Erasmus in Praise of Folly; With Portrait, Life of Erasmus, and His Epistle to Sir Thomas More (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...accounted good soldiers. And the Germans are noted for their tall, proper stature, and for their skill in magic. But not to mention any more, I suppose you are already convinced how great an improvement and addition to the happiness of human life is occasioned by self-love: the next step to which is flattery; for as self-love is nothing but the coaxing up of ourselves, so the same currying and humoring of others is termed flattery. Flattery, it is true, is now looked upon as a scandalous name, but it is by such only as mind words more than things. They are prejudiced against it upon this account, because they suppose it jostles out all truth and sincerity, whereas indeed its property is quite contrary, as appears from the examples of several brute creatures. What is more fawning than a spaniel? And yet what animal is more faithful to its master? What is more fond and loving than a tame squirrel? And yet what is more sportive and inoffensive? This little frisking creature is kept up in a cage to play withal, while lions, tigers, leopards, and such other savage emblems of rapine and cruelty are shown only for their great rarity, and otherwise yield no pleasure to their respective keepers. There is indeed a pernicious and destructive sort of flattery wherewith rookers and sharks work their several ends upon such as they can make a prey of, by decoying them into traps and snares beyond recovery. But that which is the effect of folly is of a very different nature; it proceeds from a softness of spirit, and a flexibleness of good humor, and comes far nearer to virtue than that other extreme of friendship, namely, a stiff, sour, dogged moroseness: it refreshes our minds when tired, enlivens them when melancholy, reinforces them when languishing, ..