De planctu naturae

Behold how the tenacious flesh of avarice tears freedom away from the wings of the human mind.

On arrogance. Now we must consider how the swollen pomposity of insolent arrogance lifts human minds into puffed pride, by whose deadly contagion of infirmity the multitude of men is corrupted, while, insolently exalting itself above itself, it sinks ruinously below itself, diminishing itself by its arrogance, pressing itself down by its self-exaltation, stripping itself away by its own puffed display. In these men, either a solemn pomposity of words, or silence, mother of suspicion, or some particular specification of conduct, or an insolent affectation of gesture, or excessive corruption of the body, betrays outwardly the pride that lies within. For some, though the humility of servile condition brings them low, boast of a lofty freedom; others, though the vileness of a scurrilous birth makes them common, exalt themselves in word alone by nobility of blood. Others, though still wailing in the cradle of grammatical art, still nursing at its breasts, profess to hold the very summit of Aristotelian subtlety. Others, though numbed by the frosts of hare-like timidity, by the sole remedy of wordiness put on a lion's boldness. There are others who plainly speak, by outward silence, what the haughtiness of inward indignation shuts up within: for to others lying at a lower level of conduct, or their equals in like uprightness, or even to those flourishing in a loftier height of dignity, they disdain to share any part in mutual conversation; and if anyone begs a word of them by the favor of a question, the answer is withheld from the question by so vast a gap of silence that it seems to bear no kinship to it at all. Others, delighting to make their own acts distinctive, labor in every way to be singular in the crowd, particular amid generality, contrary within universality, different within unity. For while others engage in conversation, these indulge in silences; while others are loosened into wantonness, these seem entangled in gravity; while others are entangled in grave affairs, these idle away their time in wantonness. While others are made cheerful in countenance by a certain festive serenity, these display in their face a kind of tempest of malevolent severity. Others shape the gestures of inward pride by an outward affectation of gesture: as though they despised all earthly things, they gaze upward at the heavens lying on their backs, they turn their eyes aside in disdain; they raise their eyebrows, they tilt their chin back in haughtiness, they bend their arms into the shape of bows. Their very feet barely touch the earth, only with the tips of their toes. Others, however, make their bodies far too effeminate with womanish arrangements, who with the help of the comb bring their gathered hair into such peace that not even a gentle breeze could stir up disorder in it; they also mow down the luxuriant fringes of their eyebrows with the aid of scissors, or pluck away the excess from that same thicket by uprooting it; they lay frequent ambushes with the razor against the sprouting beard, so that it dares not sprout even a little; their arms complain of the tightness of their sleeves; their feet are imprisoned in the narrow dungeons of their shoes. Alas! Whence comes such pride, such arrogance, to man? whose birth is full of misery, whose life is worn down by toilsome penalty, whose penalty is closed by the more penal necessity of death; whose whole being, whose every moment, whose life is shipwreck, whose world is exile: whose life either is absent, or promises absence, while death presses close, or threatens to press close.

On envy. From pride, indeed, a daughter is born, who inherits her mother's malignity. This is envy, which wastes away the souls of men with the rust-eaten gnawing of continual detraction. This is the worm whose bite makes the given health of the mind waste into corruption; the mind's sincerity rots into decay; the mind's rest melts away into labor. This is the guest who, once received into hospitality by his host, undermines that very hospitality. This is a possession that most wickedly possesses its own possessor, which, while it harasses others with the barking of detraction, disturbs its own possessor's soul, piercing it with an inward gnawing. This is envy, which, toward those whom the hell of vices swallows up, from whom the reason of nature has stripped away the body's gifts, whom mad fortune has vomited out into poverty, lets the stings of its indignant detraction lie idle. But if someone swims in a torrent of riches with Croesus, scatters wealth like Cyrus, contends in beauty with Narcissus, thunders with the spirit of Turnus, matches Hercules in strength, contemplates philosophy face to face with Plato, is sealed by the mirror of chastity with Hippolytus, against this man envy spends all the stings of its detractions. For it assigns his boldness to the madness of rashness, and twists his prudence of mind into the cunning of fraud, or into the bombast of verbosity. Through this same detraction, even modesty degenerates into hypocrisy. This canker of envy wastes away a great many, who, while trying to strip the brightness from another's fame, are the first to feel the harm to their own uprightness. To these, another's prosperity seems adversity, another's adversity seems prosperity. These grieve at another's rejoicing, and rejoice at another's grief. These measure their own riches by another's poverty, and their own poverty by another's riches. These either try to cloud the clear sky of another's fame with the fog of detraction, or to steal its glory by silence alone. These either ferment the sincerity of another's uprightness with wicked interpretations, or wed the leaven of falsehood to truth. Alas, what monster is more monstrous than envy? what loss more ruinous? what fault more culpable? what punishment more penal? This is the abyss of erring blindness, the hell of the human mind, the goad of strife, the sting of anxiety. What are the movements of envy, but enemies of human tranquility, agents of the plundering of the mind? hostile vigils of a laboring soul, sentinels set against another's happiness? What good does it do a man if the serenity of prospering fortune smiles upon him, if his body too grows glad in the purple radiance of beauty, if besides his mind shines forth with the splendor of wisdom, when the banditry of envious malice plunders the riches of his mind? when it turns the serenity of prospering fortune into the clouds of adversity? when it converts the gold of comeliness into the dross of baseness? when inglorious spite strips the glory from prudence?

