§ 1. This was the second objection which the unskilled advance against us—and sometimes even learned men do so. Nor is the answer as obvious as it appears to many. For the errors of many compel us to censure certain kinds of study. Some remove mathematicians from the state because, being accustomed to
ἀκριβολογίαις ἀποδεικτικαῖς,
the most exact demonstrations, they preserve the same lines in the state, although that versatile wheel of cities demands equity, ἐπιείκειαν—equitable flexibility—dissimulation, and other things. They spurn grammarians as base, philosophers as skeptics, poets as madmen, rhetoricians as turbulent, jurists as sowers of lawsuits, and theologians as enemies of liberty. Among them only
ἀμύμων καὶ ἄμωμος,
ignorance, the rustic goddess, is without fault and reproach.
Indeed, I remember that pleasant stories in Greek concerning scholastics were once commonly circulated. For certain men indulge speculations to such a degree that they are altogether unfit for obtaining food and for human association. This is a vice not of the arts but of men. For they cut many matters too finely and conduct them to useless subtlety, and so lead the mind into bonds rather than raise and elevate it. What happens in letters happens in all matters: what is excessive is vicious; that is excessive which detains minds destined for useful things upon useless ones.
“For concerning those men,” says Seneca in chapter 13 of On the Brevity of Life, “no one will doubt that they laboriously do nothing, since they are detained in studies of useless letters; and among the Romans too there is now a great band of them. It was a sickness of the Greeks to inquire what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether they were by the same author, and then other questions of this stamp. If you keep these things to yourself, they do nothing to assist your silent conscience; if you publish them, you will appear not more learned but more troublesome.”
For the more effort such men expend, the more they impede themselves. And as in a labyrinth, the more anyone hastens toward the exit, the more he entangles himself and the farther he is from the door. Many did not find necessary things because they sought superfluous ones. “The quibbling of words,” says Seneca in Epistle 45, “and captious disputations which exercise an ineffectual acuteness have taken much time from them. We weave snares and attach an ambiguous signification to words, and then dissolve it. Have we so much leisure? Do we now know how to live and how to die? The whole mind must proceed to that place where provision must be made lest things, not words, deceive us. Why do you distinguish for me similarities of words by which no one has ever been caught except while disputing? Things deceive; distinguish them.”
The wretched diligence of Tiberius appeared thus to the learned. Suetonius, chapter 70: “He chiefly cultivated knowledge of fabulous history, even to foolishness and derision. For he also assailed grammarians, a class of men to which, as we have said, he was especially devoted, and generally tested them with questions of this kind: Who was Hecuba’s mother? What name had Achilles among the maidens? What were the Sirens accustomed to sing? And on the first day on which he entered the Senate after the death of Augustus, as though about to satisfy piety and religion together, following the example of Minos he made supplication with incense and wine, but without a flute-player, as Minos had formerly done upon the death of his son.”
No better was that archbishop concerning whom our Laelius Bisciola writes in Book 3, chapter 1, of his Leisure Hours: “When I was studying theology at Padua, I knew the archbishop of that most flourishing city in Italy, already advanced in age, a learned, talented, acute, and grave man. If you wished to confer with him about theology and divine wisdom, you would see him contract his brow, raise his eyebrow, and by manifest signs turn away from discourse of this kind. But if you intended to communicate something to him concerning modals, conversions, mixtures, maximum and minimum, proportions and degrees of action, passion, reaction, and repassion, he would brighten his countenance, exult, and triumph with joy.
“Nights and days this old and grave archbishop was wholly occupied in explaining the theory of modals. He wrote upon that argument, wrote in reply, conferred with this man and that, censured one man’s explanation and commended another’s, and never satisfied himself. Yet he did not rest even in that position if someone else appeared to him to have found something more probable, which he soon altered again. He also instituted a treatise concerning the cause and origin of laughter; and because in it, while refuting the opinions of all other ancient and recent philosophers, he seemed to himself to have touched the matter itself as with a needle, he so pleased himself that you might say he had joined the great emperor of the Turks to the faith and religion of Christ.”
