Though all that has arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past

should be true, and known by some one person, it would be less than

nothing in comparison of what is unknown. And of this same image of the

world, which glides away whilst we live upon it, how wretched and limited

is the knowledge of the most curious; not only of particular events,

which fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern, but of the

state of great governments and nations, a hundred more escape us than

ever come to our knowledge. We make a mighty business of the invention

of artillery and printing, which other men at the other end of the world,

in China, had a thousand years ago. Did we but see as much of the world

as we do not see, we should perceive, we may well believe, a perpetual

multiplication and vicissitude of forms. There is nothing single and

rare in respect of nature, but in respect of our knowledge, which is a

wretched foundation whereon to ground our rules, and that represents to

us a very false image of things. As we nowadays vainly conclude the

declension and decrepitude of the world, by the arguments we extract from

our own weakness and decay:

“Jamque adeo est affecta aetas effoet aque tellus;”

[“Our age is feeble, and the earth less fertile.”

--Lucretius, ii. 1151.]

so did he vainly conclude as to its birth and youth, by the vigour he

observed in the wits of his time, abounding in novelties and the

invention of divers arts:

“Verum, ut opinor, habet novitatem summa, recensque

Natura est mundi, neque pridem exordia coepit

Quare etiam quaedam nunc artes expoliuntur,

Nunc etiam augescunt; nunc addita navigiis sunt

Multa.”

[“But, as I am of opinion, the whole of the world is of recent

origin, nor had its commencement in remote times; wherefore it is

that some arts are still being refined, and some just on the

increase; at present many additions are being made to shipping.”

--Lucretius, v. 331.]

Our world has lately discovered another (and who will assure us that it

is the last of its brothers, since the Daemons, the Sybils, and we

ourselves have been ignorant of this till now?), as large, well-peopled,

and fruitful as this whereon we live and yet so raw and childish, that we

are still teaching it it’s a B C: ‘tis not above fifty years since it

knew neither letters, weights, measures, vestments, corn, nor vines: it

was then quite naked in the mother’s lap, and only lived upon what she

gave it. If we rightly conclude of our end, and this poet of the

youthfulness of that age of his, that other world will only enter into

the light when this of ours shall make its exit; the universe will fall

into paralysis; one member will be useless, the other in vigour. I am

very much afraid that we have greatly precipitated its declension and

ruin by our contagion; and that we have sold it opinions and our arts at

a very dear rate. It was an infant world, and yet we have not whipped

and subjected it to our discipline by the advantage of our natural worth

and force, neither have we won it by our justice and goodness, nor

subdued it by our magnanimity. Most of their answers, and the

negotiations we have had with them, witness that they were nothing behind

us in pertinency and clearness of natural understanding. The astonishing

magnificence of the cities of Cusco and Mexico, and, amongst many other

things, the garden of the king, where all the trees, fruits, and plants,

according to the order and stature they have in a garden, were

excellently formed in gold; as, in his cabinet, were all the animals bred

upon his territory and in its seas; and the beauty of their manufactures,

in jewels, feathers, cotton, and painting, gave ample proof that they

were as little inferior to us in industry. But as to what concerns

devotion, observance of the laws, goodness, liberality, loyalty, and

plain dealing, it was of use to us that we had not so much as they; for

they have lost, sold, and betrayed themselves by this advantage over us.

As to boldness and courage, stability, constancy against pain, hunger,

and death, I should not fear to oppose the examples I find amongst them

to the most famous examples of elder times that we find in our records on

this side of the world. Far as to those who subdued them, take but away

the tricks and artifices they practised to gull them, and the just

astonishment it was to those nations to see so sudden and unexpected an

arrival of men with beards, differing in language, religion, shape, and

countenance, from so remote a part of the world, and where they had never

heard there was any habitation, mounted upon great unknown monsters,

against those who had not only never seen a horse, but had never seen any

other beast trained up to carry a man or any other loading; shelled in a

hard and shining skin, with a cutting and glittering weapon in his hand,

against them, who, out of wonder at the brightness of a looking glass or

a knife, would exchange great treasures of gold and pearl; and who had

neither knowledge, nor matter with which, at leisure, they could

penetrate our steel: to which may be added the lightning and thunder of

our cannon and harquebuses, enough to frighten Caesar himself, if

surprised, with so little experience, against people naked, except where

the invention of a little quilted cotton was in use, without other arms,

at the most, than bows, stones, staves, and bucklers of wood; people

surprised under colour of friendship and good faith, by the curiosity of

seeing strange and unknown things; take but away, I say, this disparity

from the conquerors, and you take away all the occasion of so many

victories. When I look upon that in vincible ardour wherewith so many

thousands of men, women, and children so often presented and threw

themselves into inevitable dangers for the defence of their gods and

liberties; that generous obstinacy to suffer all extremities and

difficulties, and death itself, rather than submit to the dominion of

those by whom they had been so shamefully abused; and some of them

choosing to die of hunger and fasting, being prisoners, rather than to

accept of nourishment from the hands of their so basely victorious

enemies: I see, that whoever would have attacked them upon equal terms of

arms, experience, and number, would have had a hard, and, peradventure,

a harder game to play than in any other war we have seen.

Why did not so noble a conquest fall under Alexander, or the ancient

Greeks and Romans; and so great a revolution and mutation of so many

empires and nations, fall into hands that would have gently levelled,

rooted up, and made plain and smooth whatever was rough and savage

amongst them, and that would have cherished and propagated the good seeds

that nature had there produced; mixing not only with the culture of land

and the ornament of cities, the arts of this part of the world, in what

was necessary, but also the Greek and Roman virtues, with those that were

original of the country? What a reparation had it been to them, and what

a general good to the whole world, had our first examples and deportments

in those parts allured those people to the admiration and imitation of

virtue, and had begotten betwixt them and us a fraternal society and

intelligence? How easy had it been to have made advantage of souls so

innocent, and so eager to learn, leaving, for the most part, naturally so

good inclinations before? Whereas, on the contrary, we have taken

advantage of their ignorance and inexperience, with greater ease to

incline them to treachery, luxury, avarice, and towards all sorts of

inhumanity and cruelty, by the pattern and example of our manners. Who

ever enhanced the price of merchandise at such a rate? So many cities

levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated, so many millions

of people fallen by the edge of the sword, and the richest and most

beautiful part of the world turned upside down, for the traffic of pearl

and pepper? Mechanic victories! Never did ambition, never did public

animosities, engage men against one another in such miserable

hostilities, in such miserable calamities.

Certain Spaniards, coasting the sea in quest of their mines, landed in a

fruitful and pleasant and very well peopled country, and there made to

the inhabitants their accustomed professions: “that they were peaceable

men, who were come from a very remote country, and sent on the behalf of

the King of Castile, the greatest prince of the habitable world, to whom

the Pope, God’s vicegerent upon earth, had given the principality of all

the Indies; that if they would become tributaries to him, they should be

very gently and courteously used”; at the same time requiring of them

victuals for their nourishment, and gold whereof to make some pretended

medicine; setting forth, moreover, the belief in one only God, and the

truth of our religion, which they advised them to embrace, whereunto they

also added some threats. To which they received this answer: “That as to

their being peaceable, they did not seem to be such, if they were so.

As to their king, since he was fain to beg, he must be necessitous and

poor; and he who had made him this gift, must be a man who loved

dissension, to give that to another which was none of his own, to bring

it into dispute against the ancient possessors. As to victuals, they

would supply them; that of gold they had little; it being a thing they

had in very small esteem, as of no use to the service of life, whereas

their only care was to pass it over happily and pleasantly: but that what

they could find excepting what was employed in the service of their gods,

they might freely take. As to one only God, the proposition had pleased

them well; but that they would not change their religion, both because

they had so long and happily lived in it, and that they were not wont to

take advice of any but their friends, and those they knew: as to their

menaces, it was a sign of want of judgment to threaten those whose nature

and power were to them unknown; that, therefore, they were to make haste

to quit their coast, for they were not used to take the civilities and

professions of armed men and strangers in good part; otherwise they

should do by them as they had done by those others,” showing them the

heads of several executed men round the walls of their city. A fair

example of the babble of these children. But so it is, that the

Spaniards did not, either in this or in several other places, where they

did not find the merchandise they sought, make any stay or attempt,

whatever other conveniences were there to be had; witness my CANNIBALS.

--[Chapter XXX. of Book I.]

Of the two most puissant monarchs of that world, and, peradventure, of

this, kings of so many kings, and the last they turned out, he of Peru,

having been taken in a battle, and put to so excessive a ransom as

exceeds all belief, and it being faithfully paid, and he having, by his

conversation, given manifest signs of a frank, liberal, and constant

spirit, and of a clear and settled understanding, the conquerors had a

mind, after having exacted one million three hundred and twenty-five

thousand and five hundred weight of gold, besides silver, and other

things which amounted to no less (so that their horses were shod with

massy gold), still to see, at the price of what disloyalty and injustice

whatever, what the remainder of the treasures of this king might be, and

to possess themselves of that also. To this end a false accusation was

preferred against him, and false witnesses brought to prove that he went

about to raise an insurrection in his provinces, to procure his own

liberty; whereupon, by the virtuous sentence of those very men who had by

this treachery conspired his ruin, he was condemned to be publicly hanged

and strangled, after having made him buy off the torment of being burnt

alive, by the baptism they gave him immediately before execution; a

horrid and unheard of barbarity, which, nevertheless, he underwent

without giving way either in word or look, with a truly grave and royal

behaviour. After which, to calm and appease the people, aroused and

astounded at so strange a thing, they counterfeited great sorrow for his

death, and appointed most sumptuous funerals.

The other king of Mexico,--[Guatimosin]--having for a long time defended

his beleaguered city, and having in this siege manifested the utmost of

what suffering and perseverance can do, if ever prince and people did,

and his misfortune having delivered him alive into his enemies’ hands,

upon articles of being treated like a king, neither did he in his

captivity discover anything unworthy of that title. His enemies, after

their victory, not finding so much gold as they expected, when they had

searched and rifled with their utmost diligence, they went about to

procure discoveries by the most cruel torments they could invent upon the

prisoners they had taken: but having profited nothing by these, their

courage being greater than their torments, they arrived at last to such a

degree of fury, as, contrary to their faith and the law of nations, to

condemn the king himself, and one of the principal noblemen of his court,

to the rack, in the presence of one another. This lord, finding himself

overcome with pain, being environed with burning coals, pitifully turned

his dying eyes towards his master, as it were to ask him pardon that he

was able to endure no more; whereupon the king, darting at him a fierce

and severe look, as reproaching his cowardice and pusillanimity, with a

harsh and constant voice said to him thus only: “And what dost thou think

I suffer? am I in a bath? am I more at ease than thou?” Whereupon the

other immediately quailed under the torment and died upon the spot. The

king, half roasted, was carried thence; not so much out of pity (for what

compassion ever touched so barbarous souls, who, upon the doubtful

information of some vessel of gold to be made a prey of, caused not only

a man, but a king, so great in fortune and desert, to be broiled before

their eyes), but because his constancy rendered their cruelty still more

shameful. They afterwards hanged him for having nobly attempted to

deliver himself by arms from so long a captivity and subjection, and he

died with a courage becoming so magnanimous a prince.

Another time, they burnt in the same fire four hundred and sixty men

alive at once, the four hundred of the common people, the sixty the

principal lords of a province, simply prisoners of war. We have these

narratives from themselves for they not only own it, but boast of it and

publish it. Could it be for a testimony of their justice or their zeal

to religion? Doubtless these are ways too differing and contrary to so

holy an end. Had they proposed to themselves to extend our faith, they

would have considered that it does not amplify in the possession of

territories, but in the gaining of men; and would have more than

satisfied themselves with the slaughters occasioned by the necessity of

war, without indifferently mixing a massacre, as upon wild beasts, as

universal as fire and sword could make it; having only, by intention,

saved so many as they meant to make miserable slaves of, for the work and

service of their mines; so that many of the captains were put to death

upon the place of conquest, by order of the kings of Castile, justly

offended with the horror of their deportment, and almost all of them

hated and disesteemed. God meritoriously permitted that all this great

plunder should be swallowed up by the sea in transportation, or in the

civil wars wherewith they devoured one another; and most of the men

themselves were buried in a foreign land without any fruit of their

victory.