Remedies against envy. Yet if anyone wishes to banish the rust of malice, the moth of envy, from the treasury of the mind, let him find his own sorrow in another's sorrow by grieving with him, let him make another's joy his own by rejoicing with him, let him weigh his own riches in another's wealth, let him mourn his own poverty in another's poverty. If you see another's uprightness celebrated with the solemn rites of fame, do not make that festal day of praise a common day by any detraction, but rather let the lamp of another's uprightness, brought forth into the noonday of your own proclamation, shine forth the more brightly. If you see some indulging in the barking of detractions against the honors of another's fame, remove yourself from the pack of barking dogs, or, by the check of admonition, blunt their detracting tongues, wear down the teeth of their gnawing, and bite back the bites of their detractions.

On flattery. To this disguised emblem of the vices, flattery attaches its own share of malignity. By this plague are struck the courtiers of princes, the palace hounds, the artisans of flattery, the craftsmen of praise, the potters of falsehood. These are they who blast the grandiloquent trumpet of commendation into the ears of the rich; who belch forth outwardly the honeyed honeycombs of flattery; who, in order to milk out gifts, anoint the head of the rich man with the oil of flattery; who slip pillows of praise beneath the ears of prelates, who either shake imaginary dust from their cloaks, or sophistically pluck feathers from a garment that has none. These redeem, with begged-for suffrages of praise, the acts of the rich upon which the disfavor of indignant reputation has spat. These set up praises in exchange for gifts, favors in exchange for presents, the proclamations of flattering fame in exchange for a price. For if a torrent of prodigality gleams forth in the house of a rich man, the flatterer pours himself out wholly in praise of that prodigality; but if the rich man's gift smells of the torpor of wintry avarice, the flatterer, avaricious in his praise of commendation, grows cold in his gift of words: but if a gift seems, by its very greatness, to demand the drums of praise, the poet of flattery swells with a lofty style of commendation. But if the poverty of the gift begs for the suffrages of fame, he impoverishes the dignity of fame with a humbler style; since where the loftiness of the gift pleads its own case, the flatterer belches forth from the treasury of his heart hypocritical praises, shadowy reputations. For if the man for whom the gift speaks has been cast down by so great a storm of baseness that scarcely any fragments of natural gifts remain in him, the poems of flattery will dream for him the prerogative of beauty; they will falsely proclaim the narrowest confines of small-mindedness to be the palaces of magnanimity; they will bring forth into excess the low hiding places of sluggish avarice as prodigality; they will falsely proclaim, with the title of Caesarean nobility, the lowliness of a common birth. What more? If in someone a multitude of crimes is encamped, excused by no virtue from vice, when a gift comes forward as mediator, the flatterer, hired for praise, thinly colors the appearance of vice with a superficial cloak of commendation. On the other hand, if the full noonday of every comeliness grows glad in someone's face, if his tongue shines with the silver pearls of eloquence, if the bedchamber of his mind flashes with the ornaments of virtue, yet, if the artisan of flattery does not expect the favor of a gift, he labors to mix clouds with the very summits of vice into so great a light of honesty. What, then, is the anointing of flattery, but the milking-out of gifts? What is the courting of commendation, but the mockery of prelates? What is the smiling of praise, but the derision of those very men? For since speech is the faithful interpreter of understanding, and words are the faithful portraits of the soul, since the countenance is the seal of the will, and the tongue is wont to be the prophet of the mind, flatterers unfasten, by a wide gap of separation, the countenance from the will, the word from the soul, the tongue from the mind, speech from understanding. For they smile with outward, whitewashed praise upon many whom they deride with inward mockery of mind; they applaud many outwardly with plausible acclaim, whom inwardly they cheat with contradictory derision. Outwardly they applaud with the face of a maiden, inwardly they sting with a scorpion's tail; outwardly they rain down the honeyed showers of flattery, inwardly they vomit forth the storms of detraction.

Alan makes his plea to Nature. Then I, reining in the chariot of my continuous narration, said: "I would wish that you might strengthen the little stronghold of my mind with the reasonable bulwarks of your teaching, against the raging armies of these vices."

Then she: