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Look Down a Little on the Earth
And therefore, according to Homer's example, I think it high time
to leave the gods to themselves, and look down a little on the
earth; wherein likewise you'll find nothing frolic or fortunate that
it owes not to me. So provident has that great parent of mankind,
Nature, been that there should not be anything without its mixture
and, as it were, seasoning of Folly. For since according to the
definition of the Stoics, wisdom is nothing else than to be governed
by reason, and on the contrary Folly, to be given up to the will of
our passions, that the life of man might not be altogether
disconsolate and hard to away with, of how much more passion than
reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say,
"scarce half an ounce to a pound." Besides, he has confined reason
to a narrow corner of the brain and left all the rest of the body to
our passions; has also set up, against this one, two as it were,
masterless tyrants- anger, that possesses the region of the heart, and
consequently the very fountain of life, the heart itself; and lust,
that stretches its empire everywhere, right down to the genitals.
Against which double force how powerful reason is let common
experience declare, inasmuch as she, which yet is all she can do,
may call out to us till she be hoarse again and tell us the rules of
honesty and virtue; while they give up the reins to their governor and
make a hideous clamor, till at last being wearied, he suffer himself
to be carried whither they please to hurry him.
But forasmuch as such as are born to the business of the world have
some little sprinklings of reason more than the rest, yet that they
may the better manage it, even in this as well as in other things,
they call me to counsel; and I give them such as is worthy of
myself, to wit, that they take to them a wife- a silly thing, God wot,
and foolish, yet wanton and pleasant, by which means the roughness
of the masculine temper is seasoned and sweetened by her folly. For in
that Plato seems to doubt under what genus he should put woman, to
wit, that of rational creatures or brutes, he intended no other in
it than to show the apparent folly of the sex. For if perhaps any of
them goes about to be thought wiser than the rest, what else does
she do but play the fool twice, as if a man should "teach a cow to
dance," a thing quite against the hair." For as it doubles the crime
if anyone should put a disguise upon Nature, or endeavor to bring
her to that she will in no wise bear, according to that proverb of the
Greeks, "An ape is an ape, though clad in scarlet"; so a woman is a
woman still, that is to say foolish, let her put on whatever vizard
she please.
But, by the way, I hope that sex is not so foolish as to take
offense at this, that I myself, being a woman, and Folly too, have
attributed folly to them. For if they weigh it right, they needs
must acknowledge that they owe it to folly that they are more
fortunate than men. As first their beauty, which, and that not without
cause, they prefer before everything, since by its means they exercise
a tyranny even upon tyrants themselves; otherwise, whence proceeds
that sour look, rough skin, bushy beard, and such other things as
speak plain old age in a man, but from that disease of wisdom? Whereas
women's cheeks are ever plump and smooth, their voice small, their
skin soft, as if they imitated a certain kind of perpetual youth.
Again, what greater thing do they wish in their whole lives than
that they may please the man? For to what other purpose are all
those dresses, washes, baths, slops, perfumes, and those several
little tricks of setting their faces, painting their eyebrows, and
smoothing their skins? And now tell me, what higher letters of
recommendation have they to men than this folly? For what is it they
do not permit them to do? And to what other purpose than that of
pleasure? Wherein yet their folly is not the least thing that pleases;
which so true it is, I think no one will deny, that does but
consider with himself, what foolish discourse and odd gambols pass
between a man and his woman, as often as he had a mind to be gamesome?
And so I have shown you whence the first and chiefest delight of man's
life springs.
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