That the revenue from these countries, though in the hands of so

parsimonious and so prudent a prince,--[Phillip II.]--so little answers

the expectation given of it to his predecessors, and to that original

abundance of riches which was found at the first landing in those new

discovered countries (for though a great deal be fetched thence, yet we

see ‘tis nothing in comparison of that which might be expected), is that

the use of coin was there utterly unknown, and that consequently their

gold was found all hoarded together, being of no other use but for

ornament and show, as a furniture reserved from father to son by many

puissant kings, who were ever draining their mines to make this vast heap

of vessels and statues for the decoration of their palaces and temples;

whereas our gold is always in motion and traffic; we cut it into a

thousand small pieces, and cast it into a thousand forms, and scatter and

disperse it in a thousand ways. But suppose our kings should thus hoard

up all the gold they could get in several ages and let it lie idle by

them.

Those of the kingdom of Mexico were in some sort more civilised and more

advanced in arts than the other nations about them. Therefore did they

judge, as we do, that the world was near its period, and looked upon the

desolation we brought amongst them as a certain sign of it. They

believed that the existence of the world was divided into five ages, and

in the life of five successive suns, of which four had already ended

their time, and that this which gave them light was the fifth. The first

perished, with all other creatures, by an universal inundation of water;

the second by the heavens falling upon us and suffocating every living

thing to which age they assigned the giants, and showed bones to the

Spaniards, according to the proportion of which the stature of men

amounted to twenty feet; the third by fire, which burned and consumed

all; the fourth by an emotion of the air and wind, which came with such

violence as to beat down even many mountains, wherein the men died not,

but were turned into baboons. What impressions will not the weakness of

human belief admit? After the death of this fourth sun, the world was

twenty-five years in perpetual darkness: in the fifteenth of which a man

and a woman were created, who restored the human race: ten years after,

upon a certain day, the sun appeared newly created, and since the account

of their year takes beginning from that day: the third day after its

creation the ancient gods died, and the new ones were since born daily.

After what manner they think this last sun shall perish, my author knows

not; but their number of this fourth change agrees with the great

conjunction of stars which eight hundred and odd years ago, as

astrologers suppose, produced great alterations and novelties in the

world.

As to pomp and magnificence, upon the account of which I engaged in this

discourse, neither Greece, Rome, nor Egypt, whether for utility,

difficulty, or state, can compare any of their works with the highway to

be seen in Peru, made by the kings of the country, from the city of Quito

to that of Cusco (three hundred leagues), straight, even, five-and-twenty

paces wide, paved, and provided on both sides with high and beautiful

walls; and close by them, and all along on the inside, two perennial

streams, bordered with beautiful plants, which they call moly. In this

work, where they met with rocks and mountains, they cut them through, and

made them even, and filled up pits and valleys with lime and stone to

make them level. At the end of every day’s journey are beautiful

palaces, furnished with provisions, vestments, and arms, as well for

travellers as for the armies that are to pass that way. In the estimate

of this work I have reckoned the difficulty which is especially

considerable in that place; they did not build with any stones less than

ten feet square, and had no other conveniency of carriage but by drawing

their load themselves by force of arm, and knew not so much as the art of

scaffolding, nor any other way of standing to their work, but by throwing

up earth against the building as it rose higher, taking it away again

when they had done.

Let us here return to our coaches. Instead of these, and of all other

sorts of carriages, they caused themselves to be carried upon men’s

shoulders. This last king of Peru, the day that he was taken, was thus

carried betwixt two upon staves of gold, and set in a chair of gold in

the middle of his army. As many of these sedan-men as were killed to

make him fall (for they would take him alive), so many others (and they

contended for it) took the place of those who were slain, so that they

could never beat him down, what slaughter soever they made of these

people, till a horseman, seizing upon him, brought him to the ground.

CHAPTER VII

OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge our selves by railing at

it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything to proclaim its

defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how

much to be coveted soever. Greatness has, in general, this manifest

advantage, that it can lower itself when it pleases, and has, very near,

the choice of both the one and the other condition; for a man does not

fall from all heights; there are several from which one may descend

without falling down. It does, indeed, appear to me that we value it at

too high a rate, and also overvalue the resolution of those whom we have

either seen or heard have contemned it, or displaced themselves of their

own accord: its essence is not so evidently commodious that a man may

not, with out a miracle, refuse it. I find it a very hard thing to

undergo misfortunes, but to be content with a moderate measure of

fortune, and to avoid greatness, I think a very easy matter. ‘Tis,

methinks, a virtue to which I, who am no conjuror, could without any

great endeavour arrive. What, then, is to be expected from them that

would yet put into consideration the glory attending this refusal,

wherein there may lurk worse ambition than even in the desire itself,

and fruition of greatness? Forasmuch as ambition never comports itself

better, according to itself, than when it proceeds by obscure and

unfrequented ways.

I incite my courage to patience, but I rein it as much as I can towards

desire. I have as much to wish for as another, and allow my wishes as

much liberty and indiscretion; but yet it never befell me to wish for

either empire or royalty, or the eminency of those high and commanding

fortunes: I do not aim that way; I love myself too well. When I think to

grow greater, ‘tis but very moderately, and by a compelled and timorous

advancement, such as is proper for me in resolution, in prudence, in

health, in beauty, and even in riches too; but this supreme reputation,

this mighty authority, oppress my imagination; and, quite contrary to

that other,--[Julius Caesar.]--I should, peradventure, rather choose to

be the second or third in Perigord than the first at Paris at least,

without lying, rather the third at Paris than the first. I would neither

dispute with a porter, a miserable unknown, nor make crowds open in

adoration as I pass. I am trained up to a moderate condition, as well by

my choice as fortune; and have made it appear, in the whole conduct of my

life and enterprises, that I have rather avoided than otherwise the

climbing above the degree of fortune wherein God has placed me by my

birth; all natural constitution is equally just and easy. My soul is

such a poltroon, that I measure not good fortune by the height, but by

the facility.

But if my heart be not great enough, ‘tis open enough to make amends, at

any one’s request, freely to lay open its weakness. Should any one put

me upon comparing the life of L. Thorius Balbus, a brave man, handsome,

learned, healthful, understanding, and abounding in all sorts of

conveniences and pleasures, leading a quiet life, and all his own, his

mind well prepared against death, superstition, pain, and other

incumbrances of human necessity, dying, at last, in battle, with his

sword in his hand, for the defence of his country, on the one part; and

on the other part, the life of M. Regulus, so great and high as is known

to every one, and his end admirable; the one without name and without

dignity, the other exemplary and glorious to a wonder. I should

doubtless say, as Cicero did, could I speak as well as he.

[Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 20, gives the preference to Regulus, and

proclaims him the happier man.]

But if I was to compare them with my own, I should then also say that the

first is as much according to my capacity, and from desire, which I

conform to my capacity, as the second is far beyond it; that I could not

approach the last but with veneration, the other I could readily attain

by use.

Let us return to our temporal greatness, from which we are digressed. I

disrelish all dominion, whether active or passive. Otanes, one of the

seven who had right to pretend to the kingdom of Persia, did as I should

willingly have done, which was, that he gave up to his competitors his

right of being promoted to it, either by election or by lot, provided

that he and his might live in the empire out of all authority and

subjection, those of the ancient laws excepted, and might enjoy all

liberty that was not prejudicial to these, being as impatient of

commanding as of being commanded.

The most painful and difficult employment in the world, in my opinion, is

worthily to discharge the office of a king. I excuse more of their

mistakes than men commonly do, in consideration of the intolerable weight

of their function, which astounds me. ‘Tis hard to keep measure in so

immeasurable a power; yet so it is that it is, even to those who are not

of the best nature, a singular incitement to virtue to be seated in a

place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon

record, and where the least benefit redounds to so many men, and where

your talent of administration, like that of preachers, principally

addresses itself to the people, no very exact judge, easy to deceive, and

easily content. There are few things wherein we can give a sincere

judgment, by reason that there are few wherein we have not, in some sort,

a private interest. Superiority and inferiority, dominion and subjection

are bound to a natural envy and contest, and must of necessity

perpetually intrench upon one another. I believe neither the one nor the

other touching the rights of the other party; let reason therefore, which

is inflexible and without passion, determine when we can avail ourselves

of it. ‘Tis not above a month ago that I read over, two Scottish authors

contending upon this subject, of whom he who stands for the people makes

the king to be in a worse condition than a carter; he who writes for

monarchy places him some degrees above God in power and sovereignty.

Now, the incommodity of greatness that I have taken to remark in this

place, upon some occasion that has lately put it into my head, is this:

there is not, peradventure, anything more pleasant in the commerce of

many than the trials that we make against one another, out of emulation

of honour and worth, whether in the exercises of the body or in those of

the mind, wherein sovereign greatness can have no true part. And, in

earnest, I have often thought that by force of respect itself men use

princes disdainfully and injuriously in that particular; for the thing I

was infinitely offended at in my childhood, that they who exercised with

me forbore to do their best because they found me unworthy of their

utmost endeavour, is what we see happen to them daily, every one finding

himself unworthy to contend with them. If we discover that they have the

least desire to get the better of us, there is no one who will not make

it his business to give it them, and who will not rather betray his own

glory than offend theirs; and will therein employ so much force only as

is necessary to save their honour. What share have they, then, in the

engagement, where every one is on their side? Methinks I see those

paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to jousts and battle with

enchanted arms and bodies. Brisson,

[Plutarch, On Satisfaction or Tranquillity of the Mind. But in his

essay, How a Man may Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, he calls

him Chriso.]

running against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a fault in

his career; Alexander chid him for it, but he ought to have had him

whipped. Upon this consideration Carneades said, that “the sons of

princes learned nothing right but to manage horses; by reason that, in

all their other exercises, every one bends and yields to them; but a

horse, that is neither a flatterer nor a courtier, throws the son of a

king with no more ceremony than he would throw that of a porter.”

Homer was fain to consent that Venus, so sweet and delicate a goddess as

she was, should be wounded at the battle of Troy, thereby to ascribe

courage and boldness to her qualities that cannot possibly be in those

who are exempt from danger. The gods are made to be angry, to fear, to

run away, to be jealous, to grieve, to be transported with passions, to

honour them with the virtues that, amongst us, are built upon these

imperfections. Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty, can

claim no interest in the honour and pleasure that are the consequents of

hazardous actions. ‘Tis pity a man should be so potent that all things

must give way to him; fortune therein sets you too remote from society,

and places you in too great a solitude. This easiness and mean facility

of making all things bow under you, is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure:

‘tis to slide, not to go; ‘tis to sleep, and not to live. Conceive man

accompanied with omnipotence: you overwhelm him; he must beg disturbance

and opposition as an alms: his being and his good are in indigence. Evil

to man is in its turn good, and good evil. Neither is pain always to be

shunned, nor pleasure always to be pursued.

Their good qualities are dead and lost; for they can only be perceived by

comparison, and we put them out of this: they have little knowledge of

true praise, having their ears deafened with so continual and uniform an

approbation. Have they to do with the stupidest of all their subjects?

they have no means to take any advantage of him; if he but say: “‘Tis

because he is my king,” he thinks he has said enough to express that he

therefore suffered himself to be overcome. This quality stifles and

consumes the other true and essential qualities: they are sunk in the

royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves with but actions

that directly concern and serve the function of their place; ‘tis so much

to be a king, that this alone remains to them. The outer glare that

environs him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there

repelled and dissipated, being filled and stopped by this prevailing

light. The senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius; he refused

it, esteeming that though it had been just, he could derive no advantage

from a judgment so partial, and that was so little free to judge.

