Part 6 (1/2)

Unperceived the orator has incorporated here with folly all that is vitality and the courage of life Folly is spontaneous energy that no one can do without He who is perfectly sensible and serious cannot live The et away from me, Stultitia, the less they live

Why do we kiss and cuddle little children, if not because they are still so delightfully foolish And what else ant?

Now look at the truly serious and sensible They are aard at everything, at , in social intercourse

If they have to buy, or to contract, things are sure to go wrong

Quintilian says that stage fright bespeaks the intelligent orator, who knows his faults Right! But does not, then, Quintilian confess openly that wisdoood execution? And has not Stultitia the right to claim prudence for herself, if the wise, out of sha in circumstances where fools pluckily set to work?

Here Erasical sense

Indeed the consciousness of falling short in achievereat inertia retarding the progress of the world Did he know hi over his books, but confronting htheartedness, indispensable to happiness The e, blunt and without any hu, a spectre or monster, from whom all fly, deaf to all natural e escapes hihs everything accurately, he forgives nothing, he is only satisfied with hi, he alone is free It is the hideous figure of the doctrinaire which Eras of

Which state, he exclaiistrate?

He who devotes hiht would forthwith deprive himself of life Only folly is a renorant is to be hue to be blind to a wife's shortcos than to make aith oneself out of jealousy and to fill the world with tragedy!

Adulation is virtue There is no cordial devotion without a little adulation It is the soul of eloquence, of medicine and poetry; it is the honey and the sweetness of all huain a series of valuable social qualities is slyly incorporated with folly: benevolence, kindness, inclination to approve and to admire

But especially to approve of oneself There is no pleasing others without beginning by flattering ourselves a little and approving of ourselves What would the world be if everyone was not proud of his standing, his calling, so that no person would change places with another in point of good appearance, of fancy, of good fa Why should any one desire true erudition? The more incompetent a man, the pleasanter his life is and the more he is admired Look at professors, poets, orators Man's mind is so made that he is more impressed by lies than by the truth Go to church: if the priest deals with serious subjects the whole congregation is dozing, yawning, feeling bored But when he begins to tell so on his lips

To be deceived, philosophers say, is a misfortune, but not to be deceived is a superlative misfortune If it is human to err, why should a man be called unhappy because he errs, since he was so born and made, and it is the fate of all? Do we pity a s? We ht as well call the horse unhappy because it does not learn grammar or eat cakes No creature is unhappy, if it lives according to its nature The sciences were invented to our ut to our happiness, they are even in its way, though for its sake they are supposed to have been invented

By the agency of evil demons they have stolen into human life with the other pests For did not the sie live happily, unprovided with any science, only led by nature and instinct?

What did they want grae? Why have dialectics, when there were no quarrels and no differences of opinion? Why jurisprudence, when there were no bad ious to investigate with impious curiosity the secrets of nature, the size, s

It is the old idea, which gerhtly touched upon by Erasmus, afterwards proclaiue

Wisdom is misfortune, but self-conceit is happiness Grammarians, ield the sceptre of wisdom--schoolmasters, that is--would be the ate the disco by a sort of sweet frenzy But what holds good of schoolood of poets, orators, authors For them, too, all happiness merely consists in vanity and delusion The lawyers are no better off and after them come the philosophers Next there is a nuy: divines, monks, bishops, cardinals, popes, only interrupted by princes and courtiers

In the chapters[12] which review these offices and callings, satire has shi+fted its ground a little Throughout the work two themes are intertwined: that of salutary folly, which is true wisdom, and that of deluded wisdom, which is pure folly As they are both put into the et truth, if Folly

were not wisdom Now it is clear that the first is the principal theme

Erasmus starts from it; and he returns to it Only in the nities in their universal foolishness, the second theme predominates and the book becomes an ordinary satire on huh few are so delicate But in the other parts it is so far deeper

Occasionally the satire runs somewhat off the line, when Stultitia directly censures what Erasences, silly belief in wonders, selfish worshi+p of the saints; or gaht to praise; or the spirit of syste, and the jealousy of the monks

For contemporary readers the ireat extent, in the direct satire Its lasting value is in those passages where we truly grant that folly is wisdoround of all things: all consistent thinking out of the dogical quiddities of effete scholasticism The apostles would not have understood them: in the eyes of latter-day divines they would have been fools Holy Scripture itself sides with folly 'The foolishness of God is wiser than men,' says Saint Paul 'But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world' 'It pleased God by the foolishness (of preaching) to save thenorant: children, women, poor fishermen, nay, even such ani: the ass which he wished to ride, the dove, the lareat deal behind the seeeneral to have soht the apostles were full of neine? And did not the judge say: 'Paul, thou art beside thyself'? When are we beside ourselves? When the spirit breaks its fetters and tries to escape from its prison and aspires to liberty That is hest wisdom True happiness is in selflessness, in the furore of lovers, whom Plato calls happiest of all

The reater and more rapturous is the frenzy

Heavenly bliss itself is the greatest insanity; truly pious people enjoy its shadow on earth already in their meditations

Here Stultitia breaks off her discourse, apologizing in a feords in case she may have been too petulant or talkative, and leaves the pulpit