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1575
ESSAYS
by Michel de Montaigne
translated by Charles Cotton
I.
OF CUSTOM, AND THAT WE SHOULD NOT
EASILY CHANGE A LAW RECEIVED.
HE seems to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of
custom, who first invented the story of a countrywoman who, having
accustomed herself to play with and carry, a young calf in her arms,
and daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by
custom, that, when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to
bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous
schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slily and unperceived,
slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and
humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established
it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which
we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our
eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing and violating the rules of
nature: "Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister." I refer to her
Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who so often
submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story of that
king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live by
poison, and the maid that Albertus reports to have lived upon spiders.
In that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and
in very differing climates, who were of the same diet, made
provision of them, and fed them for their tables; as also, they did
grasshoppers, mice, lizards, and bats; and in a time of scarcity of
such delicacies, a toad was sold for six crowns, all which they
cook, and dish up with several sauces. There were also others found,
to whom our diet, and the flesh we eat, were venomous and mortal.
"Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive: in
montibus uri se patiuutur: pugiles coestibus contusi, ne ingemiscunt
quidem."
These strange examples will not appear so strange if we consider
what we have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our
senses. We need not go to what is reported of the people about the
cataracts of the Nile; and what philosophers believe of the music of
the spheres, that the bodies of those circles being solid and
smooth, and coming to touch and rub upon one another, cannot fail of
creating a marvelous harmony, the changes and cadences of which
cause the revolutions and dances of the stars; but that the hearing
sense of all creatures here below, being universally, like that of the
Egyptians, deafened, and stupefied with the continual noise, cannot,
how great soever, perceive it. Smiths, millers, pewterers, forgemen
and armorers could never be able to live in the perpetual noise of
their own trades, did it strike their ears with the same violence that
it does ours.
My perfumed doublet gratifies my own smelling at first; but
after I have worn it three days together, 'tis only pleasing to the
bystanders. This is yet more strange, that custom, notwithstanding
long intermissions and intervals, should yet have the power to unite
and establish the effect of its impressions upon our senses, as is
manifest in such as live near unto steeples and the frequent noise
of the bells. I myself lie at home in a tower, where every morning and
evening a very great bell rings out the Ave Maria: the noise shakes my
very tower, and at first seemed insupportable to me; but I am so
used to it, that I hear it without any manner of offense, and often
without awaking at it.
Plato reprehending a boy for playing at nuts, "Thou reprovest me,"
says the boy, "for a very little thing." "Custom," replied Plato,
"is no little thing." I find that our greatest vices derive their
first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our
principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily
pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please
itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in
the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit,
when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant,
or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of
wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some
malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots
of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and
afterward shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated
by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile
inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of
the subject; it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then
more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak
and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor
depend upon the difference between crowns and pins; but I rather
hold it more just to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in
crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only
play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money? Children
should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own
contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be
represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their
actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the
very thought, should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they
may be disguised.
I know very well, for what concerns myself, that from having
been brought up in my childhood to a plain and straightforward way
of dealing, and from having had an aversion to all manner of
juggling and foul play in my childish sports and recreations (and,
indeed, it is to be noted, that the plays of children are not
performed in play, but are to be judged in them as their most
serious actions), there is no game so small wherein from my own
bosom naturally, and without study or endeavor, I have not an
extreme aversion for deceit. I shuffle and cut and make as much
clatter with the cards, and keep as strict account for farthings, as
it were for double pistoles; when winning or losing against my wife
and daughter, 'tis indifferent to me, as when I play in good earnest
with others, for round sums. At all times, and in all places, my own
eyes are sufficient to look to my fingers; I am not so narrowly
watched by any other, neither is there any I have more respect to.
I saw the other day, at my own house, a little fellow, a native of
Nantes, born without arms, who has so well taught his feet to
perform the services his hands should have done him, that truly
these have half forgotten their natural office; and, indeed, the
fellow calls them his hands; with them he cuts anything, charges and
discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews, writes, puts off his hat,
combs his head, plays at cards and dice, and all this with as much
dexterity as any other could do who had more, and more proper, limbs
to assist him. The money I gave him- for he gains his living by
showing these feats- he took in his foot, as we do in our hand. I have
seen another who, being yet a boy, flourished a two-handed sword, and,
if I may so say, handled a halberd with the mere motions of his neck
and shoulders for want of hands; tossed them into air, and caught them
again, darted a dagger, and cracked a whip as well as any coachman
in France.
But the effects of custom are much more manifest in the strange
impressions she imprints in our minds, where she meets with less
resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgements
and beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross
impostures of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and
so many understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being
beyond the reach of human reason, any error is more excusable in
such as are not endued, through the divine bounty, with an
extraordinary illumination from above), but, of other opinions, are
there any so extravagant, that she has not planted and established for
laws in those parts of the world upon which she has been pleased to
exercise her power? And therefore that ancient exclamation was
exceeding just: "Non pudet physicum, id est speculatorem
venatoremque naturae, ab animis consuetudine imbutis quaerere
testimonium veritatis?"
I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into
human imagination, that does not meet with some example of public
practice, and that, consequently, our reason does not ground and
back up. There are people, among whom it is the fashion to turn
their backs upon him they salute, and never look upon the man they
intend to honor. There is a place, where, whenever the king spits, the
greatest ladies of his court put out their hands to receive it; and
another nation, where the most eminent persons about him stoop to take
up his ordure in a linen cloth. Let us here steal room to insert a
story.
A French gentleman was always wont to blow his nose with his
fingers (a thing very much against our fashion), and he justifying
himself for so doing, and he was a man famous for pleasant
repartees, he asked me, what privilege this filthy excrement had, that
we must carry about us a fine handkerchief to receive it, and, which
was more, afterward to lap it carefully up and carry it all day
about in our pockets, which, he said, could not but be much more
nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all
other evacuations. I found that what he said was not altogether
without reason, and by being frequently in his company, that
slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which
nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of another
country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of
nature, and not according to the essence of nature: the continually
being accustomed to anything, blinds the eye of our judgment.
Barbarians are no more a wonder to us, than we are to them; nor with
any more reason, as every one would confess if after having traveled
over those remote examples, men could settle themselves to reflect
upon, and rightly to confer them with their own. Human reason is a
tincture almost equally infused into all our opinions and manners,
of what form soever they are; infinite in matter, infinite in
diversity. But I return to my subject.
There are peoples, where, his wife and children excepted, no one
speaks to the king but through a tube. In one and the same nation, the
virgins discover those parts that modesty should persuade them to
hide, and the married women carefully cover and conceal them. To
which, this custom, in another place, has some relation, where
chastity, but in marriage, is of no esteem, for unmarried women may
prostitute themselves to as many as they please, and being got with
child, may lawfully take physic, in the sight of every one, to destroy
their fruit. And, in another place, if a tradesman marry, all of the
same condition, who are invited to the wedding, lie with the bride
before him; and the greater number of them there is, the greater is
her honor, and the opinion of her ability and strength: if an
officer marry, 'tis the same, the same with a laborer, or one of
mean condition, but then, it belongs to the lord of the place to
perform that office; and yet a severe loyalty during marriage is
afterward strictly enjoined. There are places where brothels of
young men are kept for the pleasure of women; where the wives go to
war as well as the husbands, and not only share in the dangers of
battle, but, moreover, in the honors of command. Others, where they
wear rings not only through their noses, lips, cheeks, and on their
toes, but also weighty gimmals of gold thrust through their paps and
buttocks; where, in eating, they wipe their fingers upon their thighs,
genitories, and the soles of their feet: where children are
excluded, and brothers and nephews only inherit; and elsewhere,
nephews only, saving in the succession of the prince: where, for the
regulation of community in goods and estates, observed in the country,
certain sovereign magistrates have committed to them the universal
charge and overseeing of the agriculture, and distribution of the
fruits, according to the necessity of every one: where they lament the
death of children, and feast at the decease of old men; where they lie
ten or twelve in a bed, men and their wives together: where women,
whose husbands come to violent ends, may marry again, and others
not: where the condition women is looked upon with such contempt, that
they kill all the native females, and buy wives of their neighbors
to supply their use; where husbands may repudiate their wives
without showing any cause, but wives cannot part from their
husbands, for what cause soever; where husbands may sell their wives
in case of sterility; where they boil the bodies of their dead, and
afterward pound them to a pulp, which they mix with their wine, and
drink it; where the most coveted sepulture is to be eaten with dogs,
and elsewhere by birds; where they believe the souls of the blessed
live in all manner of liberty, in delightful fields, furnished with
all sorts of delicacies, and that it is these souls, repeating the
words we utter, which we call echo; where they fight in the water, and
shoot their arrows with the most mortal aim, swimming; where, for a
sign of subjection, they lift up their shoulders, and hang down
their heads; where they put off their shoes when they enter the king's
palace; where the eunuchs, who take charge of the sacred women,
have, moreover, their lips and noses cut off, that they may not be
loved; where the priests put out their own eyes, to be better
acquainted with their demons, and the better to receive their oracles;
where every one makes to himself a deity of what he likes best; the
hunter of a lion or a fox, the fisher of some fish; idols of every
human action or passion; in which place, the sun, the moon, and the
earth are the principal deities, and the form of taking an oath is, to
touch the earth, looking up to heaven; where both flesh and fish is
eaten raw; where the greatest oath they take is, to swear by the
name of some dead person of reputation, laying their hand upon his
tomb; where the new year's gift the king sends every year to the
princes, his vassals, is fire, which being brought, all the old fire
is put out, and the neighboring people are bound to fetch the new,
every one for themselves, upon pain of high treason; where, when the
king, to betake himself wholly to devotion, retires from his
administration (which often falls out), his next successor is
obliged to do the same, and the right of the kingdom devolves to the
third in succession; where the vary the form of government,
according to the seeming necessity of affairs; depose the king when
they think good, substituting certain elders to govern in his stead,
and sometimes transferring it into the hands of the commonalty;
where men and women are both circumcised and also baptized; where
the soldier, who in one or several engagements, has been so
fortunate as to present seven of the enemies' heads to the king, is
made noble: where they live in that rare and unsociable opinion of the
mortality of the soul; where the women are delivered without pain or
fear: where the women wear copper leggings upon both legs, and if a
louse bite them, are bound in magnanimity to bite them again, and dare
not marry, till first they have made their king a tender of their
virginity, if he please to accept it: where the ordinary way of
salutation is by putting a finger down to the earth, and then pointing
it up toward heaven: where men carry burdens upon their heads, and
women on their shoulders; where the women make water standing, and the
men squatting: where they send their blood in token of friendship, and
offer incense to the men they would honor, like gods: where, not
only to the fourth, but in any other remote degree, kindred are not
permitted to marry: where the children are four years at nurse, and
often twelve; in which place, also, it is accounted mortal to give the
child suck the first day after it is born: where the correction of the
male children is peculiarly designed to the fathers, and to the
mothers of the girls; the punishment being to hang them by the
heels in the smoke: where they circumcise the women: where they eat
all sorts of herbs, without other scruple than of the badness of the
smell: where all things are open- the finest houses, furnished in
the richest manner, without doors, windows, trunks, or chests to lock,
a thief being there punished double what they are in other places:
where they crack lice with their teeth like monkeys, and abhor to
see them killed with one's nails: where in all their lives they
neither cut their hair nor pare their nails; and, in another place,
pare those of the right hand only, letting the left grow for
ornament and bravery: where they suffer the hair on the right side
to grow as long as it will, and shave the other; and in the
neighboring provinces, some let their hair grow long before, and
some behind, shaving close the rest: where parents let out their
children, and husbands their wives, to their guests to hire: where a
man may get his own mother with child and fathers make use of their
own daughters or sons, without scandal: where at their solemn feasts
they interchangeably lend their children to one another, without any
consideration of nearness of blood. In one place, men feed upon
human flesh; in another, 'tis reputed a pious office for a man to kill
his father at a certain age; elsewhere, the fathers dispose of their
children, while yet in their mothers' wombs, some to be preserved
and carefully brought up, and others to be abandoned or made away.
Elsewhere the old husbands lend their wives to young men; and in
another place they are in common, without offense; in one place
particularly, the women take it for a mark of honor to have as many
gay fringed tassels at the bottom of their garment, as they have
lain with several men. Moreover, has not custom made a republic of
women separately by themselves? has it not put arms into their
hands, and made them raise armies and fight battles? And does she not,
by her own precept, instruct the most ignorant vulgar, and make them
perfect in things which all the philosophy in the world could never
beat into the heads of the wisest men? For we know entire nations,
where death was not only despised, but entertained with the greatest
triumph; where children of seven years old suffered themselves to be
whipped to death, without changing countenance; where riches were in
such contempt, that the meanest citizen would not have deigned to
stoop to take up a purse of crowns. And we know regions, very fruitful
in all manner of provisions, where, notwithstanding, the most ordinary
diet, and that they are most pleased with, is only bread, cresses, and
water. Did not custom, moreover, work that miracle in Chios that, in
seven hundred years, it was never known that ever maid or wife
committed any act to the prejudice of her honor.