Bisciola himself judges rightly concerning him with the saying in Stobaeus, Sermon 8:
ὁ ἑλλέβορος ὁλοσχερέστερος μὲν ληφθεὶς καθαίρει, εἰς δὲ πάνυ σμικρὰ τριφθεὶς πνίγει· οὕτω καὶ ἡ κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν λεπτολογία.
Hellebore purges when taken in rather large pieces; but when it is ground into the smallest particles, it suffocates. So too does empty and excessive subtlety in philosophy.
§ 2. For these reasons those arts also had a bad reputation of old. Zeno at the beginning
τῶν ἐγκυκλίων παιδείαν ἄχρηστον ἀποφαίνει,
declares the encyclopedic, or liberal, arts useless. Yet the Stoics were excessive in subtleties, so that it is astonishing that Zeno, the chief of the Stoics, thought thus. It is true that many empty things are taught by those men. They inquire into the ages of Achilles and Patroclus
and where Ulysses wandered. Concerning this Bion says rightly in Stobaeus, Sermon 8:
Τοὺς γραμματικοὺς ζητοῦντας τὰς τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως πλάνας μὴ ἐξετάζειν τὴν ἰδίαν, μηδὲ καθορᾶν ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ τούτῳ πλανῶνται, ἀσχολούμενοι περὶ τὰ μηδὲν χρήσιμα.
Grammarians who seek the wanderings of Ulysses do not seek their own, nor do they perceive that they err in this very thing: that they labor over useless matters.
Seneca describes and condemns this entire class in Epistle 88: “But, you say, knowledge of many arts delights me. Let us therefore retain from them only as much as is necessary. Or do you think a man is to be censured who procures useless things for himself and displays a pomp of precious objects in his house, but not one who is occupied with useless furniture of letters? To wish to know more than is sufficient is a kind of intemperance.
“What of the fact that this pursuit of the liberal arts makes men troublesome, verbose, unseasonable, and self-satisfied, and therefore not learners of necessary things because they have learned superfluous ones? Didymus the grammarian wrote four thousand books. He would be wretched if he had merely read so many superfluous things. In these books the fatherland of Homer is investigated; in these, who was the true mother of Aeneas; in these, whether Anacreon lived more lustfully or more drunkenly; in these, whether Sappho was a public prostitute; and other matters which, if you knew them, ought to be unlearned. Go now and deny that life is long!
“But when you come to our own men too, I shall show you many things to be cut away with axes. At a great expenditure of time and with great annoyance to the ears of others is this praise acquired: ‘O learned man!’ Let us be content with this more rustic title: ‘O good man!’ Is it so? Shall I unroll the annals of all nations and inquire who first wrote verses? Though I have no chronological tables, shall I calculate how much time lies between Orpheus and Homer? Shall I review the marks of Aristarchus with which he punctured another’s verses and consume my life upon syllables? Shall I thus cling to the dust of geometry? Has that salutary precept so fallen from me: ‘Spare time’? Shall I know these things in order that I may be ignorant of what?
“Appion the grammarian, who under Gaius Caesar was carried about through all Greece and adopted by all the cities into the name of Homer, used to say that Homer, after completing both subjects, the Odyssey and the Iliad, added a beginning to his work in which he embraced the Trojan War. As proof of this matter he advanced the fact that in the first verse Homer had deliberately placed two letters containing the number of his books. A man who wishes to know many things must know such things.
“Do you not wish to consider how much time ill health takes from you, how much public occupation, how much private occupation, how much daily occupation, how much sleep? Measure your life: it does not contain so many things. I am speaking about liberal studies; how much that is superfluous do philosophers possess, how much that departs from use? They too descended to distinctions of syllables and the properties of conjunctions and prepositions, and envied grammarians and geometers. Whatever was superfluous in the arts of those men, they transferred into their own. Thus it came about that they know more diligently how to speak than how to live.
