XLI. O how many antipodes in morality to Sir Thomas More are to be
found in every state! for both in the east and the west, you will meet
with many of those ridiculous scarecrows, who lead a kind of hermetic
life, and are called sanctified or holy men; but those of this day do
not mortify themselves so much, but offend other people more, than
those of former times were used to do. With a displeasing gravity,
and forbidding look that amounts to sour sternness; a conversation
so opposite to the cheerful, that it borders on the extreme of
clownish surliness; a zeal so harsh and severe, that it degenerates
into cruelty; a scrupulous observance of rites and ceremonies, that
approaches to superstition; and by the mere want or absence of a few
vices; I say, that with the help of these appearances, they, without
more cost or trouble, set themselves up as patterns or images of
ultimate perfection; and they are truly images in the strict sense of
the word, for their whole value consists in their external shape and
figure; and I besides call them images, because they are not endued
or informed with a true, but with the sham semblance of a spirit. I
repeat again that they are images, because they are hard as marble,
and insensible and unfeeling as the trunks of trees. In the morality
that directs them, gentleness of manners, affability, and pity, are
blotted out of the catalogue of virtues. I have not even yet said
enough. Those two sensible characteristics of charity, pointed out by
St. Paul, that is to say, patience and benevolence, are so foreign to
their dispositions, that they are inclined to consider them as signs
of relaxation of discipline, or at least of lukewarmness. They assume
the figure of saints, without possessing more sanctity than the stock
or stone images of such, and would number themselves among the blessed,
wanting the requisites which the gospel expresses to constitute them
such, and make them deserving of being inserted in that catalogue,
which are meekness, compassion, and a conciliatory spirit. _Beati
mites, beati misericordes, beati pacifici._
XLII. It is also certain, that virtue is tinctured with, or wears a
different hue, according to the genius or disposition of the subject
in whom it exists, and on this account, in different individuals it
appears in different colours. Notwithstanding this, we ought in the
mixture or combination, to distinguish what is derived solely from
virtue, and what is produced by the intervention of constitution. There
are men of a harsh, choleric, unpleasant cast of mind, who at the same
time are virtuous; but their virtue on this account is not harsh,
choleric, and displeasing, but rather in its operations, by means of
its innate good qualities, corrects those defects. The misfortune is,
that these defects of temper, confound the understanding and pervert
the judgment; and in consequence of this perversion of the judgment,
virtue is prevented from amending the defects of the genius. A virtuous
man, who is of an impetuous, violent disposition, and inclining to
the morose, when placed in command, is easily brought to think; he
finds himself in circumstances where prudence dictates that he should
use rigour; whereas one of an excessive gentle and mild genius, can
never persuade himself that contingent is arrived. Both one and the
other discharge and preserve their consciences, and the public are the
sufferers by their mistakes, but in a very different degree, according
to the diversity of the employments or destinations of such people.
The very gentle man is most pernicious in external policy, and the
rigorous in internal. An excess of clemency, and forbearing to put in
execution criminal laws, in cases where the offences committed are
injurious to the public at large, is a very great evil. In matters that
concern the reformation, or internal amendment of souls, rigour is not
only useless, but prejudicial, because the fear of temporal punishment
does not make penitents, but hypocrites; it only removes the external
execution of vice, and concentrates the evil intention within the
soul, where it produces a new sin, in the hatred it excites against the
judge.