_Of a Philosophical Entertainment._
After I had Proclaimed this, in the five great places of the Town, my
Advocate came and reached me his Hand to help me down. I was in great
amaze, when after I had Eyed him I found him to be my Spirit; we were
an hour in embracing one another: "Come lodge with me," said he, "for
if you return to Court, after a Publick Disgrace, you will not be well
lookt upon: Nay more, I must tell you, that you would have been still
amongst the Apes yonder, as well as the _Spaniard_ your Companion,
if I had not in all Companies published the vigour and force of your
Wit, and gained from your Enemies the protection of the great Men in
your favours." I ceased not to thank him all the way, till we came to
his Lodgings; there he entertained me till Suppertime with all the
Engines he had set a work to prevail with my Enemies, notwithstanding
the most specious pretexts they had used for riding the Mobile,[1] to
desist from so unjust a Prosecution. But as they came to acquaint us
that Supper was upon the Table, he told me that to bear me company that
evening he had invited Two Professors of the University of the Town
to Sup with him: "I'll make them," said he, "fall upon the Philosophy
which they teach in this World, and by that means you shall see my
Landlord's Son: He's as Witty a Youth as ever I met with; he would
prove another _Socrates_, if he could use his Parts aright, and not
bury in Vice the Graces wherewith God continually visits him, by
affecting a Libertinism,[2] as he does, out of a Chimerical Ostentation
and Affectation of the name of a Wit. I have taken Lodgings here, that
I may lay hold on all Opportunities of Instructing him:" He said no
more, that he might give me the Liberty to speak, if I had a mind to
it; and then made a sign, that they should strip me of my disgraceful
Ornaments, in which I still glistered.
The Two Professors, whom we expected, entered just as I was undrest,
and we went to sit down to Table, where the Cloth was laid, and where
we found the Youth he had mentioned to me, fallen to already. They
made him a low Reverence, and treated him with as much respect as a
Slave does his Lord. I asked my Spirit the reason of that, who made me
answer, that it was because of his Age; seeing in that World, the Aged
rendered all kind of Respect and Difference[3] to the Young; and which
is far more, that the Parents obeyed their Children, so soon as by the
Judgment of the Senate of Philosophers they had attained to the Years
of Discretion.[4]
[Sidenote: Why Parents Obey Children]
"You are amazed," continued he, "at a Custom so contrary to that of
your Country; but it is not all repugnant to Reason: For say, in your
Conscience, when a brisk young Man is at his Prime in Imagining,
Judging, and Acting, is not he fitter to govern a Family than a
Decrepit piece of Threescore Years, dull and doting, whose Imagination
is frozen under the Snow of Sixty Winters, who follows no other Guide
but what you call the Experience of happy Successes; which yet are no
more but the bare effects of Chance, against all the Rules and Oeconomy
of humane Prudence? And as for Judgment, he hath but little of that
neither, though the people of your World make it the Portion of Old
Age: But to undeceive them, they must know, That that which is called
Prudence in an Old Man is no more but a panick Apprehension, and a
mad Fear of acting any thing where there is danger: So that when he
does not run a Risk, wherein a Young Man hath lost himself; it is not
that he foresaw the Catastrophe, but because he had not Fire enough to
kindle those noble Flashes, which make us dare: Whereas the Boldness
of that Young Man was as a pledge of the good Success of his design;
because the same Ardour that speeds and facilitates the execution,
thrust him upon the undertaking.
"As for Execution, I should wrong your Judgment if I endeavoured to
convince it by proofs: You know that Youth alone is proper for Action;
and were you not fully perswaded of this, tell me, pray, when you
respect a Man of Courage, is it not because he can revenge you on your
Enemies or Oppressors? And does any thing, but meer Habit, make you
consider[5] him, when a Battalion of Seventy _Januarys_ hath frozen his
Blood and chilled all the noble Heats that youth is warmed with?
When you yield to the Stronger, is it not that he should be obliged
to you for a Victory which you cannot Dispute him? Why then should
you submit to him, when Laziness hath softened his Muscles, weakened
his Arteries, evaporated his Spirits, and suckt the Marrow out of his
Bones? If you adore a Woman, is it not because of her Beauty? Why
should you then continue your Cringes, when Old Age hath made her a
Ghost, which only represents a hideous Picture of Death? In short,
when you loved a Witty Man, it was because by the Quickness of his
Apprehension he unravelled an intricate Affair, seasoned the choicest
Companies with his quaint Sayings, and sounded the depth of Sciences
with a single Thought; and do you still honour him, when his worn
Organs disappoint his weak Noddle, when he is become dull and uneasy in
Company, and when he looks like an aged Fairy[6] rather than a rational
Man?
