Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

Translated by John Wilson

Taken from Project Gutenburg – http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8efly10.txt

But 'tis a sad thing, they say, to be mistaken. Nay rather, he is most
miserable that is not so. For they are quite beside the mark that place
the happiness of men in things themselves, since it only depends upon
opinion. For so great is the obscurity and variety of human affairs that
nothing can be clearly known, as it is truly said by our academics, the
least insolent of all the philosophers; or if it could, it would but
obstruct the pleasure of life. Lastly, the mind of man is so framed that
it is rather taken with the false colors than truth; of which if anyone
has a mind to make the experiment, let him go to church and hear sermons,
in which if there be anything serious delivered, the audience is either
asleep, yawning, or weary of it; but if the preacher--pardon my mistake,
I would have said declaimer--as too often it happens, fall but into an
old wives' story, they're presently awake, prick up their ears and gape
after it. In like manner, if there be any poetical saint, or one of whom
there goes more stories than ordinary, as for example, a George, a
Christopher, or a Barbara, you shall see him more religiously worshiped
than Peter, Paul, or even Christ himself. But these things are not for
this place. . . .
 
And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for their furred
gowns and starched beards that they look upon themselves as the only wise
men and all others as shadows. And yet how pleasantly do they dote while
they frame in their heads innumerable worlds; measure out the sun, the
moon, the stars, nay and heaven itself, as it were, with a pair of
compasses; lay down the causes of lightning, winds, eclipses, and other
the like inexplicable matters; and all this too without the least
doubting, as if they were Nature's secretaries, or dropped down among us
from the council of the gods; while in the meantime Nature laughs at them
and all their blind conjectures. For that they know nothing, even this is
a sufficient argument, that they don't agree among themselves and so are
incomprehensible touching every particular. These, though they have not
the least degree of knowledge, profess yet that they have mastered all;
nay, though they neither know themselves, nor perceive a ditch or block
that lies in their way, for that perhaps most of them are half blind, or
their wits a wool-gathering, yet give out that they have discovered
ideas, universalities, separated forms, first matters, quiddities,
haecceities, formalities, and the like stuff; things so thin and bodiless
that I believe even Lynceus himself was not able to perceive them. But
then chiefly do they disdain the unhallowed crowd as often as with their
triangles, quadrangles, circles, and the like mathematical devices, more
confounded than a labyrinth, and letters disposed one against the other,
as it were in battle array, they cast a mist before the eyes of the
ignorant. Nor is there wanting of this kind some that pretend to
foretell things by the stars and make promises of miracles beyond
all things of soothsaying, and are so fortunate as to meet with people
that believe them.
 
But perhaps I had better pass over our divines in silence and not stir
this pool or touch this fair but unsavory plant, as a kind of men that
are supercilious beyond comparison, and to that too, implacable; lest
setting them about my ears, they attack me by troops and force me to a
recantation sermon, which if I refuse, they straight pronounce me a
heretic. For this is the thunderbolt with which they fright those whom
they are resolved not to favor. And truly, though there are few others
that less willingly acknowledge the kindnesses I have done them, yet even
these too stand fast bound to me upon no ordinary accounts; while being
happy in their own opinion, and as if they dwelt in the third heaven,
they look with haughtiness on all others as poor creeping things and
could almost find in their hearts to pity them; while hedged in with so
many magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions
explicit and implicit, they abound with so many starting-holes that
Vulcan's net cannot hold them so fast, but they'll slip through with
their distinctions, with which they so easily cut all knots asunder that
a hatchet could not have done it better, so plentiful are they in their
new-found words and prodigious terms. Besides, while they explicate the
most hidden mysteries according to their own fancy--as how the world was
first made; how original sin is derived to posterity; in what manner, how
much room, and how long time Christ lay in the Virgin's womb; how
accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their subject.
 
But these are common and threadbare; these are worthy of our great and
illuminated divines, as the world calls them! At these, if ever they fall
athwart them, they prick up--as whether there was any instant of time in
the generation of the Second Person; whether there be more than one
filiation in Christ; whether it be a possible proposition that God the
Father hates the Son; or whether it was possible that Christ could have
taken upon Him the likeness of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or
of a stone, or of a gourd; and then how that gourd should have preached,
wrought miracles, or been hung on the cross; and what Peter had
consecrated if he had administered the Sacrament at what time the body of
Christ hung upon the cross; or whether at the same time he might be said
to be man; whether after the Resurrection there will be any eating and
drinking, since we are so much afraid of hunger and thirst in this world.
There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than
these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities,
haecceities, which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could
look through a stone wall and discover those things through the thickest
darkness that never were.
 
Add to this those their other determinations, and those too so contrary
to common opinion that those oracles of the Stoics, which they call
paradoxes, seem in comparison of these but blockish and idle--as 'tis a
lesser crime to kill a thousand men than to set a stitch on a poor man's
shoe on the Sabbath day; and that a man should rather choose that the
whole world with all food and raiment, as they say, should perish, than
tell a lie, though never so inconsiderable. And these most subtle
subtleties are rendered yet more subtle by the several methods of so many
Schoolmen, that one might sooner wind himself out of a labyrinth than the
entanglements of the realists, nominalists, Thomists, Albertists,
Occamists, Scotists. Nor have I named all the several sects, but only
some of the chief; in all which there is so much doctrine and so much
difficulty that I may well conceive the apostles, had they been to deal
with these new kind of divines, had needed to have prayed in aid of some
other spirit.
 
