Part 15

As for _excess_ I conceive that as in every natural body the number of sinews, veins, and arteries to give it life and motion, is definite and certain, so in a body politic the distributive use of learning, which I compare to those parts, is everywhere certain. And whatever is more than nature requires in either of them, as in the one it breeds disease, so in the other it causes destruction by breach of proportion, and so consequently of peace. In natural bodies excess appears when one or more parts encroach on the others and enfeeble them. In communities this excess in learning is to be discerned when the private professions swell too much and so weaken the whole body, either by the multitude of professional men, who bite deeply where many must be fed and there is little to feed on, or by unnecessary professions, which choke off the more useful, and fill the world with trifles, or by an infinitude of books, which cloy up students, and weaken them by an intolerable diffuseness of treatment, fattening the carcass but lowering the strength of pithy matter. Do not all these surfeits exist at this day in our own State? Are they not enemies to the common good, being grown out of proportion? Are they not worth consideration and redress?

I pass now to the question of defect. In a natural body there is too little, when either something necessary is wanting, or what is there is too weak to serve its purpose. And does not learning show the same defects, disquieting to a State, when the necessary professional men are wanting either in number or in worthiness; where show takes the place of sound stuff; where in place of real learning only superficial knowledge is sought, enough to make a shift with; when necessary professions are despised and trampled under foot, because the cursory student has to post away in haste; when there is a lack of needful books to further learning, and those we have are of little use owing to insufficiency of treatment? This corruption in learning any man may see who desires to seek out either the malady or its cure; it is a breach of proportion, and therefore of peace, in a commonwealth, a pining evil which consumes by starving.

As for diversity in matters of learning, I think that as it proceeds from differences in ability, in upbringing, in intelligence, in judgment, because these are much finer in some than in others, it does a great deal of harm to the peace of any State, especially where its leaders, though they may not fall out, but merely express their opinions, yet divide studies according to their favourites, considering the importance of the subjects less than the attraction of the authors. If this diversity breaks out in earnest, as it has frequently done in our time, while printing itself, which in its natural and best uses is the instrument of necessity and the exponent of learning, becomes very often too easy an outlet for vaunting ambition, for malicious envy and revenge, for all passions to all purposes, what a sore blow is given to the public quiet, when the means to welfare is made an instrument of distemper! For will not he fight in his fury who brawls in his books? Do not those minds seem armed for open conflict--nay, do they not arm others too by pressing enmity forward--which in private studies enter into combats on paper; which by too much eagerness make a great ado in matters better quenched than stirred to life; which whet their wits beforehand to be wranglers ever after, and as far as lies in them disturb the general welfare? What I disapprove of is needless combats in learning; those that are fruitful may go on, yet with no more passion than common civility and Christian charity will allow. Excess overburdens, defect weakens, diversity distracts, but dissension destroys. You know yourselves, my learned readers, what a wonderful stir there is daily in your schools, through diverging opinions in logic, in philosophy, in mathematics, in physics. The lawyer generally abstains from controversal writing, because he does not gain by it what he seeks; pleading in the Common Courts offers a better pasture for a lean purse than a busy pen. The dissension in divinity is specially fierce, the more so because it often falls out that the adversaries intermingle their own passions with the matters they treat of. For while our religious doctrines sometimes require defence, disputes might often be compounded, if men’s feelings were as readily cooled as they are inflamed. But in the meanwhile how greatly is the general peace disturbed by dissensions that turn aside a worthy means, to maintain a wrong and become a slave to some inordinate passion! I cannot enter fully upon this subject, but touch upon it merely that my good readers may understand how much my desire for the furtherance of learning was increased after I had noticed these inconveniences, though at first I meant only to help the teaching of the learned tongues. Agreement among the learned is the mother of general contentment; by carping and contradicting they trouble the world and taint themselves, bearing all the while the name of Christians--a title which enjoins us to avoid contention, even by the submission of those who are wronged, and charges us to defend our religion, not with passionate minds, but with the armour of patience and truth. These were the blemishes which I saw by the way, and lamented in the body of learning. The amendment which I desire rests upon two great pillars--the professors of learning, who must give intelligence of the error, and the principal magistrates--nay, even the sovereign prince--who being God’s great instruments to procure quietness for our souls and bodies, our goods and actions, must bring about redress in so important a matter as the course of learning.