As we give them all advantages of honour, so do we soothe and authorise

all their vices and defects, not only by approbation, but by imitation

also. Every one of Alexander’s followers carried his head on one side,

as he did; and the flatterers of Dionysius ran against one another in his

presence, and stumbled at and overturned whatever was under foot, to shew

they were as purblind as he. Hernia itself has also served to recommend

a man to favour; I have seen deafness affected; and because the master

hated his wife, Plutarch--[who, however, only gives one instance; and in

this he tells us that the man visited his wife privately.]--has seen his

courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved; and, which is yet more,

uncleanliness and all manner of dissoluteness have so been in fashion; as

also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion,

effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be; and by an example yet more

dangerous than that of Mithridates’ flatterers, who, as their master

pretended to the honour of a good physician, came to him to have

incisions and cauteries made in their limbs; for these others suffered

the soul, a more delicate and noble part, to be cauterised.

But to end where I began: the Emperor Adrian, disputing with the

philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus

soon yielded him the victory; for which his friends rebuking him, “You

talk simply,” said he; “would you not have him wiser than I, who commands

thirty legions?” Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pollio, and “I,”

said Pollio, “say nothing, for it is not prudence to write in contest

with him who has power to proscribe.” And they were right. For

Dionysius, because he could not equal Philoxenus in poesy and Plato in

discourse, condemned the one to the quarries, and sent the other to be

sold for a slave into the island of AEgina.

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE ART OF CONFERENCE

‘Tis a custom of our justice to condemn some for a warning to others. To

condemn them for having done amiss, were folly, as Plato says,

[Diogenes Laertius, however, in his Life of Plato, iii. 181, says

that Plato’s offence was the speaking too freely to the tyrant.]

for what is done can never be undone; but ‘tis to the end they may offend

no more, and that others may avoid the example of their offence: we do

not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him. I do the same; my

errors are sometimes natural, incorrigible, and irremediable: but the

good which virtuous men do to the public, in making themselves imitated,

I, peradventure, may do in making my manners avoided:

“Nonne vides, Albi ut male vivat filius? utque

Barrus inops? magnum documentum, ne patriam rein

Perdere guis velit;”

[“Dost thou not see how ill the son of Albus lives? and how the

indigent Barrus? a great warning lest any one should incline to

dissipate his patrimony.”--Horace, Sat., i. 4, 109.]

publishing and accusing my own imperfections, some one will learn to be

afraid of them. The parts that I most esteem in myself, derive more

honour from decrying, than for commending myself which is the reason why

I so often fall into, and so much insist upon that strain. But, when all

is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; a man’s

accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never: There may,

peradventure, be some of my own complexion who better instruct myself by

contrariety than by similitude, and by avoiding than by imitation. The

elder Cato was regarding this sort of discipline, when he said, “that the

wise may learn more of fools, than fools can of the wise”; and Pausanias

tells us of an ancient player upon the harp, who was wont to make his

scholars go to hear one who played very ill, who lived over against him,

that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. The

horror of cruelty more inclines me to clemency, than any example of

clemency could possibly do. A good rider does not so much mend my seat,

as an awkward attorney or a Venetian, on horseback; and a clownish way of

speaking more reforms mine than the most correct. The ridiculous and

simple look of another always warns and advises me; that which pricks,

rouses and incites much better than that which tickles. The time is now

proper for us to reform backward; more by dissenting than by agreeing; by

differing more than by consent. Profiting little by good examples, I

make use of those that are ill, which are everywhere to be found: I

endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as

constant as I see others fickle; as affable as I see others rough; as

good as I see others evil: but I propose to myself impracticable

measures.

The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is

conversation; I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of

life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose,

I should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight, than my hearing and

speech. The Athenians, and also the Romans, kept this exercise in great

honour in their academies; the Italians retain some traces of it to this

day, to their great advantage, as is manifest by the comparison of our

understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and

feeble motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises

at once. If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he

presses upon my flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations

stir up mine; jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up

to something above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether

tedious in discourse. But, as our mind fortifies itself by the

communication of vigorous and regular understandings, ‘tis not to be

expressed how much it loses and degenerates by the continual commerce and

familiarity we have with mean and weak spirits; there is no contagion

that spreads like that; I know sufficiently by experience what ‘tis worth

a yard. I love to discourse and dispute, but it is with but few men, and

for myself; for to do it as a spectacle and entertainment to great

persons, and to make of a man’s wit and words competitive parade is, in

my opinion, very unbecoming a man of honour.

Folly is a bad quality; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex

at it, as I do, is another sort of disease little less troublesome than

folly itself; and is the thing that I will now accuse in myself. I enter

into conference, and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch

as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and

wherein to take any deep root; no propositions astonish me, no belief

offends me, though never so contrary to my own; there is no so frivolous

and extravagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the production

of human wit. We, who deprive our judgment of the right of determining,

look indifferently upon the diverse opinions, and if we incline not our

judgment to them, yet we easily give them the hearing: Where one scale is

totally empty, I let the other waver under an old wife’s dreams; and I

think myself excusable, if I prefer the odd number; Thursday rather than

Friday; if I had rather be the twelfth or fourteenth than the thirteenth

at table; if I had rather, on a journey, see a hare run by me than cross

my way, and rather give my man my left foot than my right, when he comes

to put on my stockings. All such reveries as are in credit around us,

deserve at least a hearing: for my part, they only with me import

inanity, but they import that. Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are

something more than nothing in nature; and he who will not suffer himself

to proceed so far, falls, peradventure, into the vice of obstinacy, to

avoid that of superstition.

The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they

only rouse and exercise, me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to

offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form

of conference, and not of authority. At every opposition, we do not

consider whether or no it be dust, but, right or wrong, how to disengage

ourselves: instead of extending the arms, we thrust out our claws. I

could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell

me that I am a fool, and talk I know not of what. I love stout

expressions amongst gentle men, and to have them speak as they think; we

must fortify and harden our hearing against this tenderness of the

ceremonious sound of words. I love a strong and manly familiarity and

conversation: a friendship that pleases itself in the sharpness and

vigour of its communication, like love in biting and scratching: it is

not vigorous and generous enough, if it be not quarrelsome, if it be

civilised and artificial, if it treads nicely and fears the shock:

“Neque enim disputari sine reprehensione potest.”

[“Neither can a man dispute, but he must contradict.”

(Or:) “Nor can people dispute without reprehension.”

--Cicero, De Finib., i. 8.]

When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger: I

advance towards him who controverts, who instructs me; the cause of truth

ought to be the common cause both of the one and the other. What will

the angry man answer? Passion has already confounded his judgment;

agitation has usurped the place of reason. It were not amiss that the

decision of our disputes should pass by wager: that there might be a

material mark of our losses, to the end we might the better remember

them; and that my man might tell me: “Your ignorance and obstinacy cost

you last year, at several times, a hundred crowns.” I hail and caress

truth in what quarter soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself,

and open my conquered arms as far off as I can discover it; and, provided

it be not too imperiously, take a pleasure in being reproved, and

accommodate myself to my accusers, very often more by reason of civility

than amendment, loving to gratify and nourish the liberty of admonition

by my facility of submitting to it, and this even at my own expense.

Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it: they have not

the courage to correct, because they have not the courage to suffer

themselves to be corrected; and speak always with dissimulation in the

presence of one another: I take so great a pleasure in being judged and

known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am

so: my imagination so often contradicts and condemns itself, that ‘tis

all one to me if another do it, especially considering that I give his

reprehension no greater authority than I choose; but I break with him,

who carries himself so high, as I know of one who repents his advice,

if not believed, and takes it for an affront if it be not immediately

followed. That Socrates always received smilingly the contradictions

offered to his arguments, a man may say arose from his strength of

reason; and that, the advantage being certain to fall on his side, he

accepted them as a matter of new victory. But we see, on the contrary,

that nothing in argument renders our sentiment so delicate, as the

opinion of pre-eminence, and disdain of the adversary; and that, in

reason, ‘tis rather for the weaker to take in good part the oppositions

that correct him and set him right. In earnest, I rather choose the

company of those who ruffle me than of those who fear me; ‘tis a dull and

hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us and approve of

all we say. Antisthenes commanded his children never to take it kindly

or for a favour, when any man commended them. I find I am much prouder

of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardour of dispute,

I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased

with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness. In fine, I

receive and admit of all manner of attacks that are direct, how weak

soever; but I am too impatient of those that are made out of form. I

care not what the subject is, the opinions are to me all one, and I am

almost indifferent whether I get the better or the worse. I can

peaceably argue a whole day together, if the argument be carried on with

method; I do not so much require force and subtlety as order; I mean the

order which we every day observe in the wranglings of shepherds and

shop-boys, but never amongst us: if they start from their subject, ‘tis

out of incivility, and so ‘tis with us; but their tumult and impatience

never put them out of their theme; their argument still continues its

course; if they interrupt, and do not stay for one another, they at least

understand one another. Any one answers too well for me, if he answers

what I say: when the dispute is irregular and disordered, I leave the

thing itself, and insist upon the form with anger and indiscretion;

falling into wilful, malicious, and imperious way of disputation, of

which I am afterwards ashamed. ‘Tis impossible to deal fairly with a

fool: my judgment is not only corrupted under the hand of so impetuous a

master, but my conscience also.

Our disputes ought to be interdicted and punished as well as other verbal

crimes: what vice do they not raise and heap up, being always governed

and commanded by passion? We first quarrel with their reasons, and then

with the men. We only learn to dispute that we may contradict; and so,

every one contradicting and being contradicted, it falls out that the

fruit of disputation is to lose and annihilate truth. Therefore it is

that Plato in his Republic prohibits this exercise to fools and ill-bred

people. To what end do you go about to inquire of him, who knows nothing

to the purpose? A man does no injury to the subject, when he leaves it

to seek how he may treat it; I do not mean by an artificial and

scholastic way, but by a natural one, with a sound understanding. What

will it be in the end? One flies to the east, the other to the west;

they lose the principal, dispersing it in the crowd of incidents after an

hour of tempest, they know not what they seek: one is low, the other

high, and a third wide. One catches at a word and a simile; another is

no longer sensible of what is said in opposition to him, and thinks only

of going on at his own rate, not of answering you: another, finding

himself too weak to make good his rest, fears all, refuses all, at the

very beginning, confounds the subject; or, in the very height of the

dispute, stops short and is silent, by a peevish ignorance affecting a

proud contempt or a foolishly modest avoidance of further debate:

provided this man strikes, he cares not how much he lays himself open;

the other counts his words, and weighs them for reasons; another only

brawls, and uses the advantage of his lungs. Here’s one who learnedly

concludes against himself, and another who deafens you with prefaces and

senseless digressions: an other falls into downright railing, and seeks a

quarrel after the German fashion, to disengage himself from a wit that

presses too hard upon him: and a last man sees nothing into the reason of

the thing, but draws a line of circumvallation about you of dialectic

clauses, and the formulas of his art.

Now, who would not enter into distrust of sciences, and doubt whether he

can reap from them any solid fruit for the service of life, considering

the use we put them to?

“Nihil sanantibus litteris.”

[“Letters which cure nothing.”--Seneca, Ep., 59.]

Who has got understanding by his logic? Where are all her fair promises?

“Nec ad melius vivendum, nec ad commodius disserendum.”

[“It neither makes a man live better nor talk better.”

--Cicero, De Fin., i. 19.]

Is there more noise or confusion in the scolding of herring-wives than in

the public disputes of men of this profession? I had rather my son

should learn in a tap-house to speak, than in the schools to prate. Take

a master of arts, and confer with him: why does he not make us sensible

of this artificial excellence? and why does he not captivate women and

ignoramuses, as we are, with admiration at the steadiness of his reasons

and the beauty of his order? why does he not sway and persuade us to what

he will? why does a man, who has so much advantage in matter and

treatment, mix railing, indiscretion, and fury in his disputations?

Strip him of his gown, his hood, and his Latin, let him not batter our

ears with Aristotle, pure and simple, you will take him for one of us,

or worse. Whilst they torment us with this complication and confusion of

words, it fares with them, methinks, as with jugglers; their dexterity

imposes upon our senses, but does not at all work upon our belief this

legerdemain excepted, they perform nothing that is not very ordinary and

mean: for being the more learned, they are none the less fools.

[So Hobbes said that if he had read as much as the academical

pedants he should have known as little.]

I love and honour knowledge as much as they that have it, and in its true

use ‘tis the most noble and the greatest acquisition of men; but in such

as I speak of (and the number of them is infinite), who build their

fundamental sufficiency and value upon it, who appeal from their

understanding to their memory:

“Sub aliena umbra latentes,”

[“Sheltering under the shadow of others.”--Seneca, Ep., 33.]

and who can do nothing but by book, I hate it, if I dare to say so, worse

than stupidity. In my country, and in my time, learning improves

fortunes enough, but not minds; if it meet with those that are dull and

heavy, it overcharges and suffocates them, leaving them a crude and

undigested mass; if airy and fine, it purifies, clarifies, and subtilises

them, even to exinanition. ‘Tis a thing of almost indifferent quality;

a very useful accession to a well-born soul, but hurtful and pernicious

to others; or rather a thing of very precious use, that will not suffer

itself to be purchased at an under rate; in the hand of some ‘tis a

sceptre, in that of others a fool’s bauble.

But let us proceed. What greater victory do you expect than to make your

enemy see and know that he is not able to encounter you? When you get

the better of your argument; ‘tis truth that wins; when you get the

advantage of form and method, ‘tis then you who win. I am of opinion that

in, Plato and Xenophon Socrates disputes more in favour of the disputants

than in favour of the dispute, and more to instruct Euthydemus and

Protagoras in the, knowledge of their impertinence, than in the

impertinence of their art. He takes hold of the first subject like one

who has a more profitable end than to explain it--namely, to clear the

understandings that he takes upon him to instruct and exercise. To hunt

after truth is properly our business, and we are inexcusable if we carry

on the chase impertinently and ill; to fail of seizing it is another

thing, for we are born to inquire after truth: it belongs to a greater

power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of

the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine

knowledge. The world is but a school of inquisition: it is not who shall

enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses. He may as well play

the fool who speaks true, as he who speaks false, for we are upon the

manner, not the matter, of speaking. ‘Tis my humour as much to regard

the form as the substance, and the advocate as much as the cause, as

Alcibiades ordered we should: and every day pass away my time in reading

authors without any consideration of their learning; their manner is what

I look after, not their subject: And just so do I hunt after the

conversation of any eminent wit, not that he may teach me, but that I may

know him, and that knowing him, if I think him worthy of imitation, I may

imitate him. Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically,

prudently, and fully, is a talent that few men have. The falsity that

proceeds from ignorance does not offend me, but the foppery of it. I

have broken off several treaties that would have been of advantage to

me, by reason of the impertinent contestations of those with whom I

treated. I am not moved once in a year at the faults of those over whom

I have authority, but upon the account of the ridiculous obstinacy of

their allegations, denials, excuses, we are every day going together by

the ears; they neither understand what is said, nor why, and answer

accordingly; ‘tis enough to drive a man mad. I never feel any hurt upon

my head but when ‘tis knocked against another, and more easily forgive

the vices of my servants than their boldness, importunity, and folly; let

them do less, provided they understand what they do: you live in hope to

warm their affection to your service, but there is nothing to be had or

to be expected from a stock.

But what, if I take things otherwise than they are? Perhaps I do; and

therefore it is that I accuse my own impatience, and hold, in the first

place, that it is equally vicious both in him that is in the right, and

in him that is in the wrong; for ‘tis always a tyrannic sourness not to

endure a form contrary to one’s own: and, besides, there cannot, in

truth, be a greater, more constant, nor more irregular folly than to be

moved and angry at the follies of the world, for it principally makes us

quarrel with ourselves; and the old philosopher never wanted an occasion

for his tears whilst he considered himself. Miso, one of the seven

sages, of a Timonian and Democritic humour, being asked, “what he

laughed at, being alone?”--“That I do laugh alone,” answered he. How

many ridiculous things, in my own opinion, do I say and answer every day

that comes over my head? and then how many more, according to the

opinion of others? If I bite my own lips, what ought others to do? In

fine, we must live amongst the living, and let the river run under the

bridge without our care, or, at least, without our interference. In

truth, why do we meet a man with a hunch-back, or any other deformity,

without being moved, and cannot endure the encounter of a deformed mind

without being angry? this vicious sourness sticks more to the judge than

to the crime. Let us always have this saying of Plato in our mouths: “Do

not I think things unsound, because I am not sound in myself? Am I not

myself in fault? may not my observations reflect upon myself?”--a wise

and divine saying, that lashes the most universal and common error of

mankind. Not only the reproaches that we throw in the face of one

another, but our reasons also, our arguments and controversies, are

reboundable upon us, and we wound ourselves with our own weapons: of

which antiquity has left me enough grave examples. It was ingeniously

and home-said by him, who was the inventor of this sentence:

“Stercus cuique suum bene olet.”

[“To every man his own excrements smell well.”--Erasmus]

We see nothing behind us; we mock ourselves an hundred times a day; when

we deride our neighbours; and we detest in others the defects which are

more manifest in us, and which we admire with marvellous inadvertency and

impudence. It was but yesterday that I heard a man of understanding and

of good rank, as pleasantly as justly scoffing at the folly of another,

who did nothing but torment everybody with the catalogue of his genealogy

and alliances, above half of them false (for they are most apt to fall

into such ridiculous discourses, whose qualities are most dubious and

least sure), and yet, would he have looked into himself, he would have

discerned himself to be no less intemperate and wearisome in extolling

his wife’s pedigree. O importunate presumption, with which the wife sees

herself armed by the hands of her own husband. Did he understand Latin,

we should say to him:

“Age, si hic non insanit satis sua sponte, instiga.”

[“Come! if of himself he is not mad enough, urge him on.”

--Terence, And., iv. 2, 9.]

I do not say that no man should accuse another, who is not clean

himself,--for then no one would ever accuse,--clean from the same sort of

spot; but I mean that our judgment, falling upon another who is then in

question, should not, at the same time, spare ourselves, but sentence us

with an inward and severe authority. ‘Tis an office of charity, that he

who cannot reclaim himself from a vice, should, nevertheless, endeavour

to remove it from another, in whom, peradventure, it may not have so deep

and so malignant a root; neither do him who reproves me for my fault that

he himself is guilty of the same. What of that? The reproof is,

notwithstanding, true and of very good use. Had we a good nose, our own

ordure would stink worse to us, forasmuch as it is our own: and Socrates

is of opinion that whoever should find himself, his son, and a stranger

guilty of any violence and wrong, ought to begin with himself, present

himself first to the sentence of justice, and implore, to purge himself,

the assistance of the hand of the executioner; in the next place, he

should proceed to his son, and lastly, to the stranger. If this precept

seem too severe, he ought at least to present himself the first, to the

punishment of his own conscience.

The senses are our first and proper judges, which perceive not things but

by external accidents; and ‘tis no wonder, if in all the parts of the

service of our society, there is so perpetual and universal a mixture of

ceremonies and superficial appearances; insomuch that the best and most

effectual part of our polities therein consist. ‘Tis still man with whom

we have to do, of whom the condition is wonderfully corporal. Let those

who, of these late years, would erect for us such a contemplative and

immaterial an exercise of religion, not wonder if there be some who think

it had vanished and melted through their fingers had it not more upheld

itself among us as a mark, title, and instrument of division and faction,

than by itself. As in conference, the gravity, robe, and fortune of him

who speaks, ofttimes gives reputation to vain arguments and idle words,

it is not to be presumed but that a man, so attended and feared, has not

in him more than ordinary sufficiency; and that he to whom the king has

given so many offices and commissions and charges, he so supercilious and

proud, has not a great deal more in him, than another who salutes him at

so great a distance, and who has no employment at all. Not only the

words, but the grimaces also of these people, are considered and put into

the account; every one making it his business to give them some fine and

solid interpretation. If they stoop to the common conference, and that

you offer anything but approbation and reverence, they then knock you

down with the authority of their experience: they have heard, they have

seen, they have done so and so: you are crushed with examples. I should

willingly tell them, that the fruit of a surgeon’s experience, is not the

history of his practice and his remembering that he has cured four people

of the plague and three of the gout, unless he knows how thence to

extract something whereon to form his judgment, and to make us sensible

that he has thence become more skillful in his art. As in a concert of

instruments, we do not hear a lute, a harpsichord, or a flute alone, but

one entire harmony, the result of all together. If travel and offices

have improved them, ‘tis a product of their understanding to make it

appear. ‘Tis not enough to reckon experiences, they must weigh, sort and

distil them, to extract the reasons and conclusions they carry along with

them. There were never so many historians: it is, indeed, good and of

use to read them, for they furnish us everywhere with excellent and

laudable instructions from the magazine of their memory, which,

doubtless, is of great concern to the help of life; but ‘tis not that we

seek for now: we examine whether these relaters and collectors of things

are commendable themselves.

I hate all sorts of tyranny, both in word and deed. I am very ready to

oppose myself against those vain circumstances that delude our judgments

by the senses; and keeping my eye close upon those extraordinary

greatnesses, I find that at best they are men, as others are:

“Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa

Fortuna.”

[“For in those high fortunes, common sense is generally rare.”

--Juvenal, viii. 73.]

Peradventure, we esteem and look upon them for less than they are, by

reason they undertake more, and more expose themselves; they do not

answer to the charge they have undertaken. There must be more vigour and

strength in the bearer than in the burden; he who has not lifted as much

as he can, leaves you to guess that he has still a strength beyond that,

and that he has not been tried to the utmost of what he is able to do; he

who sinks under his load, makes a discovery of his best, and the weakness

of his shoulders. This is the reason that we see so many silly souls

amongst the learned, and more than those of the better sort: they would

have made good husbandmen, good merchants, and good artisans: their

natural vigour was cut out to that proportion. Knowledge is a thing of

great weight, they faint under it: their understanding has neither vigour

nor dexterity enough to set forth and distribute, to employ or make use

of this rich and powerful matter; it has no prevailing virtue but in a

strong nature; and such natures are very rare--and the weak ones, says

Socrates, corrupt the dignity of philosophy in the handling, it appears

useless and vicious, when lodged in an ill-contrived mind. They spoil

and make fools of themselves:

“Humani qualis simulator simius oris,

Quern puer arridens pretioso stamine serum

Velavit, nudasque nates ac terga reliquit,

Ludibrium mensis.”

[“Just like an ape, simulator of the human face, whom a wanton boy

has dizened up in rich silks above, but left the lower parts bare,

for a laughing-stock for the tables.”

--Claudian, in Eutrop., i 303.]

Neither is it enough for those who govern and command us, and have all

the world in their hands, to have a common understanding, and to be able

to do the same that we can; they are very much below us, if they be not

infinitely above us: as they promise more, so they are to perform more.

And yet silence is to them, not only a countenance of respect and

gravity, but very often of good advantage too: for Megabyzus, going ‘to

see Apelles in his painting-room, stood a great while without speaking a

word, and at last began to talk of his paintings, for which he received

this rude reproof: “Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemedst to be some

great thing, by reason of thy chains and rich habit; but now that we have

heard thee speak, there is not the meanest boy in my workshop that does

not despise thee.” Those princely ornaments, that mighty state, did not

permit him to be ignorant with a common ignorance, and to speak

impertinently of painting; he ought to have kept this external and

presumptive knowledge by silence. To how many foolish fellows of my time

has a sullen and silent mien procured the credit of prudence and

capacity!

Dignities and offices are of necessity conferred more by fortune than

upon the account of merit; and we are often to blame, to condemn kings

when these are misplaced: on the contrary, ‘tis a wonder they should have

so good luck, where there is so little skill:

“Principis est virtus maxima nosse suos;”

[“‘Tis the chief virtue of a prince to know his people.”

--Martial, viii. 15.]

for nature has not given them a sight that can extend to so many people,

to discern which excels the rest, nor to penetrate into our bosoms, where

the knowledge of our wills and best value lies they must choose us by

conjecture and by groping; by the family, wealth, learning, and the voice

of the people, which are all very feeble arguments. Whoever could find

out a way by which they might judge by justice, and choose men by reason,

would, in this one thing, establish a perfect form of government.

“Ay, but he brought that great affair to a very good pass.” This is,

indeed, to say something, but not to say enough: for this sentence is

justly received, “That we are not to judge of counsels by events.”

The Carthaginians punished the ill counsels of their captains, though

they were rectified by a successful issue; and the Roman people often

denied a triumph for great and very advantageous victories because the

conduct of their general was not answerable to his good fortune.

We ordinarily see, in the actions of the world, that Fortune, to shew

us her power in all things, and who takes a pride in abating our

presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them

fortunate in emulation of virtue; and most favours those operations the

web of which is most purely her own; whence it is that the simplest

amongst us bring to pass great business, both public and private; and,

as Seiramnes, the Persian, answered those who wondered that his affairs

succeeded so ill, considering that his deliberations were so wise, “that

he was sole master of his designs, but that success was wholly in the

power of fortune”; these may answer the same, but with a contrary turn.

Most worldly affairs are performed by themselves

“Fata viam inveniunt;”

[“The destinies find the way.”--AEneid, iii. 395]

the event often justifies a very foolish conduct; our interposition is

little more than as it were a running on by rote, and more commonly a

consideration of custom and example, than of reason. Being formerly

astonished at the greatness of some affair, I have been made acquainted

with their motives and address by those who had performed it, and have

found nothing in it but very ordinary counsels; and the most common and

usual are indeed, perhaps, the most sure and convenient for practice, if

not for show. What if the plainest reasons are the best seated? the

meanest, lowest, and most beaten more adapted to affairs? To maintain

the authority of the counsels of kings, it needs not that profane persons

should participate of them, or see further into them than the outmost

barrier; he who will husband its reputation must be reverenced upon

credit and taken altogether. My consultation somewhat rough-hews the

matter, and considers it lightly by the first face it presents: the

stress and main of the business I have been wont to refer to heaven;

“Permitte divis caetera.”

[“Leave the rest to the gods.”--Horace, Od., i. 9, 9.]

Good and ill fortune are, in my opinion, two sovereign powers; ‘tis folly

to think that human prudence can play the part of Fortune; and vain is

his attempt who presumes to comprehend both causes and consequences, and

by the hand to conduct the progress of his design; and most especially

vain in the deliberations of war. There was never greater circumspection

and military prudence than sometimes is seen amongst us: can it be that

men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve

themselves to the end of the game? I moreover affirm that our wisdom

itself and consultation, for the most part commit themselves to the

conduct of chance; my will and my reason are sometimes moved by one

breath, and sometimes by another; and many of these movements there are

that govern themselves without me: my reason has uncertain and casual

agitations and impulsions:

“Vertuntur species animorum, et pectora motus

Nunc alios, alios, dum nubila ventus agebat,

Concipiunt.”

[“The aspects of their minds change; and they conceive now such

ideas, now such, just so long as the wind agitated the clouds.”

--Virgil, Georg., i. 42.]

Let a man but observe who are of greatest authority in cities, and who

best do their own business; we shall find that they are commonly men of

the least parts: women, children, and madmen have had the fortune to

govern great kingdoms equally well with the wisest princes, and

Thucydides says, that the stupid more ordinarily do it than those of

better understandings; we attribute the effects of their good fortune to

their prudence:

“Ut quisque Fortuna utitur,

Ita praecellet; atque exinde sapere illum omnes dicimus;”

[“He makes his way who knows how to use Fortune, and thereupon we

all call him wise.”--Plautus, Pseudol., ii. 3, 13.]

wherefore I say unreservedly, events are a very poor testimony of our

worth and parts.

Now, I was upon this point, that there needs no more but to see a man

promoted to dignity; though we knew him but three days before a man of

little regard, yet an image of grandeur of sufficiency insensibly steals

into our opinion, and we persuade ourselves that, being augmented in

reputation and train, he is also increased in merit; we judge of him, not

according to his worth, but as we do by counters, according to the

prerogative of his place. If it happen so that he fall again, and be

mixed with the common crowd, every one inquires with amazement into the

cause of his having been raised so high. “Is this he,” say they, “was he

no wiser when he was there? Do princes satisfy themselves with so

little? Truly, we were in good hands.” This is a thing that I have

often seen in my time. Nay, even the very disguise of grandeur

represented in our comedies in some sort moves and gulls us. That which

I myself adore in kings is the crowd of their adorers; all reverence and

submission are due to them, except that of the understanding: my reason

is not obliged to bow and bend; my knees are. Melanthius being asked

what he thought of the tragedy of Dionysius, “I could not see it,” said

he, “it was so clouded with language”; so most of those who judge of the

discourses of great men ought to say, “I did not understand his words,

they were so clouded with gravity, grandeur, and majesty.” Antisthenes

one day tried to persuade the Athenians to give order that their asses

might be employed in tilling the ground as well as the horses were; to

which it was answered that that animal was not destined for such a

service: “That’s all one,” replied he, “you have only to order it: for

the most ignorant and incapable men you employ in the commands of your

wars incontinently become worthy enough, because you employ them”; to

which the custom of so many people, who canonise the king they have

chosen out of their own body, and are not content only to honour, but

must adore them, comes very near. Those of Mexico, after the ceremonies

of their king’s coronation are over, dare no more look him in the face;

but, as if they had deified him by his royalty. Amongst the oaths they

make him take to maintain their religion, their laws, and liberties, to

be valiant, just, and mild, he moreover swears to make the sun run his

course in his wonted light, to drain the clouds at fit seasons, to make

rivers run their course, and to cause the earth to bear all things

necessary for his people.

I differ from this common fashion, and am more apt to suspect the

capacity when I see it accompanied with that grandeur of fortune and

public applause; we are to consider of what advantage it is to speak when

a man pleases, to choose his subject, to interrupt or change it, with a

magisterial authority; to protect himself from the oppositions of others

by a nod, a smile, or silence, in the presence of an assembly that

trembles with reverence and respect. A man of a prodigious fortune

coming to give his judgment upon some slight dispute that was foolishly

set on foot at his table, began in these words: “It can be no other but

a liar or a fool that will say otherwise than so and so.” Pursue this

philosophical point with a dagger in your hand.

There is another observation I have made, from which I draw great

advantage; which is, that in conferences and disputes, every word that

seems to be good, is not immediately to be accepted. Most men are rich

in borrowed sufficiency: a man may say a good thing, give a good answer,

cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one

or the other. That a man may not understand all he borrows, may perhaps

be verified in myself. A man must not always presently yield, what truth

or beauty soever may seem to be in the opposite argument; either he must

stoutly meet it, or retire, under colour of not understanding it, to try,

on all parts, how it is lodged in the author. It may happen that we

entangle ourselves, and help to strengthen the point itself. I have

sometimes, in the necessity and heat of the combat, made answers that

have gone through and through, beyond my expectation or hope; I only gave

them in number, they were received in weight. As, when I contend with a

vigorous man, I please myself with anticipating his conclusions, I ease

him of the trouble of explaining himself, I strive to forestall his

imagination whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and

pertinency of his understanding warn and threaten me afar off: I deal

quite contrary with the others; I must understand, and presuppose nothing

but by them. If they determine in general words, “this is good, that is

naught,” and that they happen to be in the right, see if it be not

fortune that hits it off for them: let them a little circumscribe and

limit their judgment; why, or how, it is so. These universal judgments

that I see so common, signify nothing; these are men who salute a whole

people in a crowd together; they, who have a real acquaintance, take

notice of and salute them individually and by name. But ‘tis a hazardous

attempt; and from which I have, more than every day, seen it fall out,

that weak understandings, having a mind to appear ingenious, in taking

notice, as they read a book, of what is best and most to be admired, fix

their admiration upon some thing so very ill chosen, that instead of

making us discern the excellence of the author; they make us very well

see their own ignorance. This exclamation is safe, “That is fine,” after

having heard a whole page of Virgil; by that the cunning sort save

themselves; but to undertake to follow him line by line, and, with an

expert and tried judgment, to observe where a good author excels himself,

weighing the words, phrases, inventions, and his various excellences, one

after another; keep aloof from that:

“Videndum est, non modo quid quisque loquatur, sed etiam quid

quisque sentiat, atque etiam qua de causa quisque sentiat.”

[“A man is not only to examine what every one says, but also what

every one thinks, and from what reason every one thinks.”

--Cicero, De Offic:, i. 41.]

I every day hear fools say things that are not foolish: they say a good

thing; let us examine how far they understand it, whence they have it,

and what they mean by it. We help them to make use of this fine

expression, of this fine sentence, which is none of theirs; they only

have it in keeping; they have bolted it out at a venture; we place it for

them in credit and esteem. You lend them your hand. To what purpose?

they do not think themselves obliged to you for it, and become more inept

still. Don’t help them; let them alone; they will handle the matter like

people who are afraid of burning their fingers; they dare change neither

its seat nor light, nor break into it; shake it never so little, it slips

through their fingers; they give it up, be it never so strong or fair

they are fine weapons, but ill hafted: How many times have I seen the

experience of this? Now, if you come to explain anything to them, and to

confirm them, they catch at it, and presently rob you of the advantage of

your interpretation; “It was what I was about to say; it was just my

idea; if I did not express it so, it was for want of language.” Mere

wind! Malice itself must be employed to correct this arrogant ignorance.

The dogma of Hegesias, “that we are neither to hate nor accuse, but

instruct,” is correct elsewhere; but here ‘tis injustice and inhumanity

to relieve and set him right who stands in no need on’t, and is the worse

for’t. I love to let them step deeper into the mire; and so deep, that,

if it be possible, they may at last discern their error.

Folly and absurdity are not to be cured by bare admonition; and what

Cyrus answered to him, who importuned him to harangue his army, upon the

point of battle, “that men do not become valiant and warlike upon a

sudden, by a fine oration, no more than a man becomes a good musician by

hearing a fine song,” may properly be said of such an admonition as this.

These are apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand, by a long and

continued education. We owe this care and this assiduity of correction

and instruction to our own people; but to go preach to the first

passer-by, and to become tutor to the ignorance and folly of the first we

meet, is a thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in private

conversation, and rather give up the whole thing than proceed to these

initiatory and school instructions; my humour is unfit either to speak or

write for beginners; but for things that are said in common discourse, or

amongst other things, I never oppose them either by word or sign, how

false or absurd soever.

As to the rest, nothing vexes me so much in folly as that it is more

satisfied with itself than any reason can reasonably be. ‘Tis

unfortunate that prudence forbids us to satisfy and trust ourselves,

and always dismisses us timorous and discontented; whereas obstinacy and

temerity fill those who are possessed with them with joy and assurance.

‘Tis for the most ignorant to look at other men over the shoulder, always

returning from the combat full of joy and triumph. And moreover, for the

most part, this arrogance of speech and gaiety of countenance gives them

the better of it in the opinion of the audience, which is commonly weak

and incapable of well judging and discerning the real advantage.

Obstinacy of opinion and heat in argument are the surest proofs of folly;

is there anything so assured, resolute, disdainful, contemplative,

serious and grave as the ass?

May we not include under the title of conference and communication the

quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst

friends, pleasantly and wittily jesting and rallying with one another?

‘Tis an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, and

which, if it be not so tense and serious as the other I spoke of but now,

is, as Lycurgus thought, no less smart and ingenious, nor of less

utility. For my part, I contribute to it more liberty than wit, and have

therein more of luck than invention; but I am perfect in suffering, for I

endure a retaliation that is not only tart, but indiscreet to boot,

without being moved at all; and whoever attacks me, if I have not a brisk

answer immediately ready, I do not study to pursue the point with a

tedious and impertinent contest, bordering upon obstinacy, but let it

pass, and hanging down cheerfully my ears, defer my revenge to another

and better time: there is no merchant that always gains: Most men change

their countenance and their voice where their wits fail, and by an

unseasonable anger, instead of revenging themselves, accuse at once their

own folly and impatience. In this jollity, we sometimes pinch the secret

strings of our imperfections which, at another and graver time, we cannot

touch without offence, and so profitably give one another a hint of our

defects. There are other jeux de main,--[practical jokes]--rude and

indiscreet, after the French manner, that I mortally hate; my skin is

very tender and sensible: I have in my time seen two princes of the blood

buried upon that very account. ‘Tis unhandsome to fight in play. As to

the rest, when I have a mind to judge of any one, I ask him how far he is

contented with himself; to what degree his speaking or his work pleases

him. I will none of these fine excuses, “I did it only in sport,

‘Ablatum mediis opus est incudibus istud.’

