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TO MADAME DIANE DE FOIX, Comtesse de Gurson
I never yet saw that father, but let his son be never so decrepit or deformed, would not, notwithstanding, own him: not, nevertheless, if he were not totally besotted, and blinded with his paternal affection, that he did not well enough discern his defects; but that with all defaults he was still his. Just so, I see better than any other, that all I write here are but the idle reveries of a man that has only nibbled upon the outward crust of sciences in his nonage, and only retained a general and formless image of them; who has got a little snatch of everything and nothing of the whole, 'a la Francoise'. For I know, in general, that there is such a thing as physic, as jurisprudence: four parts in mathematics, and, roughly, what all these aim and point at; and, peradventure, I yet know farther, what sciences in general pretend unto, in order to the service of our life: but to dive farther than that, and to have cudgelled my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all modern learning, or particularly addicted myself to any one science, I have never done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able to draw the first lineaments and dead colour; insomuch that there is not a boy of the lowest form in a school, that may not pretend to be wiser than I, who am not able to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am at any time forced upon, I am necessitated in my own defence, to ask him, unaptly enough, some universal questions, such as may serve to try his natural understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his is to me.
I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solid learning but Plutarch and Seneca; and there, like the Danaides, I eternally fill, and it as constantly runs out; something of which drops upon this paper, but little or nothing stays with me. History is my particular game as to matter of reading, or else poetry, for which I have particular kindness and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice, forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible and shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of verse darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and apprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect. As to the natural parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under the burden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and stumbling in the way; and when I have gone as far as I can, I am in no degree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of land before me, with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, that I am not able to penetrate. And taking upon me to write indifferently of whatever comes into my head, and therein making use of nothing but my own proper and natural means, if it befall me, as oft- times it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the same heads and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but just now in Plutarch's "Discourse of the Force of Imagination"), to see myself so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in comparison of those better writers, I at once pity or despise myself. Yet do I please myself with this, that my opinions have often the honour and good fortune to jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, though at a very great distance, and can say, "Ah, that is so." I am farther satisfied to find that I have a quality, which every one is not blessed withal, which is, to discern the vast difference between them and me; and notwithstanding all that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble as they are, to run on in their career, without mending or plastering up the defects that this comparison has laid open to my own view. And, in plain truth, a man had need of a good strong back to keep pace with these people. The indiscreet scribblers of our times, who, amongst their laborious nothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors, with a design, by that means, to illustrate their own writings, do quite contrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of ornaments renders the complexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that they lose much more than they get.
The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epicurus, were in this of two quite contrary humours: the first not only in his books mixed passages and sayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole Medea of Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a man pick out of his writings all that was none of his, he would leave him nothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, in three hundred volumes that he left behind him, has not so much as one quotation.[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Chyysippus, vii. 181, and Epicurus, x. 26.]
I happened the other day upon this piece of fortune; I was reading a French book, where after I had a long time run dreaming over a great many words, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, that indeed they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, I came at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated to the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the ascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular a precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence discovered the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never had since the heart to descend into it any more. If I should set out one of my discourses with such rich spoils as these, it would but too evidently manifest the imperfection of my own writing. To reprehend the fault in others that I am guilty of myself, appears to me no more unreasonable, than to condemn, as I often do, those of others in myself: they are to be everywhere reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary allowed them. I know very well how audaciously I myself, at every turn, attempt to equal myself to my thefts, and to make my style go hand in hand with them, not without a temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my reader from discerning the difference; but withal it is as much by the benefit of my application, that I hope to do it, as by that of my invention or any force of my own. Besides, I do not offer to contend with the whole body of these champions, nor hand to hand with anyone of them: 'tis only by flights and little light attempts that I engage them; I do not grapple with them, but try their strength only, and never engage so far as I make a show to do. If I could hold them in play, I were a brave fellow; for I never attack them; but where they are most sinewy and strong. To cover a man's self (as I have seen some do) with another man's armour, so as not to discover so much as his fingers' ends; to carry on a design (as it is not hard for a man that has anything of a scholar in him, in an ordinary subject to do) under old inventions patched up here and there with his own trumpery, and then to endeavour to conceal the theft, and to make it pass for his own, is first injustice and meanness of spirit in those who do it, who having nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a reputation, endeavour to do it by attempting to impose things upon the world in their own name, which they have no manner of title to; and next, a ridiculous folly to content themselves with acquiring the ignorant approbation of the vulgar by such a pitiful cheat, at the price at the same time of degrading themselves in the eyes of men of understanding, who turn up their noses at all this borrowed incrustation, yet whose praise alone is worth the having. For my own part, there is nothing I would not sooner do than that, neither have I said so much of others, but to get a better opportunity to explain myself. Nor in this do I glance at the composers of centos, who declare themselves for such; of which sort of writers I have in my time known many very ingenious, and particularly one under the name of Capilupus, besides the ancients. These are really men of wit, and that make it appear they are so, both by that and other ways of writing; as for example, Lipsius, in that learned and laborious contexture of his Politics.
But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these ineptitudes may be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more than my old bald grizzled likeness before them, where the painter has presented you not with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particular opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe, and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure, be another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to change me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it, being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others.
Some one, then, having seen the preceding chapter, the other day told me at my house, that I should a little farther have extended my discourse on the education of children.[" Which, how fit I am to do, let my friends flatter me if they please, I have in the meantime no such opinion of my own talent, as to promise myself any very good success from my endeavour." This passage would appear to be an interpolation by Cotton. At all events, I do not find it in the original editions before me, or in Coste.]
Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this subject, I could not possibly better employ it, than to present my best instructions to the little man that threatens you shortly with a happy birth (for you are too generous to begin otherwise than with a male); for, having had so great a hand in the treaty of your marriage, I have a certain particular right and interest in the greatness and prosperity of the issue that shall spring from it; beside that, your having had the best of my services so long in possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honour and advantage of all wherein you shall be concerned. But, in truth, all I understand as to that particular is only this, that the greatest and most important difficulty of human science is the education of children. For as in agriculture, the husbandry that is to precede planting, as also planting itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that which is planted comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more art to be used, more care to be taken, and much more difficulty to cultivate and bring it to perfection so it is with men; it is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up. The symptoms of their inclinations in that tender age are so obscure, and the promises so uncertain and fallacious, that it is very hard to establish any solid judgment or conjecture upon them. Look at Cimon, for example, and Themistocles, and a thousand others, who very much deceived the expectation men had of them. Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover their natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are grownup, applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certain opinions, and conforming themselves to particular laws and customs, easily alter, or at least disguise, their true and real disposition; and yet it is hard to force the propension of nature. Whence it comes to pass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of our time m training up children to things, for which, by their natural constitution, they are totally unfit. In this difficulty, nevertheless, I am clearly of opinion, that they ought to be elemented in the best and most advantageous studies, without taking too much notice of, or being too superstitious in those light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years, and to which Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too much authority.
Madam, science is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvellous use, especially in persons raised to that degree of fortune in which you are. And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot perform its true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in the conduct of war, in the government of peoples, in negotiating the leagues and friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming a syllogism in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing a dose of pills in physic. Wherefore, madam, believing you will not omit this so necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourself have tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yet have the writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my lord, your husband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur de Candale, your uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which will extend the knowledge of this quality in your family for so many succeeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint your ladyship with one particular fancy of my own, contrary to the common method, which is all I am able to contribute to your service in this affair.
