A SENSUAL LIFE IS A MISERABLE LIFE.
The sensuality that we here treat of falls naturally under the head of
luxury; which extends to all the excesses of gluttony, lust, effeminacy
of manners; and, in short, to whatsoever concerns the overgreat care of
the carcass.
To begin now with the pleasures of the palate, (which deal with us like
Egyptian thieves, that strangle those they embrace), what shall we say
of the luxury of Nomentanus and Apicius, that entertained their very
souls in the kitchen: they have the choicest music for their ears; the
most diverting spectacles for their eyes; the choicest variety of meats
and drinks for their palates. What is all this, I say, but a _merry
madness_? It is true, they have their delights, but not without heavy
and anxious thoughts, even in their very enjoyments, beside that, they
are followed with repentance, and their frolics are little more than
the laughter of so many people out of their wits. Their felicities are
full of disquiet, and neither sincere nor well grounded: but they have
need of one pleasure to support another; and of new prayers to forgive
the errors of their former. Their life must needs be wretched that get
with great pains what they keep with greater.
One diversion overtakes another; hope excites hope; ambition begets
ambition; so that they only change the matter of their miseries,
without seeking any end of them; and shall never be without either
prosperous or unhappy causes of disquiet. What if a body might have
all the pleasures in the world for the asking? who would so much unman
himself, as by accepting of them, to desert his soul, and become a
perpetual slave to his senses? Those false and miserable palates, that
judge of meats by the price and difficulty, not by the healthfulness
of taste, they vomit that they may eat, and they eat that they may
fetch it up again. They cross the seas for rarities, and when they have
swallowed them, they will not so much as give them time to digest.
Wheresoever Nature has placed men, she has provided them aliment: but
we rather choose to irritate hunger by expense than to allay it at an
easier rate.
What is it that we plow the seas for; or arm ourselves against men and
beasts? To what end do we toil, and labor, and pile bags upon bags? We
may enlarge our fortunes, but we cannot our bodies; so that it does
but spill and run over, whatsoever we take more than we can hold. Our
forefathers (by the force of whose virtues we are now supported in our
vices) lived every jot as well as we, when they provided and dressed
their own meat with their own hands; lodged upon the ground, and were
not as yet come to the vanity of gold and gems; when they swore by
their earthen gods, and kept their oath, though they died for it.
Did not our consuls live more happily when they cooked their own meat
with those victorious hands that had conquered so many enemies and
won so many laurels? Did they not live more happily, I say, than our
Apicius (that corrupter of youth, and plague of the age he lived in)
who, after he had spent a prodigious fortune upon his belly, poisoned
himself for fear of starving, when he had yet 250,000 crowns in his
coffers? which may serve to show us, that it is the mind, and not
the sum, that makes any man rich; when Apicius with all his treasure
counted himself in a state of beggary, and took poison to avoid that
condition, which another would have prayed for. But why do we call
it poison, which was the wholesomest draught of his life? His daily
gluttony was poison rather, both to himself and others. His ostentation
of it was intolerable; and so was the infinite pains he took to mislead
others by his example, who went even fast enough of themselves without
driving.
It is a shame for a man to place his felicity in those entertainments
and appetites that are stronger in brutes. Do not beasts eat with a
better stomach? Have they not more satisfaction in their lusts? And
they have not only a quicker relish of their pleasures, but they enjoy
them without either scandal or remorse. If sensuality were happiness,
beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the
soul, not in the flesh. They that deliver themselves up to luxury
are still either tormented with too little, or oppressed with too
much; and equally miserable, by being either deserted or overwhelmed:
they are like men in a dangerous sea; one while cast a-dry upon a
rock, and another while swallowed up in a whirlpool; and all this
from the mistake of not distinguishing good from evil. The huntsman,
that with which labor and hazard takes a wild beast, runs as great a
risk afterwards in the keeping of him; for many times he tears out
the throat of his master; and it is the same thing with inordinate
pleasures: the more in number, and the greater they are, the more
general and absolute a slave is the servant of them. Let the common
people pronounce him as happy as they please, he pays his liberty for
his delights, and sells himself for what he buys.
Let any man take a view of our kitchens, the number of our cooks, and
the variety of our meats; will he not wonder to see so much provision
made for one belly? We have as many diseases as we have cooks or
meats; and the service of the appetite is the study now in vogue. To
say nothing of our trains of lackeys, and our troops of caterers and
sewers: Good God! that ever one belly should employ so many people!
How nauseous and fulsome are the surfeits that follow these excesses?
Simple meats are out of fashion, and all are collected into one; so
that the cook does the office of the stomach; nay, and of the teeth
too; for the meat looks as if it were chewed beforehand: here is the
luxury of all tastes in one dish, and liker a vomit than a soup. From
these compounded dishes arise compounded diseases, which require
compounded medicines. It is the same thing with our minds that it is
with our tables; simple vices are curable by simple counsels, but a
general dissolution of manners is hardly overcome; we are overrun with
a public as well as with a private madness. The physicians of old
understood little more than the virtue of some herbs to stop blood, or
heal a wound; and their firm and healthful bodies needed little more
before they were corrupted by luxury and pleasure; and when it came to
that once, their business was not to allay hunger, but to provoke it by
a thousand inventions and sauces. That which was aliment to a craving
stomach is become a burden to a full one. From hence came paleness,
trembling, and worse effects from crudities than famine; a weakness in
the joints, the belly stretched, suffusion of choler, the torpor of
the nerves, and a palpitation of the heart. To say nothing of megrims,
torments of the eyes and ears, head-ache, gout, scurvy, several sorts
of fevers and putrid ulcers, with other diseases that are but the
punishment of luxury. So long as our bodies were hardened with labor,
or tired with exercise or hunting, our food was plain and simple; many
dishes have made many diseases.
