Siramnes the Persian replied to those who were amazed that his enterprises turned out so badly, seeing that his projects were so wise, by saying that he alone was master of his projects while Fortune was mistress of the outcome of his enterprises: they too could make the same reply to explain the opposite tendency.*
Most of this world’s events happen by themselves:
Fata viam inveniunt.
[The Fates find a way.]†
The outcome often lends authority to the most inept leadership. Our intervention is virtually no more than a habit, the result of tradition and example rather than of reason. I was once astounded by the greatness of a venture; I then learnt from those who had brought it to a successful conclusion what their motives were and what methods they used: I found nothing but ordinary notions.
Indeed the most ordinary usual ones are also perhaps the most reliable and the most suitable in practice if not for show. What if the most lowly reasons are the most solidly based? What if the most humble, most lax and best-trodden ones are the most suited to our concerns? If we are to safeguard the authority of the Privy Council we do not need laymen participating in it nor seeing further than the first obstacle. If we want to maintain its reputation it must be taken on trust, as a whole.
My thought sketches out the matter for a while and dwells lightly on the first aspects of it: then I usually leave the principal thrust of the task to heaven.
Permitte divis caetera.
[Entrust the rest to the gods.]
To my mind Good Luck and Bad Luck are two sovereign powers. There is no wisdom in thinking that the role of Fortune can be played by human wisdom. What he undertakes is vain if a man should presume to embrace both causes and consequences and to lead the progress of his action by the hand; and it is especially vain in counsels of war. Never were there more military circumspection and prudence than I sometimes see practised among us: perhaps we fear that we shall get lost en route, and therefore keep ourselves in reserve for the climax in the final act!
I will go on to say that our very wisdom and mature reflections are for the most part led by chance. My will and my reasoning are stirred this way and that. And many of their movements govern themselves without me. My reason is daily subject to incitements and agitations which are due to chance:
Vertuntur species animorum, et pectora motus
Nunc alios, alios dum nubila ventus agebat,
Concipiunt.
[Their minds’ ideas are ever turning round; the emotions in their breasts are driven hither and thither like clouds before the wind.]*
Look and see who wield most power in our cities; who do their jobs best. You will find that they are usually the least clever. There have been cases when women, children and lunatics have ruled their states equally as well as the most talented princes. Coarse men more usually succeed in such things, says Thucydides, better than the subtle ones do.† We ascribe the deeds of their good fortune to their wisdom.
Ut quisque fortuna utitur
Ita praecellet, atque exinde sapere illum omnes dicimus.
[Each outstanding man is raised by his good fortune; we then say that he is clever.]
That is why I insist that, in all our activities, their outcomes provide meagre testimony of our worth and ability.
Now I was just about to say that it merely suffices for us to see a man raised to great dignity; even though we knew him three days before to be a negligible man, there seeps into our opinions, unawares, a notion of greatness, of talents, and we convince ourselves that by growing in style and reputation he has grown in merit. Our judgements of him are not based on his worth but (as is the case with the counters of an abacus) on the tokens of rank. Let his luck turn again, let him have a fall and be lost in the crowd again, then we all ask in wonder what had made him soar so high! ‘Is this the same man?’ we ask. ‘Did he not know more about it when he was up there? Are princes satisfied with so little? We were in good hands, indeed we were!’
That is something I have seen many times in my own days.
Why, even the mask of greatness which is staged in our plays affects us somewhat and deceives us. What I worship in kings is the crowd of their worshippers. Everything should bow and submit to our kings – except our intelligence. My reason was not made for bending and bowing, my knees were.
When Melanthius was asked how Dionysius’ tragedy appeared to him, ‘I never saw it,’ he replied. ‘It was obscured by the words!’ So, too, most of those who judge what the great have to say ought to answer: ‘I never heard his words: they were too much obscured by his dignity, grandeur and majesty.’*
One day, when Antisthenes urged the Athenians to command that donkeys be used, as their horses were, to plough their fields, he was told that donkeys were not born for such a service. ‘That does not matter,’ he retorted. ‘It all depends on your issuing the order: for the most ignorant and incompetent men whom you put in command of your wars never fail to become suddenly most worthy of command, because it is you who employ them!’†
Related to this is the practice of so many people to sanctify the kings whom they have chosen from among themselves. They are not contented with honouring them: they need to worship them. The people of Mexico dare not look at the face of their king once they have completed the rites of his enthronement, but as though they had deified him by his royal state they make him swear not merely to maintain their religion, laws and liberties and to be valiant, just and debonair, he must also swear to cause the sun to run shining with its accustomed light, the clouds to break in due season, the rivers to flow in their courses and the earth to bring forth all things needful for his people.‡
I am opposed to that widespread fashion and I most doubt a man’s ability when I see it accompanied by great rank and public acclaim. We should remember what it means to a man to be able to speak when he wants to, to choose the right moment, to break off the discussion or switch the subject with the authority of a master, to defend himself against objections with a shake of the head, a little smile or with silence, in front of courtiers who tremble with reverence and respect.
