In Praise of Folly
and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, who prescribed this
infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly,
and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify and make pliable
the stiffness and morose humour of man. Now that which made Plato
doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational
creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and Folly of
that sex, a sex so unalterably simple, that for any of them to thrust
forward, and reach at the name of wise, is but to make themselves the
more remarkable fools, such an endeavour, being but a swimming against
the stream, nay, the turning the course of nature, the bare attempting
whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for
as it is a trite proverb, _That an ape will be an ape, though clad in
purple_; so a woman will be a woman, a fool, whatever disguise she takes
up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus
charged; for if they do but righdy consider they will find it is to
Folly they are beholden for those endowments, wherein they so far
surpass and excel man; as first, for their unparalleled beauty, by the
charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest tyrants; for what is
it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes men so tawny and
thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter
or old age, while women have such dainty smooth cheeks, such a low
gende voice, and so pure a complexion, as if nature had drawn them for a
standing pattern of all symmetry and comeliness? Beside, what live, but
to be wound up as it were in a winding-sheet before we are dead, and so
to be shuffled quick into a grave, and buried alive.
But there are yet others perhaps that have no gust in this sort of
pleasure, but place their greatest content in the enjoyment of friends,
telling us that true friendship is to be preferred before all other
acquirements; that it is a thing so useful and necessary, as the very
elements could not long subsist without a natural combination; so
pleasant that it affords as warm an influence as the sun itself; so
honest, (if honesty in this case deserve any consideration), that the
very philosophers have not stuck to place this as one among the rest of
their different sentiments of the chiefest good. But what if I make it
appear that I also am the main spring and original of this endearment?
Yes, I can easily demonstrate it, and that not by crabbed syllogisms,
or a crooked and unintelligible way of arguing, but can make it (as the
proverb goes) _As plain as the nose on your face_. Well then, to scratch
and curry one another, to wink at a friend's faults; nay, to cry up some
failings for virtuous and commendable, is not this the next door to
the being a fool? When one looking stedfastly in his mistress's face,
admires a mole as much as a beauty spot; when another swears his lady's
stinking breath is a most redolent perfume; and at another time the fond
parent hugs the squint-eyed child, and pretends it is rather a becoming
glance and winning aspect than any blemish of the eye-sight, what is all
this but the very height of Folly?
Folly (I say) that both makes friends and keeps them so. I speak of
mortal men only, among whom there are none but have some small faults;
he is most happy that has fewest. If we pass to the gods, we shall
find that they have so much of wisdom, as they have very little of
friendship; nay, nothing of that which is true and hearty. The reason
why men make a greater improvement in this virtue, is only because they
are more credulous and easy natured; for friends must be of the same
humour and inclinations too, or else the league of amity, though made
with never so many protestations, will be soon broke. Thus grave
and morose men seldom prove fast friends; they are too captious and
censorious, and will not bear with one another's infirmities; they are
as eagle sighted as may be in the espial of others' faults, while they
wink upon themselves, and never mind the beam in their own eyes. In
short, man being by nature so prone to frailties, so humoursome and
cross-grained, and guilty of so many slips and miscarriages, there could
be no firm friendship contracted, except there be such an allowance made
for each other's defaults, which the Greeks term _'Eunoeia_, and we may
construe good nature, which is but another word for Folly. And what?
Is not Cupid, that first father of all relation, is not he stark blind,
that as he cannot himself distinguish of colours, so he would make us as
mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and wheedle us into a
thinking that we are always in the right? Thus every Jack sticks to his
own Jill; every tinker esteems his own trull; and the hob-nailed suiter
prefers Joan the milk-maid before any of my lady's daughters. These
things are true, and are ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however
ridiculous they seem, it is hence only that all societies receive their
cement and consolidation.
