What may be taught, I strive to learn;
What may likewise be found
I seek, for wishes all I pray,
And would to God be bound.
Now would I gladly know, what is it that men may find and what can they learn, in case all things in the world be directed by fortune? What senate house of city would not be dissolved and abolished? what counsel chamber of prince should not be overthrown and put down, if all were at the disposition of fortune? We do her wrong in reproaching her for blindness, when we run upon her as we do, blind, and debasing ourselves into her; for how can we chuse but stumble upon her indeed, if we pluck out our own eyes, to wit, our wisdom and dexterity of counsel, and take a blind guide to lead us by the hand in the course of this our life? Certes, this were even as much as if some one of us should say, the action of those that see is fortune, and not sight of eyes, which Plato calleth φωσφόρα, that is, light-bearers: the action likewise of them that hear is nothing else but fortune, and not a natural power and faculty to receive the stroke or repercussion of the air, carried by the ear to the brain. But better it were (I trow) and so will every wise body think, to take heed how to discredit our senses so as to submit them to fortune: For why? Nature hath bestowed upon us sight, hearing, taste and smelling, with all the parts of the body endued with the rest of their powers and faculties, as ministers of counsel and wisdom. For it is the soul that seeth, it is the soul and understanding that heareth, all the rest are deaf and blind: and like as if there were no sun at all we should (for all the tars besides) live in perpetual night as Heraclitus saith; even so, if man had not reason and intelligence, notwithstanding all his other senses, he should not differ in the whole race of his life from brute and wild beasts; but now in that we excel and rule them all, it is not by chance and fortune: but Prometheus (that is to say) the use and discourse of reason is the very cause hat hath given us in recompense
Both horse and ass, with breed of beeves so strong
To carry us, and ease our labour long,
according as we read in Æschylus the poet. Forasmuch as otherwise fortune and nature both have been more favourable and beneficial to most of the brute beasts in their entrance into this life, than unto man; for armed they be with horns, tusks, spurs and stings; moreover, as Empedocles saith:
The urchin strikes with many a prick,
Which grow on back both sharp and thick.
