In Praise of Folly

of evil acts, not terrified with the fables of ghosts, nor frightened with spirits and goblins. They are

not distracted with the fear of evils to come nor the hopes of future good. In short, they are not

disturbed with those thousand of cares to which this life is subject. They are neither modest, nor

fearful, nor ambitious, nor envious, nor love they any man. And lastly, if they should come nearer

even to the very ignorance of brutes, they could not sin, for so hold the divines. And now tell me,

you wise fool, with how many troublesome cares your mind is continually perplexed; heap together

all the discommodities of your life, and then you’ll be sensible from how many evils I have delivered

my fools. Add to this that they are not only merry, play, sing, and laugh themselves, but make mirth

wherever they come, a special privilege it seems the gods have given them to refresh the pensiveness

of life. Whence it is that whereas the world is so differently affected one towards another, that all

men indifferently admit them as their companions, desire, feed, cherish, embrace them, take their

parts upon all occasions, and permit them without offense to do or say what they like. And so little

does everything desire to hurt them, that even the very beasts, by a kind of natural instinct of their

innocence no doubt, pass by their injuries. For of them it may be truly said that they are consecrate

to the gods, and therefore and not without cause do men have them in such esteem. 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

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In Praise of Folly

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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 quickwitted, 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.

And here again do those frogs of the Stoics croak at me and say that nothing is more miserable than

madness. But folly is the next degree, if not the very thing. For what else is madness than for a man

to be out of his wits? But to let them see how they are clean out of the way, with the Muses’ good

favor we’ll take this syllogism in pieces. Subtly argued, I must confess, but as Socrates in Plato

teaches us how by splitting one Venus and one Cupid to make two of either, in like manner should

those logicians have done and distinguished madness from madness, if at least they would be

thought to be well in their wits themselves. For all madness is not miserable, or Horace had never

called his poetical fury a beloved madness; nor Plato placed the raptures of poets, prophets, and

lovers among the chiefest blessings of this life; nor that sibyl in Virgil called Aeneas’ travels mad

labors. But there are two sorts of madness, the one that which the revengeful Furies send privily

from hell, as often as they let loose their snakes and put into men’s breasts either the desire of war,

or an insatiate thirst after gold, or some dishonest love, or parricide, or incest, or sacrilege, or the

like plagues, or when they terrify some guilty soul with the conscience of his crimes; the other, but

nothing like this, that which comes from me and is of all other things the most desirable; which

happens as often as some pleasing dotage not only clears the mind of its troublesome cares but

renders it more jocund. And this was that which, as a special blessing of the gods, Cicero, writing

to his friend Atticus, wished to himself, that he might be the less sensible of those miseries that

then hung over the commonwealth.

Nor was that Grecian in Horace much wide of it, who was so far mad that he would sit by himself

whole days in the theatre laughing and clapping his hands, as if he had seen some tragedy acting,

whereas in truth there was nothing presented; yet in other things a man well enough, pleasant among

his friends, kind to his wife, and so good a master to his servants that if they had broken the seal

of his bottle, he would not have run mad for it. But at last, when by the care of his friends and

physic he was freed from his distemper and become his own man again, he thus expostulates with

them, “Now, by Pollux, my friends, you have rather killed than preserved me in thus forcing me

from my pleasure.” By which you see he liked it so well that he lost it against his will. And trust

me, I think they were the madder of the two, and had the greater need of hellebore, that should

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In Praise of Folly

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