The Banquet | Page 5

will the wound of Fortune, with
which the ruined man is often unjustly reproached. Truly I have been a
ship without a sail and without a rudder, borne to divers ports and lands
and shores by the dry wind which blows from doleful poverty; and I
have appeared vile in the eyes of many, who perhaps through some
report may have imaged me in other form. In the sight of whom not
only my person became vile, but each work already completed was

held to be of less value than that might again be which remained yet to
be done.
The reason wherefore this happens (not only to me but to all), it now
pleases me here briefly to touch upon. And firstly, it is because rumour
goes beyond the truth; and then, what is beyond the truth restricts and
strangles it. Good report is the first born of kindly thought in the mind
of the friend; which the mind of the foe, although it may receive the
seed, conceives not.
That mind which gives birth to it in the first place, so to make its gift
more fair, as by the charity of friendship, keeps not within bounds of
truth, but passes beyond them. When one does that to adorn a tale, he
speaks against his conscience; when it is charity that causes him to pass
the bounds, he speaks not against conscience.
The second mind which receives this, not only is content with the
exaggeration of the first mind, but its own report adds its own effect of
endeavours to embellish, and so by this action, and by the deception
which it also receives from the goodwill generated in it, good report is
made more ample than it should be; either with the consent or the
dissent of the conscience; even as it was with the first mind. And the
third receiving mind does this; and the fourth; and thus the
exaggeration of good ever grows. And so, by turning the aforesaid
motives in the contrary direction, one can perceive why ill-fame in like
manner is made to grow. Wherefore Virgil says in the fourth of the
Æneid: "Let Fame live to be fickle, and grow as she goes." Clearly,
then, he who is willing may perceive that the image generated by Fame
alone is always larger, whatever it may be, than the thing imaged is, in
its true state.


CHAPTER IV.
Having previously shown the reason why Fame magnifies the good and

the evil beyond due limit, it remains in this chapter to show forth those
reasons which make evident why the Presence restricts in the opposite
way, and having shown this I will return to the principal proposition. I
say, then, that for three causes his Presence makes a person of less
value than he is. The first is childishness, I do not say of age, but of
mind; the second is envy; and these are in the judge: the third is human
impurity; and this is in the person judged. The first, one can briefly
reason thus: the greater part of men live according to sense and not
according to reason, after the manner of children, and the like of these
judge things simply from without; and the goodness which is ordained
to a fit end they perceive not, because the eyes of Reason, which they
need in order to perceive it, are closed. Hence, they soon see all that
they can, and judge according to their sight.
And forasmuch as any opinion they form on the good fame of others,
from hearsay, with which, in the presence of the person judged, their
imperfect judgment may dissent, they amend not according to reason,
because they judge merely according to sense, they will deem that
which they have first heard to be a lie as it were, and dispraise the
person who was previously praised. Hence, in such men, and such are
almost all, Presence restricts the one fame and the other. Such men as
these are inconstant and are soon cloyed; they are often gay and often
sad from brief joys and sorrows; speedy friends and speedy foes; each
thing they do like children, without the use of reason.
The second observation from these reasons is, that due comparison is
cause for envy to the vicious; and envy is a cause of evil judgment,
because it does not permit Reason to argue for that which is envied, and
the judicial power is then like the judge who hears only one side. Hence,
when such men as these perceive a person to be famous, they are
immediately jealous, because they compare members and powers; and
they fear, on account of the excellence of such an one, to be themselves
accounted of less worth; and these passionate