In Praise of Folly

have the ill will of all the grammarians. I knew in my time one of many arts, a Grecian, a Latinist,

a mathematician, a philosopher, a physician, a man master of them all, and sixty years of age, who,

laying by all the rest, perplexed and tormented himself for above twenty years in the study of

grammar, fully reckoning himself a prince if he might but live so long till he could certainly

determine how the eight parts of speech were to be distinguished, which none of the Greeks or

Latins had yet fully cleared: as if it were a matter to be decided by the sword if a man made an

adverb of a conjunction. And for this cause is it that we have as many grammars as grammarians;

nay more, forasmuch as my friend Aldus has given us above five, not passing by any kind of

grammar, how barbarously or tediously soever compiled, which he has not turned over and examined;

envying every man’s attempts in this kind, rather to be pitied than happy, as persons that are ever

tormenting themselves; adding, changing, putting in, blotting out, revising, reprinting, showing it

to friends, and nine years in correcting, yet never fully satisfied; at so great a rate do they purchase

this vain reward, to wit, praise, and that too of a very few, with so many watchings, so much sweat,

so much vexation and loss of sleep, the most precious of all things. Add to this the waste of health,

spoil of complexion, weakness of eyes or rather blindness, poverty, envy, abstinence from pleasure,

over-hasty old age, untimely death, and the like; so highly does this wise man value the approbation

of one or two blear-eyed fellows. But how much happier is this my writer’s dotage who never

studies for anything but puts in writing whatever he pleases or what comes first in his head, though

it be but his dreams; and all this with small waste of paper, as well knowing that the vainer those

trifles are, the higher esteem they will have with the greater number, that is to say all the fools and

unlearned. And what matter is it to slight those few learned if yet they ever read them? Or of what

authority will the censure of so few wise men be against so great a cloud of gainsayers?

But they are the wiser that put out other men’s works for their own, and transfer that glory which

others with great pains have obtained to themselves; relying on this, that they conceive, though it

should so happen that their theft be never so plainly detected, that yet they should enjoy the pleasure

of it for the present. And ’tis worth one’s while to consider how they please themselves when they

are applauded by the common people, pointed at in a crowd, “This is that excellent person;” lie on

booksellers’ stalls; and in the top of every page have three hard words read, but chiefly exotic and

next degree to conjuring; which, by the immortal gods! what are they but mere words? And again,

if you consider the world, by how few understood, and praised by fewer! for even among the

unlearned there are different palates. Or what is it that their own very names are often counterfeit

or borrowed from some books of the ancients? When one styles himself Telemachus, another

Sthenelus, a third Laertes, a fourth Polycrates, a fifth Thrasymachus. So that there is no difference

whether they title their books with the “Tale of a Tub,” or, according to the philosophers, by alpha,

beta.

But the most pleasant of all is to see them praise one another with reciprocal epistles, verses, and

encomiums; fools their fellow fools, and dunces their brother dunces. This, in the other’s opinion,

is an absolute Alcaeus; and the other, in his, a very Callimachus. He looks upon Tully as nothing

to the other, and the other again pronounces him more learned than Plato. And sometimes too they

pick out their antagonist and think to raise themselves a fame by writing one against the other;

while the giddy multitude are so long divided to whether of the two they shall determine the victory,

till each goes off conqueror, and, as if he had done some great action, fancies himself a triumph.

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In Praise of Folly

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And now wise men laugh at these things as foolish, as indeed they are. Who denies it? Yet in the

meantime, such is my kindness to them, they live a merry life and would not change their imaginary

triumphs, no, not with the Scipioes. While yet those learned men, though they laugh their fill and

reap the benefit of the other’s folly, cannot without ingratitude deny but that even they too are not

a little beholding to me themselves.

And among them our advocates challenge the first place, nor is there any sort of people that please

themselves like them: for while they daily roll Sisyphus his stone, and quote you a thousand cases,

as it were, in a breath no matter how little to the purpose, and heap glosses upon glosses, and

opinions on the neck of opinions, they bring it at last to this pass, that that study of all other seems

the most difficult. Add to these our logicians and sophists, a generation of men more prattling than

an echo and the worst of them able to outchat a hundred of the best picked gossips. And yet their

condition would be much better were they only full of words and not so given to scolding that they

most obstinately hack and hew one another about a matter of nothing and make such a sputter about

terms and words till they have quite lost the sense. And yet they are so happy in the good opinion

of themselves that as soon as they are furnished with two or three syllogisms, they dare boldly enter

the lists against any man upon any point, as not doubting but to run him down with noise, though

the opponent were another Stentor.

And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for their furred gowns and starched

beards that they look upon themselves as the only wise men and all others as shadows. And yet

how pleasantly do they dote while they frame in their heads innumerable worlds; measure out the

sun, the moon, the stars, nay and heaven itself, as it were, with a pair of compasses; lay down the

causes of lightning, winds, eclipses, and other the like inexplicable matters; and all this too without

the least doubting, as if they were Nature’s secretaries, or dropped down among us from the council

of the gods; while in the meantime Nature laughs at them and all their blind conjectures. For that

they know nothing, even this is a sufficient argument, that they don’t agree among themselves and

so are incomprehensible touching every particular. These, though they have not the least degree of

knowledge, profess yet that they have mastered all; nay, though they neither know themselves, nor

perceive a ditch or block that lies in their way, for that perhaps most of them are half blind, or their

wits a wool-gathering, yet give out that they have discovered ideas, universalities, separated forms,

first matters, quiddities, haecceities, formalities, and the like stuff; things so thin and bodiless that

I believe even Lynceus himself was not able to perceive them. But then chiefly do they disdain the

unhallowed crowd as often as with their triangles, quadrangles, circles, and the like mathematical

devices, more confounded than a labyrinth, and letters disposed one against the other, as it were in

battle array, they cast a mist before the eyes of the ignorant. Nor is there wanting of this kind some

that pretend to foretell things by the stars and make promises of miracles beyond all things of

soothsaying, and are so fortunate as to meet with people that believe them.

But perhaps I had better pass over our divines in silence and not stir this pool or touch this fair but

unsavory plant, as a kind of men that are supercilious beyond comparison, and to that too, implacable;

lest setting them about my ears, they attack me by troops and force me to a recantation sermon,

which if I refuse, they straight pronounce me a heretic. For this is the thunderbolt with which they

fright those whom they are resolved not to favor. And truly, though there are few others that less

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Desiderius Erasmus

In Praise of Folly

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