The Book of the Courtier
orderly lives, for this was guarded in Jove’s castle by very watchful
warders, who so frightened Prometheus that he dared not approach them;
wherefore Jove had compassion for the misery of men, who were torn by
wild beasts because they could not stand together for lack of civic
faculty, and sent Mercury to earth to bring them justice and shame, to
the end that these two things might adorn their cities and unite the
citizens. And he saw fit that they should not be given to men like the
other arts, wherein one expert suffices for many ignorant (as in the
case of medicine), but that they should be impressed upon each man; and
he ordained a law that all who were without justice and shame should be
exterminated and put to death like public pests. So you see, my lord
Ottaviano, that these virtues are vouchsafed by God to men, and are not
acquired, but natural.”
12.—Then my lord Ottaviano said, smiling:
“Do you then insist, my lord Gaspar, that men are so unhappy and
perverse, that they have by industry discovered an art to tame the
natures of wild beasts, bears, wolves, lions, and by it are able to
teach a pretty bird to fly whither they like, and to return willingly
from its woods and natural freedom to cages and captivity,—and yet that
they cannot or will not by the same industry find arts to help
themselves and improve their minds with diligence and study? To my
thinking this would be as if physicians were to study with all diligence
to acquire the mere art of healing sore nails and scurf in children, and
were to leave off curing fevers, pleurisy and other serious maladies;
and how out of all reason this would be, everyone can consider.
“Therefore I think that the moral virtues are not in us by nature
wholly, for nothing can ever become used to that which is naturally
contrary to it; as we see in the case of a stone, which although it were
thrown upwards ten thousand times would never become used to move
thither of itself; hence if virtue were as natural to us as weight is to
the stone, we should never become used to vice. Nor, on the other hand,
are the vices natural in this sense, for we should never be able to be
virtuous; and it would be too unfair and foolish to chastise men for
those defects that proceed from nature without our fault; and this
errour would be committed by the law, which does not inflict punishment
upon malefactors on account of their past errour (since what is done can
not be undone), but has regard to the future, to the end that he who has
erred may err no more nor be the cause of others erring through his bad
example. And thus the law presumes that the virtues can be learned,
which is very true; for we are born capable of receiving them and the
vices also, and hence custom creates in us the habit of both the one and
the other, so that we first practise virtue or vice, and then are
virtuous or vicious.
“The contrary is observed in things that are bestowed by nature, which
we first have the power to practise and then do practise: as is the case
with the senses; for first we are able to see, hear and touch, then we
see, hear and touch, although also many of these functions are perfected
by training. Wherefore good masters teach children not only letters, but
also good and seemly manners in eating, drinking, speaking and walking,
with certain appropriate gestures.
13.—“Therefore as in the other arts, so too in virtue it is necessary to
have a master, who by instruction and good reminders shall arouse and
awake in us those moral virtues whereof we have the seed enclosed and
buried in our soul, and like a good husbandman shall cultivate them and
open the way for them by freeing us from the thorns and tares of
appetite, which often so overshadow and choke our minds as not to let
them blossom or bring forth those happy fruits which alone we should
desire to have spring up in the human heart.
“In this sense, then, justice and shame, which you say Jove sent upon
earth to all men, are natural in each one of us. But just as a body
without eyes, however strong it be, often fails if it moves towards any
object, so the root of these virtues potentially engendered in our minds
often comes to naught if it be not helped by cultivation. For if it is
to ripen into action and perfect character, nature alone is not enough,
as has been said, but there is need of studied practice and of reason,
to purify and clear the soul by lifting the dark veil of ignorance, from
which nearly all the errours of men proceed,—because if good and evil
were well perceived and understood, everyone would always prefer good
and shun evil. Thus virtue may almost be said to be a kind of prudence
and wit to prefer the good, and vice a kind of imprudence and ignorance
which lead us to judge falsely; for men never prefer evil deeming it to
be evil, but are deceived by a certain likeness that it bears to good.”
14.—Then my lord Gaspar replied:
“There are, however, many who know well that they are doing evil, and
yet do it; and this because they have more thought for the present
pleasure which they feel, than for the chastisement which they fear must
come upon them: like thieves, homicides, and other such men.”
My lord Ottaviano said:
“True pleasure is always good, and true suffering always evil; therefore
these men deceive themselves in taking false pleasure for true, and true
suffering for false; hence by false pleasures they often run into true
sufferings. Therefore that art which teaches how to discern the true
from the false, may well be learned; and the faculty whereby we choose
that which is truly good and not that which falsely seems so, may be
called true wisdom and more profitable to human life than any other,
because it dispels the ignorance from which, as I have said, all evils
spring.”