The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choice of whom depends the whole success of his education, has several other great and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust, besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not mention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common rules: and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so far only as it shall appear advisable.
For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the account of profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favour of the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and depends upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his own proper and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, having rather a desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholar or learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friends solicitous to find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made than a well-filled head; ["'Tete bien faite', an expression created by Montaigne, and which has remained a part of our language."Servan.] seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two to prefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should exercise his charge after a new method.
'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their
pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business
of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would
have a tutor to correct this error, and, that at the very first, he
should according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the
test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to
discern and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and
sometimes leaving him to open it for himself; that is, I would not
have him alone to invent and speak, but that he should also hear his
pupil speak in turn. Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first
their scholars speak, and then they spoke to them [Diogenes
Laertius, iv. 36.]
"Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt,
auctoritas eorum, qui docent."
["The authority of those who teach, is very often an
impediment to
those who desire to learn."Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 5.]
It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he may judge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want of which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust, and to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest things I know, and 'tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to know how to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them. I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.
Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with
one and the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to
instruct several boys of differing and unequal capacities, are
infinitely mistaken; and 'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of
scholars, there are not found above two or three who bring away any
good account of their time and discipline. Let the master not only
examine him about the grammatical construction of the bare words of
his lesson, but about the sense and let him judge of the profit he has
made, not by the testimony of his memory, but by that of his life.
Let him make him put what he has learned into a hundred several
forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if he
yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, taking
instruction of his progress by the pedagogic institutions of Plato.
'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the
same condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its
office unless it have altered the form and condition of what was
committed to it to concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when
bound and compelled to follow the appetite of another's fancy,
enslaved and captivated under the authority of another's instruction;
we have been so subjected to the trammel, that we have no free, nor
natural pace of our own; our own vigour and liberty are extinct and
gone:
"Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt."
["They are ever in wardship."Seneca, Ep., 33.]
I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great an Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: "That the touchstone and square of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absolute conformity to Aristotle's doctrine; and that all besides was nothing but inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said all." A position, that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted, brought him once and long kept him in great danger of the Inquisition at Rome.
Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he reads,
and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust.
Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to him, than
those of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be
propounded to, and laid before him; he will himself choose, if he be
able; if not, he will remain in doubt.
"Che non men the saver, dubbiar m' aggrata."
["I love to doubt, as well as to know."Dante, Inferno, xi.
93]
for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own
reason, they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows
another, follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after
nothing.
"Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet."
["We are under no king; let each vindicate himself."
Seneca, Ep.,33]
Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he imbibe their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts; and no matter if he forget where he had his learning, provided he know how to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after: 'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them, but themselves afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he borrows from others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile a work that shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment: his instruction, labour and study, tend to nothing else but to form that. He is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials that have assisted him, but only to produce what he has himself done with them. Men that live upon pillage and borrowing, expose their purchases and buildings to every one's view: but do not proclaim how they came by the money. We do not see the fees and perquisites of a gentleman of the long robe; but we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and his family, and the titles and honours he has obtained for him and his. No man divulges his revenue; or, at least, which way it comes in but every one publishes his acquisitions. The advantages of our study are to become better and more wise. 'Tis, says Epicharmus, the understanding that sees and hears, 'tis the understanding that improves everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns: all other faculties are blind, and deaf, and without soul. And certainly we render it timorous and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and privilege to do anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil what he thought of grammar and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence of Cicero? Our masters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there establish them like oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of the substance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies no more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That which a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at his own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it, according to the opinion of Plato, who says, that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the true philosophy, and the other sciences, that are directed to other ends; mere adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those two noted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well, without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of our studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is book sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of a servant, a jest at the table, are so many new subjects.
And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use and travel into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our young monsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda [The Pantheon of Agrippa.] is in circuit; or of the richness of Signora Livia's petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero's face, in a statue in such an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some medal; but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. I would that a boy should be sent abroad very young, and first, so as to kill two birds with one stone, into those neighbouring nations whose language is most differing from our own, and to which, if it be not formed betimes, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend.
And also 'tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not
be brought up in his mother's lap. Mothers are too tender, and their
natural affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all so
overfond, that they can neither find in their hearts to give them due
correction for the faults they may commit, nor suffer them to be
inured to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not
endure to see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to
drink cold drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly
horse, nor take a foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to
discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a
boy to be good for anything when he comes to be a man, must by no
means spare him when young, and must very often transgress the rules
of physic:
"Vitamque sub dio, et trepidis agat
In rebus."
["Let him live in open air, and ever in movement about
something."
Horace, Od. ii., 3, 5.]
It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are also to make his
sinews strong; for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the
members, and would have too hard a task to discharge two offices
alone. I know very well to my cost, how much mine groans under the
burden, from being accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed,
as eternally leans and presses upon her; and often in my reading
perceive that our masters, in their writings, make examples pass for
magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness
of skin and hardness of bones; for I have seen men, women, and
children, naturally born of so hard and insensible a constitution of
body, that a sound cudgelling has been less to them than a flirt with
a finger would have been to me, and that would neither cry out, wince,
nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and when wrestlers
counterfeit the philosophers in patience, 'tis rather strength of
nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to be inured to undergo labour,
is to be accustomed to endure pain:
"Labor callum obducit dolori."
["Labour hardens us against pain."Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii.
15.]
A boy is to be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics, cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come by misfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this world goes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for proof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws, threatens the honestest men with the whip and the halter.
And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, which ought to be sovereign over the boy he has received into his charge, is often checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may also be added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master's son, and the knowledge he has of the estate and greatness he is heir to, are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years.
And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I
have observed this vice, that instead of gathering observations from
others, we make it our whole business to lay ourselves open to them,
and are more concerned how to expose and set out our own commodities,
than how to increase our stock by acquiring new. Silence, therefore,
and modesty are very advantageous qualities in conversation. One
should, therefore, train up this boy to be sparing and an husband of
his knowledge when he has acquired it; and to forbear taking
exceptions at or reproving every idle saying or ridiculous story that
is said or told in his presence; for it is a very unbecoming rudeness
to carp at everything that is not agreeable to our own palate. Let
him be satisfied with correcting himself, and not seem to condemn
everything in another he would not do himself, nor dispute it as
against common customs.
"Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia."
["Let us be wise without ostentation, without envy."
Seneca, Ep., 103.
Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images of authority, this
childish ambition of coveting to appear better bred and more
accomplished, than he really will, by such carriage, discover himself
to be. And, as if opportunities of interrupting and reprehending were
not to be omitted, to desire thence to derive the reputation of
something more than ordinary. For as it becomes none but great poets
to make use of the poetical licence, so it is intolerable for any but
men of great and illustrious souls to assume privilege above the
authority of custom:
"Si quid Socrates ant Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem
fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et
divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur."
["If Socrates and Aristippus have committed any act against
manners
and custom, let him not think that he is allowed to do the
same; for
it was by great and divine benefits that they obtained this
privilege."Cicero, De 0ffic., i. 41.]
Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but
with a champion worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all
the little subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose, but only such
arguments as may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in
the election and choice of his reasons, to abominate impertinence, and
consequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, let him be lessoned
to acquiesce and submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it,
whether in his opponent's argument, or upon better consideration of
his own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere
clatter of words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any
argument whatever, than as he shall in his own judgment approve it:
nor yet is arguing a trade, where the liberty of recantation and
getting off upon better thoughts, are to be sold for ready money:
"Neque, ut omnia, qux praescripta et imperata sint,
defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur."
["Neither is their any necessity upon him, that he should
defend
all things that are prescribed and enjoined him."
Cicero, Acad., ii. 3.]
If his governor be of my humour, he will form his will to be a very good and loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, and very stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of having any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several other inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honest man ought to have, a man's judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by these particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise its function, or is blemished with ingratitude and indiscretion. A man that is purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak or think otherwise than favourably and well of a master, who, amongst so many millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his own hand to nourish and advance; this favour, and the profit flowing from it, must needs, and not without some show of reason, corrupt his freedom and dazzle him; and we commonly see these people speak in another kind of phrase than is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, though what they say in that courtly language is not much to be believed.
Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, and have only reason for their guide. Make him understand, that to acknowledge the error he shall discover in his own argument, though only found out by himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which are the principal things he is to seek after; that obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise and correct himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat of dispute, are rare, great, and philosophical qualities.
Let him be advised, being in company, to have his eye and ear in every corner; for I find that the places of greatest honour are commonly seized upon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest fortunes are seldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when, whilst they at the upper end of the chamber have been only commenting the beauty of the arras, or the flavour of the wine, many things that have been very finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost and thrown away. Let him examine every man's talent; a peasant, a bricklayer, a passenger: one may learn something from every one of these in their several capacities, and something will be picked out of their discourse whereof some use may be made at one time or another; nay, even the folly and impertinence of others will contribute to his instruction. By observing the graces and manners of all he sees, he will create to himself an emulation of the good, and a contempt of the bad.
Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being
inquisitive after everything; whatever there is singular and rare near
the place where he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble
fountain, an eminent man, the place where a battle has been anciently
fought, the passages of Caesar and Charlemagne:
"Qux tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat."
["What country is bound in frost, what land is friable with
heat,
what wind serves fairest for Italy."Propertius, iv. 3, 39.]
Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, and alliances of princes, things in themselves very pleasant to learn, and very useful to know.
In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only live in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. 'Tis an idle and vain study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent manner, but to those who do it with care and observation, 'tis a study of inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that the Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But, withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions are principally directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil's memory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his duty that he died there. Let him not teach him so much the narrative parts of history as to judge them; the reading of them, in my opinion, is a thing that of all others we apply ourselves unto with the most differing measure. I have read a hundred things in Livy that another has not, or not taken notice of at least; and Plutarch has read a hundred more there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that author ever wrote; to some it is merely a grammar study, to others the very anatomy of philosophy, by which the most abstruse parts of our human nature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy to be carefully read and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of all others the greatest master in that kind of writing; but there are a thousand others which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he only points with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, and contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicest article of the question, whence we are to grope out the rest. As, for example, where he says'[In the Essay on False Shame.] that the inhabitants of Asia came to be vassals to one only, for not having been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gave perhaps matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude." Only to see him pick out a light action in a man's life, or a mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a whole discourse. 'Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so immoderately affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better by it, but in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we should applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already read. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon the best subjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good. but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: "O stranger! thou speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst speak them." [Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians.] Such as have lean and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who are defective in matter endeavour to make amends with words.
Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. One asking Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but of the world;[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 37; Plutarch, On Exile, c. 4.] he whose imagination was fuller and wider, embraced the whole world for his country, and extended his society and friendship to all mankind; not as we do, who look no further than our feet. When the vines of my village are nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes, that the indignation of God has gone out against all the human race, and that the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it that, seeing the havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the machine of the world is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand; without considering, that many worse things have been seen, and that in the meantime, people are very merry in a thousand other parts of the earth for all this? For my part, considering the licence and impunity that always attend such commotions, I wonder they are so moderate, and that there is no more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that if that simple king of France could have managed his fortune as he should have done, he might in time have come to have been steward of the household to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallow imagination, conceive that there could be anything greater than a Duke of Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an error of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate and grandeur.
This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention. So many humours, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions, laws, and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which is no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin. The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty of so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight without closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good company in the other world: and so of the rest Pythagoras was want to say,[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 3.] that our life resembles the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own.
To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of
philosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought
to be especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know
"Quid fas optare: quid asper
Utile nummus habet: patrix carisque propinquis
Quantum elargiri deceat: quern te Deus esse
Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;
Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur."
["Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of
coined
money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our
country
and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded
thee to
be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed;
what we
are ant to what purpose engendered."Persius, iii. 69]
what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the
end and design of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the
difference betwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection,
licence and liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid
contentment; how far death, affliction, and disgrace are to be
apprehended;
"Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem."
["And how you may shun or sustain every hardship."
Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.]
by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations and irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig and well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to the instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also do; but let us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves to that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let alone, and, following Socrates' direction, limit the course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real utility:
"Sapere aude;
Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,
Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum."
["Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living
well is
like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out:
but
the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course,
to
ages without end."Horace, Ep., i. 2.]
'Tis a great foolery to teach our children:
"Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,"
["What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or
Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave."Propertius, iv. I,
89.]
the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere
before their own:
["What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?"
Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]
Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, " To what purpose," said he, "should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia were at that time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus, "Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition, and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over the world's changes?"
After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry, rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to, his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly make his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by discourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands, and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him, that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of, to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way of teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,[Theodore Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.] in which the precepts are so intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant, that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens and elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison, much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe.
'Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in
this age of ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding,
should be, looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no
use, no value, either in opinion or effect, of which I think those
ergotisms and petty sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it,
are the cause. And people are much to blame to represent it to
children for a thing of so difficult access, and with such a frowning,
grim, and formidable aspect. Who is it that has disguised it thus,
with this false, pale, and ghostly countenance? There is nothing more
airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had like to have said, more wanton.
She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious
look shows that she does not inhabit there. Demetrius the grammarian
finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting
together, said to them,[Plutarch, Treatise on Oracles which have
ceased] "Either I am much deceived, or by your cheerful and pleasant
countenances, you are engaged in no, very deep discourse." To which
one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: "Tis for such as are
puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb is
spelt with a double A, or that hunt after the derivation of the
comparatives - and -, and the superlatives and , to
knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but as to
philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that
entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad."
"Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro
Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque
Inde habitum facies."
["You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick
body; you
may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from
the
mind."Juvenal, ix. 18]
The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution of health, as to render the body in like manner healthful too; she ought to make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, and her contentment ought to fashion the outward behaviour to her own mould, and consequently to fortify it with a graceful confidence, an active and joyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. 'Tis Baroco and Baralipton [Two terms of the ancient scholastic logic.] that render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and not she; they do not so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is she that calms and appeases the storms and tempests of the soul, and who teaches famine and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certain imaginary epicycles, but by natural and manifest reasons. She has virtue for her end, which is not, as the schoolmen say, situate upon the summit of a perpendicular, rugged, inaccessible precipice: such as have approached her find her, quite on the contrary, to be seated in a fair, fruitful, and flourishing plain, whence she easily discovers all things below; to which place any one may, however, arrive, if he know but the way, through shady, green, and sweetly-flourishing avenues, by a pleasant, easy, and smooth descent, like that of the celestial vault. 'Tis for not having frequented this supreme, this beautiful, triumphant, and amiable, this equally delicious and courageous virtue, this so professed and implacable enemy to anxiety, sorrow, fear, and constraint, who, having nature for her guide, has fortune and pleasure for her companions, that they have gone, according to their own weak imagination, and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous, despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed it upon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and made of it a hobgoblin to affright people.