“Hear how much evil excessive subtlety produces and how hostile it is to truth. Protagoras says that one can dispute on either side of every matter equally, even on this very question, whether every matter can be disputed on either side. Nausiphanes says that, among the things which appear to exist, nothing exists more than it does not exist. Parmenides says that, among the things which appear, nothing at all exists. Zeno of Elea has cast every affair out of affairs: he says that nothing exists. The Pyrrhonists, Megarians, Eretrians, and Academics dwell around almost the same points, for they have put on a new knowledge: to know nothing.
“Cast all these things into that superfluous herd of liberal studies. The former hand down to me knowledge which will not profit me; the latter snatch away hope of all knowledge. It is better to know superfluous things than nothing. The former do not carry before me a light by which my sight may be directed toward truth; the latter dig out my eyes. If I believe Protagoras, nothing in the nature of things is anything but doubtful. If I believe Nausiphanes, this alone is certain: that nothing is certain. If Parmenides, nothing exists except one. If Zeno, not even one. What, then, are we? What are these things which surround, nourish, and sustain us? The whole nature of things is a shadow, either empty or deceptive. I could not readily say whether I am more angry with those who wished us to know nothing or with those who did not leave us even this: to know that we know nothing.”
The letters are Μ and Η in the word ΜΗΝΙΝ, and they make the number forty-eight. In Plutarch’s Banquet, another man observes that the first verse of the Iliad and the first of the Odyssey consist of the same number of syllables, namely seventeen, and the last verses of the same books of sixteen. Who could endure subtlety hostile to truth? Who could endure thorny foolishness? That ostentation harms minds and introduces a new anxiety and care.
“You twist words for me,” says Seneca in Epistle 48, “and arrange syllables. Evidently, unless I have constructed the most cunning interrogations and by a false conclusion have bound a lie arising from truth, I shall not be able to distinguish things to be sought from things to be avoided. I am ashamed: in so serious a matter we old men are playing. ‘Mouse’ is a syllable; but a syllable does not gnaw cheese; therefore a mouse does not gnaw cheese. O childish foolishness! For this have we drawn down our brows? For this have we let down our beards? Is this what we teach, sad and pale?”
§ 3. Men of sound judgment, men endowed with a great spirit, censure these things in letters, with the best right and deservedly. But that error belongs not to letters but to minds which use their good badly and decline from true things toward empty ones. The liberal studies retain both their dignity and usefulness, and likewise their limit and measure. In this class three things occur to me which must be said and in which the entire rationale of those studies is contained.
The first is that all those studies are preparations and, as Xenocrates used to say,
λαβὰς τῆς φιλοσοφίας,
handles of true philosophy. Youth must therefore be exercised in them so that it may not halt in them but through them strive toward greater things.
The second: that this folly is not learned from letters, but is brought to the learning of them and, through learning, intensified and increased.
The third: that it is not useless to the state for certain men to pass their whole life in those trifles. All concede the first to me; the second is doubtful; the third a paradox.
Nevertheless, I shall establish each. Seneca acknowledges the first in Epistle 88: “You desire to know what I think concerning liberal studies. I admire none and number among good things none which ends at money. They are gainful arts, useful thus far if they prepare the intellect but do not detain it. For we must linger upon them only as long as the mind can do nothing greater. They are our rudiments, not our works. You see why they are called liberal studies: because they are worthy of a free man. But one study is truly liberal, that which makes a man free: the study of wisdom, sublime, brave, and magnanimous. The rest are petty and childish.”
And again: “What, then? Do liberal studies contribute nothing to us? Much toward other things, nothing toward virtue. For even those base arts professedly consisting in work by hand contribute very much to the instruments of life, yet do not pertain to virtue. Why, then, do we educate our sons in liberal studies? Not because they can give virtue, but because they prepare the mind to receive virtue. Just as that first literacy, as the ancients called it, by which elements are handed down to children, does not teach the liberal arts but prepares a place for soon receiving them, so the liberal arts do not conduct the mind to virtue but equip it.”