[“That work was taken from the anvil half finished.”

--Ovid, Trist., i. 6, 29.]

I was not an hour about it: I have never looked at it since.” Well,

then, say I, lay these aside, and give me a perfect one, such as you

would be measured by. And then, what do you think is the best thing in

your work? is it this part or that? is it grace or the matter, the

invention, the judgment, or the learning? For I find that men are,

commonly, as wide of the mark in judging of their own works, as of those

of others; not only by reason of the kindness they have for them, but for

want of capacity to know and distinguish them: the work, by its own force

and fortune, may second the workman, and sometimes outstrip him, beyond

his invention and knowledge. For my part, I judge of the value of other

men’s works more obscurely than of my own; and place the Essays, now

high, or low, with great doubt and inconstancy. There are several books

that are useful upon the account of their subjects, from which the author

derives no praise; and good books, as well as good works, that shame the

workman. I may write the manner of our feasts, and the fashion of our

clothes, and may write them ill; I may publish the edicts of my time, and

the letters of princes that pass from hand to hand; I may make an

abridgment of a good book (and every abridgment of a good book is a

foolish abridgment), which book shall come to be lost; and so on:

posterity will derive a singular utility from such compositions: but what

honour shall I have unless by great good fortune? Most part of the

famous books are of this condition.

When I read Philip de Commines, doubtless a very good author, several

years ago, I there took notice of this for no vulgar saying, “That a man

must have a care not to do his master so great service, that at last he

will not know how to give him his just reward”; but I ought to commend

the invention, not him, because I met with it in Tacitus, not long since:

“Beneficia ea usque lxta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse;

ubi multum antevenere, pro gratis odium redditur;”

[“Benefits are so far acceptable as they appear to be capable of

recompense; where they much exceed that point, hatred is returned

instead of thanks.”--Tacitus, Annal., iv. 18.]

and Seneca vigorously says:

“Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere,

non vult esse cui reddat:”

[“For he who thinks it a shame not to requite, does not wish to

have the man live to whom he owes return.”--Seneca, Ep., 81.]

Q. Cicero says with less directness.:

“Qui se non putat satisfacere,

amicus esse nullo modo potest.”

[“Who thinks himself behind in obligation, can by no

means be a friend.”--Q. Cicero, De Petitione Consul, c. 9.]

The subject, according to what it is, may make a man looked upon as

learned and of good memory; but to judge in him the parts that are most

his own and the most worthy, the vigour and beauty of his soul, one must

first know what is his own and what is not; and in that which is not his

own, how much we are obliged to him for the choice, disposition,

ornament, and language he has there presented us with. What if he has

borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it often falls out? We, who

are little read in books, are in this strait, that when we meet with a

high fancy in some new poet, or some strong argument in a preacher, we

dare not, nevertheless, commend it till we have first informed ourselves,

through some learned man, if it be the writer’s wit or borrowed from some

other; until that I always stand upon my guard.

I have lately been reading the history of Tacitus quite through, without

interrupting it with anything else (which but seldom happens with me, it

being twenty years since I have kept to any one book an hour together),

and I did it at the instance of a gentleman for whom France has a great

esteem, as well for his own particular worth, as upon the account of a

constant form of capacity and virtue which runs through a great many

brothers of them. I do not know any author in a public narrative who

mixes so much consideration of manners and particular inclinations: and I

am of a quite contrary opinion to him, holding that, having especially to

follow the lives of the emperors of his time, so various and extreme in

all sorts of forms, so many notable actions as their cruelty especially

produced in their subjects, he had a stronger and more attractive matter

to treat of than if he had had to describe battles and universal

commotions; so that I often find him sterile, running over those brave

deaths as if he feared to trouble us with their multitude and length.

This form of history is by much the most useful; public movements depend

most upon the conduct of fortune, private ones upon our own. ‘Tis rather

a judgment than a narration of history; there are in it more precepts

than stories: it is not a book to read, ‘tis a book to study and learn;

‘tis full of sententious opinions, right or wrong; ‘tis a nursery of

ethic and politic discourses, for the use and ornament of those who have

any place in the government of the world. He always argues by strong and

solid reasons, after a pointed and subtle manner, according to the

affected style of that age, which was so in love with an inflated manner,

that where point and subtlety were wanting in things it supplied these

with lofty and swelling words. ‘Tis not much unlike the style of Seneca:

I look upon Tacitus as more sinewy, and Seneca as more sharp. His pen

seems most proper for a troubled and sick state, as ours at present is;

you would often say that he paints and pinches us.

They who doubt his good faith sufficiently accuse themselves of being his

enemy upon some other account. His opinions are sound, and lean to the

right side in the Roman affairs. And yet I am angry at him for judging

more severely of Pompey than consists with the opinion of those worthy

men who lived in the same time, and had dealings with him; and to have

reputed him on a par with Marius and Sylla, excepting that he was more

close. Other writers have not acquitted his intention in the government

of affairs from ambition and revenge; and even his friends were afraid

that victory would have transported him beyond the bounds of reason, but

not to so immeasurable a degree as theirs; nothing in his life threatened

such express cruelty and tyranny. Neither ought we to set suspicion

against evidence; and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter.

That his narrations were genuine and straightforward may, perhaps, be

argued from this very thing, that they do not always apply to the

conclusions of his judgments, which he follows according to the bias he

has taken, very often beyond the matter he presents us withal, which he

has not deigned to alter in the least degree. He needs no excuse for

having approved the religion of his time, according as the laws enjoined,

and to have been ignorant of the true; this was his misfortune, not his

fault.

I have principally considered his judgment, and am not very well

satisfied therewith throughout; as these words in the letter that

Tiberius, old and sick, sent to the senate. “What shall I write to you,

sirs, or how should I write to you, or what should I not write to you at

this time? May the gods and goddesses lay a worse punishment upon me

than I am every day tormented with, if I know!” I do not see why he

should so positively apply them to a sharp remorse that tormented the

conscience of Tiberius; at least, when I was in the same condition, I

perceived no such thing.

And this also seemed to me a little mean in him that, having to say that

he had borne an honourable office in Rome, he excuses himself that he

does not say it out of ostentation; this seems, I say, mean for such a

soul as his; for not to speak roundly of a man’s self implies some want

of courage; a man of solid and lofty judgment, who judges soundly and

surely, makes use of his own example upon all occasions, as well as those

of others; and gives evidence as freely of himself as of a third person.

We are to pass by these common rules of civility, in favour of truth and

liberty. I dare not only speak of myself, but to speak only of myself:

when I write of anything else, I miss my way and wander from my subject.

I am not so indiscreetly enamoured of myself, so wholly mixed up with,

and bound to myself, that I cannot distinguish and consider myself apart,

as I do a neighbour or a tree: ‘tis equally a fault not to discern how

far a man’s worth extends, and to say more than a man discovers in

himself. We owe more love to God than to ourselves, and know Him less;

and yet speak of Him as much as we will.

If the writings of Tacitus indicate anything true of his qualities, he

was a great personage, upright and bold, not of a superstitious but of a

philosophical and generous virtue. One may think him bold in his

relations; as where he tells us, that a soldier carrying a burden of

wood, his hands were so frozen and so stuck to the load that they there

remained closed and dead, being severed from his arms. I always in such

things bow to the authority of so great witnesses.

What also he says, that Vespasian, “by the favour of the god Serapis,

cured a blind woman at Alexandria by anointing her eyes with his spittle,

and I know not what other miracle,” he says by the example and duty of

all his good historians. They record all events of importance; and

amongst public incidents are the popular rumours and opinions. ‘Tis

their part to relate common beliefs, not to regulate them: that part

concerns divines and philosophers, directors of consciences; and

therefore it was that this companion of his, and a great man like

himself, very wisely said:

“Equidem plura transcribo, quam credo: nam nec affirmare

sustineo, de quibus dubito, nec subducere quae accepi;”

[“Truly, I set down more things than I believe, for I can neither

affirm things whereof I doubt, nor suppress what I have heard.”

--Quintus Curtius, ix.]

and this other:

“Haec neque affirmare neque refellere operae

pretium est; famae rerum standum est.”

[“‘Tis neither worth the while to affirm or to refute these things;

we must stand to report”--Livy, i., Praef., and viii. 6.]

And writing in an age wherein the belief of prodigies began to decline,

he says he would not, nevertheless, forbear to insert in his Annals, and

to give a relation of things received by so many worthy men, and with so

great reverence of antiquity; ‘tis very well said. Let them deliver to

us history, more as they receive it than as they believe it. I, who am

monarch of the matter whereof I treat, and who am accountable to none, do

not, nevertheless, always believe myself; I often hazard sallies of my

own wit, wherein I very much suspect myself, and certain verbal quibbles,

at which I shake my ears; but I let them go at a venture. I see that

others get reputation by such things: ‘tis not for me alone to judge. I

present myself standing and lying, before and behind, my right side and

my left, and, in all my natural postures. Wits, though equal in force,

are not always equal in taste and application.

This is what my memory presents to me in gross, and with uncertainty

enough; all judgments in gross are weak and imperfect.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A hundred more escape us than ever come to our knowledge

A man must have courage to fear

A man never speaks of himself without loss

A man’s accusations of himself are always believed

Agitation has usurped the place of reason

All judgments in gross are weak and imperfect

Any argument if it be carried on with method

Apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand

Arrogant ignorance

Avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten

Being as impatient of commanding as of being commanded

Defer my revenge to another and better time

Desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled

Detest in others the defects which are more manifest in us

Disdainful, contemplative, serious and grave as the ass

Do not, nevertheless, always believe myself

Events are a very poor testimony of our worth and parts.

Every abridgment of a good book is a foolish abridgment

Fault not to discern how far a man’s worth extends

Folly and absurdity are not to be cured by bare admonition

Folly satisfied with itself than any reason can reasonably be

Folly than to be moved and angry at the follies of the world

Give us history, more as they receive it than as they believe it

I every day hear fools say things that are not foolish

I hail and caress truth in what quarter soever I find it

I hate all sorts of tyranny, both in word and deed

I love stout expressions amongst gentle men

I was too frightened to be ill

If it be the writer’s wit or borrowed from some other

Ignorance does not offend me, but the foppery of it.

It is not a book to read, ‘tis a book to study and learn

“It was what I was about to say; it was just my idea,”

Judge by justice, and choose men by reason

Knock you down with the authority of their experience

Learning improves fortunes enough, but not minds

Liberality at the expense of others

Malice must be employed to correct this arrogant ignorance

Man must have a care not to do his master so great service

Mix railing, indiscretion, and fury in his disputations

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency

My humour is unfit either to speak or write for beginners

My reason is not obliged to bow and bend; my knees are

Never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd

New World: sold it opinions and our arts at a very dear rate

Obstinancy and heat in argument are the surest proofs of folly

One must first know what is his own and what is not

Our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation

Passion has already confounded his judgment

Pinch the secret strings of our imperfections

Practical Jokes: Tis unhandsome to fight in play

Presumptive knowledge by silence

Silent mien procured the credit of prudence and capacity

Spectators can claim no interest in the honour and pleasure

Study of books is a languishing and feeble motion

The cause of truth ought to be the common cause

The event often justifies a very foolish conduct

The ignorant return from the combat full of joy and triumph

The very name Liberality sounds of Liberty.