To conclude; there is nothing, in my opinion, that she does not,
or may not do; and, therefore, with very good reason it is, that
Pindar calls her the queen, and empress of the world. He that was seen
to beat his father, and reproved for so doing, made answer, that it
was the custom of their family: that, in like manner his father had
beaten his grandfather, his grandfather his great-grandfather, "And
this," says he, pointing to his son, "when he comes to my age, shall
beat me." And the father, whom the son dragged and hauled along the
streets, commanded him to stop at a certain door, for he himself, he
said, had dragged his father no farther, that being the utmost limit
of the hereditary outrage the sons used to practice upon the fathers
in their family. It is as much by custom as infirmity, says Aristotle,
that women tear their hair, bite their nails, and eats coals and
earth, and, more by custom than nature, that men abuse themselves with
one another.
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from
nature, proceed from custom; every one, having an inward veneration
for the opinions and manners approved and received among his own
people, cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor
apply himself to them without applause. In times past, when those of
Crete would curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in
some ill custom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize
and ensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from
its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to
weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we
suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world presents
itself in this posture to our first sight, it seems as if we were born
upon condition to follow on this track; and the common fancies that we
find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our minds with
the seed of our fathers, appear to be the most universal and
genuine: from whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges
of custom, is believed to be also off the hinges of reason; how
unreasonably, for the most part, God knows.
If, as we who study ourselves, have learned to do, every one who
hears a good sentence, would immediately consider how it does any
way touch his own private concern, every one would find that it was
not so much a good saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary
stupidity of his own judgment; but men receive the precepts and
admonitions of truth, as directed to the common sort, and never to
themselves; and instead of applying them to their own manners, do only
very ignorantly and unprofitably commit them to memory. But let us
return to the empire of custom.
Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no
other dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all
other form of government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those
who are inured to monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever
fortune presents them with to change, even then, when with the
greatest difficulties they have disengaged themselves from one master,
that was troublesome and grievous to them, they presently run, with
the same difficulties, to create another; being unable to take into
hatred subjection itself.
'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with
the place where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of
Scotland no more pant after Touraine, than the Scythians after
Thessaly. Darius asking certain Greeks what they would take to
assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their
fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them
a better, nor more noble sepulture, than to bury them in their own
bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the world should hire
them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the Indians to
leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the bodies of
their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the notion.
Every one does the same, for use veils from us the true aspect of
things.
"Nil adeo magnum, nec tam mirabile quidquam
Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes
Paullatim."
Taking upon me once to justify something in use among us, and that
was received with absolute authority for a great many leagues round
about us, and not content, as men commonly do, to establish it only by
force of law and example, but inquiring still farther into its origin,
I found the foundation so weak, that I who made it my business to
confirm others, was very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by
this receipt that Plato undertakes to cure the unnatural and
preposterous loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign
virtue; namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets,
and all other sorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a
recipe, by virtue of which the most beautiful daughters no more allure
their father's lust; nor brothers, of the finest shape and fashion,
their sisters' desire; the very fables of Thyestes, Oedipus, and
Macareus, having with the harmony of their song, infused this
wholesome opinion and belief into the tender brains of children.
Chastity is, in truth, a great and shining virtue, and of which the
utility is sufficiently known; but to treat of it, and to set it off
in its true value, according to nature, is as hard as 'tis easy to
do so according to custom, laws, and precepts. The fundamental and
universal reasons are of very obscure and difficult research, and
our masters either lightly pass them over, or not daring so much as to
touch them, precipitate themselves into the liberty and protection
of custom, there puffing themselves out and triumphing to their
heart's content: such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn
from this original source, do yet commit a greater error, and
subject themselves to wild opinions; witness Chrysippus who, in so
many of his writings, has strewed the little account he made of
incestuous conjunctions, committed with how near relations soever.
Whoever would disengage himself from this violent prejudice of
custom, would find several things received with absolute and
undoubting opinion, that have no other support than the hoary head and
riveled face of ancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things
being referred to the decision of truth and reason, he will find his
judgment as it were altogether overthrown, and yet restored to a
much more sure estate. For example, I shall ask him, what can be
more strange than to see a people obliged to obey laws they never
understood; bound in all their domestic affairs, as marriages,
donations, wills, sales and purchases to rules they cannot possibly
know, being neither written nor published in their own language, and
of which they are of necessity to purchase both the interpretation and
the use? Not according to the ingenious opinion of Isocrates, who
counseled his king to make the traffics and negotiations of his
subjects, free, frank, and of profit to them, and their quarrels and
disputes burdensome, and laden with heavy impositions and penalties;
but, by a prodigious opinion, to make sale of reason itself, and to
give to laws a course of merchandise. I think myself obliged to
fortune that, as our historians report, it was a Gascon gentleman, a
countryman of mine, who first opposed Charlemagne, when he attempted
to impose upon us Latin and imperial laws.