The prince may cut off what is in excess, make up what is deficient, reconcile diversities, expel dissensions, by his lawful authority for the general good; and everyone will submit, because everyone is benefited. This, indeed, confirms Plato’s saying that kings should be philosophers; that is, that all magistrates should be learned. It is a great corrosive to the whole body of learning, which is the procurer of peace, when those who have to direct gain their wisdom only through experience. That is much, but experience and learning together make the better equipment. It is an honourable conception, besides that it tends to the general good, for a learned and virtuous prince, assisted by wise counsel, to reduce the number of those that follow learning, by some principle of selection in every department, to decide what kinds of learning are most useful to the State, and to appoint a reasonable number of such books as have the best methods of treatment. The final authority in regard to every profession has always lain with the prince. Action has been taken before in all the directions I have spoken of, both by consent of the learned and by command of good princes. As our country is small, the thing could be the more easily done; as our livings are limited, it is the more needful; as the evil is great, we are the less able to bear it; as our sovereign is learned, we shall be the readier to give ear; as our people are of good understanding, they are the better able to inform her. But as the physician does not thrive by the prevention of disease, nor the lawyer grow rich by arresting contentions, nor a divine prosper so much in a heaven where all is good as on earth where all is evil, and as private profit will be followed, though it bring confusion to the State, redress will not stir, because it judges the world to be in some fault which it is loth to confess. However, to secure some redress and help in this matter at the hand of the ruler, is the duty of all who make a profession of learning, if they will but consider the reputation of learning in our day, whether from the contempt in which some professions are held, or from a deficiency in those who enter them.

In the professors of learning, to whose solicitation this point is recommended, two things are chiefly required. First, that with minds given to peace they should study soundly themselves, and that the matter be worthy and taken in due order. For sound learning will not so soon be shaken at every eager point of controversy as that which is shallow. Orderly progress gives security, and a pacific temper furthers the end that is desired both privately and publicly. The consent of the learned and their quiet inclination are a great blessing to any Commonwealth, but especially to ours in this contentious time, when overwhetted minds do very little good to some worthy professions. The distracting division of minds into sects and sorts of philosophy did much injury in the countries where it befel, and those nations among which religious dissensions arose have never been quiet since. The second point required in a student is not to seek his own advancement so much as that of the things he professes, and indeed the possession of these things is the best means to advance himself, for, where ignorance is blamed, knowledge is approved, even though the approver may not be learned. He who studies soundly recommends letters by his own example; he who solicits the help of those in authority advances learning still further; he who uses his pen to strengthen the best current of opinion proves the genuineness of his desire by his own practice. In this last form my own labour seeks to recommend uniformity, to strip off what is needless, to supply some defects, to help everyone to as quiet a course as I can temper my style to.

The second question which I said might be demanded of me, why I do not follow the precedent of those learned writers who have handled the subject with great admiration may be very soon answered. I admit that the number of those who have written upon the upbringing of children might be considered sufficient, and I grant the excellence of many of them, such as Bembus, Sturmius, and Erasmus. But the situation is different. A free city and a country under a monarchy are not in the same position, though they agree in some general respects, in which indeed these writers do not dissent from me. Nor do I fail to follow good writers, taking example from those authors who taught all the later ones to write so well. I am the servant of my country; for her sake I labour, her circumstances I must consider, and whatsoever I shall pen I shall myself see it carried out, by the grace of God, in order the better to persuade others by offering the proof of trial.

The third question, as to my writing in English, and my being so careful--I will not say fastidious--in expression, concerns me more nearly, for it has some importance. It is the opinion of some that we should not treat any philosophical subject, or any ordinary subject in a philosophical manner, in the English tongue, because the unlearned find it too difficult to understand in any case, and the learned, holding it in little esteem, get no pleasure from it. In regard both to writing in English generally, and my own writing in particular, I have this to say: No one language is finer than any other naturally, but each becomes cultivated by the efforts of the speaker who, using such opportunities as are afforded by the kind of government under which he lives, endeavours to garnish it with eloquence, and enrich it with learning. Such a tongue, elegant in form and learned in matter, while it keeps within its natural soil, not only serves its immediate purpose with just admiration, but in foreigners who become acquainted with it, it kindles a great desire to have their own language resemble it. Thus it came to pass that the people of Athens beautified their speech in the practice of pleading, and enriched it with all kinds of knowledge, bred both within Greece and outside of it. Thus it came to pass that the people of Rome, having formed their practice in imitation of the Athenian, became enamoured with the eloquence of those from whom they were borrowing, and translated their learning also. However, there was not nearly the same amount of learning in the Latin tongue during the time of the Romans as there is at this day by the industry of students throughout the whole of Europe, who use Latin as a common means of expression, both in original works and in translations. Roman authority first planted Latin among us here, by force of their conquest, and its use in matters of learning causes it to continue. Therefore the so-called Latin tongues have their own peoples to thank, both for their own cultivation at home and for the favour they enjoy abroad. So it falls out that, as we are profited by means of these tongues, we should pay them honour, and yet not without cherishing our own, in regard both to cases where the usage is best and to those where it is open to improvement. For did not these tongues use even the same means to cultivate themselves before they proved so beautiful? Did the people shrink from putting into their own language the ideas they borrowed from foreign sources? If they had done so, we should never have had the works we so greatly admire.

