I often grew tired, in my childhood, of seeing in Italian comedies pedants treated as buffoons. A Sorbonne magister is little more honorable among us. For, having been given up to their control and tutoring, what could I do less than be jealous of their reputation? I did my best to excuse them on the grounds of the natural incongruity between the vulgar and persons of rare and excellent judgment and learning, especially as they follow a completely different path from one another.
But as I have matured, I have discovered the slanders were on point. As our good Du Bellay testifies: But above all I fear a pedantic knowledge. And this is an ancient custom: for Plutarch says that Greek and scholar were words of reproach among the Romans, and of contempt. Since then, with age, I have found that there was a very good reason for this and that
There are no greater clerics than greater wise men. (folk Latin phrase)
But I am still in doubt as to how it can happen that a soul rich in the knowledge of so many things does not become more lively and more alert, and that a coarse and vulgar spirit can harbor within itself, without mending itself, the discourses and judgments of the most excellent minds that the world has ever known. To receive so many foreign minds, so strong and so great, it is necessary (a daughter, the first of our Princesses, said to me, speaking of someone) that hers be bruised, constrained and diminished to make room for the others. I would readily say that, as plants choke from too much humor, and lamps from too much oil: so the action of the mind, from too much study and material, which, seized and embarrassed by a great diversity of things, loses the means to unravel; and that this burden keeps it bent and stagnant.
But it is not so: for our soul enlarges itself by filling itself; and in the examples of old times it is seen, quite the contrary, that great men in the management of public affairs, great captains and great counselors in affairs of state have been at the same time very learned. And, as for philosophers withdrawn from all public occupation, they have also sometimes been, in truth, scorned by the Comic freedom of their time, their opinions and ways making them ridiculous.
Do you want them to judge the rights of a trial, the actions of a man? They are well suited to it! They are still searching for life, for movement, for proof that man is more than an ox; for proof that we act and suffer; for proof that laws and justice are more than beasts. Do they speak of the magistrate, or do they speak to him? It is an irreverent and uncivil liberty. Do they hear you praising their prince or a king? He is a shepherd to them, idle as a shepherd, busy squeezing and shearing his animals, but much more brutally than a shepherd.
Do you think anyone is greater than him, because he owns two thousand acres of land? They couldn’t care less, they are used to embracing everyone as their possession. Do you sell yourself on your nobility, to count seven rich ancestors? They esteem you of little, not conceiving the universal image of nature, and how many predecessors each of us has had: rich, poor, kings, valets, Greeks and barbarians. And even if you were the fiftieth descendant of Hercules, they find it vain to make use of this gift of fortune.
Thus the vulgar designated them, as ignorant of the first and common things, as presumptuous and insolent. But this Platonic image is far removed from that which our people deserve. Those were looked down upon as being above the common way, as despising public actions, as having led a particular and inimitable life, governed by certain haughty and outmoded speeches. These are disdained as being beneath the common way, as being unfit for public office, as leading a life and manner of living base and vile after the vulgar.
I hate men, lazy deeds, philosophical opinions. (August Gellius)
As for these philosophers, I say, as they were great in science, they were even greater in all action.
And just as we say of this Geometrian of Syracuse, who, having been diverted from his contemplation to put something into practice for the defense of his country, suddenly set about devising terrifying devices and effects surpassing all human belief, yet disdaining himself all this manufacture of his, and thinking that in this way he had corrupted the dignity of his art, of which his works were only the apprenticeship and the toy: also they, if sometimes one put them to the test of action, one saw them fly of such a high aisle, that it appeared well their heart and their soul had been marvelously enlarged and enriched by the intelligence of things. But some, seeing the place of political government seized by incapable men, withdrew from it; and he who asked Crates how long it would be necessary to philosophize, received this answer: Until no longer asses lead our armies.