What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful
custom, the office of a judge is bought and sold, where judgments
are paid for with ready money, and where justice may legitimately be
denied to him that has not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so
great repute, as in a government to create a fourth estate of
wrangling lawyers, to add to the three ancient ones of the church,
nobility and people; which fourth estate, having the laws in their own
hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, makes
another body separate from nobility: whence it comes to pass, that
there are double laws, those of honor and those of justice, in many
things altogether opposite one to another; the nobles as rigorously
condemning a lie taken, as the other do a lie revenged: by the law
of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility and honor who puts
up with an affront; and by the civil law, he who vindicates his
reputation by revenge incurs a capital punishment; he who applies
himself to the law for reparation of an offense none to his honor,
disgraces himself; and he who does not, is censured and punished by
the law. Yet of these two so different things, both of them
referring to one head, the one has the charge of peace, the war; these
have the profit, these the honor; those the wisdom, these the
virtue; those the word, these the action; those justice, these
valor; those reason, these force; those the long robe, these the
short: divided between them.
For what concerns indifferent things, as clothes, who is there
seeking to bring them back to their true use, which is the body's
service and convenience, and upon which their original grace and
fitness depend; for the most fantastic, in my opinion, that can be
imagined, I will instance among others, our flat caps, that long
tail of velvet that hangs down from our women's heads, with its
party-colored trappings; and that vain and futile model of a member we
cannot in modesty so much as name, which nevertheless we make show and
parade of in public. These considerations, notwithstanding, will not
prevail upon any understanding man to decline the common mode; but, on
the contrary, methinks, all singular and particular fashions are
rather marks of folly and vain affectation, than of sound reason,
and that a wise man ought, within, to withdraw and retire his soul
from the crowd, and there keep it at liberty and in power to judge
freely of things; but, as to externals, absolutely to follow and
conform himself to the fashion of the time. Public society has nothing
to do with our thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, our labors,
our fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them to its
service, and to the common opinion; as did that good and great
Socrates who refused to preserve his life by a disobedience to the
magistrate, though a very wicked and unjust one: for it is the rule of
rules, the general law of laws, that every one observe those of the
place wherein he lives.
Nomoiz epesthai toisin egchorioiz kalon.
And now to another point. It is a very great doubt, whether any so
manifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let
it be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering
it; forasmuch as government is a structure composed of divers parts
and members joined and united together, with so strict connection,
that it is impossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the
whole body will be sensible of it. The legislator of the Thurians
ordained, that whosoever would go about either to abolish an old
law, or to establish a new, should present himself with a halter about
his neck to the people to the end, that if the innovation he would
introduce should not be approved by every one, he might immediately be
hanged; and he of the Lacedaemonians employed his life, to obtain from
his citizens a faithful promise, that none of his laws should be
violated. The Ephorus who so rudely cut the two strings that Phrynis
had added to music, never stood to examine whether that addition
made better harmony, or that by its means the instrument was more full
and complete; it was enough for him to condemn the invention, that
it was a novelty, and an alteration of the old fashion. Which also
is the meaning of the old rusty sword carried before the magistracy of
Marseilles.
For my own part, I have a great aversion from novelty, what face
or what pretense soever it may carry along with it, and have reason,
having been an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For
those for which for so many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is
not wholly accountable; but one may say, with color enough, that it
has accidentally produced and begotten the mischiefs and ruin that
have since happened, both without and against it; it, principally,
we are to accuse for these disorders.
"Heu! patior telis vulnera facta meis."