"Conclude then from thence, Son, that it is fitter Young Men should
govern Families, than Old; and the rather, that according to your own
Principles, _Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas, Alexander_, and _Cæsar_,
of whom most part died under Fourty Years of Age, could have merited
no Honours, as being too Young in your account, though their Youth
was the only cause of their Famous Actions; which a more advanced Age
would have rendered ineffectual, as wanting that Heat and Promptitude
that rendered them so highly successful. But you'll tell me, that all
the Laws of your World do carefully enjoin the Respect that is due to
Old Men: That's true; but it & as true also, that all who made
Laws have been Old Men, who feared that Young Men might justly have
dispossessed them of the Authority they had usurped.
"You owe nothing to your mortal Architector, but your Body only; your
Soul comes from Heaven, and Chance might have made your Father your
Son, as now you are his. Nay, are you sure he hath not hindered you
from Inheriting a Crown? Your Spirit left Heaven, perhaps with a design
to animate the King of the _Romans_, in the Womb of the Empress; it
casually encountered the _Embryo_ of you by the way, and it may be to
shorten its journey, went and lodged there: No, no, God would never
have razed your name out of the List of Mankind, though your Father had
died a Child. But who knows, whether you might not have been at this
day the work of some valiant Captain, that would have associated you
to his Glory, as well as to his Estate. So that, perhaps, you are no
more indebted to your Father--for the life he hath given you, than
you would be to a Pirate who had put you in Chains, because he feeds
you: Nay, grant he had begot you a Prince, or King; a Present loses
its merit, when it is made without the Option of him who receives
it. _Cæsar_ was killed, and so was _Cassius_ too: In the mean time
_Cassius_ was obliged to the Slave, from whom he begg'd his Death, but
so was not _Cæsar_ to his Murderers, who forced it upon him. Did your
Father consult your Will and Pleasure, when he Embraced your Mother?
Did he ask you, if you thought fit to see that Age, or to wait for
another; if you would be satisfied to be the Son of a Sot, or if you
had the Ambition to spring from a Brave Man? Alas, you whom alone the
business concerned, were the only Person not consulted in the case.
May be then, had you been shut up any where else, than in the Womb of
Nature's Ideas, and had your Birth been in your own Opinion, you would
have said to the _Parca_, my dear Lady, take another Spindle in your
Hand: I have lain very long in the Bed of Nothing, and I had rather
continue an Hundred years still without a Being, than to Be to day,
that I may repent of it to morrow: However, Be you must, it was to no
purpose for you to whimper and squall to be taken back again to the
long and darksome House they drew you out of, they made as if they
believed you cryed for the Teat.
"These are the Reasons, at least some of them, my Son, why Parents
bear so much respect to their Children: I know very well that I have
inclined to the Childrens side more than in justice I ought; and that
in favour of them, I have spoken a little against my Conscience. But
since I was willing to repress the Pride of some Parents, who insult
over the weakness of their little Ones; I have been forced to do as
they do who to make a crooked Tree streight bend it to the contrary
side, that betwixt two Conversions it may become even: Thus I have made
Fathers restore to their Children what they have taken from them, by
taking from them a great deal that belonged to them; that so another
time they may be content with their own. I know very well also that by
this Apology I have offended all Old men: But let them remember, that
they were Children before they were Fathers, and Young before they were
Old; and that I must needs have spoken a great deal to their advantage,
seeing they were not found in a Parsley-bed:[7] But, in fine, fall
back, fall edge, though my Enemies draw up against my Friends, it will
go well enough still with me; for I have obliged all men, and only
disobliged but one half."
With that he held his tongue, and our Landlord's Son spoke in this
manner: "Give me leave," said he to him, "since by your care I am
informed of the Original, History, Customs, and Philosophy, of the
World of this little Man; to add something to what you have said; and
to prove that Children are not obliged to Parents for their Generation,
because their Parents were obliged in Conscience to procreate them.
"The strictest Philosophy of their World acknowledges that it is better
to dye, since to dye one must have lived, than not to have had a Being.
