Chapter 85

For not only to a philosopher, but to any man in his right wits, when he has upon him the thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to him to remember the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine a month ago? It would rather only make matters worse to him:-- Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia. “The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble.” Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy gives, only to remember the happiness that is past, and to forget the misadventures we have undergone; as if we had the science of oblivion in our own power, and counsel, wherein we are yet no more to seek. Suavis laborum est præteritorum ræmoria. “Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain.” How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with fortune, and steel my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to this degree of cowardice to make me hide my head at this rate, and save myself by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents to us not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing that so much imprints any thing in our memory as a desire to forget it. And ‘tis a good way to retain and keep any thing safe in the soul to solicit her to lose it. And this is false: Est situm in nobis, ut et adversa quasi perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et suaviter meminerimus; “it is in our power to bury, as it were, in a perpetual oblivion, all adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and delightful memory of our successes;” and this is true: Memini etiam quo nolo; oblivisci non possum quo volo. “I do also remember what I would not; but I cannot forget what I would.” And whose counsel is this? His, qui se unies sapiervtem profiteri sit ausus; “who alone durst profess himself a wise man.” Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes Præstinxit stellas, exortus uti æthereus Sol. “Who from mankind the prize of knowledge won, And put the stars out like the rising sun.” To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true way to ignorance? Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est. “Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils.” We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where we find the strongest reason will not answer the purpose, provided they administer satisfaction and comfort Where they cannot cure the wound, they are content to palliate and benumb it I believe they will not deny this, that if they could add order and constancy in a state of life that could maintain itself in ease and pleasure by some debility of judgment, they would accept it:-- Potare, et spargere flores Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberi. “Give me to drink, and, crown’d with flowers, despise The grave disgrace of being thought unwise.” There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas’s mind this man, being otherwise of very regular manners, living quietly and contentedly in his family, and not failing in any office of his duty, either towards his own or strangers, and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful things, became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed with a conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of the finest sights and the best comedies in the world; and being cured by the physicians of his frenzy, was hardly prevented from endeavouring by suit to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:-- Pol I me occidistis, amici, Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error; “By heaven! you’ve killed me, friends, outright, And not preserved me; since my dear delight And pleasing error, by my better sense Unhappily return’d, is banished hence;” with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of Pythodorus, who made himself believe that all the ships that weighed anchor from the port of Piræus, and that came into the haven, only made their voyages for his profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother Crito caused him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and free from all anxiety of mind. ‘Tis according to the old Greek verse, that “there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise.” And Ecclesiastes, “In much wisdom there is much sorrow;” and “Who gets wisdom gets labour and trouble.” Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that last remedy which she applies to all sorts of necessities, to put an end to the life we are not able to endure. Placet?--Pare. Non placet?--Quâcumque vis, exi. Pungit dolor?--Vel fodiat sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum; sin tectus armis Vulcaniis, id est fortitudine, résisté; “Does it please?--Obey it. Not please?--Go where thou wilt. Does grief prick thee,--nay, stab thee?--If thou art naked, present thy throat; if covered with the arms of Vulcan, that is, fortitude, resist it.” And this word, so used in the Greek festivals, aut bibat, aut abeat, “either drink or go,” which sounds better upon the tongue of a Gascon, who naturally changes the h into v, than on that of Cicero:-- Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis. Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti; Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius æquo Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas. “If to live well and right thou dost not know, Give way, and leave thy place to those that do. Thou’st eaten, drunk, and play’d to thy content, ‘Tis time to make thy parting compliment, Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;” What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a sending back not only to ignorance, to be there in safety, but even to stupidity, insensibility, and nonentity? Democritum postquam matura vetustas Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis; Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse. “Soon as, through age, Democritus did find A manifest decadence in his mind, He thought he now surviv’d to his own wrong, And went to meet his death, that stay’d too long.” ‘Tis what Antisthenes said, “That a man should either make provision of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;” and what Chrysippus alleged upon this saying of the poet Tyrtæus:-- “Or to arrive at virtue or at death;” and Crates said, “That love would be cured by hunger, if not by time; and whoever disliked these two remedies, by a rope.” That Sextius, of whom both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an encomium, having applied himself, all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy, resolved to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of his studies too tedious and slow. He ran to find death, since he could not overtake knowledge. These are the words of the law upon the subject: “If peradventure some great inconvenience happen, for which there is no remedy, the haven is near, and a man may save himself by swimming out of his body as out of a leaky skiff; for ‘tis the fear of dying, and not the love of life, that ties the fool to his body.” As life