In Praise of Folly

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 an other 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; for which cause, since in truth they are morotatoi, fools, and yet would appear to the

world to be wise men and Thales, we’ll even call them morosophous, wise fools.

Nor will it be amiss also to imitate the rhetoricians of our times, who think themselves in a manner

gods if like horse leeches they can but appear to be double-tongued, and believe they have done a

mighty act if in their Latin orations they can but shuffle in some ends of Greek like mosaic work,

though altogether by head and shoulders and less to the purpose. And if they want hard words, they

run over some worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of the most old and obsolete to

confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that they that understand their meaning will like it the

better, out its particular grace; for if there happen to be any mote ambitious than others, they may

give their applause with a smile, and, like the ass, shake their ears, that they may be thought to

understand more than the rest of their neighbors.

But to come to the purpose: I have given you my name, but what epithet shall I add? What but that

of the most foolish? For by what more proper name can so great a goddess as Folly be known to

her disciples? And because it is not alike known to all from what stock I am sprung, with the Muses’

good leave I’ll do my endeavor to satisfy you. But yet neither the first Chaos, Orcus, Saturn, or

Japhet, nor any of those threadbare, musty gods were my father, but Plutus, Riches; that only he,

that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the

father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and

profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels,

judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want

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Desiderius Erasmus

In Praise of Folly

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breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without whose help

all that herd of gods of the poets’ making, and those few of the better sort of the rest, either would

not be at all, or if they were, they would be but such as live at home and keep a poor house to

themselves. And to whomsoever he’s an enemy, ’tis not Pallas herself that can befriend him; as on

the contrary he whom he favors may lead Jupiter and his thunder in a string. This is my father and

in him I glory. Nor did he produce me from his brain, as Jupiter that sour and ill-looked Pallas; but

of that lovely nymph called Youth, the most beautiful and galliard of all the rest. Not was I, like

that limping blacksmith, begot in the sad and irksome bonds of matrimony. Yet, mistake me not,

’twas not that blind and decrepit Plutus in Aristophanes that got me, but such as he was in his full

strength and pride of youth; and not that only, but at such a time when he had been well heated

with nectar, of which he had, at one of the banquets of the gods, taken a dose extraordinary.

And as to the place of my birth, forasmuch as nowadays that is looked upon as a main point of

nobility, it was neither, like Apollo’s, in the floating Delos, nor Venus-like on the rolling sea, nor

in any of blind Homer’s as blind caves: but in the Fortunate Islands, where all things grew without

plowing or sowing; where neither labor, nor old age, nor disease was ever heard of; and in whose

fields neither daffodil, mallows, onions, beans, and such contemptible things would ever grow, but,

on the contrary, rue, angelica, bugloss, marjoram, trefoils, roses, violets, lilies, and all the gardens

of Adonis invite both your sight and your smelling. And being thus born, I did not begin the world,

as other children are wont, with crying; but straight perched up and smiled on my mother. Nor do

I envy to the great Jupiter the goat, his nurse, forasmuch as I was suckled by two jolly nymphs, to

wit, Drunkenness, the daughter of Bacchus, and Ignorance, of Pan. And as for such my companions

and followers as you perceive about me, if you have a mind to know who they are, you are not like

to be the wiser for me, unless it be in Greek: this here, which you observe with that proud cast of

her eye, is Philautia, Self-love; she with 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 Ecgretos 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 cloudgathering 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

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Desiderius Erasmus

In Praise of Folly

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