But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to be his duty to possess his pupil with as much or more affection than reverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets have evermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make him sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall once find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante or an Angelica [Heroines of Ariosto.] for a mistress, a natural, active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison of a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quite contrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia.
Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; it is by order, and not by force, that it is to be acquired. Socrates, her first minion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it aside, to slip into the more natural facility of her own progress; 'tis the nursing mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops the toper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eaten to a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to pleasure. If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without it, and forms another, wholly her own, not so fickle and unsteady as the other. She can be rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to lie upon soft perfumed beds: she loves life, beauty, glory, and health; but her proper and peculiar office is to know how to regulate the use of all these good things, and how to lose them without concern: an office much more noble than troublesome, and without which the whole course of life is unnatural, turbulent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, that men may justly represent those monsters upon rocks and precipices.
If this pupil shall happen to be of so contrary a disposition, that he had rather hear a tale of a tub than the true narrative of some noble expedition or some wise and learned discourse; who at the beat of drum, that excites the youthful ardour of his companions, leaves that to follow another that calls to a morris or the bears; who would not wish, and find it more delightful and more excellent, to return all dust and sweat victorious from a battle, than from tennis or from a ball, with the prize of those exercises; I see no other remedy, but that he be bound prentice in some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son of a duke; according to Plato's precept, that children are to be placed out and disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or condition of the father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their own souls.
Since philosophy is that which instructs us to live, and that
infancy has there its lessons as well as other ages, why is it not
communicated to children betimes?
"Udum et molle lutum est; nunc, nunc properandus, et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota."
["The clay is moist and soft: now, now make haste, and form
the
pitcher on the rapid wheel.'Persius, iii. 23.]
They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living. A hundred students have got the pox before they have come to read Aristotle's lecture on temperance. Cicero said, that though he should live two men's ages, he should never find leisure to study the lyric poets; and I find these sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable. The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare; he owes but the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to education; the remainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, employ that short time in necessary instruction. Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics; they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be amended: take the plain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and then rightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one of Boccaccio's novels; a child from nurse is much more capable of them, than of learning to read or to write. Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood, as well as for the decrepit age of men.
I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his
great disciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the
elements of geometry; as with infusing into him good precepts
concerning valour, prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt
of fear; and with this ammunition, sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no
more than thirty thousand foot, four thousand horse, and but forty-two
thousand crowns, to subjugate the empire of the whole earth. For the
other acts and sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed commended
their excellence and charm, and had them in very great honour and
esteem, but not ravished with them to that degree as to be tempted to
affect the practice of them In his own person:
"Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque,
Finem ammo certum, miserisque viatica canis."
["Young men and old men, derive hence a certain end to the
mind,
and stores for miserable grey hairs."Persius, v. 64.]
Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus,[Diogenes Laertius, x. 122.] says, "That neither the youngest should refuse to philosophise, nor the oldest grow weary of it." Who does otherwise, seems tacitly to imply, that either the time of living happily is not yet come, or that it is already past. And yet, a for all that, I would not have this pupil of ours imprisoned and made a slave to his book; nor would I have him given up to the morosity and melancholic humour of a sour ill-natured pedant.
I would not have his spirit cowed and subdued, by applying him to the rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when, by reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered to be overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humour in him; for that renders him unfit for civil conversation, and diverts him from better employments. And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with it, that he would not find time so much as to comb his head or to pare his nails. Neither would I have his generous manners spoiled and corrupted by the incivility and barbarism of those of another. The French wisdom was anciently turned into proverb: "Early, but of no continuance." And, in truth, we yet see, that nothing can be more ingenious and pleasing than the children of France; but they ordinarily deceive the hope and expectation that have been conceived of them; and grown up to be men, have nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of: I have heard men of good understanding say, these colleges of ours to which we send our young people (and of which we have but too many) make them such animals as they are.[Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as other people he should have been as great a blockhead as they. W.C.H.] [And Bacon before Hobbe's time had discussed the "futility" of university teaching. D.W.]
But to our little monsieur, a closet, a garden, the table, his bed,
solitude, and company, morning and evening, all hours shall be the
same, and all places to him a study; for philosophy, who, as the
formatrix of judgment and manners, shall be his principal lesson, has
that privilege to have a hand in everything. The orator Isocrates,
being at a feast entreated to speak of his art, all the company were
satisfied with and commended his answer: "It is not now a time," said
he, "to do what I can do; and that which it is now time to do, I
cannot do." [Plutarch, Symp., i. I.] For to make orations and
rhetorical disputes in a company met together to laugh and make good
cheer, had been very unreasonable and improper, and as much might have
been said of all the other sciences. But as to what concerns
philosophy, that part of it at least that treats of man, and of his
offices and duties, it has been the common opinion of all wise men,
that, out of respect to the sweetness of her conversation, she is ever
to be admitted in all sports and entertainments. And Plato, having
invited her to his feast, we see after how gentle and obliging a
manner, accommodated both to time and place, she entertained the
company, though in a discourse of the highest and most important
nature:
"Aeque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque;
Et, neglecta, aeque pueris senibusque nocebit."
["It profits poor and rich alike, but, neglected, equally
hurts old
and young."Horace, Ep., i. 25.]
By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more and better employed than his fellows of the college are. But as the steps we take in walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times as many, do not tire a man so much as those we employ in a formal journey, so our lesson, as it were accidentally occurring, without any set obligation of time or place, and falling naturally into every action, will insensibly insinuate itself. By which means our very exercises and recreations, running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, will prove to be a good part of our study. I would have his outward fashion and mien, and the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind. 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body that we are training up, but a man, and we ought not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not to fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like two horses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his, does he not seem to allow more time for, and to take more care of exercises for the body, and to hold that the mind, in a good proportion, does her business at the same time too?
As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on with a severe sweetness, quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle ways, do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! than which, I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates a well-descended nature. If you would have him apprehend shame and chastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him to heat and cold, to wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to despise; wean him from all effeminacy and delicacy in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking; accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet- knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man. I have ever from a child to the age wherein I now am, been of this opinion, and am still constant to it. But amongst other things, the strict government of most of our colleges has evermore displeased me; peradventure, they might have erred less perniciously on the indulgent side. 'Tis a real house of correction of imprisoned youth. They are made debauched by being punished before they are so. Do but come in when they are about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their pedagogues drunk with fury. A very pretty way this, to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their book, with a furious countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed and pernicious way of proceeding! Besides what Quintilian has very well observed, that this imperious authority is often attended by very dangerous consequences, and particularly our way of chastising. How much more decent would it be to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, than with the bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my ordering. I should paint the school with the pictures of joy and gladness; Flora and the Graces, as the philosopher Speusippus did his. Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too. Such viands as are proper and wholesome for children, should be sweetened with sugar, and such as are dangerous to them, embittered with gall. 'Tis marvellous to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning the gaiety and diversion of the youth of his city, and how much and often he enlarges upon the races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances: of which, he says, that antiquity has given the ordering and patronage particularly to the gods themselves, to Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses. He insists long upon, and is very particular in, giving innumerable precepts for exercises; but as to the lettered sciences, says very little, and only seems particularly to recommend poetry upon the account of music.