This alone, therefore, is the utility they possess: they exercise intellects,
cultivate them, sharpen sagacity, and no one has a passage to perfect wisdom except through those arts. Philo says rightly in On the Preliminary Studies:
ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν οἰκίαις αὔλειοι πρόκεινται κλισιάδων, ἐν δὲ πόλεσι τὰ προάστεια, δι’ ὧν εἴσω βαδίζειν ἔνεστιν, οὕτως καὶ ἀρετῆς πρόκειται τὰ ἐγκύκλια· ταῦτα γὰρ ὁδός ἐστιν εἰς ἐκείνην φέρουσα.
Houses certainly have their forecourts, and cities their suburbs, through which there is an entrance; so the liberal arts have the encyclopedic disciplines set before them and already prepare a road for virtue.
Those who therefore remain fixed in these matters do the same thing as men who, enticed by the pleasantness of inns, neglect the soil of their fatherland. The aim of our Society is to direct the other studies of those who live in it toward theology. Constitution, Part 4, chapter 12: “Since the aim of the Society and of its studies is to aid our neighbors toward knowledge and love of God and the salvation of their souls, and since the faculty of theology is the means more proper to that end, the universities of the Society shall chiefly apply themselves to it. Through very suitable teachers they shall diligently treat matters which pertain to scholastic doctrine and the Sacred Scriptures, as well as expository matters which agree with this end fixed for us.”
And chapter 5: “Since the aim of the learning which is acquired in this Society is, with God’s favor assisting, to profit one’s own soul and the souls of one’s neighbors, this shall be, both universally and in individual persons, the measure by which it is determined to which faculties our members ought to apply themselves and how far they ought to advance in them. And because, speaking generally, humane letters in various languages, logic, likewise natural and moral philosophy, metaphysics, and theology—both that which is called scholastic and that which is called positive—and Sacred Scripture aid toward this, those who are sent to colleges shall devote themselves to the study of these faculties. Indeed, they shall occupy themselves with greater diligence in those which, account being taken of time, place, and persons, and the rest, the supreme moderator of studies will judge in the Lord to agree more closely with the aforesaid end.”
For some, medicine is proposed; for others, knowledge of the laws. Let each so learn the lesser things that he prepares himself for the great. Meanwhile, it is certain that without these things those who profess the greater sciences cannot be understood.
§ 4. The second point is the one which I confessed to be doubtful to many: those who cling to these lesser minutiae of the sciences brought their error to them; they did not learn it from those sciences. For how can it happen that anyone, while tasting the first rudiments of letters, should judge that they have no use unless they are counted and compared with one another? What moderately prudent man can judge that clever subtleties were invented solely as instruments of torture for intellects? Are there not very many men of lofty and vigorous intellect, well versed in the greatest sciences, who are not ignorant of those trifles and sometimes play with them for recreation, and test the abilities of boys who answer anxiously? Since, therefore, the subtlety which they have learned sharpens the intellects of most men and does not blunt them, why would it so derange a few, if they had brought a mind to letters? For, as Philonides used to say, one must
Γράμματα μαθεῖν, καὶ τὸν μαθόντα νοῦν ἔχειν.
learn letters and bring a mind to the learning. And so, when you observe men sitting continually over these things, you will judge that they either cannot or do not wish to attain greater things, and that they could not have attained even these without letters. Thus two kinds of grammarians and philosophers immediately disclose themselves. The first is moderate, learned, polished, and prudent; it refers precepts to eloquence and to knowledge of historians, orators, and poets, and this knowledge to the higher sciences, the flight from vices, and the love of virtues. I have no fear of calling men of this kind, even though they occupy themselves with grammar, pillars of the state. The other kind is laboriously wretched, delighting in the hunting of syllables and the subtleties of feverish erudition—in a word, entangled in most laborious follies. This saying of Aristippus must frequently be impressed upon them: Those who eat or exercise the most are not in better health than those who take what is necessary; so those who read not the most things but useful things are to be judged learned.