There are some upon whom their rich clothes weep

There is no merchant that always gains

There is nothing single and rare in respect of nature

They have heard, they have seen, they have done so and so

They have not the courage to suffer themselves to be corrected

Tis impossible to deal fairly with a fool

To fret and vex at folly, as I do, is folly itself

Transferring of money from the right owners to strangers

Tutor to the ignorance and folly of the first we meet

Tyrannic sourness not to endure a form contrary to one’s own

Universal judgments that I see so common, signify nothing

“What he laughed at, being alone?”--“That I do laugh alone,”

We are not to judge of counsels by events

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him

We neither see far forward nor far backward

Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemedst to be some great thing

Who has once been a very fool, will never after be very wise

Wide of the mark in judging of their own works

Wise may learn more of fools, than fools can of the wise

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 17.

IX. Of Vanity

CHAPTER IX

OF VANITY

There is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to write of it so

vainly. That which divinity has so divinely expressed to us--[“Vanity

of vanities: all is vanity.”--Eccles., i. 2.]--ought to be carefully and

continually meditated by men of understanding. Who does not see that I

have taken a road, in which, incessantly and without labour, I shall

proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world? I can give

no account of my life by my actions; fortune has placed them too low: I

must do it by my fancies. And yet I have seen a gentleman who only

communicated his life by the workings of his belly: you might see on his

premises a show of a row of basins of seven or eight days’ standing; it

was his study, his discourse; all other talk stank in his nostrils.

Here, but not so nauseous, are the excrements of an old mind, sometimes

thick, sometimes thin, and always indigested. And when shall I have done

representing the continual agitation and mutation of my thoughts, as they

come into my head, seeing that Diomedes wrote six thousand books upon the

sole subject of grammar?

[It was not Diomedes, but Didymus the grammarian, who, as Seneca

(Ep., 88) tells us, wrote four not six thousand books on questions

of vain literature, which was the principal study of the ancient

grammarian.--Coste. But the number is probably exaggerated, and for

books we should doubtless read pamphlets or essays.]

What, then, ought prating to produce, since prattling and the first

beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load of

volumes? So many words for words only. O Pythagoras, why didst not thou

allay this tempest? They accused one Galba of old for living idly; he

made answer, “That every one ought to give account of his actions, but

not of his home.” He was mistaken, for justice also takes cognisance of

those who glean after the reaper.

But there should be some restraint of law against foolish and impertinent

scribblers, as well as against vagabonds and idle persons; which if there

were, both I and a hundred others would be banished from the reach of our

people. I do not speak this in jest: scribbling seems to be a symptom of

a disordered and licentious age. When did we write so much as since our

troubles? when the Romans so much, as upon the point of ruin? Besides

that, the refining of wits does not make people wiser in a government:

this idle employment springs from this, that every one applies himself

negligently to the duty of his vocation, and is easily debauched from it.

The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of

every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice,

irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power; the

weaker sort contribute folly, vanity, and idleness; of these I am one.

It seems as if it were the season for vain things, when the hurtful

oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do but what signifies

nothing is a kind of commendation. ‘Tis my comfort, that I shall be one

of the last who shall be called in question; and whilst the greater

offenders are being brought to account, I shall have leisure to amend:

for it would, methinks, be against reason to punish little

inconveniences, whilst we are infested with the greater. As the

physician Philotimus said to one who presented him his finger to dress,

and who he perceived, both by his complexion and his breath, had an ulcer

in his lungs: “Friend, it is not now time to play with your nails.”

--[Plutarch, How we may distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend.]

And yet I saw, some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I have in

very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there

was neither law nor justice, nor magistrate who performed his office, no

more than there is now, publish I know not what pitiful reformations

about cloths, cookery, and law chicanery. Those are amusements wherewith

to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally

forgotten. Those others do the same, who insist upon prohibiting

particular ways of speaking, dances, and games, to a people totally

abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices. ‘Tis no time to bathe and

cleanse one’s self, when one is seized by a violent fever; it was for the

Spartans alone to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they were

just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of their

life.

For my part, I have that worse custom, that if my slipper go awry, I let

my shirt and my cloak do so too; I scorn to mend myself by halves.

When I am in a bad plight, I fasten upon the mischief; I abandon myself

through despair; I let myself go towards the precipice, and, as they say,

“throw the helve after the hatchet”; I am obstinate in growing worse, and

think myself no longer worth my own care; I am either well or ill

throughout. ‘T is a favour to me, that the desolation of this kingdom

falls out in the desolation of my age: I better suffer that my ill be

multiplied, than if my well had been disturbed.--[That, being ill, I

should grow worse, than that, being well, I should grow ill.]--The words

I utter in mishap are words of anger: my courage sets up its bristles,

instead of letting them down; and, contrary to others, I am more devout

in good than in evil fortune, according to the precept of Xenophon, if

not according to his reason; and am more ready to turn up my eyes to

heaven to return thanks, than to crave. I am more solicitous to improve

my health, when I am well, than to restore it when I am sick;

prosperities are the same discipline and instruction to me that

adversities and rods are to others. As if good fortune were a thing

inconsistent with good conscience, men never grow good but in evil

fortune. Good fortune is to me a singular spur to modesty and

moderation: an entreaty wins, a threat checks me; favour makes me bend,

fear stiffens me.

Amongst human conditions this is common enough: to be better pleased with

foreign things than with our own, and to love innovation and change:

“Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu,

Quod permutatis hora recurrit equis:”

[“The light of day itself shines more pleasantly upon us because it

changes its horses every hour.” Spoke of a water hour-glass,

adds Cotton.]

I have my share. Those who follow the other extreme, of being quite

satisfied and pleased with and in themselves, of valuing what they have

above all the rest, and of concluding no beauty can be greater than what

they see, if they are not wiser than we, are really more happy; I do not

envy their wisdom, but their good fortune.

This greedy humour of new and unknown things helps to nourish in me the

desire of travel; but a great many more circumstances contribute to it;

I am very willing to quit the government of my house. There is, I

confess, a kind of convenience in commanding, though it were but in a

barn, and in being obeyed by one’s people; but ‘tis too uniform and

languid a pleasure, and is, moreover, of necessity mixed with a thousand

vexatious thoughts: one while the poverty and the oppression of your

tenants: another, quarrels amongst neighbours: another, the trespasses

they make upon you afflict you;

“Aut verberatae grandine vineae,

Fundusque mendax, arbore nunc aquas

Culpante, nunc torrentia agros

Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas.”

[“Or hail-smitten vines and the deceptive farm; now trees damaged

by the rains, or years of dearth, now summer’s heat burning up the

petals, now destructive winters.”--Horatius, Od., iii. I, 29.]

and that God scarce in six months sends a season wherein your bailiff can

do his business as he should; but that if it serves the vines, it spoils

the meadows:

“Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol,

Aut subiti perimunt imbres, gelidoeque pruinae,

Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant;”

[“Either the scorching sun burns up your fields, or sudden rains or

frosts destroy your harvests, or a violent wind carries away all

before it.”--Lucretius, V. 216.]

to which may be added the new and neat-made shoe of the man of old, that

hurts your foot,

[Leclerc maliciously suggests that this is a sly hit at Montaigne’s

wife, the man of old being the person mentioned in Plutarch’s Life

of Paulus Emilius, c. 3, who, when his friends reproached him for

repudiating his wife, whose various merits they extolled, pointed to

his shoe, and said, “That looks a nice well-made shoe to you; but I

alone know where it pinches.”]

and that a stranger does not understand how much it costs you, and what

you contribute to maintain that show of order that is seen in your

family, and that peradventure you buy too dear.

I came late to the government of a house: they whom nature sent into the

world before me long eased me of that trouble; so that I had already

taken another bent more suitable to my humour. Yet, for so much as I

have seen, ‘tis an employment more troublesome than hard; whoever is

capable of anything else, will easily do this. Had I a mind to be rich,

that way would seem too long; I had served my kings, a more profitable

traffic than any other. Since I pretend to nothing but the reputation of

having got nothing or dissipated nothing, conformably to the rest of my

life, improper either to do good or ill of any moment, and that I only

desire to pass on, I can do it, thanks be to God, without any great

endeavour. At the worst, evermore prevent poverty by lessening your

expense; ‘tis that which I make my great concern, and doubt not but to do

it before I shall be compelled. As to the rest, I have sufficiently

settled my thoughts to live upon less than I have, and live contentedly:

“Non aestimatione census, verum victu atque cultu,

terminantur pecunix modus.”

[“‘Tis not by the value of possessions, but by our daily subsistence

and tillage, that our riches are truly estimated.”

--Cicero, Paradox, vi. 3.]

My real need does not so wholly take up all I have, that Fortune has not

whereon to fasten her teeth without biting to the quick. My presence,

heedless and ignorant as it is, does me great service in my domestic

affairs; I employ myself in them, but it goes against the hair, finding

that I have this in my house, that though I burn my candle at one end by

myself, the other is not spared.

Journeys do me no harm but only by their expense, which is great, and

more than I am well able to bear, being always wont to travel with not

only a necessary, but a handsome equipage; I must make them so much

shorter and fewer; I spend therein but the froth, and what I have

reserved for such uses, delaying and deferring my motion till that be

ready. I will not that the pleasure of going abroad spoil the pleasure

of being retired at home; on the contrary, I intend they shall nourish

and favour one another. Fortune has assisted me in this, that since my

principal profession in this life was to live at ease, and rather idly

than busily, she has deprived me of the necessity of growing rich to

provide for the multitude of my heirs. If there be not enough for one,

of that whereof I had so plentifully enough, at his peril be it: his

imprudence will not deserve that I should wish him any more. And every

one, according to the example of Phocion, provides sufficiently for his

children who so provides for them as to leave them as much as was left

him. I should by no means like Crates’ way. He left his money in the

hands of a banker with this condition--that if his children were fools,

he should then give it to them; if wise, he should then distribute it to

the most foolish of the people; as if fools, for being less capable of

living without riches, were more capable of using them.

At all events, the damage occasioned by my absence seems not to deserve,

so long as I am able to support it, that I should waive the occasions of

diverting myself by that troublesome assistance.

There is always something that goes amiss. The affairs, one while of one

house, and then of another, tear you to pieces; you pry into everything

too near; your perspicacity hurts you here, as well as in other things.

I steal away from occasions of vexing myself, and turn from the knowledge

of things that go amiss; and yet I cannot so order it, but that every

hour I jostle against something or other that displeases me; and the

tricks that they most conceal from me, are those that I the soonest come

to know; some there are that, not to make matters worse, a man must

himself help to conceal. Vain vexations; vain sometimes, but always

vexations. The smallest and slightest impediments are the most piercing:

and as little letters most tire the eyes, so do little affairs most

disturb us. The rout of little ills more offend than one, how great

soever. By how much domestic thorns are numerous and slight, by so much

they prick deeper and without warning, easily surprising us when least we

suspect them.

[Now Homer shews us clearly enough how surprise gives the advantage;

who represents Ulysses weeping at the death of his dog; and not

weeping at the tears of his mother; the first accident, trivial as

it was, got the better of him, coming upon him quite unexpectedly;

he sustained the second, though more potent, because he was prepared

for it. ‘Tis light occasions that humble our lives. ]

I am no philosopher; evils oppress me according to their weight, and they

weigh as much according to the form as the matter, and very often more.

If I have therein more perspicacity than the vulgar, I have also more

patience; in short, they weigh with me, if they do not hurt me. Life is

a tender thing, and easily molested. Since my age has made me grow more

pensive and morose,

“Nemo enim resistit sibi, cum caeperit impelli,”

[“For no man resists himself when he has begun to be driven

forward.”--Seneca, Ep., 13.]

for the most trivial cause imaginable, I irritate that humour, which

afterwards nourishes and exasperates itself of its own motion; attracting

and heaping up matter upon matter whereon to feed:

“Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat:”

[“The ever falling drop hollows out a stone.”--Lucretius, i. 314.]

these continual tricklings consume and ulcerate me. Ordinary

inconveniences are never light; they are continual and inseparable,

especially when they spring from the members of a family, continual and

inseparable. When I consider my affairs at distance and in gross, I

find, because perhaps my memory is none of the best, that they have gone

on hitherto improving beyond my reason or expectation; my revenue seems

greater than it is; its prosperity betrays me: but when I pry more

narrowly into the business, and see how all things go:

“Tum vero in curas animum diducimus omnes;”

[“Indeed we lead the mind into all sorts of cares.”

