The Battle of the Books; with selections from the literature of the Phalaris controversy/Appendix 1
[Temple's Works ed. 1814: III, pp. 444–446]
Juvat antiquos accedere fontes.
Whoever converses much among the old books will be something hard to please among the new; yet these must have their part too in the leisure of an idle man, and have many of them their beauties as well as their defaults. Those of story or relations of matter of fact have a value from their substance as much as from their form, and the variety of events is seldom without entertainment or instruction, how indifferently soever the tale is told. Other sorts of writings have little of esteem but what they receive from the wit, learning, or genius of the authors, and are seldom met with of any excellency, because they do but trace over the paths that have been beaten by the ancients; or comment, critique, and flourish upon them: and are at best but copies after those originals, unless upon subjects never touched by them; such as are all that relate to the different constitutions of religious laws or governments in several countries, with all matters of controversy that arise upon them.
Two pieces that have lately pleased me (abstracted from any of these subjects) are one in English upon the Antediluvian World, and another in French upon the Plurality of Worlds; one writ by a divine, and the other by a gentleman, but both very finely in their several kinds, and upon their several subjects, which would have made very poor work in common hands. I was so pleased with the last (I mean the fashion of it rather than the matter, which is old and beaten) that I enquired for what else I could of the same hand, till I met with a small piece concerning poesy, which gave me the same exception to both these authors whom I should otherwise have been very partial to. For the first could not end his learned treatise without a panegyric of modern learning and knowledge in comparison of the ancient: and the other falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry, and preference of the new, that I could not read either of these strains without some indignation, which no quality among men is so apt to raise in me as sufficiency, the worst composition out of the pride and ignorance of mankind. But these two being not the only persons of the age that defend these opinions, it may be worth examining how far either reason or experience can be allowed to plead or determine in their favour.
The force of all that I have met with upon this subject either in talk or writings, is, first, as to knowledge: that we must have more than the ancients, because we have the advantage both of theirs and our own, which is commonly illustrated by the similitude of a dwarf's standing upon a giant's shoulders, and seeing more or farther than he: next, as to wit or genius, that nature being still the same, these must be much at a rate in all ages, at least in the same climates, as the growth and size of plants and animals commonly are. And if both these are allowed they think the cause is gained. But I cannot tell why we should conclude that the ancient writers had not as much advantage from the knowledge of others, that were ancient to them, as we have from those that are ancient to us.
[The ancients had many books, perhaps more than we have: but books are not really necessary to learning.
In Eastern countries there seems to have been a general custom that the priests should keep a record of public events; and in Æthiopia, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Syria, and Judæa they were equally diligent in the study of natural science and philosophy. From these sources Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the ancients drew those depths of knowledge or learning which have made them so renowned in all succeeding ages.]
[ibia. pp. 449–452]
. . . to judge whether the ancients or moderns can be probably thought to have made the greatest progress in the search and discoveries of the vast region of truth and nature, it will be worth enquiring what guides have been used, and what labours employed, by the one and the other, in these noble travels and pursuits.