Heraclitus resigned the kingship to his brother, and to the Ephesians who criticized him for spending his time playing with children in front of the temple, he replied: “Is it not better to do this than to govern affairs in your company? Others, with their imagination set above fortune and the world, found the seats of justice and even the thrones of kings base and vile. And Empedocles refused the kingship that the Agrigentines offered him. Thales sometimes complained of the care of farming and of getting rich, and was reproached for it as being like the fox, for not being able to do it. It occurred to him, as a pastime, to show his experience; and, having for the time being lowered his knowledge in the service of profit and gain, he set up a trade, which in a year brought in such riches that hardly in their whole lives could the most experienced in that trade make such.
What Aristotle recites of some who call both that and Anaxagoras and their like wise and not prudent, for not taking enough care of more useful things, besides the fact that I do not fully understand this difference in words, this is no excuse for my people: and, seeing the low and needy fortune they allow themselves, we would have more reason to say both of them, that they are neither wise nor prudent. I leave this first reason, and believe it is better to say that this evil comes from their poor approach to science; and, in the way we have been taught, it is not surprising that neither pupils nor teachers become more skilled, even though they become more learned. In truth, the care and expense of our fathers is aimed only at filling our heads with science; there is little news of judgment and virtue.
Shout to our people from one passer-by: O the learned man! And from another: O the good man! We should not turn our eyes and respect towards the former. There would need to be a third crier: O the thick-headed! We will gladly inquire: Does he know Greek or Latin? Does he write in verse or prose? But if he has become better or wiser, that was the main thing, and that is what remains behind. We should inquire who is better educated, not who is more educated. We only work to fill the memory, and leave the understanding and the conscience empty. Just as birds sometimes go in search of gravel, and carry it in their beaks without tasting it, to feed it to their young, so our pedants rummage through science in books, and only lodge it at the tip of their lips, only to disgorge it and put it to the wind.
It is wonderful how neatly folly lodges on my example. Is this not what I do in most of this composition? I take sentences here and there from books that I like, not to keep them, for I have no use for them, but to transfer them to this place, where, to tell the truth, they are no more mine than in their original place. We are, I believe, knowledgeable only of the present science, not of the past, and even less of the future. But what is worse, neither do their scholars and their children feed on it, nor do they feed from it; it is passed from hand to hand, for the sole purpose of showing it off, of entertaining others, and of telling stories about it, like a useless coin, good for no other use and only good for counting and throwing away.
They have learned to speak with others, not with themselves.
It is not to be spoken to, but to be governed. (Cicero)
Nature, to show that there is nothing savage in what is guided by it, causes productions of the mind to arise in nations less cultivated by art, which rival the most artistic productions. As for my point, how delicate is the Gascon proverb:
Puff and blow as you will: what concerns us is the movement of the fingers.
To blow hard is to move hard, but we are only stirring our fingers, taken from a litany.
We know how to say: Cicero says thus: these are Plato’s words; these are Aristotle’s very words. But what do we say ourselves? What do we judge? What do we do? A parrot could say as much.
This reminds me of the rich Roman who took great pains and spent a lot of money to gather around him men who were knowledgeable in all kinds of sciences, so that when an opportunity arose among his friends to talk about this or that, they would take his place and be ready to provide him with a speech, who with a verse from Homer, each according to his hobby and thought this to be his own knowledge because it was in the minds of his people. So do also those whose self-importance is housed in their sumptuous libraries. I know some who, when I ask what they know, ask me for a book to show it to me; and would not dare to tell me that the backside is scabby, unless they go immediately to study in their lexicon what scabby means and what backside means.
We take on other people’s opinions and knowledge, and that’s it. We have to make them our own. We are like someone who, needing fire, would go and ask his neighbor for some, and, having found a nice big one, would stop there to warm himself, without remembering to bring any home with him. What use is it to have a belly full of meat if it is not digested? if it is not transformed within us? if it does not increase and strengthen us?
