as to be a cause of wit in others, was a cool fellow, with a knowledge
of his man, be he whom he might whom he talked with, which laid
the companion open to certain defeat in debate; and in debate he
immoderately delighted. He was what in our country people call "an old
one." This hard-headed humorist, whose drollery diverted the young
patricians, turns out in the sequel to have a probity as invincible as
his logic, and to be, under cover of this play, enthusiastic in his
religion. When accused before the judges, he affirmed the immortality
of the soul and a future reward and punishment, and, refusing to
recant, was condemned to die; he entered the prison and took away all
ignominy from the place. The fame of this prison, the fame of the
discourses there, and the drinking of the hemlock, are one of the most
precious passages in the history of the world.
The rare coincidence in one ugly body of the droll and the martyr, the
keen street debater with the sweetest saint known to any history at
that time, had forcibly struck the mind of Plato, and the figure of
Socrates placed itself in the foreground of the scene as the fittest
dispenser of the intellectual treasures he had to communicate.
It remains to say that the defect of Plato is that he is literary,
and never otherwise. His writings have not the vital authority which
the screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and Jews
possess.
And he had not a system. The acutest German, the lovingest disciple
could never tell what Platonism was. No power of genius has ever yet
had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma
remains.
_Montaigne_
The philosophers affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. To
men of this world the man of ideas appears out of his reason. The
abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each
other, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between
the two, the sceptic. He labours to be the beam of the balance. There
is so much to say on all sides. This is the position occupied by
Montaigne.
In 1571, on the death of his father, he retired from the practice of
the law, at Bordeaux, and settled himself on his estate. Downright
and plain dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was
esteemed in the country for his sense and probity. In the civil wars of
the League, which converted every house into a fort, Montaigne kept his
gates open, and his house without defence. All parties freely came and
went, his courage and honor being universally esteemed.
Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all writers. The essays are
an entertaining soliloquy on every random topic that comes into his
head, treating everything without ceremony, yet with masculine sense. I
know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the language
of conversation transferred to a book. Montaigne talks with shrewdness,
knows the world, and books, and himself; never shrieks, or protests, or
prays. He keeps the plain; he rarely mounts or sinks; he likes to feel
solid ground and the stones underneath.
We are natural believers. We are persuaded that a thread runs
through all things, and all worlds are strung on it as beads. But
though we reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, to the sceptical class,
which Montaigne represents, every man at some time belongs. The
ground occupied by the sceptic is the vestibule of the temple. The
interrogation of custom at all points is an inevitable stage in
the growth of every superior mind. It stands in the mind of the
wise sceptic that our life in this world is not quite so easy of
interpretation as churches and school books say. He does not wish to
take ground against these benevolences, but he says: "There are doubts.
Shall we, because good nature inclines us to virtue's side, say, 'There
are no doubts--and lie for the right?' Is not the satisfaction of the
doubts essential to all manliness?"
I may play with the miscellany of facts, and take those superficial
views which we call scepticism; but I know they will presently appear
to me in that order which makes scepticism impossible. For the world is
saturated with deity and law. Things seem to tend downward, to justify
despondency, to promote rogues, to defeat the just; but by knaves as
by martyrs the just cause is carried forward, and general ends are
somewhat answered. The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and
waves cannot drown him. Through the years and the centuries, through
evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency
irresistibly streams. So let a man learn to look for the permanent in
the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of
things he was wont to reverence without losing his reverence.
_Shakespeare_
Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare. So far from
Shakespeare being the least known, he is the one person in all modern
history known to us. What point of morals, of manners, of economy,
of philosophy, of taste, of conduct of life has he not settled?
What district of man's work has he not remembered? What king has he
not taught statecraft? What maiden has not found him finer than her
delicacy? What lover has he not outloved?
Some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on Shakespeare
valuable that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit; that he is
falsely judged as poet and philosopher. I think as highly as these
critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. He was
a full man who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images,
which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand.
Shakespeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors as he is
out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise; the others, conceivably.
With this wisdom of life is the equal endowment of imaginative and
lyric power. An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties.
He has no peculiarity, no importunate topic, but all is duly given. No
mannerist is he; he has no discoverable egotism--the great he tells
greatly, the small subordinately. He is wise without emphasis or
assertion; he is strong as Nature is strong, who lifts the land into
mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats a
bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the one as the other. This
power of transferring the inmost truth of things into music and verse
makes him the type of the poet.
One royal trait that belongs to Shakespeare is his cheerfulness. He
delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that
sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy, he sheds over the
universe. If he appeared in any company of human souls, who would not
march in his troop? He touches nothing that does not borrow health and
longevity from his festal style. He was master of the revels to mankind.
_Napoleon_
Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte owes his
predominance to the fidelity with which he expresses the aim of the
masses of active and cultivated men. If Napoleon was Europe, it was
because the people whom he swayed were little Napoleons. He is the
representative of the class of industry and skill. "God has granted,"
says the Koran, "to every people a prophet in its own tongue." Paris,
London, and New York, the spirit of commerce, of money, of material
power, were also to have their prophet--and Bonaparte was qualified and
sent. He was the idol of common men because he, in transcendent degree,
had the qualities and powers of common men. He came to his own and they
received him.
An Italian proverb declares that if you would succeed you must not be
too good. Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections,
and helped himself with his hands and his head. The art of war was the
game in which he exerted his arithmetic. He had a directness of action
never before combined with so much comprehension. History is full of
the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons to
be much pitied, for they know not what they should do. But Napoleon
understood his business. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark.
He put out all his strength; he risked everything; he spared nothing;
he went to the edge of his possibilities.
This vigour was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and
punctuality. His very attack was never the inspiration of courage, but
the result of calculation. The necessity of his position required a
hospitality to every sort of talent, and his feeling went along with
this policy. In fact, every species of merit was sought and advanced
under his government. Seventeen men in his time were raised from
common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal, duke, or general. I call
Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society.
His life was an experiment, under the most favourable conditions, of
the powers of intellect without conscience. All passed away, like the
smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. He did all that in him lay
to live and thrive without moral principle.
_Goethe_
I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or
secretary who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life
that everywhere throbs and works. Nature will be reported. All things
are engaged in writing their history. The planet goes attended by its
shadow. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens; the ground is all
memoranda and signatures.
Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the
literary class. Still, the writer does not stand with us on any
commanding ground. I think this to be his own fault. There have been
times when he was a sacred person; he wrote Bibles; the first hymns;
the codes; the epics; tragic songs; Sibylline verses; Chaldæan oracles.
Every word was true, and woke the nations to new life. How can he be
honoured when he is a sycophant ducking to the giddy opinion of a
reckless public?
Goethe was the philosopher of the nineteenth century multitude,
hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with the century's
rolling miscellany of facts and sciences, and by his own versatility
dispose of them with ease; and what he says of religion, of passion,
of marriage, of manners, of property, of paper-money, of periods of
belief, of omens, of luck, of whatever else, refuses to be forgotten.
What distinguishes Goethe, for French and English readers, is an
habitual reference to interior truth. But I dare not say that Goethe
ascended to the highest grounds from which genius has spoken. He is
incapable of self-surrender to the moral sentiment. Goethe can never
be dear to men. His is a devotion to truth for the sake of culture.
But the idea of absolute eternal truth, without reference to my own
enlargement by it is higher; and the surrender to the torrent of poetic
inspiration is higher.
