But this may seem perhaps a sort of intemperateness of delight in
knowing every thing, and as it were a stream violently bearing down the
reasoning faculty. But now, when a story that hath in it nothing that
is troubling and afflictive treats of great and heroic enterprises with
a potency and grace of style such as we find in Herodotus’s Grecian and
in Xenophon’s Persian history, or in what,
Inspired by heavenly Gods, sage Homer sung,
or in the Travels of Eudoxus, the Foundations and Republics of
Aristotle, and the Lives of Famous Men compiled by Aristoxenus;—these
will not only bring us exceeding much and great contentment, but such
also as is clean and secure from repentance. And who could take greater
satisfaction either in eating when a-hungry or drinking when a-dry
amongst the Phaeacians, than in going over Ulysses’s relation of his
own voyage and rambles? And what man could be better pleased with the
embraces of the most exquisite beauty, than with sitting up all night
to read over what Xenophon hath written of Panthea, or Aristobulus of
Timoclea, or Theopompus of Thebe?
11. But now these appertain all solely to the mind. But they chase
away from them the delights that accrue from the mathematics also.
Though the satisfactions we receive from history have in them something
simple and equal; but those that come from geometry, astronomy, and
music inveigle and allure us with a sort of nimbleness and variety, and
want nothing that is tempting and engaging; their figures attracting
us as so many charms, whereof whoever hath once tasted, if he be but
competently skilled, will run about singing that in Sophocles,
I’m mad; the Muses with new rage inspire me.
I’ll mount the hill; my lyre, my numbers fire me.[143]
Nor doth Thamyras break out into poetic raptures upon any other score;
nor, by Jove, Eudoxus, Aristarchus, or Archimedes. And when the lovers
of the art of painting are so enamored with the charmingness of their
own performances, that Nicias, as he was drawing the Evocation of
Ghosts in Homer, often asked his servants whether he had dined or no,
and when King Ptolemy had sent him threescore talents for his piece,
after it was finished, he neither would accept the money nor part with
his work; what and how great satisfactions may we then suppose to have
been reaped from geometry and astronomy by Euclid when he wrote his
Dioptrics, by Philippus when he had perfected his demonstration of the
figure of the moon, by Archimedes when with the help of a certain angle
he had found the sun’s diameter to make the same part of the largest
circle that that angle made of four right angles, and by Apollonius and
Aristarchus who were the inventors of some other things of the like
nature? The bare contemplating and comprehending of these now engender
in the learners both unspeakable delights and a marvellous height of
spirit. And it doth in no wise beseem me, by comparing with these the
fulsome debauchees of victualling-houses and stews, to contaminate
Helicon and the Muses,—
Where swain his flock ne’er fed,
Nor tree by hatchet bled.[144]
But these are the verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious bees;
but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and he-goats.
And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally fantastic and
precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy that he
had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish to die
immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the costly dishes
and comfits at the table of his prince. But now Eudoxus wished he might
stand by the sun, and inform himself of the figure, magnitude, and
beauty of that luminary, though he were, like Phaethon, consumed by
it. And Pythagoras offered an ox in sacrifice for having completed the
lines of a certain geometric diagram; as Apollodotus tells us,
When the famed lines Pythagoras devised,
For which a splendid ox he sacrificed.
Whether it was that by which he showed that the [square of the] line
that regards the right angle in a triangle is equivalent to the
[squares of the] two lines that contain that angle, or the problem
about the area of the parabolic section of a cone. And Archimedes’s
servants were forced to hale him away from his draughts, to be anointed
in the bath; but he notwithstanding drew the lines upon his belly with
his strigil. And when, as he was washing (as the story goes of him), he
thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero’s
crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool, he leaped up
as one possessed or inspired, crying, “I have found it” (εὕρηκα); which
after he had several times repeated, he went his way. But we never yet
heard of a glutton that exclaimed with such vehemence, “I have eaten,”
or of an amorous gallant that ever cried, “I have kissed,” among the
many millions of dissolute debauchees that both this and preceding
ages have produced. Yea, we abominate those that make mention of their
great suppers with too luscious a gust, as men overmuch taken with mean
and abject delights. But we find ourselves in one and the same ecstasy
with Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus; and we readily give assent
to Plato when he saith of the mathematics, that while ignorance and
unskilledness make men despise them, they still thrive notwithstanding
by reason of their charmingness, in despite of contempt.
12. These then so great and so many pleasures, that run like perpetual
springs and rills, these men decline and avoid; nor will they permit
those that put in among them so much as to take a taste of them, but
bid them hoist up the little sails of their paltry cock-boats and fly
from them. Nay, they all, both he and she philosophers, beg and entreat
Pythocles, for dear Epicurus’s sake, not to affect or make such account
of the sciences called liberal. And when they cry up and defend one
Apelles, they write of him that he kept himself clean by refraining
himself all along from the mathematics. But as to history—to pass
over their aversedness to other kinds of compositions—I shall only
present you with the words of Metrodorus, who in his treatise of the
Poets writes thus: Wherefore let it never disturb you, if you know not
either what side Hector was of, or the first verses in Homer’s Poem, or
again what is in its middle. But that the pleasures of the body spend
themselves like the winds called Etesian or Anniversary, and utterly
determine when once age is past its vigor, Epicurus himself was not
insensible; and therefore he makes it a problematic question, whether
a sage philosopher, when he is an old man and disabled for enjoyment,
may not still be recreated with having handsome girls to feel and grope
him, being not, it seems, of the mind of old Sophocles, who thanked God
he had at length escaped from this kind of pleasure, as from an untame
and furious master. But, in my opinion, it would be more advisable for
these sensual lechers, when they see that age will dry up so many of
their pleasures, and that, as Euripides saith,
Dame Venus is to ancient men a foe,[145] in the first place to collect
and lay up in store, as against a siege, these other pleasures, as a
sort of provision that will not impair and decay; that then, after
they have celebrated the venereal festivals of life, they may spend
a cleanly after-feast in reading over the historians and poets, or
else in problems of music and geometry. For it would never have come
into their minds so much as to think of these purblind and toothless
gropings and spurtings of lechery, had they but learned, if nothing
more, to write comments upon Homer or Euripides, as Aristotle,
Heraclides, and Dicaearchus did. But I verily persuade myself that
their neglecting to take care for such provisions as these, and finding
all the other things they employed themselves in (as they use to say
of virtue) but insipid and dry, and being wholly set upon pleasure,
and the body no longer supplying them with it, give them occasion to
stoop to do things both mean and shameful in themselves and unbecoming
their age; as well when they refresh their memories with their former
pleasures and serve themselves of old ones (as it were) long since dead
and laid up in pickle for the purpose, when they cannot have fresh
ones, as when again they offer violence to nature by suscitating and
kindling in their decayed bodies, as in cold embers, other new ones
equally senseless, they having not, it seems, their minds stored with
any congenial pleasure that is worth the rejoicing at.
13. As to the other delights of the mind, we have already treated
of them, as they occurred to us. But their aversedness and dislike
to music, that affords us so great delights and such charming
satisfactions, a man could not forget if he would, by reason of the
inconsistency of what Epicurus saith, when he pronounceth in his book
called his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of public
spectacles and to delight above any other man in the music and shows
of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not admit of music problems or
of the critical enquiries of philologists, no, not so much as at a
compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are lovers of the Muses
rather to entertain themselves at their feasts either with some
narration of military adventures or with the importune scurrilities
of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in disputes about music or in
questions of poetry. For this very thing he had the face to write in
his treatise of Monarchy, as if he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to
Nanarus satrap of Babylon. For neither would a Hiero nor an Attalus
nor an Archelaus be persuaded to make a Euripides, a Simonides, a
Melanippides, a Crates, or a Diodotus rise up from their tables, and
to place such scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or
a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to make people
disorder the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the great Ptolemy,
who was the first that formed a consort of musicians, but met with
these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you, have
thus addressed himself to the Samians:
O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?
For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be in such enmity
and hostility with the Muses. But
No animal accurst by Jove
Music’s sweet charms can ever love.[146]
What sayest thou now, Epicurus? Wilt thou get thee up betimes in
the morning, and go to the theatre to hear the harpers and flutists
play? But if a Theophrastus discourse at the table of Concords, or an
Aristoxenus of Varieties, or if an Aristophanes play the critic upon
Homer, wilt thou presently, for very dislike and abhorrence, clap both
thy hands upon thy ears? And do they not hereby make the Scythian
king Ateas more musical than this comes to, who, when he heard that
admirable flutist Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war,
playing upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather hear his
own horse neigh? And do they not also profess themselves to stand at an
implacable and irreconcilable defiance with whatever is generous and
becoming? And indeed what do they ever embrace or affect that is either
genteel or regardable, when it hath nothing of pleasure to accompany
it? And would it not far less affect a pleasurable way of living, to be
disgusted with perfumes and odors, like beetles and vultures, than to
shun and abhor the conversation of learned critics and musicians? For
what flute or harp ready tuned for a lesson, or
What sweetest consort e’er with artful noise,
Warbled by softest tongue and best tuned voice,
ever gave Epicurus and Metrodorus such content as the disputes and
precepts about consorts gave Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus,
and Dicaearchus? And also the problems about flutes, rhythms, and
harmonies; as, for instance, why the slenderer of two flutes of the
same longitude should speak flatter?—why, if you raise the pipe, will
all its notes be sharp; and flat again, if you lower it?—and why,
when clapped to another, will it sound flatter; and sharper again,
when taken from it?—why also, if you scatter chaff or dust about the
orchestra of a theatre, will the sound be softened?—and why, when one
would have set up a bronze Alexander for a frontispiece to a stage
at Pella, did the architect advise to the contrary, because it would
spoil the actors’ voices?—and why, of the several kinds of music, will
the chromatic diffuse and the harmonic compose the mind? But now the
several humors of poets, their differing turns and forms of style, and
the solutions of their difficult places, have conjoined with a sort of
dignity and politeness somewhat also that is extremely agreeable and
charming; insomuch that to me they seem to do what was once said by
Xenophon, to make a man even forget the joys of love, so powerful and
overcoming is the pleasure they bring us.
14. Of all this these gentlemen have not the least share, nor do they
so much as pretend or desire to have any. But while they are sinking
and depressing their contemplative part into the body, and dragging it
down by their sensual and intemperate appetites, as by so many weights
of lead, they make themselves appear little better than hostlers or
graziers that still ply their cattle with hay, straw, or grass, looking
upon such provender as the properest and meetest food for them. And is
it not even thus they would swill the mind with the pleasures of the
body, as hogherds do their swine, while they will not allow it can be
gay any longer than it is hoping, feeling, or remembering something
that refers to the body; but will not have it either to receive or seek
for any congenial joy or satisfaction from within itself? Though what
can be more absurd and unreasonable than—when there are two things that
go to make up the man, a body and a soul, and the soul besides hath
the prerogative of governing—that the body should have its peculiar,
natural, and proper good, and the soul none at all, but must sit
gazing at the body and simper at its passions, as if she were pleased
and affected with them, though indeed she be all the while wholly
untouched and unconcerned, as having nothing of her own to choose,
desire, or take delight in? For they should either pull off the vizor
quite, and say plainly that man is all body (as some of them do, that
take away all mental being), or, if they will allow us to have two
distinct natures, they should then leave to each its proper good and
evil, agreeable and disagreeable; as we find it to be with our senses,
each of which is peculiarly adapted to its own sensible, though they
all very strangely intercommune one with another. Now the intellect is
the proper sense of the mind; and therefore that it should have no
congenial speculation, movement, or affection of its own, the attaining
to which should be matter of complacency to it, is the most irrational
thing in the world, if I have not, by Jove, unwittingly done the men
wrong, and been myself imposed upon by some that may perhaps have
calumniated them.
15. Then I said to him: If we may be your judges, you have not; yea,
we must acquit you of having offered them the least indignity; and
therefore pray despatch the rest of your discourse with assurance. How!
said he, and shall not Aristodemus then succeed me, if you are tired
out yourself? Aristodemus said: With all my heart, when you are as much
tired as he is; but since you are yet in your vigor, pray make use of
yourself, my noble friend, and don’t think to pretend weariness. Theon
then replied: What is yet behind, I must confess, is very easy; it
being but to go over the several pleasures contained in that part of
life that consists in action. Now themselves somewhere say that there
is far more satisfaction in doing than in receiving good; and good may
be done many times, it is true, by words, but the most and greatest
part of good consists in action, as the very name of beneficence tells
us and they themselves also attest. For you may remember, continued he,
we heard this gentleman tell us but now what words Epicurus uttered,
and what letters he sent to his friends, applauding and magnifying
Metrodorus,—how bravely and like a spark he quitted the city and went
down to the port to relieve Mithrus the Syrian,—and this, though
Metrodorus did not then do any thing at all. What and how great then
may we presume the pleasures of Plato to have been, when Dion by the
measures he gave him deposed the tyrant Dionysius and set Sicily at
liberty? And what the pleasures of Aristotle, when he rebuilt his
native city Stagira, then levelled with the ground, and brought back
its exiled inhabitants? And what the pleasures of Theophrastus and of
Phidias, when they cut off the tyrants of their respective countries?
For what need a man recount to you, who so well know it, how many
particular persons they relieved, not by sending them a little wheat
or a measure of meal (as Epicurus did to some of his friends), but by
procuring restoration to the banished, liberty to the imprisoned, and
restitution of wives and children to those that had been bereft of
them? But a man could not, if he would, pass by the sottish stupidity
of the man who, though he tramples under foot and vilifies the great
and generous actions of Themistocles and Miltiades, yet writes these
very words to his friends about himself: “You have given a very gallant
and noble testimony of your care of me in the provision of corn you
have made for me, and have declared your affection to me by signs
that mount to the very skies.” So that, should a man but take that
poor parcel of corn out of the great philosopher’s epistle, it might
seem to be the recital of some letter of thanks for the delivery or
preservation of all Greece or of the commons of Athens.
16. We will now forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and
chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the
body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in barley bread and lentil
pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes,
Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties of pastry works,
And cakes by female hands wrought artfully,
Well steep’d in th’ liquor of the gold-wing’d bee;[147]
and besides all this, handsome young lassies too, such as Leontion,
Boidion, Hedia, and Nicedion, that were wont to roam about in
Epicurus’s philosophic garden. But now such joys as suit the mind must
undoubtedly be grounded upon a grandeur of actions and a splendor of
worthy deeds, if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile,
but on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to be elated
with pleasures, as Epicurus is, like tarpaulins upon the festivals of
Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he
notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and
grudged not his dropsy the satisfaction of good liquors, and that,
when he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he was melted
with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears,—no man in his right
senses would call these true joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold
to say that, if such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning
laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these forcings
and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them still called by
the name of joys and satisfactions, let him but yet think how far they
are exceeded by the pleasures that here ensue:
Our counsels have proud Sparta’s glory clipt;
and
Stranger, this is his country Rome’s great star;
and again this,