Now seeing, by not giving a Being to that Nothing, I leave it in a
state worse than Death, I am more guilty in not producing, than in
killing it. In the mean time, my little Man, thou wouldst think thou
hadst committed an unpardonable Parracide, shouldst thou have cut thy
Sons throat: It would indeed be an enormous Crime, but it is far more
execrable, not to give a Being to that which is capable of receiving
it: For that Child whom thou deprivest of life for ever, hath had the
satisfaction of having enjoyed it for some time. Besides, we know that
it is but deprived of it, but for some ages; but these forty poor
little Nothings, which thou mightest have made forty good Souldiers for
the King, thou art so malicious as to deny them Life, and lettest them
corrupt in thy Reins, to the danger of an Appoplexy, which will stifle
thee."
This Philosophy did not at all please me, which made me three or four
times shake my head; but our Preceptor held his tongue, because Supper
was mad to be gone.
We laid our selves along, then, upon very soft Quilts, covered with
large Carpets; and a young man that waited on us, taking the oldest of
our Philosophers, led him into a little parlour apart, where my Spirit
called to him to come back to us as soon as he had supped.
This humour of eating separately, gave me the curiosity of asking the
Cause of it: "He'll not relish," said he, "the steam of Meat, nor yet
of Herbs, unless they die of themselves, because he thinks they are
sensible of Pain." "I wonder not so much," replied I, "that he abstains
from Flesh, and all things that have had a sensitive Life: For in
our World the _Pythagoreans_, and even some holy _Anchorites_, have
followed that Rule; but not to dare, for instance, cut a Cabbage, for
fear of hurting it; that seems to me altogether ridiculous." "And for
my part," answered my Spirit, "I find a great deal of probability in
his Opinion."
[Sidenote: The Soul of Plants]
"For tell me, Is not that Cabbage you speak of, a Being existent in
Nature, as well as you? Is not she the common Mother of you both? Yet
the Opinion that Nature is kinder to Mankind, than to Cabbage-kind,
tickles and makes us laugh: But seeing she is incapable of Passion, she
can neither love nor hate any thing; and were she susceptible of Love,
she would rather bestow her affection upon this Cabbage, which you
grant cannot offend her, than upon that Man who would destroy her, if
it lay in his power.
"And moreover, Man cannot be born Innocent, being a Part of the first
Offender: But we know very well, that the first Cabbage did not offend
its Creator. If it be said, that we are made after the Image of the
Supreme Being, and so is not the Cabbage; grant that to be true; yet
by polluting our Soul, wherein we resembled Him, we have effaced that
Likeness, seeing nothing is more contrary to God than Sin. If then
our Soul be no longer his Image, we resemble him no more in our Feet,
Hands, Mouth, Forehead and Ears, than a Cabbage in its Leaves, Flowers,
Stalk, Pith, and Head: Do not you really think, that if this poor
Plant could speak, when one cuts it, it would not say, 'Dear Brother
Man, what have I done to thee that deserves Death? I never grow but in
Gardens, and am never to be found in desart places, where I might live
in Security: I disdain all other company but thine; and scarcely am I
sowed in thy Garden, when to shew thee my Goodwill, I blow, stretch out
my Arms to thee; offer thee my Children in Grain; and as a requital
for my civility, thou causest my Head to be chopt off.' Thus would a
Cabbage discourse, if it could speak.
"Well, and because it cannot complain, may we therefore justly do it
all the Wrong which it cannot hinder? If I find a Wretch bound Hand
and Foot, may I lawfully kill him, because he cannot defend himself?
