The philosophie, commonlie called, the morals vvritten by the learned philosopher Plutarch of Chæronea. Translated out of Greeke into English, and conferred with the Latine translations and the French, by Philemon Holland of Coventrie, Doctor in Physicke. VVhereunto are annexed the summaries necessary to be read before every treatise

WHETHER THIS COMMON Mot, be well said: Live hidden: or, So live, as no man may know thou livest. [ 20]

LOe how even himselfe, who was the authour of this sentence, would not be unknowne, but that al the world should understand, that he it was who said it; for expresly he uttered this very speech, to the end that it might not remain, unknowen that he had some more under∣standing than others, desirous to winne a glorie undeserved and not due unto him, by diverting others from glory, and exhorting them to obscurity of life. I like the man well verily, for this is just accor∣ding to the old verse:

I hate him who of wisdome beares the name, [ 30] And to himselfe cannot performe the same.

We reade that Philoxenus the sonne of Eryxis, and Gnatho the Sicilian, (two notorious gluttons given to bellie-cheere, and to love their tooth) when they were at a feast, used to snite their noses into the very dishes and platters with meat before them; thereby to drive those in their messe, and who were set at the table, from eating with them, and by that meanes to engorge themselves, and fill their bellies alone with the best viands served up: Semblably, they who are excessively and out of all measure ambitious, before others as their concur∣rents and corrivals, blame and dispraise glorie and honour, to the end that they alone with∣out any competitours might enjoy the same: And heerein they doe like unto mariners sitting at the oare in a bote or gally; for howsoever their eie is toward the poupe, yet they labour to [ 40] set the prow forward, in that the flowing of the water by reciprocation, caused by the stroke of the oares, comming forcibly backe upon the poupe, might helpe to drive forward the vessell; even so, they that deliver such rules and precepts, whiles they make semblant to flie from glory, pursue it as fast as they can; for otherwise if it were not so: what need had he (whosoever he was) to give out such a speech? what meant he else to write it, and when he had written it, to publish the same unto posteritie? If I say he meant to be unknowne to men living in his time, who desi∣red to be knowne unto those that came after him? But let us come to the thing it selfe: How can it chuse but be simply naught? Live so hidden (quoth he) that no man may perceive that ever you lived; as if he had said: Take heed you be not knowne for a digger up of sepulchres, & a defa∣cer of the tombs & monuments of the dead: But contrariwise, a foule & dishonest thing it is to [ 50] live in such sort, as that you should be willing that we al, know not the maner thereof: Yet would I for my part say cleane contrary: Hide not thy life, how ever thou do, and if thou hast lived bad∣ly, make thy selfe knowne; bewiser, repent & amend: if thou be endued with vertue, hide it not, neither be thou an unprofitable member; if vicious, continue not obstinate there, but yeeld to correction, & admit the cure of thy vice; or rather at (leastwise sir) make a distinction, & define who it is, to whom you give this precept? If he be ignorant, unlearned, wicked, or foolish, then it is as much as if you said thus: Hide thy feaver; cloke & cover thy phrēsie; let not the physician

take notice of thee; goe and put thy selfe into some darke corner, where no person may have a sight of thee, or of thy maladies and passions; go thy way aside with all thy naughtinesse, sicke as thou art of an incurable and mortall disease; cover thy spight and envie; hide thy superstiti∣on; suppresse and conceale (as it were) the disorderly beatings of thine arteries; take heed & be afraid how you let your pulse be felt, or bewray your selfe to those who have the meanes, & are able to admonish, correct, and heale you. But long ago, & in the old world, our ancestors were wont to take in hand and cure openly in publike place, those that were diseased in body: in those daies, everie one (who had met with any good medicine, or knowne a remedie, whereof he had the proofe, either in himselfe being sicke, or in another cured thereby) would reveale and com∣municate the same unto another that stood in need thereof: and thus they say: The skil of Phy∣sick [ 10] arising first, and growing by experience, became in time, a noble and excellent science. And even so, requisit it is and necessarie, to discover and lay open unto all men, lives that be diseased, and the infirmities of the soule, to touch and handle them, and by considering the in∣clinations of every man, to say thus unto one: Subject thou art to anger, take heed thereof; unto another: Thou art given to jealousie and emulation, beware of it, doe thus and thus; to a third: Art thou amorous and full of love? I have beene so my selfe otherwhiles, but I repent me thereof. But now a daies it is cleane contrarie; in denying, in cloaking, covering, and hi∣ding, men thrust and drive their vices inwardly, and more deepely still into their secret bowels. Now if they be men of woorth and vertuous, whom thou counsellest to hide themselves, that the world may take no knowledge of them, it is all one as to say unto Epaminondas: Take no [ 20] charge of the conduct of an army: or to Lycurgus: Amuse not your head about making lawes: and to Thrasibulus: Kill no tyrants: to Pythagoras: Keepe no schoole, nor teach in any wise: to Socrates: See you dispute not, nor hold any discourses of philosophie: and to your selfe Epicu∣rus first of all: Write not to your friends in Asia; enroll and gather no soldiors out of Aegypt; have no commerce nor negotiate with them; do not protect and defend as it were with a guard from villanie and violence, the yoong gentlemen of Lampsacum; send not your books abroad to all men and women alike, thereby to shew your learning; finally, ordeine nothing about your sepulture. To what tended your publicke tables? what meant those assemblies that you made of your familiar friends and faire yoong boies; to what purpose were there so many thou∣sands of verses written and composed so painfully by you in the honour of Metrodorus, Ari∣stobulus, [ 30] & Chaeredemus, to the end that after death they should not be forgotten? Was all this because you would ratifie and establish vertue by oblivion; arts by doing nothing, philosophy by silence; and felicitie by forgetfulnesse? Will you needs bereave mans life of knowledge, as if you would take away light from a feast, to the end that mē might not know that you & your fol∣lowers do all for pleasure, & upon pleasure? then good reason you have to give counsell, & saie unto your selfe: Live unknowne. Certes, if I had a minde to leade my life with Haedia the har∣lot, or to keepe ordinarily about me, the strumpet Leontium; to detest all honestie; to repose all my delight and joy in the tickling pleasures of the flesh, and in wanton lusts: these ends verilie would require to be hidden in darknesse, and covered with the shadow of the night; these be the things that would be forgotten, and not once knowne: But if a man in the science of naturall [ 40] philosophie, delight in hymnes and canticles to praise God, his justice and providence; or in morallknowledge, to set out and commend the law, humane societie, and the politike govern∣ment of common-weale; and therein regard honour and honestie, not profit and commodity; what reason have you to advise him for to live obscurely? Is it because he should teach none by good precept? is it for that no man should have a zealous love to vertue, or affect honestie by his example? If Themistocles had never bene knowne to the Athenians, Greece had not given Xerxes the foile and repulse; likewise if Camillus had beene unknowne to the Romanes, perad∣venture by this time Rome had beene no city at all; had not Dion knowne Plato, Sicilie should not have beene delivered from tyrannie. But this is my conceit; that like as light effecteth thus much, that we not onely know one another, but also are profitable one unto another; even so [ 50] in my judgement, to be knowne abroad, bringeth not onely honor and glorie, but also meanes of emploiment in vertue: Thus Epaminondas unknowne unto the Thebanes, untill he was for∣tie yeeres old, stood them in no stead at all; but after that they tooke knowledge of him once, and had committed unto him the leading of their armie, he saved the citie of Thebes, which had like to have been lost, and delivered Greece, being in danger of servitude; shewing in renowme and glorie (no lesse than in some cleere light) vertue producing her effects in due time: For ac∣cording to the poet Sophocles; By use it shineth

Like iron or brasse, that is both faire and bright So long as men doe handle it aright. In time also, an house goes to decay, And falleth downe, if dweller be away.

Whereas the very maners & natural conditions of a man be marred & corrupted, gathering as it were a mosse, & growing to age in doing nothing, through ignorance & obscurity. And verily a mute silence, a sedentarie life, retired a part in idlenesse, causeth not onely the bodie, but the mind also of man to languish & grow feeble: & like as dornant, or close & standing waters, for that they be covered, overshadowed, & not running, grow to putrifie; even so, they that never stirre, nor be emploied, what good parts soever they have in them, if they put them not foorth, [ 10] nor exercise their naturall and inbred faculties, corrupt quickly, and become old. See you not how when the night commeth on & approcheth neere, our bodies become more heavie, lum∣pish, and unfit for any worke, our spirits more dull and lazie to all actions, and the discourse of our reason and understanding more drowsie and contracted within it selfe? like unto fire that is ready to goe out; and how the same by reason of an idlenesse and unwillingnesse comming up∣on it, is somewhat troubled and disquieted with divers fantasticall imaginations; which obser∣vation advertiseth us daily after a secret and silent manner, how short the life of man is:

But when the sunne with light some beames Dispatched hath these cloudy dreames,

after he is once risen (and by mingling together the actions and cogitations of men with his [ 20] light; awakeneth and raiseth them up (as Democritus saith) in the morning, they make haste jointly one with another upon a forren desire, as if they were compunded and knit with a cer∣taine mutuall bond, some one way, and some another, rising to their serverall works and busi∣nesse. Certes, I am of advice that even our life, our very nativity, yea & the participation of man∣kind is given us of God to this end: That we should know him; for unknowne he is and hidden in this great fabricke and universall frame of the world, all the while that hee goeth too and fro therein by small parcels and piece-meale: but when hee is gathered in himselfe, and growen to his greatnesse; then shineth hee and appeereth abroad, where before he lay covered; then is he manifest and apparent, where before he was obscure and unknowen; for knowldege is not the way to his essence, as some would have it; but contrariwise, his essence is the way to know∣ledge; [ 30] for that knowledge maketh not each thing, but onely shewth it when it is done; like as the corruption of any thing that is, may not be thought a transporting to that which is not, but rather a bringing of that which is dissolved to this passe, that it appeereth no more: Which is the reason that according to the auncient lawes and traditions of our countrey, they that take the sunne to be Apollo, give him the names of Delius and Pythius; and him that is the lord of the other world beneath, whether he be a god or a divell, they call Ades; for that when we are dead and dissolved, we goe to a certeine * 1.1 obscuritie, where nothing is to be seene:

Even to the prince of darknesse and of night The lord of idle dreames deceiving sight.

And I suppose that our auncestors in old time called man, Phos, of light, for that there is in [ 40] every one of us, a vehement desire and love to know and be knowen one of another, by reason of the consanguinitie betweene us. And some philosophers there be, who thike verily, that even the soule in her substance is a very light, whereupon they are ledde as welby other signes & arguments, as by this, that there is nothing in the world that the soule hateth so much as igno∣rance, rejecting all that is obscure and unlightsome; troubled also when she is entred into dark places, for that they fill her full of feare and suspicion: but contrariwise, the light is so sweet and delectable unto her, that she taketh no joy and delight in any thing; otherwise lovely and de∣sireable by nature, without light or in darknesse; for that is it which causeth all pleasures, sports, pastimes, & recreations to be more jocund, amiable, & to mans nature agreeable; like as a com∣mon sauce that seasoneth and commendeth al viands wherewith it is mingled: whereas he that [ 50] hath cast himselfe into ignorance, and is enwrapped within the clouds of mistie blindnesse, ma∣king his life a representation of death, and burying it as it were in darknesse, seemeth that he is wearie even of being, and thinketh life a very trouble unto him: and yet they are of opinion, that the nature of glorie and essence, is the place assigned for the soules of godly, religious, and vertuous folke:

To whom the sunne shin's alwaies bright When heere with us it darke night:

The me dowes there, both faire and wide, With roses red are beautified: The fields all round about them dight With verdure, yeeld a pleasant sight: All tapissed with flowers full gay, Of fruitfull trees, that blossome ay: Amid this place the rivers cleere Runne soft and still, some there, some heere.

Wherein they passe the time away, in calling to remembraunce and recounting that which is past, in discoursing also of things present, accompanying one another, and conversing toge∣ther. [ 10] Now there is a third way, of those who have lived ill, and be wicked persons, the which sendeth their soules headlong into a darke gulfe and bottomlesse pit:

Where, from the dormant rivers bleak Of shadie night, thick mists doe reak, As blacke as pitch continually And those all round about doe flie.

ensolding, whelming, and covering those in ignorance and forgetfulnesse, who are tormented there and punished: for they be not greedy geiers or vultures, that evermore eat and gnaw the liver of wicked persons laid in the earth; and why? the same already is either burned or rotted: neither be there certeine heavie fardels, or weightie burdens that presse downe and overcharge [ 20] the bodies of such as be punished:

For such thin ghosts and fibres small, Have neither flesh nor bone at all.

yet are the reliques of their bodies who be departed, such as be capable of punishment, for that belongeth properly to a bodie that is solid and able to resist; but the onely way and true manner of chastising and punishing those, who have lived badly in this world, is infamie, igno∣rance, an entire abolition, and totall reducement to nothing, which bringeth them from the ri∣ver Lethe, that is to say, Oblivion, into another mournfull river, where there is no mirth, no joy, nor cheerefulnesse, & from thence plungeth them into a vast sea, which hath neither shore nor bottom, even idlenesse and unaptnesse to all good, which can doe nought else but draw af∣ter [ 30] it a generall forgetfulnesse and buriall (as it were) in all ignorance and infamous obscuritie.

Notes

• * 1.1

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