ERASMUS
Familiar Colloquies
Desiderius Erasmus, the most learned ecclesiastic of the
fifteenth century, and the friend of Luther and other reformers,
was born at Rotterdam on October 28, 1466, and died at Basel on
July 12, 1536. He was the son of a Dutchman named Gerard, and,
according to the fashion of the age, changed his family name
into its respective Latin and Greek equivalents, Desiderius and
Erasmus, meaning "desired," or "loved." Entering the priesthood
in 1492, he pursued his studies at Paris, and became so renowned
a scholar that he was, on visiting England, received with
distinction, not only at the universities, but also by the king.
For some time Erasmus settled in Italy, brilliant prospects being
held out to him at Rome; but his restless temperament impelled
him to wander again, and he came again to England, where he
associated with the most distinguished scholars, including Dean
Colet and Sir Thomas More. Perhaps nothing in the whole range
of mediæval literature made a greater sensation immediately on
its appearance, in 1521, than the "Colloquia," or "Familiar
Colloquies Concerning Men, Manners, and Things," of Erasmus. As
its title indicates, it consists of dialogues, and its author
intended it to make youths more proficient in Latin, that
language being the chief vehicle of intercommunication in the
Middle Ages. But Erasmus claims, in his preface, that another
purpose of the book is to make better men as well as better
Latinists, for he says: "If the ancient teachers of children are
commended who allured the young with wafers, I think it ought
not to be charged on me that by the like reward I allure youths
either to the elegancy of the Latin tongue or to piety." This
selection is made from the Latin text.
_Concerning Men, Manners and Things_
Erasmus issued his first edition of the "Colloquies" in 1521.
Successive editions appeared with great rapidity. Its popularity
wherever Latin was read was immense, but it was condemned by the
Sarbonne, prohibited in France, and devoted to the flames publicly
in Spain. The reader of its extraordinary chapters will not fail
to comprehend that such a fate was inevitable in the case of such a
production in those times. For, as the friend of the reformers who were
"turning the world upside down," Erasmus in this treatise penned the
most audacious, sardonic, and withering onslaught ever delivered by
any writer on ecclesiastical corruption of religion. He never attacks
religion itself, but extols and defends it; his aim is to launch a
series of terrific innuendoes on ecclesiasticism as it had developed
and as he saw it. He satirically, and even virulently, attacks monks
and many of their habits, the whole system of cloister-life, the
festivals and pilgrimages which formed one of the chief features of
religious activity, and the grotesque superstitions which his peculiar
genius for eloquent irony so well qualified him to caricature.
This great work, one of the epoch-making books of the world, consists
of sixty-two "Colloquies," of very varying length. They treat of the
most curiously diverse topics, as may be imagined from such titles of
the chapters as "The Youth's Piety," "The Lover and the Maiden," "The
Shipwreck," "The Epithalamium of Peter Egidius," "The Alchemist," "The
Horse Cheat," "The Cyclops, or the Gospel Carrier," "The Assembly or
Parliament of Women," "Concerning Early Rising."
A sample of the style of the "Colloquies" in the more serious sections
may be taken from the one entitled "The Religious Banquet."
NEPHEW: How unwillingly have I seen many Christians die. Some put their
trust in things not to be confided in; others breathe out their souls
in desperation, either out of a consciousness of their lewd lives, or
by reason of scruples that have been injected into their minds, even in
their dying hours, by some indiscreet men, die almost in despair.
CHRYSOGLOTTUS: It is no wonder to find them die so, who have spent
their lives in philosophising all their lives about ceremonies.
NEPHEW: What do you mean by ceremonies?
