the application. If any one in a play-house be so impertinent and rude
as to rifle the actors of their borrowed clothes, make them lay down the
character assumed, and force them to return to their naked selves, would
not such a one wholly discompose and spoil the entertainment? And would
he not deserve to be hissed and thrown stones at till the pragmatical
fool could learn better manners? For by such a disturbance the whole
scene will be altered: such as acted the men will perhaps appear to be
women: he that was dressed up for a young brisk lover, will be found a
rough old fellow; and he that represented a king, will remain but a mean
ordinary serving-man. The laying things thus open is marring all the
sport, which consists only in counterfeit and disguise. Now the world is
nothing else but such another comedy, where every one in the tire-room
is first habited suitably to the part he is to act; and as it is
successively their turn, out they come on the stage, where he that now
personates a prince, shall in another part of the same play alter his
dress, and become a beggar, all things being in a mask and particular
disguise, or otherwise the play could never be presented Now if there
should arise any starched, formal don, that would point at the several
actors, and tell how this, that seems a petty god, is in truth worse
than a brute, being made captive to the tyranny of passion; that the
other, who bears the character of a king, is indeed the most slavish of
serving-men, in being subject to the mastership of lust and sensuality;
that a third, who vaunts so much of his pedigree, is no better than
a bastard for degenerating from virtue, which ought to be of greatest
consideration in heraldry, and so shall go on in exposing all the
rest; would not any one think such a person quite frantic, and ripe for
bedlam? For as nothing is more silly than preposterous wisdom, so
is there nothing more indiscreet than an unreasonable reproof. And
therefore he is to be hooted out of all society that will not be
pliable, conformable, and willing to suit his humour with other men's,
remembering the law of clubs and meetings, that he who will not do as
the rest must get him out of the company. And it is certainly one great
degree of wisdom for every one to consider that he is but a man, and
therefore he should not pitch his soaring thoughts beyond the level of
mortality, but imp the wings of his towering ambition, and obligingly
submit and condescend to the weakness of others, it being many times a
piece of complaisance to go out of the road for company's sake.
[Illustration: 126]
No (say you), this is a grand piece of Folly: true, but yet all our
living is no more than such kind of fooling: which though it may seem
harsh to assert, yet it is not so strange as true.
For the better making it out it might perhaps be requisite to invoke the
aid of the muses, to whom the poets devoutly apply themselves upon far
more slender occasions. Come then and assist, ye Heliconian lasses,
while I attempt to prove that there is no method for an arrival at
wisdom, and consequently no track to the goal of happiness, without the
instructions and directions of Folly.
And here, in the first place it has been already acknowledged, that all
the passions are listed under my regiment, since this is resolved to be
the only distinction betwixt a wise man and a fool, that this latter
is governed by passion, the other guided by reason: and therefore the
Stoics look upon passions no other than as the infection and malady
of the soul that disorders the constitution of the whole man, and by
putting the spirits into a feverish ferment many times occasion some
mortal distemper. And yet these, however decried, are not only our
tutors to instruct us towards the attainment of wisdom, but even
bolden us likewise, and spur us on to a quicker dispatch of all our
undertakings. This, I suppose, will be stomached by the stoical Seneca,
who pretends that the only emblem of wisdom is the man without passion;
whereas the supposing any person to be so, is perfectly to unman him, or
else transforming him into some fabulous deity that never was, nor
ever will be; nay, to speak more plain, it is but the making him a mere
statue, immoveable, senseless, and altogether inactive. And if this be
their wise man, let them take him to themselves, and remove him into
Plato's commonwealth, the new Atlantis, or some other-like fairy land.
For who would not hate and avoid such a person as should be deaf to all
the dictates of common sense? that should have no more power of love or
pity than a block or stone, that remains heedless of all dangers? that
thinks he can never mistake, but can foresee all contingencies at the
greatest distance, and make provision for the worst presages? that feeds
upon himself and his own thoughts, that monopolises health, wealth,
power, dignity, and all to himself? that loves no man, nor is beloved
of any? that has the impudence to tax even divine providence of ill
contrivance, and proudly grudges, nay, tramples under foot all other
men's reputation; and this is he that is the Stoic's complete wise man.