There are two chief reasons which keep Latin, and to some extent other learned tongues, in high consideration among us,--the knowledge which is registered in them, and their use as a means of communication, in both speaking and writing, by the learned class throughout Europe. While these two benefits are retained, if there is anything else that can be done with our own tongue, either in beautifying it, or in turning it to practical account, we cannot but take advantage of it, even though Latin should thus be displaced, as it displaced others, bequeathing its learning to us. For is it not indeed a marvellous bondage, to become servants to one tongue for the sake of learning, during the greater part of our time, when we can have the very same treasure in our own language, which forms the joyful title to our liberty, as the Latin reminds us of our thraldom? I love Rome, but I love London better; I favour Italy, but I favour England more; I honour the Latin tongue, but I worship the English. I wish everything were in our tongue which the learned tongues gained from others, nor do I wrong them in treating them as they did their predecessors, teaching us by their example how boldly we may venture, notwithstanding the opinion of some among us, who desire rather to please themselves with a foreign language that they know, than to profit their country in their own language, which they ought to know. It is no argument to say: Will you dishonour those tongues which have honoured you, and without which you could never have enjoyed the learning of which you propose to rob them? For I honour them still, as much as any one, even in wishing my own tongue to be a partaker of their honour. For if I did not hold them in great admiration, because I know their value, I would not think it any honour for my own language to imitate their grace. I wish we had the stores with which they furnished themselves from foreign sources. For the tongues that we study were not the first getters, though by learned labour they prove to be good keepers, and they are ready to discharge their trust, in handing on to others what was committed to them for a term, and not in perpetuity. There can be no disgrace in their delivering to others what they received on that understanding. The dishonour will lie rather with the tongue that refuses to receive the inheritance intended for it and duly offered to it, and from this dishonour I would our language were free. I admit the good fortune of those tongues that had so great a start over others that they are most welcome wherever they set foot, and are always admired for their rare excellence, disposing all men to think little of any form of speech that does not resemble them, and to rank even the best of these as marvellously behind them. The diligent labour of the learned men of ancient times so enriched their tongues that they proved very pliable, as I am assured our own will prove, if our learned fellow-countrymen will bestow their labour on it. And why, I pray you, should such labour not be bestowed on English, as well as on Latin or any other language? Will you say it is needless? Certainly that will not hold. If loss of time over tongues, while you are pilgrims to learning, is no injury, or lack of sound skill, while language distracts the mind from the sense, especially with the foolish and inexperienced, then there might be some ground for holding it needless. But since there was no need for the present loss of time in study through labouring with tongues, and since our understanding is more perfect in our natural speech, however well we may know the foreign language, methinks necessity itself calls for English, by which all that bravery may be had at home that makes us gaze so much at the fine stranger. But you will say it is uncouth; so it is, through being unused. So was it with Latin, and so it is with every language. Cicero himself, the paragon of Rome while he was alive, and our best pattern now though he is dead, had great wrestling with such wranglers, and their disdain of their natural speech, before he won from the public of his time the opinion in which he was held by the best of his friends then, and is held by us now. Are not all his prefaces to his philosophical writings full of such conflicts with these cavillers? English wits are very well able, thank God, if the good will were present, to make that uncouth and unknown learning very familiar to our people in our own tongue, even by the example of those very writers we esteem so highly, who having done for other languages what I wish for ours in the like case, must needs approve of us, unless they assert that the merit of conveying knowledge from a foreign tongue died with them, not to revive among us. But whatever they may say to continue their own credit, our fellow-countrymen cannot but think that it is our praise to obtain by purchase and transplanting into our own tongue what they were so desirous to place in theirs, and are now so loth to forgo again; it is indeed the fairest flower of their whole garland, for these tongues would wither soon, or decay altogether, but for the great knowledge contained therein. If our people were not readier to wonder at their workmanship than to take trouble with their own tongue, they might have the same advantage. Our English is our own, and must be used by those to whom it belongs, as were those others that were ranked with the best.

