In Praise of Folly
think them herein so ridiculous, I would have them give an ingenuous
answer to this one query, whether if folly or hanging were left to their
choice, they had not much rather live like fools, than die like dogs?
But what matter is it if these things are resented by the vulgar? Their
ill word is no injury to fools, who are either altogether insensible of
any affront, or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were knocked
on the head, or had their brains dashed out, they would have some cause
to complain; but alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other way
injurious than as they are interpreted; nor otherwise evil, than as they
are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and
scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself
thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be
thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our
nature and essence; and as so, our not being wise can no more reasonably
be imputed as a fault, than it would be proper to laugh at a man because
he cannot fly in the air like birds and fowls; because he goes not on
all four as beasts of the field; because he does not wear a pair of
visible horns as a crest on his forehead, like bulls or stags: by the
same figure we may call a horse unhappy, because he was never taught
his grammar; and an ox miserable, for that he never learnt to fence: but
sure as a horse for not knowing a letter is nevertheless valuable, so a
man, for being a fool, is never the more unfortunate, it being by nature
and providence so ordained for each.
Ay, but (say our patrons of wisdom) the knowledge of arts and sciences
is purposely attainable by men, that the defect of natural parts may be
supplied by the help of acquired: as if it were probable that nature,
which had been so exact and curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs,
and flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece, and made man
as it were by halves, to be afterward polished and refined by his own
industry, in the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians feigned
were invented by their god Theuth, as a sure plague and punishment to
mankind, being so far from augmenting their happiness, that they do not
answer that end they were first designed for, which was the improvement
of memory, as Plato in his Phaedrus does wittily observe.
In the first golden age of the world there was no need of these
perplexities; there was then no other sort of learning but what was
naturally collected from every man's common sense, improved by an easy
experience. What use could there have been of grammar, when all men
spoke the same mother-tongue, and aimed at no higher pitch of oratory,
than barely to be understood by each other? What need of logic, when
they were too wise to enter into any dispute? Or what occasion for
rhetoric, where no difference arose to require any laborious decision?
And as little reason had they to be tied up by any laws, since the
dictates of nature and common morality were restraint and obligation
sufficient: and as to all the mysteries of providence, they made them
rather the object of their wonder, than their curiosity; and therefore
were not so presumptuous as to dive into the depths of nature, to labour
for the solving all phenomena in astronomy, or to wrack their brains
in the splitting of entities, and unfolding the nicest speculations,
judging it a crime for any man to aim at what is put beyond the reach of
his shallow apprehension.
Thus was ignorance, in the infancy of the world, as much the parent of
happiness as it has been since of devotion: but as soon as the golden
age began by degrees to degenerate into more drossy metals, then were
arts likewise invented; yet at first but few in number, and those rarely
understood, till in farther process of time the superstition of
the Chaldeans, and the curiosity of the Grecians, spawned so many
subtleties, that now it is scarce the work of an age to be thoroughly
acquainted with all the criticisms in grammar only. And among all the
several Arts, those are proportionably most esteemed that come nearest
to weakness and folly. For thus divines may bite their nails, and
naturalists may blow their fingers, astrologers may know their own
fortune is to be poor, and the logician may shut his fist and grasp the
wind.
While all these hard-named fellows cannot make
So great a figure as a single quack.
And in this profession, those that have most confidence, though the
least skill, shall be sure of the greatest custom; and indeed this whole
art as it is now practised, is but one incorporated compound of craft
and imposture.
Next to the physician comes (he, who perhaps will commence a suit with
me for not being placed before him, I mean) the lawyer, who is so silly
as to be _ignoramus_ to a proverb, and yet by such are all difficulties
resolved, all controversies determined, and all affairs managed so much
to their own advantage, that they get those estates to themselves which
they are employed to recover for their clients: while the poor divine
in the mean time shall have the lice crawl upon his thread-bare gown,
before, by all his sweat and drudgery, he can get money enough to
purchase a new one. As those arts therefore are most advantageous to
their respective professors which are farthest distant from wisdom, so
are those persons incomparably most happy that have least to do with
any at all, but jog on in the common road of nature, which will never
mislead us, except we voluntarily leap over those boundaries which she
has cautiously set to our finite beings. Nature glitters most in her
own plain, homely garb, and then gives the greatest lustre when she is
unsullied from all artificial garnish.
Thus if we enquire into the state of all dumb creatures, we shall find
those fare best that are left to nature's conduct: as to instance in
bees, what is more to be admired than the industry and contrivance of
these little animals?
What architect could ever form so curious a structure as they give a
model of in their inimitable combs? What kingdom can be governed with
better discipline than they exactly observe in their respective hives?