But prithee what city would choose such a magistrate? what army would be
willing to serve under such a commander? or what woman would be content
with such a do-little husband? who would invite such a guest? or what
servant would be retained by such a master? The most illiterate mechanic
would in all respects be a more acceptable man, who would be frolicsome
with his wife, free with his friends, jovial at a feast, pliable in
converse, and obliging to all company. But I am tired out with this part
of my subject, and so must pass to some other topics.
[Illustration: 131-132]
And now were any one placed on that tower, from whence Jove is fancied
by the poets to survey the world, he would all around discern how many
grievances and calamities our whole life is on every side encompassed
with: how unclean our birth, how troublesome our tendance in the cradle,
how liable our childhood is to a thousand misfortunes, how toilsome and
full of drudgery our riper years, how heavy and uncomfortable our old
age, and lastly, how unwelcome the unavoidableness of death. Farther, in
every course of life how many wracks there may be of torturing diseases,
how many unhappy accidents may casually occur, how many unexpected
disasters may arise, and what strange alterations may one moment
produce? Not to mention such miseries as men are mutually the cause of,
as poverty, imprisonment, slander, reproach, revenge, treachery, malice,
cousenage, deceit, and so many more, as to reckon them all would be as
puzzling arithmetic as the numbering of the sands.
[Illustration: 138]
How mankind became environed with such hard circumstances, or what deity
imposed these plagues, as a penance on rebellious mortals, I am not
now at leisure to enquire: but whoever seriously takes them into
consideration must needs commend the valour of the Milesian virgins, who
voluntarily killed themselves to get rid of a troublesome world: and
how many wise men have taken the same course of becoming their own
executioners; among whom, not to mention Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato,
Cassius, Brutus, and other heroes, the self-denying Chiron is never
enough to be commended; who, when he was offered by Apollo the privilege
of being exempted from death, and living on to the world's end, he
refused the enticing proposal, as deservedly thinking it a punishment
rather than a reward.
But if all were thus wise you see how soon the world would be unpeopled,
and what need there would be of a second Prometheus, to plaister up
the decayed image of mankind. I therefore come and stand in this gap
of danger, and prevent farther mischief; partly by ignorance, partly by
inadvertence; by the oblivion of whatever would be grating to remember,
and the hopes of whatever may be grateful to expect, together palliating
all griefs with an intermixture of pleasure; whereby I make men so far
from being weary of their lives, that when their thread is spun to its
full length, they are yet unwilling to die, and mighty hardly brought
to take their last farewell of their friends. Thus some decrepit old
fellows, that look as hollow as the grave into which they are falling,
that rattle in the throat at every word they speak, that can eat no meat
but what is tender enough to suck, that have more hair on their beard
than they have on their head, and go stooping toward the dust they must
shortly return to; whose skin seems already drest into parchment, and
their bones already dried to a skeleton; these shadows of men shall
be wonderful ambitious of living longer, and therefore fence off the
attacks of death with all imaginable sleights and impostures; one shall
new dye his grey hairs, for fear their colour should betray his age;
another shall spruce himself up in a light periwig; a third shall repair
the loss of his teeth with an ivory set; and a fourth perhaps shall fall
deeply in love with a young girl, and accordingly court her with as much
of gaiety and briskness as the liveliest spark in the whole town: and
we cannot but know, that for an old man to marry a young wife without a
portion, to be a cooler to other men's lust, is grown so common, that it
is become the a-la-mode of the times. And what is yet more comical, you
shall have some wrinkled old women, whose very looks are a sufficient
antidote to lechery, that shall be canting out, _Ah, life is a sweet
thing_, and so run a caterwauling, and hire some strong-backed stallions
to recover their almost lost sense of feeling; and to set themselves
off the better, they shall paint and daub their faces, always stand
a tricking up themselves at their looking-glass, go naked-necked,
bare-breasted, be tickled at a smutty jest, dance among the young girls,
write love-letters, and do all the other little knacks of decoying
hot-blooded suitors; and in the meanwhile, however they are laughed at,
they enjoy themselves to the full, live up to their hearts' desire, and
want for nothing that may complete their happiness. As for those that
think them herein so ridiculous, I would have them give an ingenuous
answer to this one query, whether if folly or hanging were left to their
choice, they had not much rather live like fools, than die like dogs?