The modern scholars have their usual recourse to the universities of their countries; some few it may be to those of their neighbours; and this in quest of books, rather than men, for their guides, though these are living, and those, in comparison, but dead instructors; which like a hand with an inscription, can point out the straight way upon the road but can neither tell you the next turnings, resolve your doubts, or answer your questions, like a guide that has traced it over, and perhaps knows it as well as his chamber. And who are these dead guides we seek in our journey? They are at best but some few authors that remain among us, of a great many that wrote in Greek or Latin, from the age of Hippocrates to that of Marcus Antoninus, which reaches not much above six hundred years. Before that time I know none, besides some poets, some fables, and some few epistles; and since that time, I know very few that can pretend to be authors rather than transcribers or commentators of the ancient learning. Now to consider at what sources our ancients drew their water, and with what unwearied pains. It is evident Thales and Pythagoras were the two founders of the Grecian philosophy: the first gave beginning to the Ionic sect, and the other to the Italic; out of which all the others celebrated in Greece or Rome were derived or composed. Thales was the first of the Sophi, or wise men famous in Greece, and is said to have learned his astronomy, geometry, astrology, theology, in his travels from his country, Miletus, to Egypt, Phœnicia, Crete, and Delphos. Pythagoras was the father of philosophers, and of the virtues, having in modesty chosen the name of a lover of wisdom, rather than of wise; and having first introduced the names of the four cardinal virtues, and given them the place and rank they have held ever since in the world. Of these two mighty men remain no writings at all; for those golden verses that go under the name of Pythagoras are generally rejected as spurious, like many other fragments of Sibyls, or old poets, and some entire poems that run with ancient names: nor is it agreed, whether he ever left anything written to his scholars or cotemporaries; or whether all that learned of him did it not by the ear and memory; and all that remained of him, for some succeeding ages, were not by tradition. But whether these ever writ or no, they were the fountains out of which the following Greek philosophers drew all those streams that have since watered the studies of the learned world, and furnished the voluminous writings of so many sects as passed afterwards under the common name of philosophers.
As there were guides to those that we call ancients, so there were others that were guides to them, in whose search they travelled far and laboured long.
There is nothing more agreed than that all the learning of the Greeks was deduced originally from Egypt or Phœnicia; but whether theirs might not have flourished to that degree it did by the commerce of the Æthiopians, Chaldeans, Arabians, and Indians, is not so evident (though I am very apt to believe it), and to most of these regions some of the Grecians travelled in search of those golden mines of learning and knowledge: not to mention the voyages of Orpheus, Musaeus, Lycurgus, Thales, Solon, Democritus, Herodotus, Plato, and that vain sophist Apollonius, (who was but an ape of the ancient philosophers), I shall only trace those of Pythagoras, who seems, of all others, to have gone the farthest upon this design, and to have brought home the greatest treasures. He went first to Egypt, where he spent two and twenty years in study and conversation, among the several colleges of priests, in Memphis, Thebes, and Heliopolis, was initiated in all their several mysteries, in order to gain admittance and instruction in the learning and sciences that were there in their highest ascendent. Twelve years he spent in Babylon, and in the studies and learning of the priests or Magi of the Chaldeans. Besides these long abodes in those two regions celebrated for ancient learning, and where one author, according to their calculations, says, he gained the observations of innumerable ages, he travelled likewise upon the same scent into Æthiopia, Arabia, India, to Crete, to Delphos, and to all the oracles that were renowned in any of these regions.
[We can judge what sort of men they were whom he visited, from the accounts we have of the Indian Brahmins.
From these Indians Pythagoras probably obtained most of his natural and moral philosophy. Probably the Egyptians also got much of their learning from them; and it seems likely that in the first place all this knowledge came from China.
But even allowing the greatness of the ancients, we cannot be sure that we derive any advantage from it, for their great advances may have been due to the native genius of single men who have never been equalled since. The greatness of the ancients may even have been a hindrance to the moderns, who have been obliged to learn all that the ancients have discovered, and so may have had their inventive powers weakened. A dwarf sees less than the giant though he stands on his shoulders, if he is naturally shorter sighted, or does not look about him so much, or is dazzled with the height.
Many causes contributed to the decay of learning after the fall of the Roman Empire, and though learning and knowledge in Western Europe have much increased during the last 150 years, there is no proof that they have outgrown all that was ancient.]
[ibid. pp. 468–477]
But what are the sciences wherein we pretend to excel? I know of no new philosophers, that have made entries upon that noble stage for fifteen hundred years past, unless Descartes and Hobbes should pretend to it; of whom I shall make no critique here, but only say that by what appears of learned men's opinions in this age, they have by no means eclipsed the lustre of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, or others of the ancients. For grammar or rhetoric, no man ever disputed it with them; nor for poetry, that ever I heard of, besides the new French author I have mentioned; and against whose opinion there could, I think, never have been given stronger evidence, than by his own poems printed together with that treatise.