Do we think that Lucullus, whom letters made and formed such a great captain without experience, would have taken them in our way? We allow ourselves to rely so heavily on the arms of others that we destroy our own strength. Do I want to arm myself against the fear of death? It is at the expense of Seneca. Do I want to draw consolation for myself or for someone else? I borrow it from Cicero. I would have taken it from within myself if I had been trained to do so. I do not like this relative and beggarly self-sufficiency. Even if we could be learned from the knowledge of others, at least we can only be wise in our own wisdom.
“I hate a sage who is not wise for himself.” (Euripides)
Hence what Ennius said,
It is in vain to be wise, who does not seek to benefit himself.
If greedy, if Vain and Euganean, however, a cheaper lamb.
And from Cicero:
For wisdom is not only to be prepared for us, but to be enjoyed.
Dionysius mocked the grammarians who took care to inquire about the misfortunes of Ulysses, and ignored their own; the musicians who tuned their flutes and did not tune their morals; the orators who studied to speak justice, not to practice it.
If our soul does not go to a better rhythm, if we do not have a healthier judgment, I would rather my schoolboy had spent his time playing tennis, at least the body would be more cheerful. See him come back from there, after fifteen or sixteen years of employment: there is nothing so ill-suited to putting him in trouble. All you can recognize as an advantage is that his Latin and Greek have made him more proud and more overbearing than he was when he left home. He should have returned with his soul full, but he has only returned with a puffed up soul; and it has only swollen instead of growing.
These masters here, as Plato says of the Sophists, their kinsmen, are of all men those who promise to be the most useful to men, and, alone among all men, who not only do not improve what is entrusted to them, as a carpenter and a mason do, but make it worse, and get paid for having made it worse. If the law that Protagoras proposed to his disciples were followed: either they would pay him according to his word, or they would swear in the temple how much they estimated the profit they had received from his disciplines, and according to this they would satisfy his penalty, my pedagogues would find themselves in trouble, having relied on the oath of my experience.
My vulgar Perigordin very pleasantly calls these sçavanteaux “Lettreferits”, as if you were to say “lettre-ferus”, to whom the letters have dealt a hammer blow, as one would say. In truth, most of the time they seem to be backward, even in common sense. For the farmer and the cobbler, you see them going simply and naively about their business, talking about what they know; these, in wanting to elevate themselves and police this knowledge that swims on the surface of their brains, go about embarrassing themselves and constantly stumbling.
Fine words escape them, but let someone else accommodate them. They know Galen well, but not the patient. They have already filled your head with laws, and have not yet conceived the crux of the matter. They know the theory of all things, but look for someone to put it into practice. I saw a friend of mine at home, as a pastime, dealing with one of these, to concoct a jargon of gibberish, rambling remarks, a patchwork of unrelated pieces, except that it was often interspersed with words specific to their dispute, thus amusing this fool for a whole day with debates, always thinking he was responding to the objections made to him; and if he was a man of letters and of reputation, and who had a fine robe.
You, oh fatherly blood, whom it is fitting to live. Come, blind, to the back of the head, and meet me with your healthy back. (Perseus)
Whoever looks closely at this kind of people, who are far away, will find, as I do, that most of the time they do not get along with each other, nor with anyone else, and that they have a fairly full memory, but completely empty judgment, unless their nature itself has shaped them differently: as I saw Adrianus Turnebus, who, having made no profession other than letters, in which he was, in my opinion, the greatest man who was a thousand years ago, nevertheless had nothing pedantic other than the wearing of his robe, and some external manner, which may not have been civilized at the courtesan, which are things of nothing.
And there are those among us who find it harder to bear a dress than a crooked soul, and look at her reverence, her bearing and her boots to judge what kind of man he is. For inside, she was the most polite soul in the world. I often saw him, in my company, making remarks beyond his station; he was so clear-sighted, so quick to grasp, so sound in his judgment, that it seemed as if he had never done anything but make war and manage state affairs. They are beautiful and strong natures,
Whose kind art. And with better clay fashioned the heart of Titan. (Juvenal)
Now, it is not enough that our institution does not wear us out, it must change us for the better.