--AEneid, v. 720.]

I have a thousand things to desire and to fear. To give them quite over,

is very easy for me to do: but to look after them without trouble, is

very hard. ‘Tis a miserable thing to be in a place where everything you

see employs and concerns you; and I fancy that I more cheerfully enjoy

the pleasures of another man’s house, and with greater and a purer

relish, than those of my own. Diogenes answered according to my humour

him who asked him what sort of wine he liked the best: “That of another,”

said he.--[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 54.]

My father took a delight in building at Montaigne, where he was born; and

in all the government of domestic affairs I love to follow his example

and rules, and I shall engage those who are to succeed me, as much as in

me lies, to do the same. Could I do better for him, I would; and am

proud that his will is still performing and acting by me. God forbid

that in my hands I should ever suffer any image of life, that I am able

to render to so good a father, to fail. And wherever I have taken in

hand to strengthen some old foundations of walls, and to repair some

ruinous buildings, in earnest I have done it more out of respect to his

design, than my own satisfaction; and am angry at myself that I have not

proceeded further to finish the beginnings he left in his house, and so

much the more because I am very likely to be the last possessor of my

race, and to give the last hand to it. For, as to my own particular

application, neither the pleasure of building, which they say is so

bewitching, nor hunting, nor gardens, nor the other pleasures of a

retired life, can much amuse me. And ‘tis what I am angry at myself for,

as I am for all other opinions that are incommodious to me; which I would

not so much care to have vigorous and learned, as I would have them easy

and convenient for life, they are true and sound enough, if they are

useful and pleasing. Such as hear me declare my ignorance in husbandry,

whisper in my ear that it is disdain, and that I neglect to know its

instruments, its seasons, its order, how they dress my vines, how they

graft, and to know the names and forms of herbs and fruits, and the

preparing the meat on which I live, the names and prices of the stuffs I

wear, because, say they; I have set my heart upon some higher knowledge;

they kill me in saying so. It is not disdain; it is folly, and rather

stupidity than glory; I had rather be a good horseman than a good

logician:

“Quin to aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus,

Viminibus mollique paras detexere junco.”

[“‘Dost thou not rather do something which is required, and make

osier and reed basket.”--Virgil, Eclog., ii. 71.]

We occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal causes and

conducts, which will very well carry on themselves without our care; and

leave our own business at random, and Michael much more our concern than

man. Now I am, indeed, for the most part at home; but I would be there

better pleased than anywhere else:

“Sit meae sedes utinam senectae,

Sit modus lasso maris, et viarum,

Militiaeque.”

[“Let my old age have a fixed seat; let there be a limit to fatigues

from the sea, journeys, warfare.”--Horace, Od., ii. 6, 6.]

I know not whether or no I shall bring it about. I could wish that,

instead of some other member of his succession, my father had resigned to

me the passionate affection he had in his old age to his household

affairs; he was happy in that he could accommodate his desires to his

fortune, and satisfy himself with what he had; political philosophy may

to much purpose condemn the meanness and sterility of my employment, if I

can once come to relish it, as he did. I am of opinion that the most

honourable calling is to serve the public, and to be useful to many,

“Fructus enim ingenii et virtutis, omnisque praestantiae,

tum maximus capitur, quum in proximum quemque confertur:”

[“For the greatest enjoyment of evil and virtue, and of all

excellence, is experienced when they are conferred on some one

nearest.”--Cicero, De Amicil., c.]

for myself, I disclaim it; partly out of conscience (for where I see the

weight that lies upon such employments, I perceive also the little means

I have to supply it; and Plato, a master in all political government

himself, nevertheless took care to abstain from it), and partly out of

cowardice. I content myself with enjoying the world without bustle;

only-to live an excusable life, and such as may neither be a burden to

myself nor to any other.

Never did any man more fully and feebly suffer himself to be governed by

a third person than I should do, had I any one to whom to entrust myself.

One of my wishes at this time should be, to have a son-in-law that knew

handsomely how to cherish my old age, and to rock it asleep; into whose

hands I might deposit, in full sovereignty, the management and use of all

my goods, that he might dispose of them as I do, and get by them what I

get, provided that he on his part were truly acknowledging, and a friend.

But we live in a world where loyalty of one’s own children is unknown.

He who has the charge of my purse in his travels, has it purely and

without control; he could cheat me thoroughly, if he came to reckoning;

and, if he is not a devil, I oblige him to deal faithfully with me by so

entire a trust:

“Multi fallere do cuerunt, dum timent falli;

et aliis jus peccandi suspicando fecerunt.”

[“Many have taught others to deceive, while they fear to be

deceived, and, by suspecting them, have given them a title to do

ill.”--Seneca, Epist., 3.]

The most common security I take of my people is ignorance; I never

presume any to be vicious till I have first found them so; and repose the

most confidence in the younger sort, that I think are least spoiled by

ill example. I had rather be told at two months’ end that I have spent

four hundred crowns, than to have my ears battered every night with

three, five, seven: and I have been, in this way, as little robbed as

another. It is true, I am willing enough not to see it; I, in some sort,

purposely, harbour a kind of perplexed, uncertain knowledge of my money:

up to a certain point, I am content to doubt. One must leave a little

room for the infidelity or indiscretion of a servant; if you have left

enough, in gross, to do your business, let the overplus of Fortune’s

liberality run a little more freely at her mercy; ‘tis the gleaner’s

portion. After all, I do not so much value the fidelity of my people as

I contemn their injury. What a mean and ridiculous thing it is for a man

to study his money, to delight in handling and telling it over and over

again! ‘Tis by this avarice makes its approaches.

In eighteen years that I have had my estate in my, own hands, I could

never prevail with myself either to read over my deeds or examine my

principal affairs, which ought, of necessity, to pass under my knowledge

and inspection. ‘Tis not a philosophical disdain of worldly and

transitory things; my taste is not purified to that degree, and I value

them at as great a rate, at least, as they are worth; but ‘tis, in truth,

an inexcusable and childish laziness and negligence. What would I not

rather do than read a contract? or than, as a slave to my own business,

tumble over those dusty writings? or, which is worse, those of another

man, as so many do nowadays, to get money? I grudge nothing but care and

trouble, and endeavour nothing so much, as to be careless and at ease.

I had been much fitter, I believe, could it have been without obligation

and servitude, to have lived upon another man’s fortune than my own: and,

indeed, I do not know, when I examine it nearer, whether, according to my

humour, what I have to suffer from my affairs and servants, has not in it

something more abject, troublesome, and tormenting than there would be in

serving a man better born than myself, who would govern me with a gentle

rein, and a little at my own case:

“Servitus obedientia est fracti animi et abjecti,

arbitrio carentis suo.”

[“Servitude is the obedience of a subdued and abject mind, wanting

its own free will.”--Cicero, Paradox, V. I.]

Crates did worse, who threw himself into the liberty of poverty, only to

rid himself of the inconveniences and cares of his house. This is what I

would not do; I hate poverty equally with pain; but I could be content to

change the kind of life I live for another that was humbler and less

chargeable.

When absent from home, I divest myself of all these thoughts, and should

be less concerned for the ruin of a tower, than I am, when present, at

the fall of a tile. My mind is easily composed at distance, but suffers

as much as that of the meanest peasant when I am at home; the reins of my

bridle being wrongly put on, or a strap flapping against my leg, will

keep me out of humour a day together. I raise my courage, well enough

against inconveniences: lift up my eyes I cannot:

“Sensus, o superi, sensus.”

[“The senses, O ye gods, the senses.”]

I am at home responsible for whatever goes amiss. Few masters (I speak

of those of medium condition such as mine), and if there be any such,

they are more happy, can rely so much upon another, but that the greatest

part of the burden will lie upon their own shoulders. This takes much

from my grace in entertaining visitors, so that I have, peradventure,

detained some rather out of expectation of a good dinner, than by my own

behaviour; and lose much of the pleasure I ought to reap at my own house

from the visitation and assembling of my friends. The most ridiculous

carriage of a gentleman in his own house, is to see him bustling about

the business of the place, whispering one servant, and looking an angry

look at another: it ought insensibly to slide along, and to represent an

ordinary current; and I think it unhandsome to talk much to our guests of

their entertainment, whether by way of bragging or excuse. I love order

and cleanliness--

“Et cantharus et lanx

Ostendunt mihi me”--

[“The dishes and the glasses shew me my own reflection.”

--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 23]

more than abundance; and at home have an exact regard to necessity,

little to outward show. If a footman falls to cuffs at another man’s

house, or stumble and throw a dish before him as he is carrying it up,

you only laugh and make a jest on’t; you sleep whilst the master of the

house is arranging a bill of fare with his steward for your morrow’s

entertainment. I speak according as I do myself; quite appreciating,

nevertheless, good husbandry in general, and how pleasant quiet and

prosperous household management, carried regularly on, is to some

natures; and not wishing to fasten my own errors and inconveniences to

the thing; nor to give Plato the lie, who looks upon it as the most

pleasant employment to every one to do his particular affairs without

wrong to another.

When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself, and the laying out

my money; which is disposed of by one single precept; too many things are

required to the raking it together; in that I understand nothing; in

spending, I understand a little, and how to give some show to my expense,

which is indeed its principal use; but I rely too ambitiously upon it,

which renders it unequal and difform, and, moreover, immoderate in both

the one and the other aspect; if it makes a show, if it serve the turn,

I indiscreetly let it run; and as indiscreetly tie up my purse-strings,

if it does not shine, and does not please me. Whatever it be, whether

art or nature, that imprints in us the condition of living by reference

to others, it does us much more harm than good; we deprive ourselves of

our own utilities, to accommodate appearances to the common opinion:

we care not so much what our being is, as to us and in reality, as what

it is to the public observation. Even the properties of the mind, and

wisdom itself, seem fruitless to us, if only enjoyed by ourselves, and if

it produce not itself to the view and approbation of others. There is a

sort of men whose gold runs in streams underground imperceptibly; others

expose it all in plates and branches; so that to the one a liard is worth

a crown, and to the others the inverse: the world esteeming its use and

value, according to the show. All over-nice solicitude about riches

smells of avarice: even the very disposing of it, with a too systematic

and artificial liberality, is not worth a painful superintendence and

solicitude: he, that will order his expense to just so much, makes it too

pinched and narrow. The keeping or spending are, of themselves,

indifferent things, and receive no colour of good or ill, but according

to the application of the will.

The other cause that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for

the present manners in our state. I could easily console myself for this

corruption in regard to the public interest:

“Pejoraque saecula ferri

Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa

Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;”

[“And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no

similitude in any of Nature’s metals.”--Juvenal, xiii. 28.]

but not to my own. I am, in particular, too much oppressed by them: for,

in my neighbourhood, we are, of late, by the long licence of our civil

wars, grown old in so riotous a form of state,

“Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas,”

[“Where wrong and right have changed places.”

--Virgil, Georg., i. 504.]

that in earnest, ‘tis a wonder how it can subsist:

“Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes

Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto.”

[“Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies,

and living by rapine.”--AEneid, vii. 748.]

In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and

held together, at what price soever; in what condition soever they are

placed, they still close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as

ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of

themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have

been disposed by art. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most

wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them all

together into a city he had caused to be built for that purpose, which

bore their name: I believe that they, even from vices themselves, erected

a government amongst them, and a commodious and just society. I see, not

one action, or three, or a hundred, but manners, in common and received

use, so ferocious, especially in inhumanity and treachery, which are to

me the worst of all vices, that I have not the heart to think of them

without horror; and almost as much admire as I detest them: the exercise

of these signal villainies carries with it as great signs of vigour and

force of soul, as of error and disorder. Necessity reconciles and brings

men together; and this accidental connection afterwards forms itself into

laws: for there have been such, as savage as any human opinion could

conceive, who, nevertheless, have maintained their body with as much

health and length of life as any Plato or Aristotle could invent. And

certainly, all these descriptions of polities, feigned by art, are found

to be ridiculous and unfit to be put in practice.