A monstrously rich man, when some trivial matter was being aired casually over dinner, joined in the discussion and began with these very words: ‘Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or a liar,’ and so on. You had better follow up that philosophical thrust with a dagger in your hand!
Here is another warning, which I find most useful: in debates and discussions we should not immediately be impressed by what we take to be a man’s own bons mots. Most men are rich with other men’s abilities. It may well be that such-and-such a man makes a fine remark, a good reply or a pithy saying, advancing it without realizing its power. (That we do not grasp everything we borrow can doubtless be proved from my own case.) We should not always give way, no matter what beauty or truth it may have. We should either seriously attack it or else, under pretence of not understanding it, retreat a little so as to probe it thoroughly and to discover how it is lodged in its author. We may be helping his sword-thrust to carry beyond his reach, running on to it ourselves. There have been times when, pressed by necessity in the duel of words, I have made counter-attacks which struck home more than I ever hoped or expected. I was counting their number: they were accepted for their weight.
When I am disputing with a man of strong arguments I enjoy anticipating his conclusions; I save him the bother of explaining himself; I make an assay at forestalling his ideas while they are still unfinished and being formed (the order and stretch of his intelligence warn me and threaten me from afar). Similarly, with those others I mentioned I do quite the opposite: we should suppose nothing, understand nothing but what they explain. If their judgements are apposite but expressed in universals – ‘This is good: that is bad’ – find out whether it is luck which makes them apposite. Make them circumscribe and restrict their verdict a little: ‘Why is it good? How is it good?’ Those universal judgements (which I find so common) say nothing. They are like those who greet pe
ople as a mass or a crowd: those who have genuine knowledge of them greet them by name and distinguish them as individuals. But it is a chancy business. Which explains why, on average more than once a day, I have seen men with ill-founded minds trying to act clever by showing me some beautiful detail in the book they are reading, but choosing so badly the point on which they fix their admiration that instead of revealing the excellence of their author they reveal their own ignorance.
When you have just listened to a whole page of Virgil you can safely exclaim, ‘Now that is beautiful!’ The cunning ones escape that way. But to undertake to go back over the detail of a good author, to try to indicate with precise and selected examples where he surpasses himself and where he flies high by weighing his words and his locutions and his choice of materials one after another: not many try that. ‘Videndum est non modo quid quisque loquatur, sed etiam quid quisque sentiat, atque etiam qua de causa quisque sentiat.’ [We should not only examine what each one says, but what are his opinions and what grounds he has for holding them.]* Day after day I hear stupid people uttering words which are not stupid. They say something good; let us discover how deeply they understand it and where they got hold of it. They do not own that fine saying or that fine reasoning, but we help them to use it. They are only looking after it. Perhaps they only produced it fortuitously, hesitantly: it is we who give it credit and value. You are lending them a hand. But why? They feel no gratitude towards you for it and become all the more silly. Do not support them; let them go their own way: they will handle that material like a man who fears getting scalded: they dare not show it in a different light or context nor to deepen it. Give it the tiniest shaking and it slips away from them: then, strong and beautiful though it be, they surrender it to you. They have beautiful weapons, but the handles are loose! How often have I learnt that from experience!
Now, if you come and clarify and reinforce it for them, they immediately take advantage of your interpretation and rob you of it: ‘That is what I was about to say,’ or, ‘That is how I understand it, exactly,’ or, ‘If I did not put it that way it was because I could not find the right words.’ – Bluster on! We should use even cunning to punish such arrogant stupidity.
Hegesias’ principle that we should neither hate nor blame but instruct is right elsewhere but not here.† There is neither justice nor kindness in helping a man to get up who does not know how to use your help and who is all the worse for it. I like to let them sink deeper in the mire and to get even more entangled – so deeply that, if possible, even they finally realize it!
You cannot cure silliness and unreasonableness by one act of warning. Of that sort of cure we can properly say what Cyrus replied to the man who urged him to give an exhortation to his troops at the moment of battle: that men are not made courageous warriors on the battlefield by a good harangue any more than you can become a good musician by hearing a good song.* Apprenticeships must be served, before you set hand to anything, by long and sustained study.
It is to our own folk that we owe this obligation to be assiduous in correcting and instructing; but to go preaching at the first passer-by or to read lectures on ignorance and silliness to the first man we come across is a practice which I loathe. I rarely do it during discussions in which I am involved; I prefer to let it all go by rather than to resort to such remote and donnish lecturing. My humour is unsuited, both in speaking and writing, to those who are learning first principles. But however false or absurd I judge things to be which are said in company or before a third party, I never leap in to interrupt them by word or gesture.
