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Why Fools are in Great Request with Princes
Whence is it else that they are in so great request with princes
that they can neither eat nor drink, go anywhere, or be an hour
without them? Nay, and in some degree they prefer these fools before
their crabbish wise men, whom yet they keep about them for state's
sake. Nor do I conceive the reason so difficult, or that it should
seem strange why they are preferred before the others, for that
these wise men speak to princes about nothing but grave, serious
matters, and trusting to their own parts and learning do not fear
sometimes "to grate their tender ears with smart truths"; but fools
fit them with that they most delight in, as jests, laughter, abuses of
other men, wanton pastimes, and the like.
Again, take notice of this no contemptible blessing which Nature
has given fools, that they are the only plain, honest men and such
as speak truth. And what is more commendable than truth? For though
that proverb of Alcibiades in Plato attributes truth to drunkards
and children, yet the praise of it is particularly mine, even from the
testimony of Euripides, among whose other things there is extant
that his honorable saying concerning us, "A fool speaks foolish
things." For whatever a fool has in his heart, he both shows it in his
looks and expresses it in his discourse; while the wise men's are
those two tongues which the same Euripides mentions, whereof the one
speaks truth, the other what they judge most seasonable for the
occasion.
These are they "that turn black into white," blow hot and cold with
the same breath, and carry a far different meaning in their breast
from what they feign with their tongue. Yet in the midst of all
their prosperity, princes in this respect seem to me most unfortunate,
because, having no one to tell them truth, they are forced to
receive flatterers for friends.
But, someone may say, the ears of princes are strangers to truth,
and for this reason they avoid those wise men, because they fear
lest someone more frank than the rest should dare to speak to them
things rather true than pleasant; for so the matter is, that they
don't much care for truth. And yet this is found by experience among
my fools, that not only truths but even open reproaches are heard with
pleasure; so that the same thing which, if it came from a wise man's
mouth might prove a capital crime, spoken by a fool is received with
delight. For truth carries with it a certain peculiar power of
pleasing, if no accident fall in to give occasion of offense; which
faculty the gods have given only to fools. And for the same reasons is
it that women are so earnestly delighted with this kind of men, as
being more propense by nature to pleasure and toys. And whatsoever
they may happen to do with them, although sometimes it be of the
most serious, yet they turn it to jest and laughter, as that sex was
ever quick-witted, especially to color their own faults.
But to return to the happiness of fools, who when they have
passed over this life with a great deal of pleasantness and without so
much as the least fear or sense of death, they go straight forth
into the Elysian field, to recreate their pious and careless souls
with such sports as they used here. Let's proceed then, and compare
the condition of any of your wise men with that of this fool. Fancy to
me now some example of wisdom you'd set up against him; one that had
spent his childhood and youth in learning the sciences and lost the
sweetest part of his life in watchings, cares, studies, and for the
remaining part of it never so much as tasted the least of pleasure;
ever sparing, poor, sad, sour, unjust, and rigorous to himself, and
troublesome and hateful to others; broken with paleness, leanness,
crassness, sore eyes, and an old age and death contracted before their
time (though yet, what matter is it, when he die that never lived?);
and such is the picture of this great wise man.
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