There is nothing new in astronomy, to vie with the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system; nor in physic, unless Harvey's circulation of the blood. But whether either of these be modern discoveries, or derived from old fountains, is disputed: nay, it is so too, whether they are true or no; for though reason may seem to favour them more than the contrary opinions, yet sense can very hardly allow them; and to satisfy mankind, both these must concur. But if they are true, yet these two great discoveries have made no change in the conclusions of astronomy, nor in the practice of physic; and so have been of little use to the world, though perhaps of much honour to the authors.
What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents were so frequently enchanted and their very natures changed; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable art? It is agreed by the learned, that the science of music, so admired of the ancients, is wholly lost in the world; and that what we have now, is made up out of certain notes that fell into the fancy or observation of a poor friar, in chanting his matins. So as those two divine excellencies of music and poetry are grown, in a manner, to be little more but the one, fiddling, and the other, rhyming; and are indeed very worthy the ignorance of the friar, and the barbarousness of the Goths, that introduced them among us.
What have we remaining of magic, by which the Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians were so renowned, and by which effects so wonderful, and to common men so astonishing, were produced, as made them have recourse to spirits or supernatural powers for some account of their strange operations? By magic I mean some excelling knowledge of nature and the various powers and qualities of its several productions, and the application of certain agents to certain patients, which by force of some peculiar qualities, produce effects very different from what fall under vulgar observation or comprehension. These are by ignorant people called magic, or conjuring, and such like terms, and an account of them, much about as wise, is given by the common learned from Sympathies, Antipathies, Idiosyncrasies, Talismans, and some scraps or terms left us by the Egyptians or Grecians of the ancient magic: but the science seems with several others to be wholly lost.
What traces have we left of that admirable science or skill in architecture, by which such stupendous fabrics have been raised of old, and so many of the wonders of the world been produced, and which are so little approached by our modern achievements of this sort that they hardly fall within our imagination Not to mention the walls and palace of Babylon, the pyramids of Egypt, the tomb of Mausolus, or colosse of Rhodes, the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome, what can be more admirable in this kind than the Roman theatres, their aqueducts, and their bridges? among which that of Trajan, over the Danube, seems to have been the last flight of the ancient architecture. The stupendous effects of this science sufficiently evince at what heights the mathematics were among the ancients; but if this be not enough, whoever would be satisfied, need go no further than the siege of Syracuse, and that mighty defence made against the Roman power, more by the wonderful science and arts of Archimedes, and almost magical force of his engines, than by all the strength of the city, or number and bravery of the inhabitants.
The greatest invention that I know of, in latter ages, has been that of the loadstone, and consequently the greatest improvement has been made in the art of navigation: yet there must be allowed to have been something stupendous in the numbers, and in the build, of their ships and galleys of old; and the skill of pilots, from the observation of the stars in the more serene climates, may be judged by the navigations, so celebrated in story, of the Tyrians, and Carthaginians, not to mention other nations. However, it is to this we owe the discovery and commerce of so many vast countries which were very little, if at all, known to the ancients; and the experimental proof of this terrestrial globe, which was before only speculation, but has since been surrounded by the fortune and boldness of several navigators. From this great, though fortuitous, invention, and the consequences thereof, it must be allowed that geography is mightily advanced in these latter ages. The vast continents of China, the East and West Indies, the long extent and coasts of Africa, with the numberless islands belonging to them, have been hereby introduced into our acquaintance, and our maps; and great increases of wealth and luxury, but none of knowledge brought among us, further than the extent and situation of country, the customs and manners of so many original nations, which we call barbarous, and, I am sure, have treated them as if we hardly esteemed them to be a part of mankind. I do not doubt but many great and more noble uses would have been made of such conquests or discoveries, if they had fallen to the share of the Greeks and Romans, in those ages when knowledge and fame were in as great request as endless gains and wealth are among us now; and how much greater discoveries might have been made by such spirits as theirs is hard to guess. I am sure ours, though great, yet look very imperfect as to what the face of this terrestrial globe would probably appear, if they had been pursued as far as we might justly have expected from the progresses of navigation since the use of the compass, which seems to have been long at a stand. How little has been performed of what has been so often, and so confidently promised, of a North-West Passage to the east of Tartary, and north of China! How little do we know of the lands on that side of the Magellan Straits that lie towards the South Pole, which may be vast islands, or continents, for aught any can yet aver, though that passage was so long since found out! Whether Japan be island, or continent with some parts of Tartary on the north side, is not certainly agreed. The lands of Yedso, upon the north-east continent, have been no more than coasted, and whether they may not join to the northern continent of America is by some doubted.
But the defect or negligence seems yet to have been greater towards the south, where we know little beyond thirty-five degrees, and that only by the necessity of doubling the Cape of Good Hope in our East India voyages: yet a continent has been long since found out within fifteen degrees to south, and about the length of Java, which is marked by the name of New Holland in the maps, and to what extent none knows either to the south, the east, or the west; yet the learned have been of opinion, that there must be a balance of earth on that side of the line in some proportion to what there is on the other, and that it cannot be all sea from thirty degrees to the South Pole, since we have found land to above sixty-five degrees towards the North. But our navigators that way have been confined to the roads of trade, and our discoveries bounded by what we can manage to a certain degree of gain. And I have heard it said among the Dutch, that their East India Company have long since forbidden, and under the greatest penalties, any further attempts of discovering that continent, having already more trade in those parts than they can turn to account, and fearing some more populous nation of Europe might make great establishments of trade in some of those unknown regions; which might ruin or impair what they have already in the Indies.
Thus we are lame still in geography itself, which we might have expected to run up to so much greater perfection by the use of the compass, and it seems to have been little advanced these last hundred years. So far have we been from improving upon those advantages we have received from the knowledge of the ancients, that since the late restoration of learning and arts among us, our first flights seem to have been the highest, and a sudden damp to have fallen upon our wings, which has hindered us from rising above certain heights. The arts of painting and statuary began to revive with learning in Europe, and made a great but short flight, so as for these last hundred years we have not had one master in either of them, who deserved a rank with those that flourished in that short period after they began among us.
It were too great a mortification to think that the same fate has happened to us even in our modern learning, as if the growth of that, as well as of natural bodies, had some short periods beyond which it could not reach, and after which it must begin to decay. It falls in one country, or one age, and rises again in others, but never beyond a certain pitch. One man, or one country at a certain time runs a great length in some certain kinds of knowledge, but loses as much ground in others that were perhaps as useful and as valuable. There is a certain degree of capacity in the greatest vessel, and when it is full, if you pour in still, it must run out some way or other, and the more it runs out on one side, the less runs out at the other. So the greatest memory, after a certain degree, as it learns or retains more of some things or words, loses and forgets as much of others. The largest and deepest reach of thought, the more it pursues some certain subjects, the more it neglects others.
Besides few men or none excel in all faculties of mind. A great memory may fail of invention: both may wan judgement to digest or apply what they remember or invent. Great courage may want caution: great prudence may want vigour: yet are all necessary to make a great commander. But how can a man hope to excel in all qualities, when some are produced by the heat, others by the coldness of brain and temper? The abilities of man must fall short on one side or other, like too scanty a blanket when you are a-bed: if you pull it upon your shoulders, you leave your feet bare; if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.