But it may be replied that our English tongue is not worthy of such cultivation, because it has so little extent, stretching no further than this island of ours, and not even over the whole of that. What though this be true? Still it reigns here and serves our purpose; it should be brushed clean in order to be worn. Are not English folk, I pray you, as particular as foreigners? And is not as much taste needed for our tongue in speaking, and our pen in writing, as for apparel and diet? But, it will be said, our State is no empire, hoping to enlarge itself by ruling other countries. What then? Though it be neither large in possession, nor in present hope of great increase, yet where it rules it can make good laws to suit its position, as well as the largest country can, and often better, since in the greatest governments there is often confusion.

But again, it will be urged, we have no rare knowledge belonging to our soil to make foreigners study our tongue as a treasure of such store. What of that? We are able by its means to apply to our use all the great treasure both of foreign soil and of foreign language. And why may not English wits, if they will bend their wills to seek matter and method, be as much sought after by foreign students for the increase of their knowledge as our soil is already sought after by foreign merchants for the increase of their wealth? As the soil is fertile because it is cultivated, so the wits are not barren, if they choose to bring forth.

Yet though all this be true, we are in despair of ever seeing our own language so refined as were those where public orations were held in ordinary course, and the very tongue itself made a chariot to honour. Our State is a monarchy, which controls language, and teaches it to please; our religion is Christian, and prefers the naked truth to refinement of terms. What then? If for want of that exercise which the Athenian and the Roman enjoyed in their spacious courts, no Englishman should prove to be a Cicero or a Demosthenes, yet in truth he may prove comparable to them in his own commonwealth and in the eloquence that befits it. And why not indeed comparable to them in all points that concern his natural tongue? Our brain can bring forth; our ideas will bear life; our tongues are not tied, and our labour is our own. And eloquence itself is limited neither to one language nor to one soil; the whole world is its measure, and the wise ear is its judge, having regard not to greatness of state, but to the capacity of the people. And even though we should despair of altogether rivalling the excellence of foreign tongues, must our own therefore be unbeautified? It should certainly strive to reach its best if I could help. We may aspire to come to a certain height, even though we can pass no further. The nature of our government will admit true speaking and writing, and eloquence will be approved if it gives pleasure and is worthy of praise, so long as it preaches peace, and tends to preserve the State. Our religion does not condemn any ornament of language which serves the truth and does not presume overmuch. Nay, may not eloquence be a great blessing from God, and the trumpet of his honour, as Chrysostom calls that of St. Paul, if it be religiously bent? Those who have read the story of the early church find that eloquence in the primitive Christians overthrew great forces bent against our faith, and persuaded numbers to embrace the cause, when the power of truth was joined to force in the word. We should seek eloquence to serve God, but shun it to serve ourselves, unless we have God’s warrant.

But will you thus break off communication with learned foreigners by banishing Latin, and putting her learning into your own tongue? Communication will not cease while people have cause to interchange dealings, and it may easily be continued without Latin. Already in some countries, whose languages are akin to the Latin, the learned class are weaning their tongues and pens from the use of Latin, both in written discourse and spoken disputation, to their own natural speech. It is a question not of disgracing Latin, but of gracing our own language. Why should we honour a stranger more than our own, if the purpose be served? And although, on account of the limitations of our language, no foreigner would seek to borrow from us as we do from other tongues, because we devise nothing new, though we receive the old, yet we ourselves gain very much in study by being set from the first in the privy chambers of knowledge, through the familiarity of our native speech. Justinian the emperor said to the students of law, when he gave imperial force to his Institutes, that they were most happy in the advantage of hearing the Emperor’s voice at first hand, while those of earlier times were delayed for four whole years. And does not our study of foreign languages take us fully four years? If this were the only hindrance indeed, and if we gained otherwise, we could bear the loss. But it is not only time that is lost in studying foreign tongues, though we must use them till we learn to do without them. Who can deny that we understand best in our natural speech, seeing that all our foreign learning is applied through the medium of our own language, and learning is of value only in so far as it is applied to particular uses?