Meanwhile nothing in stupidity irritates me more than its being much more pleased with itself than any reasonableness could reasonably be. It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance. It is the least clever of men who look down at others over their shoulders, always returning from the fray full of glory and joyfulness. And as often as not their haughty language and their happy faces win them victory in the eyes of the bystanders who are generally feeble in judging and incapable of discerning real superiority. The surest proof of animal-stupidity is ardent obstinacy of opinion. Is there anything more certain, decided, disdainful, contemplative, grave and serious, than a donkey?
Perhaps we may include in the category of conversation and discussion those short pointed exchanges which happiness and intimacy introduce among friends when pleasantly joking together and sharply mocking each other. That is a sport for which my natural gaiety makes me rather well-suited; and if it is not as tensely serious as the other sport I have just described, it is no less keen and clever, nor, as it seemed to Lycurgus, any less useful. Where I am concerned I contribute more licence than wit, being more happy in that than in finding my material; but I am a perfect target, for I can put up with retaliation without getting angry not merely when sharp but even when rude. When I am suddenly attacked, if I cannot at once find a good repartee I do not waste time following up that thrust with vague boring contestations akin to stubbornness but I let it go by, cheerfully flapping down my ears and waiting for a better moment to get my own back. No huckster wins every haggle.
Most people, when their arguments fail, change voice and expression, and instead of retrieving themselves betray their weaknesses and susceptibility by an unmannerly anger. In the excitement of jesting we can sometimes nip those secret chords of one another’s imperfections which we cannot even pluck without offence when we are calm; we warn each other profitably of each other’s faults. There are other sports, physical ones, rash and harsh in the French manner, which I hate unto death. I am touchy and sensitive about such things: in my lifetime I have seen two princes of the blood royal laid in their graves because of them. It is an ugly thing to fight for fun.*
In addition when I want to judge another man I ask him to what extent he is himself satisfied; how far he is happy with what he has said or written. I want him to avoid those fine excuses: ‘I was only playing at it’ –
Ablatum mediis opus est incudibus istud
[It was taken off the anvil only half finished]†
– ‘I only spent an hour on it’; ‘I have not seen it since’. – ‘All right,’ I say: ‘let us leave those examples. Show me something which does represent you entirely, something by which you are happy to be measured.’ And then I say, ‘What do you consider the most beautiful aspect of your work? Is it this quality or that quality? Is it its gracious style, its subject-matter, your discovery of the material, your judgement, your erudition?’
For I normally find that men are as wrong in judging their own work as other people’s, not simply because their emotions are involved but because they lack the ability to understand it and to analyse it. The work itself, by its own momentum and fortune, can favour the author beyond his own understanding and research; it can run ahead of him. There is no work that I can judge with less certainty than my own: the Essays I place – very hesitantly and with little assurance – sometimes low, sometimes high.
Many books are useful for their subject-matter: their authors derive little glory from them. And there are good books which as far as good workmanship is concerned are a disgrace to their authors. I could write about our style of feasting, about our clothing – and I could write it gracelessly; I could publish contemporary edicts and the letters of princes which come into the public domain; I could make an abridgement of a good book (and every abridgement of a good book is a daft one) and then the book itself could chance to get lost. Things like that. From such compilations posterity would derive unique assistance: but what honour would I derive from them except for being lucky? A good proportion of famous books fall in that category.
When I was reading a few years ago Philippe de Commines – a very good author, certainly – I noted the following saying as being above average: ‘We should be wary of doing such great services to our master that we render him unable to
reward them justly.’ I should have praised not him but his discovery of a topic. Not long ago I came upon this sentence in Tacitus: ‘Beneficia eo usque laeta sunt dum videntur exolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur.’ [Good turns are pleasing only in so far as they seem repayable. Much beyond that we repay with hatred not gratitude.] Seneca puts it forcefully: ‘Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere, non vult esse cui reddat.’ [He for whom not to repay is a disgrace wants his benefactor dead.] Quintus Cicero, with a laxer turn of phrase, writes: ‘Qui se non putat satisfacere, amicus esse nullo modo potest.’ [He who cannot repay his debt to you can in no wise love you.]*
An author’s subject can, when appropriate, show him to be erudite or retentive, but if you are to judge what qualities in him most truly belong to him and are the most honourable (I mean the force and beauty of his soul) you must know what is really his and what definitely is not; and in that which is not, how much we are indebted to him for his selection, disposition, ornamentation and the literary quality of what he had contributed. Supposing he has taken somebody else’s matter and then ruined the style, as often happens! People like us who have little experience of books are in difficulties when we come across some fine example of ingenuity in a modern poet or some strong argument in a preacher. We dare not praise them for it before we have learned from a scholar whether that item is original to them or taken from another. Until I have done that I remain suspicious.
On Friendship (Penguin) Page 5