While the horse, by turning a rebel to nature, and becoming a slave
to man, undergoes the worst of tyranny: he is sometimes spurred on to
battle so long till he draw his guts after him for trapping, and at last
falls down, and bites the ground instead of grass; not to mention the
penalty of his jaws being curbed, his tail docked, his back wrung, his
sides spur-galled, his close imprisonment in a stable, his rapshin and
fetters when he runs a grass, and a great many other plagues, which
he might have avoided, if he had kept to that first station of freedom
which nature placed him in. How much more desirable is the unconfined
range of flies and birds, who living by instinct, would want nothing
to complete their happiness, if some well-employed Domitian would not
persecute the former, nor the sly fowler lay snares and gins for the
entrapping of the other? And if young birds, before their unfledged
wings can carry them from their nests, are caught, and pent up in a
cage, for the being taught to sing, or whistle, all their new tunes make
not half so sweet music as their wild notes, and natural melody: so much
does that which is but rough-drawn by nature surpass and excel all the
additional paint and varnish of art And we cannot sure but commend
and admire that Pythagorean cock, which (as Lucian relates) had been
successively a man, a woman, a prince, a subject, a fish, a horse, and
a frog; after all his experience, he summed up his judgment in this
censure, that man was the most wretched and deplorable of all creatures,
all other patiently grazing within the enclosures of nature, while man
only broke out, and strayed beyond those safer limits, which he was
justly confined to. And Gryllus is to be adjudged wiser than the
much-counselling Ulysses, in as much as when by the enchantment of Circe
he had been turned into a hog, he would not lay down his swinishness,
nor forsake his beloved sty, to run the peril of a hazardous voyage.
For a farther confirmation whereof I have the authority of Homer, that
captain of all poetry, who, as he gives to mankind in general, the
epithet of wretched and unhappy, so he bestows in particular upon
Ulysses the title of miserable, which he never attributes to Paris,
Ajax, Achilles, or any other of the commanders; and that for this
reason, because Ulysses was more crafty, cautious, and wise, than any of
the rest.
As those therefore fall shortest of happiness that reach highest
at wisdom, meeting with the greater repulse for soaring beyond the
boundaries of their nature, and without remembering themselves to be but
men, like the fallen angels, daring them to vie with Omnipotence, and
giant-like scale heaven with the engines of their own brain; so are
those most exalted in the road of bliss that degenerate nearest into
brutes, and quietly divest themselves of all use and exercise of reason.
And this we can prove by a familiar instance. As namely, can there be
any one sort of men that enjoy themselves better than those which we
call idiots, changelings, fools and naturals? It may perhaps sound
harsh, but upon due consideration it will be found abundantly true, that
these persons in all circumstances fare best, and live most comfortably;
as first, they are void of all fear, which is a very great privilege
to be exempted from; they are troubled with no remorse, nor pricks of
conscience; they are not frighted with any bugbear stories of another
world; they startle not at the fancied appearance of ghosts, or
apparitions; they are not wracked with the dread of impending mischiefs,
nor bandied with the hopes of any expected enjoyments: in short, they
are unassaulted by all those legions of cares that war against the quiet
of rational souls; they are ashamed of nothing, fear no man, banish the
uneasiness of ambition, envy, and love; and to add the reversion of a
future happiness to the enjoyment of a present one, they have no sin
neither to answer for; divines unanimously maintaining, that a gross
and unavoidable ignorance does not only extenuate and abate from the
aggravation, but wholly expiate the guilt of any immorality.
Come now then as many of you as challenge the respect of being accounted
wise, ingenuously confess how many insurrections of rebellious thoughts,
and pangs of a labouring mind, ye are perpetually thrown and tortured
with; reckon up all those inconveniences that you are unavoidably
subject to, and then tell me whether fools, by being exempted from
all these embroilments, are not infinitely more free and happy than
yourselves? Add to this, that fools do not barely laugh, and sing, and
play the good-fellow alone to themselves: but as it is the nature of
good to be communicative, so they impart their mirth to others, by
making sport for the whole company they are at any time engaged in, as
if providence purposely designed them for an antidote to melancholy:
whereby they make all persons so fond of their society, that they are
welcomed to all places, hugged, caressed, and defended, a liberty given
them of saying or doing anything; so well beloved, that none dares to
offer them the least injury; nay, the most ravenous beasts of prey will
pass them by untouched, as if by instinct they were warned that such
innocence ought to receive no hurt. Farther, their converse is so
acceptable in the court of princes, that few kings will banquet, walk,
or take any other diversion, without their attendance; nay, and had much