[A] Here they live on human flesh;15 there, it is a pious duty to kill one’s father at a particular age; elsewhere the fathers decide, when the children are still in the womb, which will be kept and brought up and which will be killed and abandoned; elsewhere aged husbands lend their wives to younger men to enjoy; elsewhere again there is no sin in having wives in common – indeed in one country the women, as a mark of honour, hem their skirts with a fringe of tassels to show how many men they have lain with.
And did not habit found a state composed only of women? Did it not place weapons in their hands, make them raise armies and fight battles?16
And does not habit teach the roughest of the rough something which the whole of philosophy fails to implant in the heads of the wisest of men? For we know of whole nations [C] where death is not merely despised but rejoiced in; [A] where seven-year-old boys17 let themselves be flogged to death without changing their expression;18 where riches are held in such contempt that the most wretched of their citizens would not deign to stoop and pick up a purse full of crowns. And we know of regions where every kind of food grows in abundance but where both the usual and the most savoury dish is bread and mustard-cress with water.19
[B] And did not custom produce a miracle in Chios where, for seven hundred years, no one ever recalled a woman or girl who lost her honour?
[A] To sum up then, the impression I have is that there is nothing that custom may not do and cannot do; and Pindar rightly calls her (so I have been told) the Queen and Empress of the World.20
[C] The man found beating his father replied that such was traditional in his family; that his father had beaten his grandfather; his grandfather, his great-grandfather: ‘And this boy will beat me once he has reached my age.’ Yet the father whom the son was pulling about and dragging along the road commanded him to stop at a certain doorway, for he had not dragged his own father beyond that point, that being the boundary for the hereditary bashing of fathers customary among the sons of their line.21
It is by custom, says Aristotle, as often as from illness that women tear out their hair, gnaw their nails, eat earth and charcoal: just as it is as much by custom as by Nature that males lie with males.
The laws of conscience which we say are born of Nature are born of custom; since man inwardly venerates the opinions and the manners approved and received about him, he cannot without remorse free himself from them nor apply himself to them without self-approbation.
[B] In the past, when the Cretans wished to curse someone, they prayed the gods to make him catch a bad habit.
[A] But the principal activity of custom is so to seize us and to grip us in her claws that it is hardly in our power to struggle free and to come back into ourselves, where we can reason and argue about her ordinances. Since we suck them in with our mothers’ milk and since the face of the world is presented thus to our infant gaze, it seems to us that we were really born with the property of continuing to act that way. And as for those ideas which we find to be held in common and in high esteem about us, the seeds of which were planted in our souls by our forefathers, they appear to belong to our genus, to be natural. [C] That is why we think that it is reason which is unhinged whenever custom is – and God knows how often we unreasonably do that! If (as those of us have been led to do who make a study of ourselves) each man, on hearing a wise maxim, immediately looked to see how it properly applied to him, he would find that it was not so much a pithy saying as a whiplash applied to the habitual stupidity of his faculty of judgement. But the counsels of Truth and her precepts are taken to apply to the generality of men, never to oneself: we store them up in our memory not in our manners, which is most stupid and unprofitable.
But let us get back to custom’s imperial sway.
Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same: as soon as they have rid themselves of the exactions of one master, no matter what opportunities for change Fortune may give them they rush to implant an equally difficult one in his place, incapable as they are of resolving to hate the over-mastery as such.22
[A] Darius asked some Greeks what it would take to persuade them to adopt the Indian custom of eating their dead fathers (for that was the ritual among Indians who reckoned that the most auspicious burial they could give their fathers was within themselves): they replied that nothing on earth would make them do it. Then he made an assay at persuading those Indians to abandon their way and adopt that of the Greeks (which was to cremate their fathers’ corpses): he horrified them even more.23
We all do likewise: usage hides the true aspect of things from us:
Nil adeo magnum, nec tam mirabile quicquam
Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes
Paulatim.
[There is nothing which at first seems so great or so wondrous which we do not all gradually wonder at less and less.]24
I once had the duty of justifying one of our practices which, far and wide around us, is accepted as having established authority; I did not wish to maintain it (as is usually done) exclusively by force of law and exempla so I traced it back to its origins: I found its basis to be so weak25 that I all but loathed it – I who was supposed to encourage it in others.
[C] This was the remedy that Plato prescribed to banish the unnatural loves of his age – he considered it a basic, sovereign remedy: public opinion should condemn them; poets and everyone else should give dreadful accounts of them. By this remedy even the fairest daughters would not attract the lust of their fathers, nor would outstandingly handsome brothers that of their sisters, since the myths of Thyestes, of Oedipus and of Macareus would have planted moral beliefs in the tender minds of children by the charm of the poetry.26 Indeed, chastity is a fair virtue; its usefulness is well recognized: yet it is as hard to treat it and to justify it from Nature as it is easy to do so from tradition, law and precept. Basic universal precepts of reason are difficult to investigate thoroughly: dons skim through them quickly or do not even dare to handle them, throwing themselves straightway into the sanctuary of tradition, where they can preen themselves on easy victories.