so far from that, that his Weakness would aggravate my Cruelty. And
though this wretched Creature be poor, and destitute of all the
advantages which we have, yet it deserves not Death; and when of all
the Benefits of a Being it hath only that of Encrease, we ought not
cruelly to snatch that away from it. To massacre a Man, is not so
great Sin, as to cut and kill a Cabbage, because one day the Man will
rise again, but the Cabbage has no other Life to hope for: By putting
to death a Cabbage, you annihilate it; but in killing a Man, you make
him only change his Habitations Nay, I'll go farther with you still:
since God doth equally cherish all his Works, and hath equally divided
the Benefits betwixt Us and Plants, it is but just we should have an
equal Esteem for Them as for our Selves. It is true we were born first,
but in the Family of God there is no Birthright. If then the Cabbage
share not with us in the inheritance of Immortality, without doubt
that Want was made up by some other Advantage, that may make amends
for the shortness of its Being; may be by an universal Intellect, or
a perfect Knowledge of all things in their Causes; and it's for that
Reason, that the wise Mover of all things hath not shaped for it Organs
like ours, which are proper only for a simple Reasoning, not only weak,
but many times fallacious too; but others, more ingeniously framed,
stronger, and more numerous, which serve to manage its Speculative
Exercises. You'll ask me, perhaps, when ever any Cabbage imparted those
lofty Conceptions to us? But tell me, again, who ever discovered to
us certain Beings, which we allow to be above us; to whom we bear no
Analogy nor Proportion, and whose Existence it is as hard for us to
comprehend, as the Understanding and Ways whereby a Cabbage expresses
its self to its like, though not to us, because our senses are too dull
to penetrate so far.
"_Moses_, the greatest of Philosophers, who drew the Knowledge of
Nature from the Fountain-Head, Nature her self, hinted this truth to us
when he spoke of the Tree of Knowledge; and without doubt he intended
to intimate to us under that Figure, that Plants, in Exclusion to
Mankind, possess perfect Philosophy. Remember, then, O thou Proudest
of Animals! that though a Cabbage which thou cuttest sayeth not a
Word, yet it pays it at Thinking; but the poor Vegetable has no fit
Organs to howl as you do, nor yet to frisk it about, and weep: Yet,
it hath those that are proper to complain of the Wrong you do it, and
to draw a Judgement from Heaven upon you for the Injustice. But if
you still demand of me, how I come to know that Cabbage and Coleworts
conceive such pretty Thoughts? Then will I ask you, how come you to
know that they do not; and that some amongst them, when they shut up at
Night, may not Compliment one another as you do, saying: Good Night,
Master _Cole-Curled-Pate_; your most humble Servant, good Master
_Cabbage-Round-Head_."
So far was he gone on in his Discourse, when the young Lad, who had led
out our Philosopher, led him in again; "What, Supped already?" cryed
my Spirit to him. He answered, yes, almost: The Physiognomist having
permitted him to take a little more with us. Our young Landlord stayed
not till I should ask him the meaning of that Mystery; "I perceive,"
said he, "you wonder at this way of Living; know then, that in your
World, the Government of Health is too much neglected, and that our
Method is not to be despised."
[Sidenote: The Physiognomist]
"In all Houses there is a Physiognomist entertained by the Publick,[8]
who in some manner resembles your Physicians, save that he only
prescribes to the Healthful, and judges of the different manners how
we are to be Treated only according to the Proportion, Figure, and
Symmetry of our Members; by the Features of the Face, the Complexion,
the Softness of the Skin, the Agility of the Body, the Sound of the
Voice, and the Colour, Strength, and Hardness of the Hair. Did not you
just now mind a Man, of a pretty low Stature, who ey'd you; he was the
Physiognomist of the House: Assure your self, that according as he
observed your Constitution, he hath diversified the Exhalation of your
Supper: Mark the Quilt on which you lie, how distant it is from our
Couches; without doubt, he judges your Constitution to be far different
from ours; since he feared that the Odour which evaporates from those
little Pipkins that stand under our Noses, might reach you, or that
yours might steam to us; at Night, you'll see him chuse the Flowers for
your Bed with the same Circumspection."
[1] The people, the populace. _Cf_. pp. 74 (starts with "... without any
difficulty, and...") and 168 ("... But you'll say, some are...").
[2] "Libertinism" in seventeenth-century English is like the French
_libertinage_, applied rather to licentiousness of opinion than of
practice; so here it means rather "free thought" than free living.
[3] Deference.
[4] _Cf_. Gulliver's Voyage to Lilliput, chap. vi.
[5] Respect.
[6] Fr., _Dieu Foyer_. The change seems to be an interesting embroidery
of the translator's fancy, since he has correctly translated the words
as "Household God" on p. 76 (starts with "... Companions had retreated
to Temples...").
[7] Fr., "sous une pomme de chou" under a cabbage-head; where, as too
curious children are sometimes told in France, the babies are found.
The English expression is exactly equivalent. Cf. Locke: "Sempronia dug
Titus out of the parsley bed, as they used to tell children, and so
became his mother."
[8] Supported by the State. _Cf_. p. 34, n. 1. (See note 10 chap. III.)