They who give the first shock to a state, are almost naturally the
first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are
seldom enjoyed by him who was the first motor; he beats and disturbs
the water for another's net. The unity and contexture of this
monarchy, of this grand edifice, having been ripped and torn in her
old age, by this thing called innovation, has since laid open a
rent, and given sufficient admittance to such injuries: the royal
majesty with greater difficulty declines from the summit to the
middle, then it falls and tumbles headlong from the middle to the
bottom. But if the inventors do the greater mischief, the imitators
are more vicious, to follow examples of which they have felt and
punished both the horror and the offense. And if there can be any
degree of honor in ill-doing, these last must yield to the others
the glory of contriving, and the courage of making the sorts of new
disorders easily draw, from this primitive and ever-flowing
fountain, examples and precedents to trouble and discompose our
government; we read in our very laws, made for the remedy of this
first evil, the beginning and pretenses of all sorts of wicked
enterprises; and that befals us, which Thucydides said of the civil
wars of his time, that, in favor of public vices, they gave them new
and more plausible names for their excuse, sweetening and disguising
their true titles; which must be done, forsooth, to reform our
conscience and belief: "honesta oratio est;" but the best pretence for
innovation is of very dangerous consequence: "adeo nihil motum ex
antiquo probabile est." And freely to speak my thoughts, it argues a
strange self-love and great presumption to be so fond of one's own
opinions, that a public peace must be overthrown to establish them,
and to introduce so many inevitable mischiefs, and so dreadful a
corruption of manners, as a civil war and the mutations of state
consequent to it, always bring in their train, and to introduce
them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of one's own
country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many certain
and knowing vices against errors that are only contested and
disputable? And are there any worse sorts of vices than those
committed against a man's own conscience, and the natural light of his
own reason? The senate, upon the dispute between it and the people
about the administration of their religion, was bold enough to
return this evasion for current pay: "Ad deos id magis, quam ad se,
pertinere: ipsos visuros, ne sacra sua polluantur;" according to
what the oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing to be
invaded by the Persians, in the Median war, inquired of Apollo, how
they should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether they
should hide, or remove it to some other place? He returned them
answer, that they should stir nothing from thence, and only take
care of themselves, for he was sufficient to look to what belonged
to him.
The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and
justice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it lays
indifferently on all to yield absolute obedience to the civil
magistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what a
wonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to establish
the salvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over
death and sin, would do it after no other way, but at the mercy of our
ordinary forms of justice, subjecting the progress and issue of so
high and so salutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice
of our customs and observances; sacrificing the innocent blood of so
many of His elect, and so long a loss of so many years, to the
maturing of this inestimable fruit? There is a vast difference between
the case of one who follows the forms and laws of his country, and
of another who will undertake to regulate and change them; of whom the
first pleads simplicity, obedience, and example for his excuse, who,
whatever he shall do, it cannot be imputed to malice; 'tis at the
worst but misfortune: "Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis
monumentis testata consignataque antiquisas?" besides what Isocrates
says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation than excess: the
other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever shall take
upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging, and
should look well about him, and make it his business to discern
clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he
is about to introduce.
This so vulgar consideration, is that which settled me in my
station, and kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth
under the rein, so as not to burden my shoulders with so great a
weight, as to render myself responsible for a science of that
importance, and in this to dare what in my better and more mature
judgment I durst not do in the most easy and indifferent things I
had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity of judging is of no
consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to go about to
subject public and established customs and institutions to the
weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for
private reason has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that
upon the divine, which no government will endure a man should do, upon
the civil laws; with which, though human reason has much more
commerce than with the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by
their own proper judges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to
expound and set forth the law and custom received, and neither to
wrest it, nor to introduce anything of innovation. If, sometimes,
the divine providence has gone beyond the rules to which it has
necessarily bound and obliged us men, it is not to give us any
dispensation to do the same; those are master strokes of the divine
hand, which we are not to imitate, but to admire, and extraordinary
examples, marks of express and particular purposes, of the nature of
miracles, presented before us for manifestations of its
almightiness, equally above both our rules and force, which it would
be folly and impiety to attempt to represent and imitate; and that
we ought not to follow, but to contemplate with the greatest
reverence: acts of his personage, and not for us. Cotta very
opportunely declares: "Quum de religione agitur, Ti. Coruncanium, P.
Scipionem, P. Scaevolam pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut
Cleanthem, aut Chrysippum, sequor." God knows in the present quarrel
of our civil war, where there are a hundred articles to dash out and
to put in, great and very considerable, how many there are who can
truly boast they have exactly and perfectly weighed and understood the
grounds and reasons of the one and the other party; 'tis a number,
if they make any number, that would be able to give us very little
disturbance. But what becomes of all the rest, under what ensigns do
they march, in what quarter do they lie? Theirs have the same effect
with other weak and ill-applied medicines; they have only set the
humors they would purge more violently in work, stirred and
exasperated by the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion
was too weak to purge, but strong enough to weaken us; so that it does
not work, but we keep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from
the operation but intestine gripes and dolors.