Those who refuse to be drawn away from the beginnings and sources fail even worse and find themselves bound to savage opinions – as Chrysippus was, who often strewed throughout his writings the little account he took of incestuous unions of any kind.27
[A] A man who wished to loose himself28 from the violent foregone conclusions of custom will find many things accepted as being indubitably settled which have nothing to support them but the hoary whiskers and wrinkles of attendant usage; let him tear off that mask, bring matters back to truth and reason, and he will feel his judgement turned upside-down, yet restored by this to a much surer state.
I will ask him, for example, what could be stranger than seeing a people obliged to obey laws which they have never understood;29 in all their household concerns, marriages, gifts, wills, buying and selling, they are bound by laws which they cannot know, being neither written nor published in their own language: they needs must pay to have them interpreted and applied [C] – not following in this the ingenious notion of Isocrates30 (who advised his king to make all trade and business free, unfettered and profitable but all quarrels and disputes onerous, loading them with heavy taxes); they prefer the monstrous notion of making a trade of reason itself and treating laws like merchandise. [A] I am pleased that it was (as our historians state) a Gascon gentleman from my part of the country whom Fortune led to be the first to object when Charlemagne wished to impose Imperial Roman Law on us.31
What is more uncouth than a nation32 where, by legal custom, the office of judge is openly venal and where verdicts are simply bought for cash? where, quite legally, justice is denied to anyone who cannot pay for it, yet where this trade is held in such high esteem that there is formed a fourth estate in the commonwealth, composed of men who deal in lawsuits, thus joining the three ancient estates, the Church, the Nob
ility and the People? where this fourth estate, having charge of the laws and sovereign authority over lives and chattels, should be quite distinct from the nobility, with the result that there are two sets of laws, the law of honour and the law of justice which are strongly opposed in many matters (the first condemns an unavenged accusation of lying: the other condemns the revenge; a gentleman who puts up with an insult is, by the laws of arms, stripped of his rank and nobility: one who avenges it incurs capital punishment; if he goes to law to redress an offence against his honour, he is dishonoured; if he acts independently he is chastised and punished by the Law); where these two estates, so different from each other, both derive from a single Head, yet one is responsible for peace, the other for war; the first acquires profit, the second, honour; the first, learning, the second, virtue; the first, words, the second, deeds; the first, justice, the second valour; the first reason, the second, fortitude; the first the long gown, the second, the short?
Take things indifferent, such as clothing: if anyone cared to refer clothing back to its true purpose (which is its usefulness and convenience for the body – its original grace and comeliness depends on that), I would concede to him that the most monstrous clothes imaginable include, to my taste, our doctoral bonnets, that long tail of pleated velvet hanging down from the heads of our womenfolk with its motley fringes, and that silly codpiece uselessly modelling a member which we cannot even decently call by its name yet which we make a parade of, showing it off in public.
Nevertheless such considerations do not deter a man of intelligence from following the common fashion;33 it seems to me on the contrary that all idiosyncratic and outlandish modes derive less from reason than from madness and ambitious affectation; it is his soul that a wise man should withdraw from the crowd, maintaining its power and freedom freely to make judgements, whilst externally accepting all received forms and fashions.
The government of a community has no right to our thoughts, but everything else such as our actions, efforts, wealth and life itself should be lent to it for its service or even given up when the community’s opinions so require, [A1] just as that great and good man Socrates refused to save his life by disobeying [B] the magistrate, [A1] a most unjust and iniquitous magistrate. For the Rule of rules, the general Law of laws, is that each should observe those of the place wherein he lives.34
[It is right to obey one’s country’s laws.]
And here is one drawn from a different barrel: it is greatly to be doubted whether any obvious good can come from changing any traditional law, whatever it may be, compared with the evil of changing it; for a polity is like a building made of diverse pieces interlocked together, joined in such a way that it is impossible to move one without the whole structure feeling it. He who gave the Thurians their laws35 ordained that if any man wished to abolish an ancient one or establish a new one he should appear before the people with a rope round his neck, so that he could be hanged at once if anyone failed to approve of his novelty. And the lawgiver to the Spartans spent his life in persuading the citizens to make a solemn promise not to break any of his ordinances. The Spartan Magistrate36 who roughly cut the two extra strings which Phrynis added to his lyre was not worried about whether the music was improved or whether the chords were more ample: it sufficed him to condemn them because it was a departure from the traditional style. (That was the meaning of that rusty sword of justice hanging in Massilia.)37
[B] I abhor novelty, no matter what visage it presents, and am right to do so, for I have seen some of its disastrous effects. That novelty which has [C] for so many years [B] beset us is not solely responsible,38 but one can say with every likelihood that it has incidentally caused and given birth to them all. Even for the evils and destruction which have subsequently happened without it and despite it it must accept responsibility.