Paul knew what faith was, and yet when he said, "Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen," he did not
define it doctor-like. And as he understood charity well himself, so he
did as illogically divide and define it to others in his first Epistle to
the Corinthians, Chapter the thirteenth. And devoutly, no doubt, did the
apostles consecrate the Eucharist; yet, had they been asked the question
touching the "terminus a quo" and the "terminus ad quem" of
transubstantiation; of the manner how the same body can be in several
places at one and the same time; of the difference the body of Christ has
in heaven from that of the cross, or this in the Sacrament; in what point
of time transubstantiation is, whereas prayer, by means of which it is,
as being a discrete quantity, is transient; they would not, I conceive,
have answered with the same subtlety as the Scotists dispute and define
it. They knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them has so
philosophically demonstrated how she was preserved from original sin as
have done our divines? Peter received the keys, and from Him too that
would not have trusted them with a person unworthy; yet whether he had
understanding or no, I know not, for certainly he never attained to that
subtlety to determine how he could have the key of knowledge that had no
knowledge himself. They baptized far and near, and yet taught nowhere
what was the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism, nor
made the least mention of delible and indelible characters. They
worshiped, 'tis true, but in spirit, following herein no other than that
of the Gospel, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship, must worship him
in spirit and truth;" yet it does not appear it was at that time revealed
to them that an image sketched on the wall with a coal was to be
worshiped with the same worship as Christ Himself, if at least the two
forefingers be stretched out, the hair long and uncut, and have three
rays about the crown of the head. For who can conceive these things,
unless he has spent at least six and thirty years in the philosophical
and supercelestial whims of Aristotle and the Schoolmen?
 
In like manner, the apostles press to us grace; but which of them
distinguishes between free grace and grace that makes a man acceptable?
They exhort us to good works, and yet determine not what is the work
working, and what a resting in the work done. They incite us to charity,
and yet make no difference between charity infused and charity wrought in
us by our own endeavors. Nor do they declare whether it be an accident or
a substance, a thing created or uncreated. They detest and abominate sin,
but let me not live if they could define according to art what that is
which we call sin, unless perhaps they were inspired by the spirit of the
Scotists. Nor can I be brought to believe that Paul, by whose learning
you may judge the rest, would have so often condemned questions,
disputes, genealogies, and, as himself calls them, "strifes of words," if
he had thoroughly understood those subtleties, especially when all the
debates and controversies of those times were rude and blockish in
comparison of the more than Chrysippean subtleties of our masters.
Although yet the gentlemen are so modest that if they meet with anything
written by the apostles not so smooth and even as might be expected from
a master, they do not presently condemn it but handsomely bend it to
their own purpose, so great respect and honor do they give, partly to
antiquity and partly to the name of apostle. And truly 'twas a kind of
injustice to require so great things of them that never heard the least
word from their masters concerning it. And so if the like happen in
Chrysostom, Basil, Jerome, they think it enough to say they are not
obliged by it.
 
The apostles also confuted the heathen philosophers and Jews, a people
than whom none more obstinate, but rather by their good lives and
miracles than syllogisms: and yet there was scarce one among them that
was capable of understanding the least "quodlibet" of the Scotists. But
now, where is that heathen or heretic that must not presently stoop to
such wire-drawn subtleties, unless he be so thick-skulled that he can't
apprehend them, or so impudent as to hiss them down, or, being furnished
with the same tricks, be able to make his party good with them? As if a
man should set a conjurer on work against a conjurer, or fight with one
hallowed sword against another, which would prove no other than a work to
no purpose. For my own part I conceive the Christians would do much
better if instead of those dull troops and companies of soldiers with
which they have managed their war with such doubtful success, they would
send the bawling Scotists, the most obstinate Occamists, and invincible
Albertists to war against the Turks and Saracens; and they would see, I
guess, a most pleasant combat and such a victory as was never before. For
who is so faint whom their devices will not enliven? who so stupid whom
such spurs can't quicken? or who so quick-sighted before whose eyes they
can't cast a mist?
 
But you'll say, I jest. Nor are you without cause, since even among
divines themselves there are some that have learned better and are ready
to turn their stomachs at those foolish subtleties of the others. There
are some that detest them as a kind of sacrilege and count it the height
of impiety to speak so irreverently of such hidden things, rather to be
adored than explicated; to dispute of them with such profane and
heathenish niceties; to define them so arrogantly and pollute the majesty
of divinity with such pithless and sordid terms and opinions. Meantime
the others please, nay hug themselves in their happiness, and are so
taken up with these pleasant trifles that they have not so much leisure
as to cast the least eye on the Gospel or St. Paul's epistles. And while
they play the fool at this rate in their schools, they make account the
universal church would otherwise perish, unless, as the poets fancied of
Atlas that he supported heaven with his shoulders, they underpropped the
other with their syllogistical buttresses. And how great a happiness is
this, think you? while, as if Holy Writ were a nose of wax, they fashion
and refashion it according to their pleasure; while they require that
their own conclusions, subscribed by two or three Schoolmen, be accounted
greater than Solon's laws and preferred before the papal decretals;
while, as censors of the world, they force everyone to a recantation that
differs but a hair's breadth from the least of their explicit or implicit
determinations. And those too they pronounce like oracles. This
proposition is scandalous; this irreverent; this has a smack of heresy;
this no very good sound: so that neither baptism, nor the Gospel, nor
Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor St. Augustine, no nor most
Aristotelian Thomas himself can make a man a Christian, without these

bachelors too be pleased to give him his grace.