So it is, nevertheless, that Fortune, still reserving her
authority in defiance of whatever we are able to do or say,
sometimes presents us with a necessity so urgent, that 'tis
requisite the laws should a little yield and give way; and when one
opposes the increase of an innovation that thus intrudes itself by
violence, to keep a man's self in so doing in all places and in all
things within bounds and rules against those who have the power, and
to whom all things are lawful that may any way serve to advance
their design, who have no other law nor rule but what serves best to
their own purpose, 'tis a dangerous obligation and an intolerable
inequality:
"Aditum nocendi perfido praestat fides,"
forasmuch as the ordinary discipline of a healthful state does not
provide against these extraordinary accidents; it presupposes a body
that supports itself in its principal members and offices, and a
common consent to its obedience and observation. A legitimate
proceeding is cold, heavy, and constrained, and not fit to make head
against a headstrong and unbridled proceeding. 'Tis known to be, to
this day, cast in the dish of those two great men, Octavius and
Cato, in the two civil wars of Sylla and Caesar, that they would
rather suffer their country to undergo the last extremities, than
relieve their fellow-citizens at the expense of its laws, or be guilty
of any innovation; for, in truth, in these last necessities, where
there is no other remedy, it would, peradventure, be more discreetly
done to stoop and yield a little to receive the blow, than, by
opposing without possibility of doing good, to give occasion to
violence to trample all under foot; and better to make the laws do
what they can when they cannot do what they would. After this manner
did he who suspended them for four-and-twenty hours, and he who, for
once, shifted a day in the calendar, and that other who of the month
of June made a second of May. The Lacedaemonians themselves, who
were so religious observers of the laws of their country, being
straitened by one of their own edicts, by which it was expressly
forbidden to choose the same man twice to be admiral; and on the other
side, their affairs necessarily requiring that Lysander should again
take upon him that command, they made one Aratus admiral, 'tis true,
but withal, Lysander went superintendent of the navy; and, by the same
subtlety, one of their ambassadors being sent to the Athenians to
obtain the revocation of some decree, and Pericles remonstrating to
him, that it was forbidden to take away the tablet wherein a law had
once been engrossed, he advised him to turn it only; that being not
forbidden; and Plutarch commends Philopoemen, that being born to
command, he knew how to do it, not only according to the laws but also
to overrule even the laws themselves, when the public necessity so
required.
II.
OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
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 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 cudgeled my
brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all modern
learning, or particularly addicted myself to any one science, I have
done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able to draw the
first lineaments and dead color; 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 defense, 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
ofttimes 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 honor 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 among 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 humors: 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 contrary, in three hundred volumes that he left behind him,
has not so much as any one quotation.
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 six first 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 any one 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 armor, 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 endeavor 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, endeavor 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 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 essays
of mine may be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more
than my old bald grizzled pate 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 tomorrow, 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.
A friend of mine, then, having read the preceding chapter, the
other day told me, that I should a little farther have extended my
discourse on the education of children. Now, madame, if I had any
sufficiency in this subject, I could not possibly better employ it,
than to present my best instructions to the little gentleman 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; besides that, your having had the best of my
services so long in possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire
the honor 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 grown up, 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 in 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.
Madame, science, is a very great ornament, and a thing of
marvelous 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, madame, 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 as that is unworthy of the
grace and favor 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; 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, while 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. "Obest
plerumque iis, qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui docent." 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 vigor 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 substance of them, 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 vigor and
liberty are extinct and gone: "Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt."
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 che saper, dubbiar m' aggrata,"
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." 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 forgot 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 afterward 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, labor 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 honors 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 or rhetoric, and 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 and 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 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 humors, 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 neighboring 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 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."
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 cudgeling 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 labor, is to be accustomed to endure pain: "labor callum
obducit dolori." A boy is to be broken into 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 upon 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 a 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 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 license, so it is
intolerable for any but men of great and illustrious souls to assume
privilege above the authority of custom; "si quid Socrates aut
Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne
arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et divinis bonis hanc licentiam
assequebantur." 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, quae praescripta et imperata
sint, defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur."
If his governor be of my humor, 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 favorably
and well of a master, who, among so many millions of other subjects,
has picked out him with his own hand to nourish and advance; this
favor, 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 honor 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, while they at the upper end of
the chamber have only been commending the beauty of the arras, or
the flavor of the wine, many things that have been very finely said at
the lower end of the table have been lost or 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:
"Quae tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat."
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 by so 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 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:
"Oh stranger! thou speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as
thou shouldst speak them." Such as have lean and spare bodies stuff
themselves out with clothes; so they who are defective in matter,
endeavor to make amends with words.