Heu patior telis vulnera facta meis.
[Alas, I suffer wounds made by my own arrows.]39
[C] Those [B] who shake40 the State are easily the first to be engulfed in its destruction. [C] The fruits of dissension are not gathered by the one who began it: he stirs and troubles the waters for other men to fish in. [B] Once the great structure of the monarchy is shaken by novelty and its interwoven bonds torn asunder – especially in its old age – the gates are opened as wide as you wish to similar attacks. [C] It is harder for Regal Majesty, said an ancient, to decline from the summit to a middling place than to plunge from there to the very bottom.41
But if innovators do most harm, those who copy them are more at fault for rushing to follow examples after they have experienced the horror of them and punished them. And if there are degrees of honour even in the doing of evil, then they must concede to the others the glory of innovation and the courage to make the first attempt.
[B] From this first and abundant source all kinds of new depravity go [C] happily [B] drawing ideas and models for disturbing our system of government. In the very laws which were made to remedy the original evil we can find introductions to all sorts of wicked actions and excuses for them: what is happening to us is what Thucydides said of the civil wars of his own time: that to flatter public vices and to justify them, gentler names were given to them, rejecting true indictments of them as spurious or else mitigating them.42 Yet the intention is to reform our consciences and our beliefs! ‘Honesta oratio est!’ [The plea is fine enough!]43 But even the best of [C] pretexts [B] for novelty are exceedingly dangerous: [C] ‘adeo nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est’ [so true is it that no change from ancient ways can be approved].44
[B] To speak frankly, it seems to me that there is a great deal of self-love and arrogance in judging so highly of your opinions that you are obliged to disturb the public peace in order to establish them, thereby introducing those many unavoidable evils and that horrifying moral corruption which, in matters of great importance, civil wars and political upheavals bring in their wake – introducing them moreover into your own country. [C] Is it not bad husbandry to encourage so many definite and acknowledged vices in order to combat alleged and disputable error? Is there any kind of vice more wicked than those which trouble the naturally recognized sense of community?
When the Roman Senate had differences with the people about the service of their religion it dared to palm them off with this evasion: ‘Ad deos id magis quam ad se pertinere, ipsos visuros ne sacra sua polluantur.’ [That this was less a matter for them than for the gods, who would see that their rites were not profaned.]45 That concurs with what the oracle replied to the men of Delphi in their war against the Medes: fearing a Persian invasion they asked the god what they should do with the holy treasures in his temple, hide them or bear them away. He told them to move nothing; they should look after themselves: he was able to provide for his own.46
[B] The Christian religion bears all the signs of the highest justice and utility, but none is more obvious than the specific injunction to obey the powers that be and to uphold the civil polity.47 What a wondrous example was bequeathed to us by the Wisdom of God48 when, in order to establish the salvation of the human race and forward his glorious victory over death and sin, he willed to do so only within the context of our political order. He submitted the course and conduct of so sublime an enterprise, so rich in salvation, to the blind injustice of our human usages and custom, permitting the innocent blood of so many of the Elect, his favoured ones, to flow; he suffered many long years to be lost in order to bring that inestimable fruit to ripeness.
There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.
In excuse the former can cite simplicity, obedience and example: whatever he may do, it cannot be from ill-will, only (at worse) from misfortune; [C] ‘Quis est enim quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis testata consignataque antiquitas?’ [Who would not be moved by the most illustrious records witnessed and sealed by antiquity?] – apart from what Isocrates said, that imperfection has a greater interest in
moderation than excess does.49
[B] The other is in a much tougher position,50 [C] since anyone who undertakes to chop and change usurps the right to judge and must pride himself on seeing the defect in what he would get rid of and the good in what he would bring in. The following principles are banal enough but they did strengthen me in my position and even put a bridle on my rasher youth: never to load my shoulders with the heavy burden of claiming knowledge of so important a science;51 Never to venture to do in such a matter what I would never dare to do in the easiest of those disciplines in which I had been instructed and where facile decisions do no harm, seeming to me as it does to be most iniquitous to wish to submit immovable public regulations and observances to the instability of private ideas (private reasoning having jurisdiction only in private matters) and to undertake against divine ordinances something that no State would tolerate against civil ones (even though human reason is far more involved in civil law, the Law is the sovereign judge of its judges; judicial discretion is limited to explaining and extending accepted usage: it cannot deflect it or make innovations). Though divine Providence has sometimes passed beyond the rules to which we are bound by necessity, it was not dispensing us from them. Such cases are blows from God’s hand which we are not to imitate but to greet with amazement; they are inordinate examples, expressly marked by signs of special approval, the same in kind as the miracles which Providence gives us in witness of his omnipotence, miracles far above our order-of-being and our capacities which it is madness and impiety to assay to imitate. We are required not to follow them but to contemplate them in ecstasy. They are acts of his Person, not ours.52