Nevertheless, the madness of those men is blamed upon letters in vain. For in all arts, even the illiberal, there is a certain laborious and foolish subtlety. What garment did nature will to be ready for man? It is made from the hide or wool of animals. But how many kinds of clothing have leisure and luxury invented! A toga is scarcely completed in one year, the workmanship of which exceeds its material. Let courtiers themselves consider how much time they spend upon ceremonies and titles. In every matter there is something excessive, in every life something superfluous. Saddles, bridles, and the collars of greyhounds are burdened with elaborate expense. And now the evil has increased to such a degree that those things appear necessary, and the man for whom expenditures upon these follies are lacking thinks himself in need. Therefore, just as superfluities are introduced by human folly into every art concerned with every kind of thing and action, so too the liberal arts are afflicted by the same cause.
In the third place I said that it is not useless to the state for the cares and labors of certain men to be detained upon those curious, useless, thorny, and grim matters. Just as excessive diligence in the treatment of the liberal arts serves some advantage, and it is desirable for a prince to have certain craftsmen of the highest excellence in all arts, even those which are not necessary, so too it is conducive to many things that there should be a few men who have exceeded the measure in the liberal arts. He who draws a grain of millet through the eye of a needle will easily strike a designated enemy with a sure blow. He who could enclose the whole Iliad in a nutshell will easily write secret letters for his prince to men under siege. He who could walk upon a rope will proceed securely over the walls and battlements of the enemy. He who is an excessive investigator of history nevertheless carries a light before the rest.
Annaeus relates these superfluous matters: Duilius was the first to conquer in a naval battle. Curius Dentatus was the first to lead elephants in a triumph. Claudius Caudex was the first to board his own ship. Valerius Corvinus was the first to assume a name from a conquered city. Sulla was the first to exhibit lions released in the circus. Pompey was the first to present a combat of eighteen elephants. These things have their own utility and assist men who are occupied. For those leisured men are like nomenclators, who promptly supplied names to their masters; they arranged friends and clients in order by name and always had books at hand so that they could remember. The memory of so many names—of so many powerful men and so many childless old men—is an immense and fastidious labor; nevertheless, many men wore away a lifetime in it. At that time it was a profession: “to beat upon the proud doors of the more powerful, to arrange childless old men alphabetically,” as Seneca says in Epistle 68. And it is agreed that there were large books containing the names both of clients and of the more powerful. Labor in these excessive cares of letters is not dissimilar, because it is frequently of use in grave matters—not so that the intellects of youth may be distracted by these minutiae, but so that certain amusements of the arts may be preserved, just as those of other things in the state are preserved. Never
will there be too many men in so grim a labor; in every other field more men transgress through curiosity than in the sciences.
§ 5. Will you therefore tolerate in the state a man counting the syllables of Homeric verses, one disputing about the mark behind Helen’s ear, one doubting Penelope’s chastity, one examining ancient stones, one writing three hundred volumes of dialectic or four thousand on grammar? Certainly: just as you tolerate an athletic trainer, a flute-player, arrangers of delicacies, and painters of faces. Yet that curiosity of grammarians is more honorable and is frequently useful to many; much more so is that of natural philosophers and mathematicians.
§ 6. Much greater is the assault of martial men upon men of letters: they contend that spirits are broken, grow languid in leisure, and lose their courage. Nor do they listen to an excuse, for there is not enough reasoning in arms; they advance with sheer force. Yet learned men ought not to yield. They possess the prerogative bestowed by the man who sang, to the disgust of all:
Let arms yield to the toga; let the laurel yield to the tongue.
Once the eloquent man bore the arms of the brave man: Ulysses those of Achilles. Agamemnon desired not ten Ajaxes or Diomedeses, but Nestors. Many wars are brought to completion by counsel, few by strength.
Ὅπλον τοι λόγος ἐστὶ τομώτερον ἀνδρὶ σιδήρου.
Speech is a sword sharper than iron for a man.
Two things perfect a warrior: prudence and courage. Without courage, prudence can resist for a long time; without prudence, courage is nothing, and the rashness which takes its place constructs its own ruin. It is truly said:
Ἀλκὴ δ’ ἀνεμώλιος ἄφρων.
Foolish courage is weak.
It is truly said:
Διπλοῦν ὁρῶσιν οἱ μαθόντες γράμματα.
Those who have learned letters see double. In war there is the greatest need of counsel, because counsel must be taken both most swiftly and most prudently. Most swiftly, because opportunities must be seized and counsel taken in the arena itself. Most prudently, because it is not permitted to err twice: the first error is fatal. A learned man, from history, from philosophy, and from stratagems, will decide the matter more swiftly and safely; others will decide more slowly. That error—that only fury is needed in war—is not the error of soldiers but of rustics. There is need of a commander who is pleasing to the soldier, who can temper the fierce, rouse the sluggish, and strengthen the fearful; who can retain allies, attract the wavering, and soften enemies; who can diminish an enemy’s power, render his allies suspect, and set them against one another. If war were nothing other than a battle line, and if men fought in the battle line solely with the strength of their bodies, after the manner of the Andabatae, perhaps there would be less need to know human affairs.
Do you think that the philosophy of Socrates and knowledge of all histories hindered Xenophon? Did Julius Caesar conquer more slowly because he loved learning? Lucan, Book 10:
The fame of my son-in-law indeed led me to the Pharian cities, Yet also fame of you; amid battles I always devoted myself To the regions of the stars and sky, and to the gods above; Nor will my year be surpassed by the calendars of Eudoxus.
Pericles, the thunderbolt of Greece, for forty years governed the people by eloquence, the soldier by courage, and both by prudence. He was a disciple of the philosopher Anaxagoras. Greece scarcely knows a better man than Dion, scarcely a wiser slayer of a tyrant; yet he professed that he owed all those ornaments to Plato. Greater in learning and in name, Timotheus, a most excellent general, emerging from the instruction of Isocrates, restored the affairs of Greece. Archytas of Tarentum instructed Philolaus, and Xenophon instructed Agesilaus.
The Athenians sent three philosophers to Rome concerning the greatest affairs—Carneades, Critolaus, and Diogenes—although the negotiation was chiefly instituted concerning war and alliance. Zeno of Elea taught military affairs by design, and very many slayers of tyrants came forth from his school. Whether rightfully or wrongfully, I do not dispute; this I assert: his school was plainly martial. By reading, Lucullus suddenly became a commander and so broke the forces of Mithridates that he handed the victory over him to others. Tullius himself both sought a triumph and judged more prudently concerning the civil war than Pompey.
§ 7. I do not judge either Virgil or Horace to have been unwarlike, and I judge Ennius also to have been a brave man. Alcaeus, Stesichorus, and Archilochus were also renowned in war, although the last resolved to abandon his shield rather than his life.
Letters, therefore, are equally necessary for peace and war. Agrippina acted wickedly when she denied that philosophy was suitable for Nero, who was to become emperor; for she feared that, if cultivated by letters, he would more quickly pass out of his mother’s power. Nor was Louis XI right when he wished his son Charles to know no more Latin than these words: “He who does not know how to dissemble does not know how to reign.” For certainly many things were found wanting in his reign.
Letters do not draw men away from the conduct of affairs if they are joined with prudence; for in letters we learn both things done and things to be done, and before all else to abhor idleness. Were Severus, Pertinax, and Antoninus less because they were learned? Men acclaimed to Tacitus: “Who rules better than a man of letters?” And indeed he would have ruled most excellently if customary treachery had not removed him from their midst. Gordian was an orator and a poet; he made Misitheus prefect and by his counsel rightly administered the empire. I shall close with the jeweled maxim of Pope Julius II: knowledge of letters is silver in common men, but jewels in nobles and princes. I shall add: in commanders it is victory.