In all the earlier writing of Erasmus we have noted especially the quality of the moral preacher. Whatever he touched took on inevitably the tone of exhortation. And this same quality continues to appear in all his work, whenever the subject rises, even ever so little, above the level of mere grammatical detail. One ought to have this prevailing seriousness of purpose especially in mind in coming to such a piece of work as the Praise of Folly.[82] Of all Erasmus' writing, none was and is more widely known than this. It is called a satire and was intended to make men laugh. Erasmus had to apologise for it, as he did for most things he wrote, and in the introductory epistle to his dear More he apologises in advance for allowing himself so lively a diversion. There can be no doubt that the men of his day were vastly amused by it. It had for them the charm that always belongs to literary references to familiar types and figures, especially if these references are couched in colloquial phrase. Erasmus was tolerably sure of his audience, and could count upon applause from every class for the amusement it got out of his criticism of all other classes of men. Yet it is a little difficult for one of us to raise more than an honest smile at this elaborate fooling. After all, one feels the sermon underneath, and pays his tribute to the author, not primarily as a humourist, but as a man of sense who lightens his style a little, to be sure, yet remains all through plainly conscious of his mission. If one seeks an analogy, one may say, perhaps, that the Praise of Folly is about as funny as an average copy of Punch.
Erasmus' account of the origin of the Μωρία is as trifling as in the case of most of his works. He tells More that he thought it out during his journey from Italy to England in 1509, and he put it into form at More's house in London soon after. The title, Μωρίας ἐγκώμιον, he explains as a pun on More's name, the humour of it being that More was "as far from the thing as his name was near it." The book is written under the form of an oration, a declamatio the author calls it, delivered by Folly in person to an imaginary audience made up of all classes and conditions of men. Folly is a female, and this is quite in harmony with most of Erasmus' references to the sex. She wears cap and bells as her academic garb and brings to the lecture-room her attendant spirits, Self-love, Flattery, Oblivion, Laziness, Pleasure, Madness, Wantonness, Intemperance, and Sleep. Folly is the offspring of Wealth and Youth, born in the Fortunate Isles, where all things grow without toil, and nursed by the jovial nymphs, Drunkenness and Ignorance.
The oration begins by Folly commending herself as indispensable to the well-being of men. Their very existence is owing to her, for no man would put his head into the halter of marriage if he thought it over carefully beforehand as a wise man would; and no woman would marry if she carefully considered the sorrows of childbirth. Marriage therefore is owing wholly to Madness, the companion of Folly. But no woman, having once experienced the pains of child-bearing, would ever submit herself to them again but for another of Folly's ministers, Oblivion, who comes in thus to save the race. From this first example we can see how Erasmus plays with the meaning of the word "folly." It is quite impossible to define it by any one term which would cover his numerous variations, but we may see plainly from the start that it is very far from being what we mean, in plain modern English, by the word "foolishness." It comes nearer to the meaning we find in Shakespeare of "innocent" or "thoughtless." "Folly" is the opposite of studied calculation for a mere material end. It is the impulse by which men perform their noblest actions. It is imagination, idealism, sacrifice of self for others. Nowhere does Erasmus lay down any such general definition as this, but his examples show that some such meaning was in his mind, and the Folly whom he allows to praise herself is therefore really a very praiseworthy person. She hates the materialism of the Philistine—the cool, calculating merchant-spirit which would reduce life to a thing of dollars and cents—and she finds her illustrations of what is noble pretty nearly where an optimistic philosopher of modern times would find them.
The happiest times of life, says Folly, are youth and old age, and this for no reason but that they are the times most completely under the rule of folly, and least controlled by wisdom. It is the child's freedom from wisdom that makes it so charming to us; we hate a precocious child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power, to their "folly," i. e., to their obedience to impulse. "But if, perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise, she only succeeds in being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the prize-ring, a thing wholly against nature." A woman will be a woman, no matter what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her folly and make the most of it.
In dealing with Friendship, Folly first reminds her hearers that every man has his faults and plenty of them, and that everyone is all too keen in spying out the faults of others and forgetting his own. But now there could be no such thing as friendship "were it not for that which the Greeks so beautifully call εὐήθεια, and which may be translated 'folly' or 'good nature.'" Here Erasmus himself makes "stultitia" the equivalent of "morum facilitas." And not the relation of friends merely, but of husband and wife, ruler and ruled, scholar and tutor, all human relations, in short, are made tolerable by this rule of human kindness. And as the blindness of love to others makes human life bearable, so Self-love, one of Folly's intimates, is the indispensable aid to happiness, since if a man were continually ashamed of himself, of his person, his country, he would never rise to any worthy action. Courage is the very inspiration of Folly, and the proof is the stupid bungling of great thinkers when they try to do things. Socrates could not make a political speech, and showed his wisdom by declaring that a wise man ought to keep out of public business. Plato's famous saying: "happy the state that is ruled by a philosopher, or whose ruler is given to philosophy," is false, for history shows that there were never more unfortunate states than those so governed. Theorisers, in short, have ruined what they undertook to manage, but states have been saved by such divine folly as that of Quintus Curtius, who, possessed by some demon of vainglory, sacrificed himself to the infernal gods. Wise men would condemn such acts, but the pens of eloquent men have glorified them. Strange as it may seem, even the virtue of prudence is owing to folly,