15.—Then messer Pietro Bembo said:
“I do not know, my lord Ottaviano, whether my lord Gaspar ought to grant
you that all evils spring from ignorance; and that there are not many
who well know that they are sinning when they sin, and do not in the
least deceive themselves as to true pleasure, nor yet as to true
suffering. For it is certain that those who are incontinent judge
reasonably and rightly, and know that to be evil to which they are
prompted by their lusts in spite of duty, and therefore resist and set
reason against appetite, whence arises a conflict of pleasure and pain
against judgment. Conquered at last by too potent appetite, reason
yields, like a ship which resists awhile the buffetings of the sea, but
finally beaten by the too furious violence of the gale, with anchor and
rigging broken, suffers herself to be driven at fortune’s will, without
use of helm or any guidance of compass to save her.
“Therefore the incontinent commit their errours with a certain doubtful
remorse, and as it were in their own despite; which they would not do if
they did not know that what they are doing is evil, but would follow
appetite without restraint of reason and wholly uncontrolled, and would
then be not incontinent but intemperate, which is much worse. Thus
incontinence is said to be a diminished vice, because it has a grain of
reason in it; and likewise continence is said to be an imperfect virtue,
because it has a grain of passion in it. Therefore in this, methinks, we
cannot say that the errours of the incontinent proceed from ignorance,
or that they deceive themselves and that they do not sin, when they well
know that they are sinning.”
16.—My lord Ottaviano replied:
“In truth, messer Pietro, your argument is fine; yet to my thinking it
is specious rather than sound, for although the incontinent sin
hesitatingly, and reason struggles with appetite in their mind, and
although that which is evil seems evil to them,—yet they have no perfect
perception of it, nor do they know it so thoroughly as they need. Hence
they have a vague idea rather than any certain knowledge of it, and thus
allow their reason to be overcome by passion; but if they had true
knowledge of it, doubtless they would not err: since the thing by which
appetite conquers reason is always ignorance, and true knowledge can
never be overcome by passion, which is derived from the body and not
from the mind, and becomes virtue if rightly ruled and governed by
reason; if not, it becomes vice.
“But reason has such power that it always reduces the senses to
submission and enters in by wonderful means and ways, provided ignorance
does not seize that which it ought to possess. So that although the
spirits and nerves and bones have no reason in them, yet when a movement
of the mind starts in us, as if thought were spurring and shaking the
bridle on our spirits, all our members make ready,—the feet to run, the
hands to take or to do that which the mind thinks; and moreover this is
clearly seen in many who at times unwittingly eat some loathsome and
disgusting food, which to their taste seems very delicious, and then
learning what thing it was, not only suffer pain and distress of mind,
but the body so follows the mental sense, that they must perforce cast
up that food.”
17.—My lord Ottaviano was continuing his discourse further, but the
Magnifico Giuliano interrupted him and said:
“If I heard aright, my lord Ottaviano, you said that continence is an
imperfect virtue because it has a grain of passion in it; and when there
is a struggle waging in our minds between reason and appetite, I think
that the virtue which battles and gives reason the victory, ought to be
esteemed more perfect than that which conquers without opposition of
lust or passion; for there the mind seems not to abstain from evil by
force of virtue, but to refrain from doing evil because it has no
inclination thereto.”
Then my lord Ottaviano said:
“Which captain would you deem of greater worth, the one who fighting
openly puts himself in danger and yet conquers the enemy, or the one who
by his ability and skill deprives them of their strength, reducing them
to such straits that they cannot fight, and thus conquers them without
any battle or danger whatever?”
“The one,” said the Magnifico Giuliano, “who more safely conquers is
without doubt more to be praised, provided this safe victory of his do
not proceed from the cowardice of the enemy.”
My lord Ottaviano replied:
“You have judged rightly; and hence I tell you that continence may be
likened to a captain who fights manfully, and although the enemy be
strong and powerful, still conquers them, albeit not without great
difficulty and danger. While temperance unperturbed is like that captain
who conquers and rules without opposition, and having not only abated
but quite extinguished the fire of lust in the mind where she abides,
like a good prince in time of civil strife, she destroys her seditious
enemies within, and gives reason the sceptre and whole dominion.
“Thus this virtue does not compel the mind, but infusing it by very
gentle means with a vehement belief that inclines it to righteousness,
renders it calm and full of rest, in all things equal and well measured,
and disposed on every side by a certain self-accord which adorns it with
a tranquillity so serene that it is never ruffled, and becomes in all
things very obedient to reason and ready to turn its every act thereto
and to follow wherever reason may wish to lead it, without the least
unwillingness; like a tender lambkin, which always runs and stops and
walks near its dam, and moves only with her.
“This virtue, then, is very perfect and especially befitting to princes,
because from it spring many others.”
18.—Then messer Cesare Gonzaga said:
“I do not know what virtues befitting to a lord can spring from this
temperance, if it is the one which removes the passions from the mind,