I know men enough that have several fine parts; one wit, another courage, another address, another conscience, another language: one science, another, another; but a generally great man, and who has all these brave parts together, or any one of them to such a degree of excellence that we should admire him or compare him with those we honour of times past, my fortune never brought me acquainted with; and the greatest I ever knew, I mean for the natural parts of the soul, was Etienne De la Boetie; his was a full soul indeed, and that had every way a beautiful aspect: a soul of the old stamp, and that had produced great effects had his fortune been so pleased, having added much to those great natural parts by learning and study.
But how it comes to pass I know not, and yet it is certainly so, there is as much vanity and weakness of judgment in those who profess the greatest abilities, who take upon them learned callings and bookish employments as in any other sort of men whatever; either because more is required and expected from them, and that common defects are excusable in them, or because the opinion they have of their own learning makes them more bold to expose and lay themselves too open, by which they lose and betray themselves. As an artificer more manifests his want of skill in a rich matter he has in hand, if he disgrace the work by ill handling and contrary to the rules required, than in a matter of less value; and men are more displeased at a disproportion in a statue of gold than in one of plaster; so do these when they advance things that in themselves and in their place would be good; for they make use of them without discretion, honouring their memories at the expense of their understandings, and making themselves ridiculous by honouring Cicero, Galen, Ulpian, and St. Jerome alike.
I willingly fall again into the discourse of the vanity of our education, the end of which is not to render us good and wise, but learned, and she has obtained it. She has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and prudence, but she has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; we know how to decline Virtue, if we know not how to love it; if we do not know what prudence is really and in effect, and by experience, we have it however by jargon and heart: we are not content to know the extraction, kindred, and alliances of our neighbours; we desire, moreover, to have them our friends and to establish a correspondence and intelligence with them; but this education of ours has taught us definitions, divisions, and partitions of virtue, as so many surnames and branches of a genealogy, without any further care of establishing any familiarity or intimacy betwixt her and us. It has culled out for our initiatory instruction not such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin, and by their fine words has instilled into our fancy the vainest humours of antiquity.
A good education alters the judgment and manners; as it happened to Polemon, a lewd and debauched young Greek, who going by chance to hear one of Xenocrates' lectures, did not only observe the eloquence and learning of the reader, and not only brought away, the knowledge of some fine matter, but a more manifest and more solid profit, which was the sudden change and reformation of his former life. Whoever found such an effect of our discipline?
"Faciasne, quod olim
Mutatus Polemon? ponas insignia morbi
Fasciolas, cubital, focalia; potus ut ille
Dicitur ex collo furtim carpsisse coronas,
Postquam est impransi correptus voce magistri?"
["Will you do what reformed Polemon did of old? will you lay aside
the joys of your disease, your garters, capuchin, muffler, as he in
his cups is said to have secretly torn off his garlands from his
neck when he heard what that temperate teacher said?"
—Horace, Sat., ii. 3, 253]
That seems to me to be the least contemptible condition of men, which by its plainness and simplicity is seated in the lowest degree, and invites us to a more regular course. I find the rude manners and language of country people commonly better suited to the rule and prescription of true philosophy, than those of our philosophers themselves:
"Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit."
["The vulgar are so much the wiser, because they only know what is needful for them to know."—Lactantms, Instit. Div., iii. 5.]
The most remarkable men, as I have judged by outward appearance (for to judge of them according to my own method, I must penetrate a great deal deeper), for soldiers and military conduct, were the Duc de Guise, who died at Orleans, and the late Marshal Strozzi; and for men of great ability and no common virtue, Olivier and De l'Hospital, Chancellors of France. Poetry, too, in my opinion, has flourished in this age of ours; we have abundance of very good artificers in the trade: D'Aurat, Beza, Buchanan, L'Hospital, Montdore, Turnebus; as to the French poets, I believe they raised their art to the highest pitch to which it can ever arrive; and in those parts of it wherein Ronsard and Du Bellay excel, I find them little inferior to the ancient perfection. Adrian Turnebus knew more, and what he did know, better than any man of his time, or long before him. The lives of the last Duke of Alva, and of our Constable de Montmorency, were both of them great and noble, and that had many rare resemblances of fortune; but the beauty and glory of the death of the last, in the sight of Paris and of his king, in their service, against his nearest relations, at the head of an army through his conduct victorious, and by a sudden stroke, in so extreme old age, merits methinks to be recorded amongst the most remarkable events of our times. As also the constant goodness, sweetness of manners, and conscientious facility of Monsieur de la Noue, in so great an injustice of armed parties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, and robbery), wherein he always kept up the reputation of a great and experienced captain.
