No More Learning

God offered
us those things, and placed them at hand, and near us, that He knew were
profitable for us, but the hurtful He laid deep and hid. Yet do we seek
only the things whereby we may perish, and bring them forth, when God and
Nature hath buried them. We covet superfluous things, when it were more
honour for us if we would contemn necessary. What need hath Nature of
silver dishes, multitudes of waiters, delicate pages, perfumed napkins?
She requires meat only, and hunger is not ambitious. Can we think no
wealth enough but such a state for which a man may be brought into a
premunire, begged, proscribed, or poisoned? O! if a man could restrain
the fury of his gullet and groin, and think how many fires, how many
kitchens, cooks, pastures, and ploughed lands; what orchards, stews,
ponds and parks, coops and garners, he could spare; what velvets,
tissues, embroideries, laces, he could lack; and then how short and
uncertain his life is; he were in a better way to happiness than to live
the emperor of these delights, and be the dictator of fashions; but we
make ourselves slaves to our pleasures, and we serve fame and ambition,
which is an equal slavery. Have not I seen the pomp of a whole kingdom,
and what a foreign king could bring hither? Also to make himself gazed
and wondered at--laid forth, as it were, to the show--and vanish all away
in a day? And shall that which could not fill the expectation of few
hours, entertain and take up our whole lives, when even it appeared as
superfluous to the possessors as to me that was a spectator? The bravery
was shown, it was not possessed; while it boasted itself it perished. It
is vile, and a poor thing to place our happiness on these desires. Say
we wanted them all. Famine ends famine.
_De mollibus et effoeminatis_. --There is nothing valiant or solid to be
hoped for from such as are always kempt and perfumed, and every day smell
of the tailor; the exceedingly curious that are wholly in mending such an
imperfection in the face, in taking away the morphew in the neck, or
bleaching their hands at midnight, gumming and bridling their beards, or
making the waist small, binding it with hoops, while the mind runs at
waste; too much pickedness is not manly. Not from those that will jest
at their own outward imperfections, but hide their ulcers within, their
pride, lust, envy, ill-nature, with all the art and authority they can.
These persons are in danger, for whilst they think to justify their
ignorance by impudence, and their persons by clothes and outward
ornaments, they use but a commission to deceive themselves: where, if we
will look with our understanding, and not our senses, we may behold
virtue and beauty (though covered with rags) in their brightness; and
vice and deformity so much the fouler, in having all the splendour of
riches to gild them, or the false light of honour and power to help them.
Yet this is that wherewith the world is taken, and runs mad to gaze
on--clothes and titles, the birdlime of fools.

_De stultitia_. --What petty things they are we wonder at, like children
that esteem every trifle, and prefer a fairing before their fathers!
What difference is between us and them but that we are dearer fools,
coxcombs at a higher rate? They are pleased with cockleshells, whistles,
hobby-horses, and such like; we with statues, marble pillars, pictures,
gilded roofs, where underneath is lath and lime, perhaps loam. Yet we
take pleasure in the lie, and are glad we can cozen ourselves. Nor is it
only in our walls and ceilings, but all that we call happiness is mere
painting and gilt, and all for money. What a thin membrane of honour
that is! and how hath all true reputation fallen, since money began to
have any! Yet the great herd, the multitude, that in all other things
are divided, in this alone conspire and agree--to love money. They wish
for it, they embrace it, they adore it, while yet it is possessed with
greater stir and torment than it is gotten.

_De sibi molestis_.