All singularity in our manners and conditions is to be avoided, as
inconsistent with civil society. Who would not be astonished at so
strange a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander the
Great, who sweated in the shade and shivered in the sun? I have seen
those who have run from the smell of a mellow apple with greater
precipitation than from a harquebuss-shot; others afraid of a mouse;
others vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to swoon at the
making of a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight nor
the crowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may,
peradventure, be some occult cause and natural aversion in these
cases; but, in my opinion, a man might conquer it, if he took it in
time. Precept has in this wrought so effectually upon me, though not
without some pains on my part, I confess, that beer excepted, my
appetite accommodates itself indifferently to all sorts of diet.
Young bodies are supple; one should, therefore, in that age bend and
ply them to all fashions and customs: and provided a man can contain
the appetite and the will within their due limits, let a young man, in
God's name, be rendered fit for all nations and all companies, even to
debauchery and excess, if need be; that is, where he shall do it out
of complacency to the customs of the place. Let him be able to do
everything, but love to do nothing but what is good. The philosophers
themselves do not justify Callisthenes for forfeiting the favour of
his master Alexander the Great, by refusing to pledge him a cup of
wine. Let him laugh, play, wench with his prince: nay, I would have
him, even in his debauches, too hard for the rest of the company, and
to excel his companions in ability and vigour, and that he may not
give over doing it, either through defect of power or knowledge how to
do it, but for want of will.
"Multum interest, utrum peccare ali quis nolit, an nesciat."
["There is a vast difference betwixt forbearing to sin, and
not
knowing how to sin."Seneca, Ep., 90]
I thought I passed a compliment upon a lord, as free from those
excesses as any man in France, by asking him before a great deal of
very good company, how many times in his life he had been drunk in
Germany, in the time of his being there about his Majesty's affairs;
which he also took as it was intended, and made answer, "Three times";
and withal told us the whole story of his debauches. I know some who,
for want of this faculty, have found a great inconvenience in
negotiating with that nation. I have often with great admiration
reflected upon the wonderful constitution of Alcibiades, who so easily
could transform himself to so various fashions without any prejudice
to his health; one while outdoing the Persian pomp and luxury, and
another, the Lacedaemonian austerity and frugality; as reformed in
Sparta, as voluptuous in Ionia:
"Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res."
["Every complexion of life, and station, and circumstance
became
Aristippus."Horace, Ep., xvii. 23.]
I would have my pupil to be such an one,
"Quem duplici panno patentia velat,
Mirabor, vitae via si conversa decebit,
Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque."
["I should admire him who with patience bearing a patched
garment,
bears well a changed fortune, acting both parts equally well."
Horace Ep., xvii. 25.]
These are my lessons, and he who puts them in practice shall reap
more advantage than he who has had them read to him only, and so only
knows them. If you see him, you hear him; if you hear him, you see
him. God forbid, says one in Plato, that to philosophise were only to
read a great many books, and to learn the arts.
"Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam,
vita magis quam literis, persequuti sunt."
["They have proceeded to this discipline of living well,
which of
all arts is the greatest, by their lives, rather than by their
reading."Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 3.]
Leo, prince of the Phliasians, asking Heraclides Ponticus [It was not Heraclides of Pontus who made this answer, but Pythagoras.]of what art or science he made profession: "I know," said he, "neither art nor science, but I am a philosopher." One reproaching Diogenes that, being ignorant, he should pretend to philosophy; "I therefore," answered he, "pretend to it with so much the more reason." Hegesias entreated that he would read a certain book to him: "You are pleasant," said he; "you choose those figs that are true and natural, and not those that are painted; why do you not also choose exercises which are naturally true, rather than those written?"
The lad will not so much get his lesson by heart as he will
practise it: he will repeat it in his actions. We shall discover if
there be prudence in his exercises, if there be sincerity and justice
in his deportment, if there be grace and judgment in his speaking; if
there be constancy in his sickness; if there be modesty in his mirth,
temperance in his pleasures, order in his domestic economy,
indifference in palate, whether what he eats or drinks be flesh or
fish, wine or water:
"Qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem
vitae
putet: quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis pareat."
["Who considers his own discipline, not as a vain ostentation
of
science, but as a law and rule of life; and who obeys his own
decrees, and the laws he has prescribed for himself."
Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 4.]
The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine. Zeuxidamus, to one who asked him, why the Lacedaemonians did not commit their constitutions of chivalry to writing, and deliver them to their young men to read, made answer, that it was because they would inure them to action, and not amuse them with words. With such a one, after fifteen or sixteen years' study, compare one of our college Latinists, who has thrown away so much time in nothing but learning to speak. The world is nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse, divided into four or five parts; and other five years, at least, to learn succinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle and intricate manner let us leave all this to those who make a profession of it.
Going one day to Orleans, I met in that plain on this side Clery,
two pedants who were travelling towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces
distant from one another; and, a good way further behind them, I
discovered a troop of horse, with a gentleman at the head of them, who
was the late Monsieur le Comte de la Rochefoucauld. One of my people
inquired of the foremost of these masters of arts, who that gentleman
was that came after him; he, having not seen the train that followed
after, and thinking his companion was meant, pleasantly answered, "He
is not a gentleman; he is a grammarian; and I am a logician." Now we
who, quite contrary, do not here pretend to breed a grammarian or a
logician, but a gentleman, let us leave them to abuse their leisure;
our business lies elsewhere. Let but our pupil be well furnished with
things, words will follow but too fast; he will pull them after him if
they do not voluntarily follow. I have observed some to make excuses,
that they cannot express themselves, and pretend to have their fancies
full of a great many very fine things, which yet, for want of
eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, and nothing else.
Will you know what I think of it? I think they are nothing but
shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not
what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet
themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe
how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will
soon conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about
conception, and that they are but licking their formless embryo. For
my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his
mind a sprightly and clear imagination, he will express it well enough
in one kind of tongue or another, and, if he be dumb, by signs
"Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur;"
["Once a thing is conceived in the mind, the words to express
it
soon present themselves." ("The words will not reluctantly
follow the
thing preconceived.")Horace, De Arte Poetica. v. 311]
And as another as poetically says in his prose:
"Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt,"
["When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves
readily." ("When things have taken possession of the mind,
the
words trip.")Seneca, Controvers., iii. proem.]
and this other.
"Ipsae res verbs rapiunt."
["The things themselves force the words to express them."
Cicero, De Finib., iii. 5.]