It is an ill thing for a man not to know the measure of his stomach,
nor to consider that men do many things in their drink that they are
ashamed of sober; drunkenness being nothing else but a voluntary
madness. It emboldens men to do all sorts of mischiefs; it both
irritates wickedness and discovers it; it does not make men vicious,
but it shows them to be so. It was in a drunken fit that Alexander
killed Clytus. It makes him that is insolent prouder, him that is
cruel fiercer, it takes away all shame. He that is peevish breaks out
presently into ill words and blows. The lecher, without any regard to
decency or scandal, turns up his whore in the market-place. A man’s
tongue trips, his head runs round, he staggers in his pace. To say
nothing of the crudities and diseases that follow upon this distemper,
consider the public mischiefs it has done. How many warlike nations
and strong cities, that have stood invincible to attacks and sieges,
has drunkenness overcome! Is it not a great honor to drink the company
dead? a magnificent virtue to swallow more wine than the rest, and yet
at last to be outdone by a hogshead? What shall we say of those men
that invert the offices of day and night? as if our eyes were only
given us to make use of in the dark? Is it day? “It is time to go to
bed.” Is it night? “It is time to rise.” Is it toward morning? “Let us
go to supper.” When other people lie down they rise, and lie till the
next night to digest the debauch of the day before. It is an argument
of clownery, to do as other people do.
Luxury steals upon us by degrees; first, it shows itself in a more
than ordinary care of our bodies, it slips next into the furniture of
our houses; and it gets then into the fabric, curiosity, and expense
of the house itself. It appears, lastly, in the fantastical excesses
of our tables. We change and shuffle our meats, confound our sauces,
serve that in first that used to be last, and value our dishes, not for
the taste, but for the rarity. Nay, we are so delicate, that we must
be told when we are to eat or drink; when we are hungry or weary; and
we cherish some vices as proofs and arguments of our happiness. The
most miserable mortals are they that deliver themselves up to their
palates, or to their lusts: the pleasure is short and turns presently
nauseous, and the end of it is either shame or repentance. It is a
brutal entertainment, and unworthy of a man, to place his felicity in
the service of his senses. As to the wrathful, the contentious, the
ambitious, though the distemper be great, the offence has yet something
in it that is manly; but the basest of prostitutes are those that
dedicate themselves wholly to lust; what with their hopes and fears,
anxiety of thought, and perpetual disquiets, they are never well, full
nor fasting.
What a deal of business is now made about our houses and diet, which
was at first both obvious and of little expense? Luxury led the
way, and we have employed our wits in the aid of our vices. First
we desired superfluities, our next step was to wickedness, and, in
conclusion, we delivered up our minds to our bodies, and so became
slaves to our appetites, which before were our servants, and are now
become our masters. What was it that brought us to the extravagance
of embroideries, perfumes, tire-women, etc. We passed the bounds of
Nature, and launched out into superfluities; insomuch, that it is
now-a-days only for beggars and clowns to content themselves with what
is sufficient; our luxury makes us insolent and mad. We take upon us
like princes, and fly out for every trifle, as though there were life
and death in the case. What a madness is it for a man to lay out an
estate upon a table or a cabinet, a patrimony upon a pain of pendants,
and to inflame the price of curiosities according to the hazard either
of breaking or losing of them? To wear garments that will neither
defend a woman’s body, nor her modesty: so thin that one could make a
conscience of swearing she were naked: for she hardly shows more in
the privacies of her amour than in public? How long shall we covet
and oppress, enlarge our possessions, and account that too little for
one man which was formerly enough for a nation? And our luxury is as
insatiable as our avarice. Where is that lake, that sea, that forest,
that spot of land; that is not ransacked to gratify our palate? The
very earth is burdened with our buildings; not a river, not a mountain,
escapes us. Oh, that there should be such boundless desires in our
little bodies! Would not fewer lodgings serve us? We lie but in one,
and where we are not, that is not properly ours. What with our hooks,
snares, nets, dogs, etc., we are at war with all living creatures; and
nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap, or too common;
and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate. Our avarice, our
ambition, our lusts, are insatiable; we enlarge our possessions, swell
our families, we rifle sea and land for matter of ornament and luxury.
A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a
thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all
other living creatures. We do not eat to satisfy hunger, but ambition;
we are dead while we are alive, and our houses are so much our tombs,
that a man might write our _epitaphs_ upon our very doors.
A voluptuous person, in fine, can neither be a good man, a good
patriot, nor a good friend; for he is transported with his appetites,
without considering, that the lot of man is the law of Nature. A good
man (like a good soldier) will stand his ground, receive wounds, glory
in his scars, and in death itself love his master for whom he falls;
with that divine precept always in his mind, “Follow good:” whereas
he that complains, laments, and groans, must yield nevertheless, and
do his duty though in spite of his heart. Now, what a madness is it
for a man to choose rather to be lugged than to follow, and vainly to
contend with the calamities of human life? Whatsoever is laid upon
us by necessity, we should receive generously; for it is foolish to
strive with what we cannot avoid. We are born subjects, and to obey
God is perfect liberty. He that does this shall be free, safe, and
quiet: all his actions shall succeed to his wish: and what can any man
desire more than to want nothing from without, and to have all things
desirable within himself? Pleasures do but weaken our minds, and send
us for our support to Fortune, who gives us money only as the wages of
slavery. We must stop our eyes and our ears. Ulysses had but one rock
to fear, but human life has many. Every city, nay, every man, is one;
and there is no trusting even to our nearest friends. Deliver me from
the superstition of taking those things which are light and vain for
felicities.