I have taken a delight to publish in several places the hopes I have of
Marie de Gournay le Jars,
[She was adopted by him in 1588. See Leon Feugere's Mademoiselle
de Gournay: 'Etude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages'.]
my adopted daughter; and certainly beloved by me more than paternally, and enveloped in my retirement and solitude as one of the best parts of my own being: I have no longer regard to anything in this world but her. And if a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capable of very great things; and amongst others, of the perfection of that sacred friendship, to which we do not read that any of her sex could ever yet arrive; the sincerity and solidity of her manners are already sufficient for it, and her affection towards me more than superabundant, and such, in short, as that there is nothing more to be wished, if not that the apprehension she has of my end, being now five-and-fifty years old, might not so much afflict her. The judgment she made of my first Essays, being a woman, so young, and in this age, and alone in her own country; and the famous vehemence wherewith she loved me, and desired my acquaintance solely from the esteem she had thence of me, before she ever saw my face, is an incident very worthy of consideration.
Other virtues have had little or no credit in this age; but valour is become popular by our civil wars; and in this, we have souls brave even to perfection, and in so great number that the choice is impossible to make.
This is all of extraordinary and uncommon grandeur that has hitherto arrived at my knowledge.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A generous heart ought not to belie its own thoughts
A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry
Against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said
Agitated betwixt hope and fear
All defence shows a face of war
Almanacs
An advantage in judgment we yield to none
Any old government better than change and alteration
Anything becomes foul when commended by the multitude
Appetite runs after that it has not
Armed parties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, robbery)
Authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men
Authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien beget
Be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play
Beauty of stature is the only beauty of men
Believing Heaven concerned at our ordinary actions
Better at speaking than writing. Motion and action animate word
Caesar's choice of death: "the shortest"
Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful
Content: more easily found in want than in abundance
Curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge
Defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy
Desire of riches is more sharpened by their use than by the need
Difficulty gives all things their estimation
Doubt whether those (old writings) we have be not the worst
Doubtful ills plague us worst
Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure
Engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty
Every government has a god at the head of it
Executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices
Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself
Folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it.
For who ever thought he wanted sense?
Fortune rules in all things
Gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence
Happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it to fortune
Having too good an opinion of our own worth
He should discern in himself, as well as in others
He who is only a good man that men may know it
How many worthy men have we known to survive their reputation
Humble out of pride
I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others
I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony
I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead
I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question
I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment
I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing
Ill luck is good for something
Imitating other men's natures, thou layest aside thy own
Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation
Impunity pass with us for justice
It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part
Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists
Lessen the just value of things that I possess
License of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs
Lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up
Loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up.
More brave men been lost in occasions of little moment
More solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak
My affection alters, my judgment does not
No way found to tranquillity that is good in common
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself
Not conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark
Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself
Nothing is more confident than a bad poet
Nothing that so poisons as flattery
Obedience is never pure nor calm in him who reasons and disputes
Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous
Of the fleeting years each steals something from me
Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate
Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present
One may be humble out of pride
Our will is more obstinate by being opposed
Overvalue things, because they are foreign, absent
Philopoemen: paying the penalty of my ugliness.
Pleasing all: a mark that can never be aimed at or hit
Poets
Possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules
Prolong his life also prolonged and augmented his pain
Regret so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold
Sense: no one who is not contented with his share
Setting too great a value upon ourselves
Setting too little a value upon others
She who only refuses, because 'tis forbidden, consents
Short of the foremost, but before the last
Souls that are regular and strong of themselves are rare
Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing
Take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst
The age we live in produces but very indifferent things
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it
The satiety of living, inclines a man to desire to die
There is no reason that has not its contrary
They do not see my heart, they see but my countenance
Those who can please and hug themselves in what they do
Tis far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't
Voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance
Vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on
We believe we do not believe
We consider our death as a very great thing
We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings
We have taught the ladies to blush
We set too much value upon ourselves
Were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one
What a man says should be what he thinks
What he did by nature and accident, he cannot do by design
What is more accidental than reputation?
What, shall so much knowledge be lost
Wiser who only know what is needful for them to know