Human understanding is marvelously 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; 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 is 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
license 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 luster, 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 humors, 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 eternizing 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 and ceremonies,
the tumorous majesty of so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and
fortify our sight without astonishment or winking to behold the lustre
of our own; so many millions of men, buried before us, encourage us
not to fear to go seek such good company in the other world: and so of
all the rest. Pythagoras was wont to say, 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; patriae carisque propinquis
Quantum elargiri deceat; quem te Deus esse
Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;
Quid sumus, aut quidnam victuri gignimur,"
what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the
end and design of study; what valor, temperance and justice are; the
difference between ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection,
license 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;"
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 die and well to live. Among 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; vivendi recte vui prorogat horam,
Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis oevum."
'Tis a great foolery to teach our children-
"Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,"
the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere, before
their own.
"Ti, Pleiadessi Kamoi;
Ti d' astrasin Booteo;"
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 cudgel my brains about the world's revolutions?"
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, 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, "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 Ballo be spelt with a double l or that hunt
after the derivation of the comparatives cheiron and beltion, and
the superlatives cheiriston and beltiston, to knit their brows while
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."
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
behavior to her own mold, 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 that
render their disciples so dirty and ill-favored, 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,
from 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
imaginations and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous,
despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and
others, and placed it upon a rock apart, among 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 humor, 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 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 ardor 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."
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 Bocaccio'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 valor, prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt
of fear; and with this ammunition, sent him, while 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 arts and sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed
commended their excellence and charm, and had them in very great honor
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 animo certum, miserisque viatica canis."
Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus, says,
"That neither the youngest should refuse to philosophize, 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, 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 humor 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 humor 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 as 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.
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." For to make orations and rhetorical disputes in a
company met together to laugh and make good cheer, had been very
unseasonable 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."
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 among
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 marvelous to see how
solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning the gayety and diversion of
the youth of his city, and how much and often he enlarges upon their
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 harquebus 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
favor 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 vigor, 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." 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."
I would have my pupil to be such a one,
"Quem duplici panno patientia velat,
Mirabor, vitae via si conversa decebit,
Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque."
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 philosophize 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." Leo, prince of the Phliasians, asking Heraclides
Ponticus 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
practice 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 his 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." 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 the plain on this side Clery,
two pedants traveling toward 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 dominies, 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 throw away their time at their own
fancy: 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 labor 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."
And as another as poetically says in his prose, "Quum res animum
occupavere, verba ambiunt:" and this other, "Ipsoe res verbe rapiunt."
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 luster 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:" a very pretty answer this methinks, and a pack of learned
orators most sweetly graveled. 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, first, a pert affected fellow,
offered this 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 favor; but the other in three words: "Oh, Athenians,
what this man says, I will do." 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 consul." Let it go before,
or come after, a good sentence or a thing well said, is always in
season; if it either 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."
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,"
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." 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." 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 Westphalia ham makes
a man drink, drink quenches thirst; therefore, a Westphalia 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?" 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." And as another
says, "Qui alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur ad id, quod non
proposuerant scribere." I for my part rather bring in a fine
sentence by head and shoulder 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, quae feriet;"
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 among 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 gayety 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." "Quis accurate loquitur, nisi qui
vult putide loqui?" 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 mistakenly 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 fullness 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 philologous, curious to learn things, and these
were his favorites; the other, logophilous, 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 scandalized that our whole life should be spent in
nothing else. I would first understand my own language, and that of my
neighbors 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 among 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. However, 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,
but 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 very
great salary for this only end, had me continually with him: to him
there were also joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me,
and to relieve him; who all of them spoke to me in no other language
but Latin. As to the rest of his family, it was an inviolable rule,
that neither himself, nor my mother, man nor maid, should speak
anything in my company, but such Latin words as every one had
learned only to gabble with me. 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 neighboring 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 Nicholas Grouchy, who wrote a book "De
Comitiis Romanorum," William Guerente, who wrote a comment upon
Aristotle; George Buchanan, that great Scotch poet; and Mark Antony
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 Count 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 devise, but a new one, and by way
of sport; tossing our declensions to and fro, after the manner of
those who, by certain games at tables and chess, learn geometry and
arithmetic. For he, among 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 violently and
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 a long and steady cure, submit to all sorts of
prescriptions and recipes, 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 thing that gave me any taste for books, was the pleasure
I took in reading the fables of Ovid's Metamorphoses