#1: Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
In the following passage from In Praise of Folly, Erasmus discusses the folly of childhood. Read the passage carefully, then write an essay in which you analyze his tone and the use of rhetorical strategies or stylistic devices to convey his view of folly and childhood.
"For ignorance provides the happiest life."*
But now let's take the facts one by one.
First of all, everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age? Surely it's the charm of folly, which thoughtful Nature has taken care to bestow on the newly born so that they can offer some reward of pleasure to mitigate the hard work of bringing them up and win the liking of those who look after them. Then follows adolescence, which everyone finds delightful, openly supports, and warmly encourages, eagerly offering a helping hand. Now whence comes the charm of youth if not from me? I've seen to it that youth has so little wisdom and hence so few frowns. It's a fact that soon as the young grow-up and develop the sort of mature sense which comes through experience and education, the bloom of youthful beauty begins to fade at once, enthusiasm wanes, gaiety cools down, and energy slackens. The further anyone withdraws from me the less and less he's alive, until 'painful age' comes on, that is, 'old age with its troubles' unwelcome not only to others but just as much to itself.** This too would be intolerable to man if I weren't at his elbow out of pity for all he has to bear just as the gods of fiction -- often come to the aid of the dying with some metamorphosis, so do I recall people who are on the brink of the grave, as far as possible, to childhood once again. Hence the aptitude of the popular expression, 'second childhood'. And if any of you are interested in my method of transformation, I'm quite willing to tell you. The spring belonging to my nymph Lethe has its source in the Islands of the Blest, and what flows through the underworld is only a trickle of a stream. There I take them, so that once they have drunk deep draughts of forgetfulness the cares of the mind are gradually washed away and they recover their youth. I know they're called silly and foolish, as indeed they are, but that is exactly what it means to become a child again.
What else is childhood but silliness and foolishness? Its utter lack of sense is what we find so delightful. Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders; witness the oft repeated saying 'I hate a small child who's too wise for his years.' And who could carry on doing business or having dealings with an old man if his vast experience of affairs was still matched by a vigorous mind and keen judgement?
Footnotes:
* The line of Sophocles from his Ajax is referred to, like so many of the other allusions and quotations, in the Adages. Technically it is true to say that the stoics, or some of them, did not despise the pleasure which was not a passion but a 'rational affection'. Erasmus, as usual, is making learned fun and perhaps remembering that, for Seneca, the 'pleasure'which is the final end of human endeavour is for the Epicurean identified with the 'virtue' which the stoics cultivate (de beata vita, 13). Back** This section contains verbal reminiscences of Virgil, Seneca and Horace. The Greek phrase for 'painful age' is taken from Homer (Iliad, 8, 103) while that for 'second childhood' a little later comes from Lucian (Saturn, 9) Erasmus comments on it in the Adages, as he also does on the proverb from Apulcius which Folly goes on to quote, 'I hate a small child too wise for his years.' Back
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