There are some of our Parliaments, when they have to receive officers, who only examine them on knowledge; the others also add the test of sense, by presenting them with the judgment of some case. These seem to me to have a much better style; and even though these two pieces are necessary, and both must be present, it is true that the knowledge is less valuable than the judgment. This one can do without the other, and not the other without this one. For, as the Greek verse says,
What use is knowledge if there is no understanding? (Stobaeus)
What use is knowledge if the understanding is not there? God willing, for the good of our justice, these companies would be as well supplied with understanding and conscience as they are with knowledge!
We learn not for life but for school. (Seneca)
Now knowledge should not be attached to the soul, it should be incorporated into it; it should not be cherished, it should be imbued; and, if it does not change it and improve its imperfect state, it is certainly much better to leave it there. It is a dangerous sword, and one that hinders and offends its master, if it is in weak hands and those who do not know how to use it,
It would have been better not to have learned. (Cicero)
Perhaps this is the reason why we and Theology do not require much knowledge from our wives, and that Francis, Duke of Brittany, son of John the Fifth, when he was told of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of James V of Scotland, it was added that she had been brought up simply and had received no education in literature. He replied that he loved her all the better for it and that a woman was learned enough when she knew how to tell the difference between her husband’s shirt and doublet. So it is not such a great marvel, as people claim, that our ancestors did not make much of letters, and that even today they are only found by chance in the main councils of our kings. If this aim of enriching oneself, which is the only one proposed to us today by means of Jurisprudence, Medicine, pedantry, and Theology again, did not hold them in credit, you would no doubt see them as quarrelsome as they ever were. What a shame if they teach us neither to think well nor to do good?
After the learned have emerged, the good are lacking. (Seneca)
Any other science is detrimental to those who do not have the science of goodness. But could the reason I was looking for just now also be this: that our study in France has almost no other goal than profit, less so than those that nature has given rise to for more generous purposes than lucrative ones, devoting oneself to letters, or so briefly (leave, before taken a liking for it, to a profession that has nothing in common with books), there are usually only those of lowly birth who seek a means of support left to devote themselves entirely to study.
And the souls of these people, being and by nature and by domestic institution and example of the lowest alloy, barely reap the fruit of knowledge. For it is not meant to give light to the soul that has none, nor to enable a blind man to see: its job is not to provide him with sight, but to train him to use it, to regulate his movements, provided he has straight and capable feet and legs of his own. Science is a good drug, but no drug is strong enough to preserve itself without alteration and corruption, depending on the vice of the vessel that contains it.
Some have clear sight, but not straight sight; and consequently they see the good and do not follow it; and they see the science, and do not make use of it. Plato’s main precept in his Republic is to give his citizens their role according to their nature. Nature can do everything and does everything. The lame are ill-suited to physical exercise; and lame souls to mental exercise; bastards and vulgar people are unworthy of philosophy.
When we see a man with poor footwear, we say that it is no surprise if he is a shoemaker. Likewise, it seems that experience often offers us a doctor who is less well-trained, a theologian who is less reformed, a scholar who is less self-sufficient than any other. Aristo Chius was once right to say that philosophers harm their listeners, especially since most souls are not suited to benefit from such instruction, which, if not put to good use, is put to bad use:
They came out of the school of Aristippus, and out of the school of Zeno, bitter. (Cicero)
In this fine institution that Xenophon lends to the Persians, we find that they taught virtue to their children, as other nations do with letters. Plato says that the eldest son, in their royal succession, was thus brought up. After his birth, he was given, not to women, but to eunuchs of the highest authority around the kings because of their virtue. They took charge of making his body beautiful and healthy, and after seven years they would make him ride a horse and go hunting. When he had reached the age of fourteen, they placed him in the hands of four: the wisest, the most just, the most temperate, the most valiant of the nation.