But what matter is it if these things are resented by the vulgar? Their
ill word is no injury to fools, who are either altogether insensible of
any affront, or at least lay it not much to heart. If they were knocked
on the head, or had their brains dashed out, they would have some cause
to complain; but alas, slander, calumny, and disgrace, are no other way
injurious than as they are interpreted; nor otherwise evil, than as they
are thought to be so: what harm is it then if all persons deride and
scoff you, if you bear but up in your own thoughts, and be yourself
thoroughly conceited of your deserts? And prithee, why should it be
thought any scandal to be a fool, since the being so is one part of our
nature and essence; and as so, our not being wise can no more reasonably
be imputed as a fault, than it would be proper to laugh at a man because
he cannot fly in the air like birds and fowls; because he goes not on
all four as beasts of the field; because he does not wear a pair of
visible horns as a crest on his forehead, like bulls or stags: by the
same figure we may call a horse unhappy, because he was never taught
his grammar; and an ox miserable, for that he never learnt to fence: but
sure as a horse for not knowing a letter is nevertheless valuable, so a
man, for being a fool, is never the more unfortunate, it being by nature
and providence so ordained for each.
[Illustration: 142]
Ay, but (say our patrons of wisdom) the knowledge of arts and sciences
is purposely attainable by men, that the defect of natural parts may be
supplied by the help of acquired: as if it were probable that nature,
which had been so exact and curious in the mechanism of flowers, herbs,
and flies, should have bungled most in her masterpiece, and made man
as it were by halves, to be afterward polished and refined by his own
industry, in the attainment of such sciences as the Egyptians feigned
were invented by their god Theuth, as a sure plague and punishment to
mankind, being so far from augmenting their happiness, that they do not
answer that end they were first designed for, which was the improvement
of memory, as Plato in his Phaedrus does wittily observe.
In the first golden age of the world there was no need of these
perplexities; there was then no other sort of learning but what was
naturally collected from every man's common sense, improved by an easy
experience. What use could there have been of grammar, when all men
spoke the same mother-tongue, and aimed at no higher pitch of oratory,
than barely to be understood by each other? What need of logic, when
they were too wise to enter into any dispute? Or what occasion for
rhetoric, where no difference arose to require any laborious decision?
And as little reason had they to be tied up by any laws, since the
dictates of nature and common morality were restraint and obligation
sufficient: and as to all the mysteries of providence, they made them
rather the object of their wonder, than their curiosity; and therefore
were not so presumptuous as to dive into the depths of nature, to labour
for the solving all phenomena in astronomy, or to wrack their brains
in the splitting of entities, and unfolding the nicest speculations,
judging it a crime for any man to aim at what is put beyond the reach of
his shallow apprehension.
[Illustration: 147]
Thus was ignorance, in the infancy of the world, as much the parent of
happiness as it has been since of devotion: but as soon as the golden
age began by degrees to degenerate into more drossy metals, then were
arts likewise invented; yet at first but few in number, and those rarely
understood, till in farther process of time the superstition of
the Chaldeans, and the curiosity of the Grecians, spawned so many
subtleties, that now it is scarce the work of an age to be thoroughly
acquainted with all the criticisms in grammar only. And among all the
several Arts, those are proportionably most esteemed that come nearest
to weakness and folly. For thus divines may bite their nails, and
naturalists may blow their fingers, astrologers may know their own
fortune is to be poor, and the logician may shut his fist and grasp the
wind.
While all these hard-named fellows cannot make
So great a figure as a single quack.
And in this profession, those that have most confidence, though the
least skill, shall be sure of the greatest custom; and indeed this whole
art as it is now practised, is but one incorporated compound of craft
and imposture.
Next to the physician comes (he, who perhaps will commence a suit with
me for not being placed before him, I mean) the lawyer, who is so silly
as to be _ignoramus_ to a proverb, and yet by such are all difficulties
resolved, all controversies determined, and all affairs managed so much
to their own advantage, that they get those estates to themselves which
they are employed to recover for their clients: while the poor divine
in the mean time shall have the lice crawl upon his thread-bare gown,
before, by all his sweat and drudgery, he can get money enough to
purchase a new one. As those arts therefore are most advantageous to
their respective professors which are farthest distant from wisdom, so
are those persons incomparably most happy that have least to do with
any at all, but jog on in the common road of nature, which will never
mislead us, except we voluntarily leap over those boundaries which she
has cautiously set to our finite beings. Nature glitters most in her
own plain, homely garb, and then gives the greatest lustre when she is
unsullied from all artificial garnish.
[Illustration: 151]
Thus if we enquire into the state of all dumb creatures, we shall find
those fare best that are left to nature's conduct: as to instance in
bees, what is more to be admired than the industry and contrivance of
these little animals?
What architect could ever form so curious a structure as they give a
model of in their inimitable combs? What kingdom can be governed with
better discipline than they exactly observe in their respective hives?
While the horse, by turning a rebel to nature, and becoming a slave
to man, undergoes the worst of tyranny: he is sometimes spurred on to
battle so long till he draw his guts after him for trapping, and at last
falls down, and bites the ground instead of grass; not to mention the
penalty of his jaws being curbed, his tail docked, his back wrung, his
sides spur-galled, his close imprisonment in a stable, his rapshin and
fetters when he runs a grass, and a great many other plagues, which
he might have avoided, if he had kept to that first station of freedom
which nature placed him in. How much more desirable is the unconfined
range of flies and birds, who living by instinct, would want nothing
to complete their happiness, if some well-employed Domitian would not
persecute the former, nor the sly fowler lay snares and gins for the
entrapping of the other? And if young birds, before their unfledged
wings can carry them from their nests, are caught, and pent up in a
cage, for the being taught to sing, or whistle, all their new tunes make
not half so sweet music as their wild notes, and natural melody: so much
does that which is but rough-drawn by nature surpass and excel all the
additional paint and varnish of art And we cannot sure but commend
and admire that Pythagorean cock, which (as Lucian relates) had been
successively a man, a woman, a prince, a subject, a fish, a horse, and
a frog; after all his experience, he summed up his judgment in this
censure, that man was the most wretched and deplorable of all creatures,
all other patiently grazing within the enclosures of nature, while man
only broke out, and strayed beyond those safer limits, which he was
justly confined to. And Gryllus is to be adjudged wiser than the
much-counselling Ulysses, in as much as when by the enchantment of Circe
he had been turned into a hog, he would not lay down his swinishness,
nor forsake his beloved sty, to run the peril of a hazardous voyage.
For a farther confirmation whereof I have the authority of Homer, that
captain of all poetry, who, as he gives to mankind in general, the
epithet of wretched and unhappy, so he bestows in particular upon
Ulysses the title of miserable, which he never attributes to Paris,
Ajax, Achilles, or any other of the commanders; and that for this
reason, because Ulysses was more crafty, cautious, and wise, than any of
the rest.
[Illustration: 156]
As those therefore fall shortest of happiness that reach highest
at wisdom, meeting with the greater repulse for soaring beyond the
boundaries of their nature, and without remembering themselves to be but
men, like the fallen angels, daring them to vie with Omnipotence, and
giant-like scale heaven with the engines of their own brain; so are
those most exalted in the road of bliss that degenerate nearest into
brutes, and quietly divest themselves of all use and exercise of reason.
And this we can prove by a familiar instance. As namely, can there be
any one sort of men that enjoy themselves better than those which we
call idiots, changelings, fools and naturals? It may perhaps sound
harsh, but upon due consideration it will be found abundantly true, that
these persons in all circumstances fare best, and live most comfortably;
as first, they are void of all fear, which is a very great privilege
to be exempted from; they are troubled with no remorse, nor pricks of
conscience; they are not frighted with any bugbear stories of another
world; they startle not at the fancied appearance of ghosts, or
apparitions; they are not wracked with the dread of impending mischiefs,
nor bandied with the hopes of any expected enjoyments: in short, they
are unassaulted by all those legions of cares that war against the quiet
of rational souls; they are ashamed of nothing, fear no man, banish the
uneasiness of ambition, envy, and love; and to add the reversion of a
future happiness to the enjoyment of a present one, they have no sin
neither to answer for; divines unanimously maintaining, that a gross
and unavoidable ignorance does not only extenuate and abate from the
aggravation, but wholly expiate the guilt of any immorality.
[Illustration: 159]
Come now then as many of you as challenge the respect of being accounted
wise, ingenuously confess how many insurrections of rebellious thoughts,
and pangs of a labouring mind, ye are perpetually thrown and tortured
with; reckon up all those inconveniences that you are unavoidably
subject to, and then tell me whether fools, by being exempted from
all these embroilments, are not infinitely more free and happy than
yourselves? Add to this, that fools do not barely laugh, and sing, and
play the good-fellow alone to themselves: but as it is the nature of
good to be communicative, so they impart their mirth to others, by
making sport for the whole company they are at any time engaged in, as
if providence purposely designed them for an antidote to melancholy:
whereby they make all persons so fond of their society, that they are
welcomed to all places, hugged, caressed, and defended, a liberty given
them of saying or doing anything; so well beloved, that none dares to
offer them the least injury; nay, the most ravenous beasts of prey will
pass them by untouched, as if by instinct they were warned that such
innocence ought to receive no hurt. Farther, their converse is so
acceptable in the court of princes, that few kings will banquet, walk,
or take any other diversion, without their attendance; nay, and had much
rather have their company, than that of their gravest counsellors, whom
they maintain more for fashion-sake than good-will; nor is it so strange
that these fools should be preferred before graver politicians, since
these last, by their harsh, sour advice, and ill-timing the truth, are
fit only to put a prince out of the humour, while the others laugh, and
talk, and joke, without any danger of disobliging.
It is one farther very commendable property of fools, that they always
speak the truth, than which there is nothing more noble and heroical.
For so, though Plato relate it as a sentence of Alcibiades, that in the
sea of drunkenness truth swims uppermost, and so wine is the only teller
of truth, yet this character may more justly be assumed by me, as I
can make good from the authority of Euripides, who lays down this as
an axiom _uwpa uwpos heyei_. Children and fools always speak the truth.
Whatever the fool has in his heart he betrays it in his face; or what
is more notifying, discovers it by his words: while the wise man, as
Euripides observes, carries a double tongue; the one to speak what may
be said, the other what ought to be; the one what truth, the other what
the time requires: whereby he can in a trice so alter his judgment,
as to prove that to be now white, which he had just before swore to be
black; like the satyr at his porridge, blowing hot and cold at the same
breath; in his lips professing one thing, when in his heart he means
another.
Furthermore, princes in their greatest splendour seem upon this account
unhappy, in that they miss the advantage of being told the truth,
and are shammed off by a parcel of insinuating courtiers, that acquit
themselves as flatterers more than as friends. But some will perchance
object, that princes do not love to hear the truth, and therefore wise
men must be very cautious how they behave themselves before them, lest
they should take too great a liberty in speaking what is true, rather
than what is acceptable. This must be confessed, truth indeed is seldom
palatable to the ears of kings; yet fools have so great a privilege as
to have free leave, not only to speak bare truths, but the most bitter
ones too; so as the same reproof, which had it come from the mouth of a
wise man would have cost him his head, being blurted out by a fool, is
not only pardoned, but well taken, and rewarded. For truth has naturally
a mixture of pleasure, if it carry with it nothing of offence to the
person whom it is applied to; and the happy knack of ordering it so is
bestowed only on fools. 'Tis for the same reason that this sort of men
are more fondly beloved by women, who like their tumbling them about,
and playing with them, though never so boisterously; pretending to take
that only in jest, which they would have to be meant in earnest, as that
sex is very ingenious in palliating, and dissembling the bent of their
wanton inclinations.
But to return. An additional happiness of these fools appears farther
in this, that when they have run merrily on to their last stage of
life, they neither find any fear nor feel any pain to die, but march
contentedly to the other world, where their company sure must be as
acceptable as it was here upon earth.
[Illustration: 164]
Let us draw now a comparison between the condition of a fool and that of
a wise man, and see how infinitely the one outweighs the other.