The Praise of Folly | Page 3

effect, to wit, to remove the trouble of the mind, I have done
it at once with my single look.
But if you ask me why I appear before you in this strange dress, be
pleased to lend me your ears, and I'll tell you; not those ears, I mean,
you carry to church, but abroad with you, such as you are wont to prick
up to jugglers, fools, and buffoons, and such as our friend Midas once
gave to Pan. For I am disposed awhile to play the sophist with you; not
of their sort who nowadays boozle young men's heads with certain
empty notions and curious trifles, yet teach them nothing but a more

than womanish obstinacy of scolding: but I'll imitate those ancients
who, that they might the better avoid that infamous appellation of sophi
or wise, chose rather to be called sophists. Their business was to
celebrate the praises of the gods and valiant men. And the like
encomium shall you hear from me, but neither of Hercules nor Solon,
but my own dear self, that is to say, Folly. Nor do I esteem a rush that
call it a foolish and insolent thing to praise one's self. Be it as foolish as
they would make it, so they confess it proper: and what can be more
than that Folly be her own trumpet? For who can set me out better than
myself, unless perhaps I could be better known to another than to
myself? Though yet I think it somewhat more modest than the general
practice of our nobles and wise men who, throwing away all shame,
hire some flattering orator or lying poet from whose mouth they may
hear their praises, that is to say, mere lies; and yet, composing
themselves with a seeming modesty, spread out their peacock's plumes
and erect their crests, while this impudent flatterer equals a man of
nothing to the gods and proposes him as an absolute pattern of all
virtue that's wholly a stranger to it, sets out a pitiful jay in other's
feathers, washes the blackamoor white, and lastly swells a gnat to an
elephant. In short, I will follow that old proverb that says, "He may
lawfully praise himself that lives far from neighbors." Though, by the
way, I cannot but wonder at the ingratitude, shall I say, or negligence of
men who, notwithstanding they honor me in the first place and are
willing enough to confess my bounty, yet not one of them for these so
many ages has there been who in some thankful oration has set out the
praises of Folly; when yet there has not wanted them whose elaborate
endeavors have extolled tyrants, agues, flies, baldness, and such other
pests of nature, to their own loss of both time and sleep. And now you
shall hear from me a plain extemporary speech, but so much the truer.
Nor would I have you think it like the rest of orators, made for the
ostentation of wit; for these, as you know, when they have been beating
their heads some thirty years about an oration and at last perhaps
produce somewhat that was never their own, shall yet swear they
composed it in three days, and that too for diversion: whereas I ever
liked it best to speak whatever came first out.
But let none of you expect from me that after the manner of

rhetoricians I should go about to define what I am, much less use any
division; for I hold it equally unlucky to circumscribe her whose deity
is universal, or make the least division in that worship about which
everything is so generally agreed. Or to what purpose, think you,
should I describe myself when I am here present before you, and you
behold me speaking? For I am, as you see, that true and only giver of
wealth whom the Greeks call Moria, the Latins Stultitia, and our plain
English Folly. Or what need was there to have said so much, as if my
very looks were not sufficient to inform you who I am? Or as if any
man, mistaking me for wisdom, could not at first sight convince
himself by my face the true index of my mind? I am no counterfeit, nor
do I carry one thing in my looks and another in my breast. No, I am in
every respect so like myself that neither can they dissemble me who
arrogate to themselves the appearance and title of wise men and walk
like asses in scarlet hoods, though after all their hypocrisy Midas' ears
will discover their master. A most ungrateful generation of men that,
when they are wholly given up to my party, are yet publicly ashamed of
the name, as taking it for a reproach;