The Praise of Folly | Page 5

the smiling countenance,
that is ever and anon clapping her hands, is Kolakia, Flattery; she that
looks as if she were half asleep is Lethe, Oblivion; she that sits leaning
on both elbows with her hands clutched together is Misoponia,
Laziness; she with the garland on her head, and that smells so strong of
perfumes, is Hedone, Pleasure; she with those staring eyes, moving
here and there, is Anoia, Madness; she with the smooth skin and full
pampered body is Tryphe, Wantonness; and, as to the two gods that you
see with them, the one is Komos, Intemperance, the other Eegretos
hypnos, Dead Sleep. These, I say, are my household servants, and by
their faithful counsels I have subjected all things to my dominion and
erected an empire over emperors themselves. Thus have you had my
lineage, education, and companions.
And now, lest I may seem to have taken upon me the name of goddess
without cause, you shall in the next place understand how far my deity
extends, and what advantage by it I have brought both to gods and men.
For, if it was not unwisely said by somebody, that this only is to be a
god, to help men; and if they are deservedly enrolled among the gods
that first brought in corn and wine and such other things as are for the
common good of mankind, why am not I of right the alpha, or first, of
all the gods? who being but one, yet bestow all things on all men. For
first, what is more sweet or more precious than life? And yet from
whom can it more properly be said to come than from me? For neither
the crab-favoured Pallas' spear nor the cloud-gathering Jupiter's shield
either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of
gods and king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay
by his forked thunder and those looks wherewith he conquered the
giants and with which at pleasure he frightens the rest of the gods, and

like a common stage player put on a disguise as often as he goes about
that, which now and then he does, that is to say the getting of children:
And the Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show
me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put
off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what
is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his
supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles,
and for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise
man whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse
to me. But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that would submit his
neck to the noose of wedlock, if, as wise men should, he did but first
truly weigh the inconvenience of the thing? Or what woman is there
would ever go to it did she seriously consider either the peril of
child-bearing or the trouble of bringing them up? So then, if you owe
your beings to wedlock, you owe that wedlock to this my follower,
Madness; and what you owe to me I have already told you. Again, she
that has but once tried what it is, would she, do you think, make a
second venture if it were not for my other companion, Oblivion? Nay,
even Venus herself, notwithstanding whatever Lucretius has said,
would not deny but that all her virtue were lame and fruitless without
the help of my deity. For out of that little, odd, ridiculous May-game
came the supercilious philosophers, in whose room have succeeded a
kind of people the world calls monks, cardinals, priests, and the most
holy popes. And lastly, all that rabble of the poets' gods, with which
heaven is so thwacked and thronged, that though it be of so vast an
extent, they are hardly able to crowd one by another.
But I think it is a small matter that you thus owe your beginning of life
to me, unless I also show you that whatever benefit you receive in the
progress of it is of my gift likewise. For what other is this? Can that be
called life where you take away pleasure? Oh! Do you like what I say?
I knew none of you could have so little wit, or so much folly, or
wisdom rather, as to be of any other opinion. For even the Stoics
themselves that so severely cried down pleasure did but handsomely
dissemble, and railed against it to the common people to no other end
but that having discouraged them from