But what would we have, unless it be other natures and beings than God Almighty has given us? The height of our statures may be six or seven feet, and we would have it sixteen; the length of our age may reach to a hundred years, and we would have it a thousand; we are born to grovel upon the earth, and we would fain soar up to the skies. We cannot comprehend the growth of a kernel or seed, the frame of an ant or bee; we are amazed at the wisdom of the one and industry of the other; and yet we will know the substance, the figure, the courses, the influences, of all those glorious celestial bodies, and the end for which they were made: we pretend to give a clear account how thunder and lightning (that great artillery of God Almighty) is produced, and we cannot comprehend how the voice of a man is framed—that poor little noise we make every time we speak. The motion of the sun is plain and evident to some astronomers, and of the earth, to others; yet we none of us know which of them moves, and meet with many seeming impossibilities in both, and beyond the fathom of human reason or comprehension. Nay, we do not so much as know what motion is, nor how a stone moves from our hand when we throw it cross the street. Of all these, that most ancient and divine writer gives the best account, in that short satire, "Vain man would fain be wise, when he is born like a wild ass's colt."
But, God be thanked, his pride is greater than his ignorance, and what he wants in knowledge he supplies by sufficiency. When he has looked about him as far as he can, he concludes there is no more to be seen. When he is at the end of his line, he is at the bottom of the ocean. When he has shot his best, he is sure none ever did, nor ever can, shoot better or beyond it. His own reason is the certain measure of truth, his own knowledge of what is possible in nature, though his mind and his thoughts change every seven years, as well as his strength and his features. Nay, though his opinions change every week, or every day, yet he is sure, or at least confident, that his present thoughts and conclusions are just and true and cannot be deceived: and among all the miseries to which mankind is born and subjected in the whole course of his life, he has this one felicity to comfort and support him, that in all ages, in all things, every man is always in the right. A boy at fifteen is wiser than his father at forty, the meanest subject than his prince or governors, and the modern scholars, because they have for a hundred years past learned their lesson pretty well, are much more knowing than the ancients their masters.
But let it be so, and proved by good reasons, is it so by experience too? Have the studies, the writings, the productions of Gresham College or the late academies of Paris, outshined or eclipsed the Lycæum of Plato, the academy of Aristotle, the Stoa of Zeno, the garden of Epicurus? Has Harvey outdone Hippocrates, or Wilkins, Archimedes? Are D'Avila's and Strada's histories beyond those of Herodotus and Livy? Are Sleyden's commentaries beyond those of Cæsar? the flights of Boileau above those of Vergil? If all this must be allowed, I will then yield Gondibert to have excelled Homer, as is pretended, and the modern French poetry, all that of the ancients. And yet I think it may be as reasonably said that the plays in Moorfields are beyond the Olympic games; a Welsh or Irish harp excels those of Orpheus and Arion; the pyramid in London those of Memphis; and the French conquests in Flanders are greater than those of Alexander and Cæsar, as their operas and panegyrics would make us believe.
But the consideration of poetry ought to be a subject by itself. For the books we have in prose, do any of the modern we converse with, appear of such a spirit and force as if they would live longer than the ancient have done? If our wit and eloquence, our knowledge or inventions, would deserve it, yet our languages would not. There is no hope of their lasting long, nor of anything in them. They change every hundred years so as to be hardly known for the same, or anything of the former styles to be endured by the latter, so as they can no more last like the ancients, than excellent carvings in wood like those in marble or brass.
[Moreover the modern languages are inferior to
the ancient in dignity and beauty.]
[ibid. pp. 478–480]
It may perhaps be further affirmed in favour of the ancients, that the oldest books we have, are still, in their kind, the best. The two most ancient that I know of, in prose, among those we call profane authors, are Æsop's Fables, and Phalaris's Epistles—both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original, so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men, or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics, have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian, with some others have attributed them to Lucian: but, I think, he must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original: such diversity of passions upon such variety of actions, and passages of life and government; such freedom of thought; such boldness of expression; such bounty to his friends; such scorn of his enemies; such honour of learned men; such esteem of good; such knowledge of life; such contempt of death; with such fierceness of nature, and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them, and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing, than of acting, what Phalaris did. In all one writ you find the scholar or the sophist, and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander.