CHRYSOGLOTTUS: I will tell you, but with protestation beforehand,
over and over, that I do not find fault with the rites and sacraments
of the Church, but rather highly approve of them; but I blame a
wicked and superstitious sort of people who teach people to put their
confidence in these things, omitting those things that make them truly
Christians. If you look into Christians in common, do they not live as
if the whole sum of religion consisted in ceremonies? With how much
pomp are the ancient rites of the Church set forth in baptism? The
infant waits without the church door, the exorcism is performed, the
catechism is performed, vows are made, Satan is abjured with all his
pomps and pleasures; then the child is anointed, signed, seasoned with
salt, dipped, a charge given to its sureties to see it well brought
up; and the oblation money being paid, they are discharged, and by
this time the child passes for a Christian, and in some sense is so. A
little time after it is anointed again, and in time learns to confess,
receive the sacrament, is accustomed to rest on holy days, to hear
divine service, to fast sometimes, to abstain from flesh; and if he
observes all these he passes for an absolute Christian. He marries a
wife, and then comes on another sacrament; he enters into holy orders,
is anointed again and consecrated, his habit is changed, and then to
prayers.
Now, I approve of the doing of all this well enough, but the doing
of them more out of custom than conscience I do not approve. But to
think that nothing else is requisite for the making of a Christian I
absolutely disapprove. For the greater part of the men in the world
trust to these things, and think they have nothing else to do but get
wealth by right or wrong, to gratify their passions of lust, rage,
malice, ambition. And this they do till they come on their death-bed.
And then follow more ceremonies--confession upon confession more
unction still, the eucharists are administered; tapers, the cross, the
holy water are brought in; indulgences are procured, if they are to be
had for love or money; and orders are given for a magnificent funeral.
Now, although these things may be well enough, as they are done in
conformity to ecclesiastical customs, yet there are some more internal
impressions which have an efficacy to fortify us against the assaults
of death by filling our hearts with joy, and helping us to go out of
the world with a Christian assurance.
EUSEBIUS: When I was in England I saw St. Thomas' tomb all over
bedecked with a vast number of jewels of an immense price, besides
other rich furniture, even to admiration. I had rather that these
superfluities should be applied to charitable uses than to be reserved
for princes that shall one time or other make a booty of them. The holy
man, I am confident, would have been better pleased to have had his
tomb adorned with leaves and flowers.... Rich men, nowadays, will have
their monuments in churches, whereas in time past they could hardly get
room for their saints there. If I were a priest or a bishop, I would
put it into the head of these thick-skulled courtiers or merchants
that if they would atone for their sins to Almighty God they should
privately bestow their liberality on the relief of the poor.
* * * * *
A wonderful plea for peace, in shape of an exquisite satire, is the
"Colloquy" entitled "Charon." It is a dialogue between Charon, the
ghostly boatman on the River Styx, and Genius Alastor. Its style may be
gathered from the following excerpt.
CHARON: Whither are you going so brisk, and in such haste, Alastor?
ALASTOR: O Charon, you come in the nick of time; I was coming to you.
CHARON: Well, what news do you bring?
ALASTOR: I bring a message to you and Prosperine that you will be glad
to hear. All the Furies have been no less diligent than they have been
successful in gaining their point. There is not one foot of ground
upon earth that they have not infected with their hellish calamities,
seditions, wars, robberies, and plagues. Do you get your boat and your
oars ready; you will have such a vast multitude of ghosts come to you
anon that I am afraid you will not be able to carry them all over
yourself.
CHARON: I could have told you that.
ALASTOR: How came you to know it?
CHARON: Ossa brought me that news about two days ago!
ALASTOR: Nothing is more swift than that goddess. But what makes you
loitering here, having left your boat?
CHARON: My business brought me hither. I came hither to provide myself
with a good strong three-oared boat, for my boat is so rotten and leaky
with age that it will not carry such a burden, if Ossa told me true.
ALASTOR: What was it that Ossa told you?
CHARON: That the three monarchs of the world were bent upon each
other's destruction with a mortal hatred, and that no part of
Christendom was free from the rage of war; for these three have drawn
in all the rest to be engaged in the war with them. They are all so
haughty that not one of them will in the least submit to the other.