The same which has been said of friendship is much more applicable to a
state of marriage, which is but the highest advance and improvement
of friendship in the closest bond of union. Good God! What frequent
divorces, or worse mischief, would oft sadly happen, except man and
wife, were so discreet as to pass over light occasions of quarrel with
laughing, jesting, dissembling, and such like playing the fool? Nay, how
few matches would go forward, if the hasty lover did but first know
how many little tricks of lust and wantonness (and perhaps more gross
failings) his coy and seemingly bashful mistress had oft before been
guilty of? And how fewer marriages, when consummated, would continue
happy, if the husband were not either sottishly insensible of, or did
not purposely wink at and pass over the lightness and forwardness of his
good-natured wife? This peace and quietness is owing to my management,
for there would otherwise be continual jars, and broils, and mad doings,
if want of wit only did not at the same time make a contented cuckold
and a still house; if the cuckoo sing at the back door, the unthinking
cornute takes no notice of the unlucky omen of others' eggs being laid
in his own nest, but laughs it over, kisses his dear spouse, and all
is well. And indeed it is much better patiently to be such a hen-pecked
frigot, than always to be wracked and tortured with the grating surmises
of suspicion and jealousy. In fine, there is no one society, no one
relation men stand in, would be comfortable, or indeed tolerable,
without my assistance; there could be no right understanding betwixt
prince and people, lord and servant, tutor and pupil, friend and
friend, man and wife, buyer and seller, or any persons however otherwise
related, if they did not cowardly put up small abuses, sneakingly cringe
and submit, or after all fawningly scratch and flatter each other. This
you will say is much, but you shall yet hear what is more; tell me then,
can any one love another that first hates himself? Is it likely any
one should agree with a friend that is first fallen out with his own
judgment? Or is it probable he should be any way pleasing to another,
who is a perpetual plague and trouble to himself? This is such a paradox
that none can be so mad as to maintain. Well, but if I am excluded
and barred out, every man would be so far from being able to bear
with others, that he would be burthensome to himself, and consequently
incapable of any ease or satisfaction. Nature, that toward some of her
products plays the step-mother rather than the indulgent parent, has
endowed some men with that unhappy peevishness of disposition, as to
nauseate and dislike whatever is their own, and much admire what belongs
to other persons, so as they cannot in any wise enjoy what their birth
or fortunes have bestowed upon them: for what grace is there in the
greatest beauty, if it be always clouded with frowns and sulliness? Or
what vigour in youth, if it be harassed with a pettish, dogged,
waspish, ill humour? None, sure. Nor indeed can there be any creditable
acquirement of ourselves in any one station of life, but we should sink
without rescue into misery and despair, if we were not buoyed up and
supported by self-love, which is but the elder sister (as it were) of
Folly, and her own constant friend and assistant For what is or can be
more silly than to be lovers and admirers of ourselves? And yet if it
were not so there will be no relish to any of our words or actions. Take
away this one property of a fool, and the orator shall become as dumb
and silent as the pulpit he stands in; the musician shall hang up his
untouched instruments on the wall; the completest actors shall be hissed
off the stage; the poet shall be burlesqued with his own doggrel rhymes;
the painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary landscape; and the
physician shall want food more than his patients do physic. In short,
without self-love, instead of beautiful, you shall think yourself an old
beldam of fourscore; instead of youthful, you shall seem just dropping
into the grave; instead of eloquent, a mere stammerer; and in lieu of
gende and complaisant, you shall appear like a downright country clown;
it being so necessary that every one should think well of himself before
he can expect the good opinion of others. Finally, when it is the main
and essential part of happiness to desire to be no other than what we
already are; this expedient is again wholly owing to self-love, which so
flushes men with a good conceit of their own, that no one repents of his
shape, of his wit, of his education, or of his country; so as the dirty
half-drowned Hollander would not remove into the pleasant plains of
Italy, the rude Thracian would not change his boggy soil for the best
seat in Athens, nor the brutish Scythian quit his thorny deserts to
become an inhabitant of the Fortunate Islands. And oh the incomparable
contrivance of nature, who has ordered all things in so even a method
that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she
makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former
defects, and makes all even. To enlarge farther, I may well presume to
aver, that there are no considerable exploits performed, no useful arts
invented, but what I am the respective author and manager of: as first,
what is more lofty and heroical than war? and yet, what is more foolish
than for some petty, trivial affront, to take such a revenge as both
sides shall be sure to be losers, and where the quarrel must be decided
at the price of so many limbs and lives? And when they come to an
engagement, what service can be done by such pale-faced students, as
by drudging at the oars of wisdom, have spent all their strength and
activity? No, the only use is of blunt sturdy fellows that have little
of wit, and so the more of resolution: except you would make a soldier
of such another Demosthenes as threw down his arms when he came within
sight of the enemy, and lost that credit in the camp which he gained in
the pulpit.
But counsel, deliberation, and advice (say you), are very necessary
for the management of war: very true, but not such counsel as shall be
prescribed by the strict rules of wisdom and justice; for a battle shall
be more successfully fought by serving-men, porters, bailiffs, padders,
rogues, gaol-birds, and such like tag-rags of mankind, than by the
most accomplished philosophers; which last, how unhappy they are in the
management of such concerns, Socrates (by the oracle adjudged to be the
wisest of mortals) is a notable example; who when he appeared in the
attempt of some public performance before the people, he faltered in the