The next to these in time are Herodotus, Thucydides, Hippocrates, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle; of whom I shall say no more than what I think is allowed by all: that they are in their several kinds inimitable. So are Cæsar, Sallust, and Cicero, in theirs, who are the ancientest of the Latin (I speak still of prose) unless it be some little of old Cato upon Rustic Affairs.
The height and purity of the Roman style, as it began towards the time of Lucretius, which was about that of the Jugurthin war, so it ended about that of Tiberius, and the last strain of it seems to have been Velleius Paterculus. The purity of the Greek lasted a great deal longer and must be allowed till Trajan's time, when Plutarch wrote, whose Greek is much more estimable than the Latin of Tacitus his contemporary. After this last I know none that deserves the name of Latin in comparison of what went before them, especially in the Augustan age: if any it is the little treatise of Minutius Felix. All Latin books that we have till the end of Trajan, and all Greek till the end of Marcus Antoninus, have a true and very estimable value. All written since that time seem to me to have little more than what comes from the relation of events we are glad to know, or the controversy of opinions in religion or laws, wherein the busy world has been so much employed.
The great wits among the moderns have been, in my opinion, and in their several kinds, of the Italian: Boccace, Machiavel, and Padre Paolo; among the Spaniards: Cervantes, who writ Don Quixote, and Guevara; among the French: Rabelais and Montaigne; among the English: Sir Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden. I mention nothing of what is written upon the subject of divinity, wherein the Spanish and English pens have been most conversant, and most excelled. The modern French are Voiture, Rochefoucauld's Memoirs, Bussy's Amadis de Gaule, with several other little relations or memoirs, that have run this age, which are very pleasant and entertaining, and seem to have refined the French language to a degree that cannot be well exceeded. I doubt it may have happened there, as it does in all works, that the more they are filed and polished, the less they have of weight and of strength, and as that language has much more fineness and smoothness at this time, so I take it to have had much more force, spirit, and compass, in Montaigne's age.
[Among other causes that have hindered the advancement of modern learning have been religious disputes, want or decay in kings and princes of favour to learning, avarice and greed of wealth, and the scorn of pedantry.]
An ingenious Spaniard at Brussels would needs have it, that the history of Don Quixote had ruined the Spanish monarchy; for before that time love and valour were all romance among them; every young cavalier that entered the scene dedicated the services of his life to his honour first, and then to his mistress. They lived and died in this romantic vein; and the old Duke of Alva, in his last Portugal expedition, had a young mistress to whom the glory of that achievement was devoted; by which he hoped to value himself, instead of those qualities he had lost with his youth. After Don Quixote appeared, and with that inimitable wit and humour turned all this romantic honour and love into ridicule, the Spaniards, he said, began to grow ashamed of both, and to laugh at fighting and loving, or at least otherwise than to pursue their fortune, or satisfy their lust: and the consequences of this, both upon their bodies and their minds, this Spaniard would needs have pass for a great cause of the ruin of Spain or of its greatness and power.
Whatever effect the ridicule of knight errantry might have had upon that monarchy, I believe that of pedantry has had a very ill one upon the commonwealth of learning, and I wish the vein of ridiculing all that is serious and good, all honour and virtue, as well as learning and piety, may have no worse effects on any other state: it is the itch of our age and climate, and has over-run both the Court and the Stage; enters a House of Lords and Commons as boldly as a coffee-house; debates of Council as well as private conversation; and I have known in my life more than one or two Ministers of State, that would rather have said a witty thing than done a wise one, and made the company laugh, rather than the kingdom rejoice. But this is enough to excuse the imperfections of learning in our age, and to censure the sufficiency of some of the learned; and this small piece of justice I have done the ancients, will not, I hope, be taken any more than it is meant, for any injury to the moderns.
I shall conclude with a saying of Alphonsus (surnamed the Wise), King of Arragon:
"That among so many things as are by men possessed, or pursued, in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read."