The first taught him religion; the second to always be truthful; the third to master his desires, the fourth to fear nothing. It is something worthy of great consideration that, in this excellent policy of Licurgus, and in truth monstrous in its perfection, yet so thoughtful of the nourishment of children as its main task, and even the very purpose of the Muses, there is so little mention of doctrine: as if this generous youth, disdaining any yoke other than that of virtue, had been provided with, instead of our masters of science, only masters of valor, prudence and justice, an example that Plato followed in his laws.
The way to discipline them was to ask them questions about the judgment of men and their actions; and, if they condemned or praised this person or that deed, it was necessary to reason with them, and by this means they sharpened their understanding and learned the law. Astyages, in Xenophon, asks Cyrus about his last lesson: It is, he said, that in our school a big boy, having a small cape, gave it to one of his smaller companions, and took away his cape, which was bigger. Our tutor having made me judge of this dispute, I judged that it was necessary to leave things as they were, and that both seemed to be better accommodated on this point: upon which he pointed out to me that I had done wrong, for I had stopped to consider propriety, and it was first necessary to have provided for justice, which demanded that no one be forced in what belonged to him. And he said that was the end of it, just as we are in our villages for having forgotten the first Aorist of tuptao.
My teacher would give me a good harangue in genere Demonstrativo, before he persuaded me that his school was worth it. They wanted to cut corners; and, since it is the case that the sciences, even when taken in their direct form, can only teach us prudence, good sense and resolution, they finally wanted to put their children to the test of effects, and to instruct them, not by hearsay, but by the trial of action, by training and molding them vigorously, not only by precepts and words, but mainly by examples and works, so that it would not be a science in their soul, but its complexion and habit. It was not an acquisition, but a natural possession.
In this regard, Agesilaus was asked what he would advise children to learn: “What they must do as men,” he replied. It is no wonder that such an institution produced such admirable results. It was said that people went to other Greek cities to find rhetoricians, painters and musicians, but to Lacedaemon they went to find legislators, magistrates and army emperors.
In Athens, one learned to speak well, and here, to do well; there, to unravel a sophisticated argument filled with captiously interwoven words; here, to unravel the snares of pleasure and to repel with great courage the threats of fortune and death. Athenians were preoccupied with words, others with things; there, it was a continual exercise of the tongue; here, a continual exercise of the soul.
Therefore it is not strange if, Antipater asking them for fifty children as hostages, they replied, quite the opposite of what we would do, that they would rather give twice as many trained men, such was their esteem for the loss of the education of their country. When Agesilaus invited Xenophon to send his children to Sparta to be educated, it was not to learn rhetoric or dialectic, but to learn (as he said) the most beautiful science there is: the science of obeying and commanding.
It is very pleasant to see Socrates, in his own way, mocking Hippias who recites to him how he earned a good sum of money in certain small towns in Sicily, especially by tutoring, yet couldn‘t earn a single sol in Sparta, noting that they were idiotic people, who knew neither how to measure nor count, pay no attention to grammar or rhythm, amusing themselves only with the succession of kings, the establishment and decline of states, and such jumble of accounts. At the end of his dialogue, Socrates made him admit in detail the excellence of the Spartan form of public government, the happiness and virtue of their lives, and led him to the conclusion of the uselessness of his arts.
Examples teach us, and in this martial policy and in all its like, that the study of science softens and effeminates courage, rather than strengthening and hardening it. The strongest state that appears to the world at present is that of the Turks: a people equally devoted to the value of arms and contempt of letters. I found Rome more valiant before she was learned. The most warlike nations in our day are the most coarse and ignorant. The Scythians, the Parthians, Tamburlan serve us as proof of this. When the Goths ravaged Greece, what saved all the libraries from being burned was one one of them who spread the opinion that this piece of furniture should be left intact to the enemy, as it would distract them from military exercises and keep them amused with sedentary and idle pursuits.
When our King Charles the Eighth, without drawing his sword, became master of the Kingdom of Naples and a large part of Tuscany, the lords of his retinue attributed this unexpected ease of conquest to the fact that the princes and nobility of Italy took more pleasure in making themselves clever and learned than vigorous and warlike.