Nor are the Danes, the Poles, the Scots, nor the Turks at quiet, but
are preparing to make dreadful havoc. The plague rages everywhere: in
Spain, Britain, Italy, France; and, more than all, there is a new fire
sprung out of the variety of opinions, which has so corrupted the minds
of all men that there is no such thing as sincere friendship anywhere;
but brother is at enmity with brother, and husband and wife cannot
agree. And it is to be hoped that this distraction will be a glorious
destruction of mankind, if these controversies, that are now managed by
the tongue and pen, come once to be decided by arms.
ALASTOR: All that fame has told you is true; for I myself, having been
a constant companion of the Furies, have with these eyes seen more than
all this, and that they never at any time have approved themselves more
worthy of their name than now.
CHARON: But there is danger lest some good spirit should start up and
of a sudden exhort them to peace. And men's minds are variable, for
I have heard that among the living there is one Polygraphus who is
continually, by his writing, inveighing against wars, and exhorting to
peace.
ALASTOR: Ay, ay, but he has a long time been talking to the deaf. He
once wrote a sort of hue and cry after peace, that was banished or
driven away; after that an epitaph upon peace defunct. But then, on the
other hand, there are others that advance our cause no less than do
the Furies themselves. They are a sort of animals in black and white
vestments, ash-coloured coats, and various other dresses, that are
always hovering about the courts of the princes, and are continually
instilling into their ears the love of war, and exhorting the nobility
and common people to it, haranguing them in their sermons that it is a
just, holy, and religious war. And that which would make you stand in
admiration at the confidence of these men is the cry of both parties.
In France they preach it up that God is on the French side, and that
they can never be overcome that has God for their protector. In
England and Spain the cry is, "The war is not the king's, but God's";
therefore, if they do but fight like men, they depend on getting the
victory, and if anyone should chance to fall in the battle, he will not
die, but fly directly up into heaven, arms and all.
In Praise of Folly
"The Praise of Folly" was written in Latin, and the title,
"Encomium Moriæ," is a pun on the name of his friend, the Greek
word _moria_ (folly) curiously corresponding with his host's
family name. The purpose of this inimitable satire is to cover
every species of foolish men and women with ridicule. Yet through
all the biting sarcasm runs an unbroken vein of religious
seriousness, the contrast greatly enhancing the impression
produced by this masterpiece.
_I.--Stultitia's Declamation_
In whatever manner I, the Goddess of Folly, may be generally spoken of
by mortals, yet I assert it emphatically that it is from me, Stultitia,
and from my influence only, that gods and men derive all mirth and
cheerfulness. You laugh, I see. Well, even that is a telling argument
in my favour. Actually now, in this most numerous assembly, as soon as
ever I have opened my mouth, the countenances of all have instantly
brightened up with fresh and unwonted hilarity, whereas but a few
moments ago you were all looking demure and woebegone.
On my very brow my name is written. No one would take me, Stultitia,
for Minerva. No one would contend that I am the Goddess of Wisdom. The
mere expression of my countenance tells its own tale. Not only am I
incapable of deceit, but even those who are under my sway are incapable
of deceit likewise. From my illustrious sire, Plutus [Wealth], I glory
to be sprung, for he, and no other, was the great progenitor of gods
and men, and I care not what Hesiod, or Homer, or even Jupiter himself
may maintain to the contrary. Everything, I affirm, is subjected to the
control of Plutus. War, peace, empires, designs, judicial decisions,
weddings, treaties, alliances, laws, arts, things ludicrous and things
serious, are all administered in obedience to his sovereign will.
Now notice the admirable foresight which nature exercises, in order
to ensure that men shall never be destitute of folly as the principal
ingredient in their constitution. Wisdom, as your divines and moralists
put it, consists in men being guided by their reason; and folly, in
their being actuated by their passions. See then here what Jupiter
has done. In order to prevent the life of man from being utterly
intolerable, he has endowed him with reason in singularly small
proportion to his passions--only, so to speak, as a half-ounce is to a
pound. And whereas he has dispersed his passions over every portion of
his body, he has confined his reason to a narrow little crevice in his
skull.