renders itself by simplicity more pleasant, so more innocent and better, also it renders it as I was saying before: “The simple and ignorant,” says St. Paul, “raise themselves up to heaven and take possession of it; and we, with all our knowledge, plunge ourselves into the infernal abyss.” I am neither swayed by Valentinian, a professed enemy to all learning and letters, nor by Licinius, both Roman emperors, who called them the poison and pest of all political government; nor by Mahomet, who, as ‘tis said, interdicted all manner of learning to his followers; but the example of the great Lycurgus, and his authority, with the reverence of the divine Lacedemonian policy, so great, so admirable, and so long flourishing in virtue and happiness, without any institution or practice of letters, ought certainly to be of very great weight. Such as return from the new world discovered by the Spaniards in our fathers’ days, testify to us how much more honestly and regularly those nations live, without magistrate and without law, than ours do, where there are more officers and lawyers than there are of other sorts of men and business:-- Di cittatorie piene, e di libelli, D’esamine, e di carte di procure, Hanno le mani e il seno, e gran fastelli Di chioge, di consigli, et di letture: Per cui le faculta de* poverelli Non sono mai nelle città sicure; Hanno dietro e dinanzi, e d’ambi i lati, Notai, procuratori, ed avvocati. “Their bags were full of writs, and of citations, Of process, and of actions and arrests, Of bills, of answers, and of replications, In courts of delegates, and of requests, To grieve the simple sort with great vexations; They had resorting to them as their guests, Attending on their circuit, and their journeys, Scriv’ners, and clerks, and lawyers, and attorneys.” It was what a Roman senator of the latter ages said, that their predecessors’ breath stunk of garlic, but their stomachs were perfumed with a good conscience; and that, on the contrary, those of his time were all sweet odour without, but stunk within of all sorts of vices; that is to say, as I interpret it, that they abounded with learning and eloquence, but were very defective in moral honesty. Incivility, ignorance, simplicity, roughness, are the natural companions of innocence; curiosity, subtlety, knowledge, bring malice in their train; humility, fear, obedience, and affability, which are the principal things that support and maintain human society, require an empty and docile soul, and little presuming upon itself. Christians have a particular knowledge, how natural and original an evil curiosity is in man; the thirst of knowledge, and the desire to become more wise, was the first ruin of man, and the way by which he precipitated himself into eternal damnation. Pride was his ruin and corruption. ‘Tis pride that diverts him from the common path, and makes him embrace novelties, and rather choose to be head of a troop, lost and wandering in the path of error; to be a master and a teacher of lies, than to be a disciple in the school of truth, suffering himself to be led and guided by the hand of another, in the right and beaten road. ‘Tis, peradventure, the meaning of this old Greek saying, that superstition follows pride, and obeys it as if it were a father: [--Greek--] Ah, presumption, how much dost thou hinder us? After that Socrates was told that the god of wisdom had assigned to him the title of sage, he was astonished at it, and, searching and examining himself throughout, could find no foundation for this divine judgment. He knew others as just, temperate, valiant, and learned, as himself; and more eloquent, more handsome, and more profitable to their country than he. At last he concluded that he was not distinguished from others, nor wise, but only because he did not think himself so; and that his God considered the opinion of knowledge and wisdom as a singular absurdity in man; and that his best doctrine was the doctrine of ignorance, and simplicity his best wisdom. The sacred word declares those miserable among us who have an opinion of themselves: “Dust and ashes,” says it to such, “what hast thou wherein to glorify thyself?” And, in another place, “God has made man like unto a shadow,” of whom who can judge, when by removing the light it shall be vanished! Man is a thing of nothing. Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the divine height, that, of the works of our Creator, those best bear his mark, and are with better title his, which we the least understand. To meet with an incredible thing is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is so much the more according to reason, by how much it is against human reason. If it were according to reason, it would be no more a miracle; and if it were according to example, it would be no longer a singular thing. Melius scitur Deus nesdendo: “God is better known by not knowing him,” says St. Austin: and Tacitus, Sanctius est ac reverentius de actis Deorum credere, quam scire; “it is more holy and reverent to believe the works of God than to know them;” and Plato thinks there is something of impiety in inquiring too curiously into God, the world, and the first causes of things: Atque illum quidem parentem hujus universitaiis invenire, difficile; et, quum jam inveneris, indicare in vulgtis, nefas: “to find out the parent of the world is very difficult; and when found out, to reveal him to the vulgar is sin,” says Cicero. We talk indeed of power, truth, justice; which are words that signify some great thing; but that thing we neither see nor conceive at all. We say that God fears, that God is angry, that God loves, Immortalia mortali sermone notantes: “Giving to things immortal mortal names.” These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in God, according to our form, nor can we imagine them, according to his. It only belongs to God to know himself, and to interpret his own works; and he does it in our language, going out of himself, to stoop to us who grovel upon the earth. How can prudence, which is the choice between good and evil, be properly attributed to him whom no evil can touch? How can reason and intelligence, which we make use of, to arrive by obscure at apparent things; seeing that nothing is obscure to him? How justice, which distributes to every one what appertains to him, a thing begot by the society and community of men, how is that in God? How temperance, which is the moderation of corporal pleasures, that have no place in the Divinity? Fortitude to support pain, labour, and dangers, as little appertains to him as the rest; these three things have no access to him. For which reason Aristotle holds him equally exempt from virtue and vice: Neque gratia, neque ira teneri potest; quod quo talia essent, imbecilla essent omnia? “He can neither be affected with favour nor indignation, because both these are the effects of frailty.” The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; ‘tis purely the gift of another’s bounty: ‘tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: ‘tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom.