"for the wise man goes to the books of the ancients and gets out of them nothing but wordy discussions, while the fool, grappling with the world in hand-to-hand conflict, learns, if I mistake not, the true prudence." "Modesty and fear are the two great obstacles to the understanding of affairs; but Folly, being hindered by neither of these, blushes at nothing and attempts everything."
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A THEOLOGIAN. HOLBEIN'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY." |
A COUNCIL OF THEOLOGIANS. HOLBEIN'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE "PRAISE OF FOLLY." |
The wise man thinks of reason only and leaves all the passions to Folly, but when this kind of thing has its perfect work, as among the Stoics, then you have left
"not so much a man as a new kind of god that never yet existed anywhere and never will; or rather, to say it plainly, a marble image of a man, dull and almost devoid of human sensibility; a man who measures everything by the line, never makes any mistakes himself, but has the eye of a lynx for the least failings of others. That's the kind of a beast your truly wise man is!"
But who has any use for such a creature? Who would have him for a ruler, a general, a husband, a friend?
"Who would not prefer one taken out of the very midst of the crowd of fools, who being a fool himself would know how to command and obey fools, who would be agreeable to his kind, namely, the great majority of men, pleasant to his wife, merry with his friends, a lively table-companion, a good-tempered comrade, in short a man 'qui nihil humani a se alienum putet'—'who holds nothing human foreign to himself.'"