He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar,
no more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet
these will give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and
peradventure shall trip as little in their language as the best
masters of art in France. He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface
to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care
to know it. Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily
effaced by the lustre of a simple and blunt truth; these fine
flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of
more solid and nutritive diet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in
Tacitus." The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant
oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war
against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he had heard their harangue
with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to the
exordium, I remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your
speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will not do what you
desire:" [Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.] a very
pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most
sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say? The Athenians were
to choose one of two architects for a very great building they had
designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his
service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work
in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in his
favour; but the other in three words: "O Athenians, what this man
says, I will do." [Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]
When Cicero was in the height and heat of an eloquent harangue, many
were struck with admiration; but Cato only laughed, saying, "We have a
pleasant (mirth-making) consul." Let it go before, or come after, a
good sentence or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither
suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what
follows after, it is good in itself. I am none of those who think
that good rhyme makes a good poem. Let him make short long, and long
short if he will, 'tis no great matter; if there be invention, and
that the wit and judgment have well performed their offices, I will
say, here's a good poet, but an ill rhymer.
"Emunctae naris, durus componere versus."
["Of delicate humour, but of rugged versification."
Horace, Sat, iv. 8.]
Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of all method and measure,
"Tempora certa modosque, et, quod prius ordine verbum est,
Posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis
Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae."
["Take away certain rhythms and measures, and make the word
which
was first in order come later, putting that which should be
last
first, you will still find the scattered remains of the poet."
Horace, Sat., i. 4, 58.]
he will never the more lose himself for that; the very pieces will
be fine by themselves. Menander's answer had this meaning, who being
reproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a
comedy, that he had not yet fallen in hand with it; "It is made, and
ready," said he, "all but the verses." [Plutarch, Whether the
Athenians more excelled in Arms or in Letters.] Having contrived the
subject, and disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for
the rest. Since Ronsard and Du Bellay have given reputation to our
French poesy, every little dabbler, for aught I see, swells his words
as high, and makes his cadences very near as harmonious as they:
"Plus sonat, quam valet."
["More sound than sense"Seneca, Ep., 40.]
For the vulgar, there were never so many poetasters as now; but though they find it no hard matter to imitate their rhyme, they yet fall infinitely short of imitating the rich descriptions of the one, and the delicate invention of the other of these masters.
But what will become of our young gentleman, if he be attacked with
the sophistic subtlety of some syllogism? "A Westfalia ham makes a
man drink; drink quenches thirst: ergo a Westfalia ham quenches
thirst." Why, let him laugh at it; it will be more discretion to do
so, than to go about to answer it; or let him borrow this pleasant
evasion from Aristippus: "Why should I trouble myself to untie that,
which bound as it is, gives me so much trouble?" [Diogenes Laertius,
ii. 70.] One offering at this dialectic juggling against Cleanthes,
Chrysippus took him short, saying, "Reserve these baubles to play with
children, and do not by such fooleries divert the serious thoughts of
a man of years." If these ridiculous subtleties,
"Contorta et aculeata sophismata,"
as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess him with an untruth,
they are dangerous; but if they signify no more than only to make him
laugh, I do not see why a man need to be fortified against them.
There are some so ridiculous, as to go a mile out of their way to
hook in a fine word:
"Aut qui non verba rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus
arcessunt, quibus verba conveniant."
["Who do not fit words to the subject, but seek out for things
quite from the purpose to fit the words."Quintilian, viii.
3.]
And as another says,
"Qui, alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur ad id,
quod non proposuerant scribere."
["Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word, are
tempted to
something they had no intention to treat of."Seneca, Ep.,
59.]
I for my part rather bring in a fine sentence by head and shoulders
to fit my purpose, than divert my designs to hunt after a sentence.
On the contrary, words are to serve, and to follow a man's purpose;
and let Gascon come in play where French will not do. I would have
things so excelling, and so wholly possessing the imagination of him
that hears, that he should have something else to do, than to think of
words. The way of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the
same in writing as in speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of
expressing a man's self, short and pithy, not so elegant and
artificial as prompt and vehement;
"Haec demum sapiet dictio, qux feriet;"
["That has most weight and wisdom which pierces the ear."
("That
utterance indeed will have a taste which shall strike the
ear.")
Epitaph on Lucan, in Fabricius, Biblioth. Lat., ii. 10.]
rather hard than wearisome; free from affectation; irregular,
incontinuous, and bold; where every piece makes up an entire body; not
like a pedant, a preacher, or a pleader, but rather a soldier-like
style, as Suetonius calls that of Julius Caesar; and yet I see no
reason why he should call it so. I have ever been ready to imitate
the negligent garb, which is yet observable amongst the young men of
our time, to wear my cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a
stocking in disorder, which seems to express a kind of haughty disdain
of these exotic ornaments, and a contempt of the artificial; but I
find this negligence of much better use in the form of speaking. All
affectation, particularly in the French gaiety and freedom, is
ungraceful in a courtier, and in a monarchy every gentleman ought to
be fashioned according to the court model; for which reason, an easy
and natural negligence does well. I no more like a web where the
knots and seams are to be seen, than a fine figure, so delicate, that
a man may tell all the bones and veins:
"Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita sit et
simplex."
["Let the language that is dedicated to truth be plain and
unaffected.Seneca, Ep. 40.]
"Quis accurat loquitur, nisi qui vult putide loqui?"
["For who studies to speak accurately, that does not at the
same
time wish to perplex his auditory?"Idem, Ep., 75.]
That eloquence prejudices the subject it would advance, that wholly attracts us to itself. And as in our outward habit, 'tis a ridiculous effeminacy to distinguish ourselves by a particular and unusual garb or fashion; so in language, to study new phrases, and to affect words that are not of current use, proceeds from a puerile and scholastic ambition. May I be bound to speak no other language than what is spoken in the market-places of Paris! Aristophanes the grammarian was quite out, when he reprehended Epicurus for his plain way of delivering himself, and the design of his oratory, which was only perspicuity of speech. The imitation of words, by its own facility, immediately disperses itself through a whole people; but the imitation of inventing and fitly applying those words is of a slower progress. The generality of readers, for having found a like robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the same body and inside too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed; the gloss, and outward ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Most of those I converse with, speak the same language I here write; but whether they think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, says Plato, study fulness and elegancy of speaking; the Lacedaemonians affect brevity, and those of Crete to aim more at the fecundity of conception than the fertility of speech; and these are the best. Zeno used to say that he had two sorts of disciples, one that he called cy-ous, curious to learn things, and these were his favourites; the other, aoy-ous, that cared for nothing but words. Not that fine speaking is not a very good and commendable quality; but not so excellent and so necessary as some would make it; and I am scandalised that our whole life should be spent in nothing else. I would first understand my own language, and that of my neighbours, with whom most of my business and conversation lies.
No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very great use, but we buy them too dear. I will here discover one way, which has been experimented in my own person, by which they are to be had better cheap, and such may make use of it as will. My late father having made the most precise inquiry that any man could possibly make amongst men of the greatest learning and judgment, of an exact method of education, was by them cautioned of this inconvenience then in use, and made to believe, that the tedious time we applied to the learning of the tongues of them who had them for nothing, was the sole cause we could not arrive to the grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge, of the ancient Greeks and Romans. I do not, however, believe that to be the only cause. So it is, that the expedient my father found out for this was, that in my infancy, and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German, who since died a famous physician in France, totally ignorant of our language, and very fluent and a great critic in Latin. This man, whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a great salary for this only one end, had me continually with him; he had with him also joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me, and to relieve him; these spoke to me in no other language but Latin. As to the rest of his household, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself, nor my mother, nor valet, nor chambermaid, should speak anything in my company, but such Latin words as each one had learned to gabble with me. [These passages are, the basis of a small volume by the Abbe Mangin: "Education de Montaigne; ou, L'Art d'enseigner le Latin A 1'instar des meres latines.]It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the whole family; my father and my mother by this means learned Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for any necessary use; as also those of the servants did who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighbouring villages, where there yet remain, that have established themselves by custom, several Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for what concerns myself, I was above six years of age before I understood either French or Perigordin, any more than Arabic; and without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of mixing it up with any other. If, for example, they were to give me a theme after the college fashion, they gave it to others in French; but to me they were to give it in bad Latin, to turn it into that which was good. And Nicolas Grouchy, who wrote a book De Comitiis Romanorum; Guillaume Guerente, who wrote a comment upon Aristotle: George Buchanan, that great Scottish poet: and Marc Antoine Muret (whom both France and Italy have acknowledged for the best orator of his time), my domestic tutors, have all of them often told me that I had in my infancy that language so very fluent and ready, that they were afraid to enter into discourse with me. And particularly Buchanan, whom I since saw attending the late Mareschal de Brissac, then told me, that he was about to write a treatise of education, the example of which he intended to take from mine; for he was then tutor to that Comte de Brissac who afterward proved so valiant and so brave a gentleman.
As to Greek, of which I have but a mere smattering, my father also designed to have it taught me by a device, but a new one, and by way of sport; tossing our declensions to and fro, after the manner of those who, by certain games of tables, learn geometry and arithmetic. For he, amongst other rules, had been advised to make me relish science and duty by an unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion, and to educate my soul in all liberty and delight, without any severity or constraint; which he was an observer of to such a degree, even of superstition, if I may say so, that some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch them violentlyand over-hastily from sleep (wherein they are much more profoundly involved than we), he caused me to be wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose. By this example you may judge of the rest, this alone being sufficient to recommend both the prudence and the affection of so good a father, who is not to be blamed if he did not reap fruits answerable to so exquisite a culture. Of this, two things were the cause: first, a sterile and improper soil; for, though I was of a strong and healthful constitution, and of a disposition tolerably sweet and tractable, yet I was, withal, so heavy, idle, and indisposed, that they could not rouse me from my sloth, not even to get me out to play. What I saw, I saw clearly enough, and under this heavy complexion nourished a bold imagination and opinions above my age. I had a slow wit that would go no faster than it was led; a tardy understanding, a languishing invention, and above all, incredible defect of memory; so that, it is no wonder, if from all these nothing considerable could be extracted. Secondly, like those who, impatient of along and steady cure, submit to all sorts of prescriptions and recipes, the good man being extremely timorous of any way failing in a thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be overruled by the common opinions, which always follow their leader as a flight of cranes, and complying with the method of the time, having no more those persons he had brought out of Italy, and who had given him the first model of education, about him, he sent me at six years of age to the College of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing in France. And there it was not possible to add anything to the care he had to provide me the most able tutors, with all other circumstances of education, reserving also several particular rules contrary to the college practice; but so it was, that with all these precautions, it was a college still. My Latin immediately grew corrupt, of which also by discontinuance I have since lost all manner of use; so that this new way of education served me to no other end, than only at my first coming to prefer me to the first forms; for at thirteen years old, that I came out of the college, I had run through my whole course (as they call it), and, in truth, without any manner of advantage, that I can honestly brag of, in all this time.
The first taste which I had for books came to me from the pleasure in reading the fables of Ovid's Metamorphoses; for, being about seven or eight years old, I gave up all other diversions to read them, both by reason that this was my own natural language, the easiest book that I was acquainted with, and for the subject, the most accommodated to the capacity of my age: for as for the Lancelot of the Lake, the Amadis of Gaul, the Huon of Bordeaux, and such farragos, by which children are most delighted with, I had never so much as heard their names, no more than I yet know what they contain; so exact was the discipline wherein I was brought up. But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessons that were prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to my advantage, to have to do with an understanding tutor, who very well knew discreetly to connive at this and other truantries of the same nature; for by this means I ran through Virgil's AEneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus, and then some Italian comedies, allured by the sweetness of the subject; whereas had he been so foolish as to have taken me off this diversion, I do really believe, I had brought away nothing from the college but a hatred of books, as almost all our young gentlemen do. But he carried himself very discreetly in that business, seeming to take no notice, and allowing me only such time as I could steal from my other regular studies, which whetted my appetite to devour those books. For the chief things my father expected from their endeavours to whom he had delivered me for education, were affability and good-humour; and, to say the truth, my manners had no other vice but sloth and want of metal. The fear was not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing; nobody prognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless; they foresaw idleness, but no malice; and I find it falls out accordingly: The complaints I hear of myself are these: "He is idle, cold in the offices of friendship and relation, and in those of the public, too particular, too disdainful." But the most injurious do not say, "Why has he taken such a thing? Why has he not paid such an one?" but, "Why does he part with nothing? Why does he not give?" And I should take it for a favour that men would expect from me no greater effects of supererogation than these. But they are unjust to exact from me what I do not owe, far more rigorously than they require from others that which they do owe. In condemning me to it, they efface the gratification of the action, and deprive me of the gratitude that would be my due for it; whereas the active well-doing ought to be of so much the greater value from my hands, by how much I have never been passive that way at all. I can the more freely dispose of my fortune the more it is mine, and of myself the more I am my own. Nevertheless, if I were good at setting out my own actions, I could, peradventure, very well repel these reproaches, and could give some to understand, that they are not so much offended, that I do not enough, as that I am able to do a great deal more than I do.
Yet for all this heavy disposition of mine, my mind, when retired
into itself, was not altogether without strong movements, solid and
clear judgments about those objects it could comprehend, and could
also, without any helps, digest them; but, amongst other things, I do
really believe, it had been totally impossible to have made it to
submit by violence and force. Shall I here acquaint you with one
faculty of my youth? I had great assurance of countenance, and
flexibility of voice and gesture, in applying myself to any part I
undertook to act: for before
"Alter ab undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus,"
["I had just entered my twelfth year."Virgil, Bucol., 39.]
I played the chief parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan,
Guerente, and Muret, that were presented in our College of Guienne
with great dignity: now Andreas Goveanus, our principal, as in all
other parts of his charge, was, without comparison, the best of that
employment in France; and I was looked upon as one of the best actors.
'Tis an exercise that I do not disapprove in young people of
condition; and I have since seen our princes, after the example of
some of the ancients, in person handsomely and commendably perform
these exercises; it was even allowed to persons of quality to make a
profession of it in Greece.
"Aristoni tragico actori rem aperit: huic et genus et
fortuna honesta erant: nec ars, quia nihil tale apud
Graecos pudori est, ea deformabat."
["He imparted this matter to Aristo the tragedian; a man of
good
family and fortune, which neither of them receive any blemish
by
that profession; nothing of this kind being reputed a
disparagement
in Greece."Livy, xxiv. 24.]
Nay, I have always taxed those with impertinence who condemn these entertainments, and with injustice those who refuse to admit such comedians as are worth seeing into our good towns, and grudge the people that public diversion. Well-governed corporations take care to assemble their citizens, not only to the solemn duties of devotion, but also to sports and spectacles. They find society and friendship augmented by it; and besides, can there possibly be allowed a more orderly and regular diversion than what is performed m the sight of every one, and very often in the presence of the supreme magistrate himself? And I, for my part, should think it reasonable, that the prince should sometimes gratify his people at his own expense, out of paternal goodness and affection; and that in populous cities there should be theatres erected for such entertainments, if but to divert them from worse and private actions.
To return to my subject, there is nothing like alluring the appetite and affections; otherwise you make nothing but so many asses laden with books; by dint of the lash, you give them their pocketful of learning to keep; whereas, to do well you should not only lodge it with them, but make them espouse it.
'Tis not, perhaps, without reason, that we attribute facility of
belief and easiness of persuasion to simplicity and ignorance: for I
fancy I have heard belief compared to the impression of a seal upon
the soul, which by how much softer and of less resistance it is, is
the more easy to be impressed upon.
"Ut necesse est, lancem in Libra, ponderibus impositis,
deprimi, sic animum perspicuis cedere."
["As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that
presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration."
Cicero, Acad., ii. 12.]
By how much the soul is more empty and without counterpoise, with
so much greater facility it yields under the weight of the first
persuasion. And this is the reason that children, the common people,
women, and sick folks, are most apt to be led by the ears. But then,
on the other hand, 'tis a foolish presumption to slight and condemn
all things for false that do not appear to us probable; which is the
ordinary vice of such as fancy themselves wiser than their neighbours.
I was myself once one of those; and if I heard talk of dead folks
walking, of prophecies, enchantments, witchcrafts, or any other story
I had no mind to believe:
"Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala,"
["Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, sorceries, Thessalian
prodigies."
Horace. Ep. ii. 3, 208.]
I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these
follies. Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be pitied as much,
at least, as they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter
my former opinions, though my curiosity has endeavoured that way; but
reason has instructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for
false and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and
limit the will of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the
bounds of my own capacity, than which no folly can be greater. If we
give the names of monster and miracle to everything our reason cannot
comprehend, how many are continually presented before our eyes? Let
us but consider through what clouds, and as it were groping in the
dark, our teachers lead us to the knowledge of most of the things
about us; assuredly we shall find that it is rather custom than
knowledge that takes away their strangeness
"Jam nemo, fessus saturusque videndi,
Suspicere in coeli dignatur lucida templa;"
["Weary of the sight, now no one deigns to look up to
heaven's lucid
temples."Lucretius, ii. 1037. The text has 'statiate
videnai']
and that if those things were now newly presented to us, we should
think them as incredible, if not more, than any others.
"Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint
Ex improviso, si sint objecta repente,
Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici,
Aute minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes."
[Lucretius, ii. 1032. The sense of the passage is in the
preceding
sentence.]
He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to
be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our
knowledge, we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
"Scilicet et fluvius qui non est maximus, ei'st
Qui non ante aliquem majorem vidit; et ingens
Arbor, homoque videtur, et omnia de genere omni
Maxima quae vidit quisque, haec ingentia fingit."
["A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger
river, a
mighty stream; and so with other thingsa tree, a
mananything
appears greatest to him that never knew a greater."Idem,
vi. 674.]
"Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur,
neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper
vident."
["Things grow familiar to men's minds by being often seen; so
that
they neither admire nor are they inquisitive about things
they daily
see." Cicero, De Natura Deor., lib. ii. 38.]
The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquire into their causes. We are to judge with more reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power of nature. How many unlikely things are there testified by people worthy of faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely to believe, we ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility. Did we rightly understand the difference betwixt the impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to the order and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men, in not believing rashly, and on the other hand, in not being too incredulous, we should observe the rule of 'Ne quid nimis' enjoined by Chilo.
When we find in Froissart, that the Comte de Foix knew in Bearn
the defeat of John, king of Castile, at Jubera the next day after it
happened, and the means by which he tells us he came to do so, we may
be allowed to be a little merry at it, as also at what our annals
report, that Pope Honorius, the same day that King Philip Augustus
died at Mantes, performed his public obsequies at Rome, and commanded
the like throughout Italy, the testimony of these authors not being,
perhaps, of authority enough to restrain us. But what if Plutarch,
besides several examples that he produces out of antiquity, tells us,
he knows of certain knowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news
of the battle lost by Antony in Germany was published at Rome, many
days' journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world,
the same day it was fought; and if Caesar was of opinion, that it has
often happened, that the report has preceded the incident, shall we
not say, that these simple people have suffered themselves to be
deceived with the vulgar, for not having been so clear-sighted as we?
Is there anything more delicate, more clear, more sprightly; than
Pliny's judgment, when he is pleased to set it to work? Anything more
remote from vanity? Setting aside his learning, of which I make less
account, in which of these excellences do any of us excel him? And
yet there is scarce a young schoolboy that does not convict him of
untruth, and that pretends not to instruct him in the progress of the
works of nature. When we read in Bouchet the miracles of St. Hilary's
relics, away with them: his authority is not sufficient to deprive us
of the liberty of contradicting him; but generally and offhand to
condemn all suchlike stories, seems to me a singular impudence. That
great St. Augustin' testifies to have seen a blind child recover sight
upon the relics of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan; a woman
at Carthage cured of a cancer, by the sign of the cross made upon her
by a woman newly baptized; Hesperius, a familiar friend of his, to
have driven away the spirits that haunted his house, with a little
earth of the sepulchre of our Lord; which earth, being also
transported thence into the church, a paralytic to have there been
suddenly cured by it; a woman in a procession, having touched St.
Stephen's shrine with a nosegay, and rubbing her eyes with it, to have
recovered her sight, lost many years before; with several other
miracles of which he professes himself to have been an eyewitness: of
what shall we excuse him and the two holy bishops, Aurelius and
Maximinus, both of whom he attests to the truth of these things?
Shall it be of ignorance, simplicity, and facility; or of malice and
imposture? Is any man now living so impudent as to think himself
comparable to them in virtue, piety, learning, judgment, or any kind
of perfection?
"Qui, ut rationem nullam afferrent,
ipsa auctoritate me frangerent."
["Who, though they should adduce no reason, would convince me
with
their authority alone."Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, i. 21.]
'Tis a presumption of great danger and consequence, besides the absurd temerity it draws after it, to contemn what we do not comprehend. For after, according to your fine understanding, you have established the limits of truth and error, and that, afterwards, there appears a necessity upon you of believing stranger things than those you have contradicted, you are already obliged to quit your limits. Now, that which seems to me so much to disorder our consciences in the commotions we are now in concerning religion, is the Catholics dispensing so much with their belief. They fancy they appear moderate, and wise, when they grant to their opponents some of the articles in question; but, besides that they do not discern what advantage it is to those with whom we contend, to begin to give ground and to retire, and how much this animates our enemy to follow his blow: these articles which they select as things indifferent, are sometimes of very great importance. We are either wholly and absolutely to submit ourselves to the authority of our ecclesiastical polity, or totally throw off all obedience to it: 'tis not for us to determine what and how much obedience we owe to it. And this I can say, as having myself made trial of it, that having formerly taken the liberty of my own swing and fancy, and omitted or neglected certain rules of the discipline of our Church, which seemed to me vain and strange coming afterwards to discourse of it with learned men, I have found those same things to be built upon very good and solid ground and strong foundation; and that nothing but stupidity and ignorance makes us receive them with less reverence than the rest. Why do we not consider what contradictions we find in our own judgments; how many things were yesterday articles of our faith, that to-day appear no other than fables? Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.