For allow a man to be discreet and flexible to companies – which are great virtues and gifts of the mind – this discretion will be to him the soul and elixir of all virtue. So that, touched with this, even pride shall be made civil humility, and cowardice, honourable and wise valour. But in things seen there is not this danger. For the body which thou lovest and esteemest fair is fair certainly, and if it be not fair in perfection, yet it is fair in the same degree that thy judgment is good. And in a fair body I do seldom suspect a disproportioned mind, or expect a good in a deformed. As when I see a goodly house I assure myself of a worthy possessor, and from a ruinous, withered building I turn away, because it seems either stuffed with varlets, as a prison, or handled by an unworthy negligent tenant, that so suffereth the waste thereof. And truly the gifts of fortune which are riches are only handmaids, yea pandars of the body’s pleasure. With their service we nourish health and preserve beauty, and we buy delights. So that virtue which must be loved for herself, and respects no further end, is indeed nothing; and riches, whose end is the good of the body, cannot be so perfectly good as the end whereto it levels.

Problem 7: Why Hath the Common Opinion Afforded Women Souls?

It is agreed that we have not so much from them as any part of either of our mortal souls of sense or growth; and we deny souls to others equal to them in all but speech, for which they are beholding only to their bodily instruments, for perchance an ape’s heart or a goat’s or a fox’s or a serpent’s would speak just so if it were in the breast, and could move the tongue and jaws. Have they so many advantages and means to hurt us (for even their loving destroys us) that we dare not displease them, but give them what they will, and so, when some call them angels, some goddesses, and the Peputian heretics made them bishops, we descend so much with the stream to allow them souls? Or do we somewhat, in this dignifying them, flatter princes and great personages that are so much governed by them? Or do we, in that easiness and prodigality wherein we daily lose our own souls, allow souls to we care not whom, and so labour to persuade ourselves that since a woman hath a soul, a soul is no great matter? Or do we but lend them souls, and that for use, since they, for our sakes, give their souls again, and their bodies to boot? Or perchance because the Devil, who doth most mischief, is all soul, for conveniency and proportion, because they would come near him, we allow them some soul. And so as the Romans naturalized some provinces in revenge, and made them Romans only for the burden of the commonwealth, so we have given women souls only to make them capable of damnation.

Problem 8: Why Are the Fairest Falsest?

I mean not of false alchemy beauty, for then the question should be inverted, why are the falsest fairest? It is not only because they are much solicited and sought for. So is gold, yet it is not so coming. And this suit to them should teach them their value and make them more reserved. Nor is it because delicatest blood hath best spirits, for what is that to the flesh? Perchance such constitutions have the best wits, and there is no other proportionable subject for women’s wits but deceit. Doth the mind so follow the temper of the body that because these complexions are aptest to change, the mind is therefore so too? Or as bells of the purest metal retain the tinkling and sound longest, so the memory of the last pleasure lasts longest in these, and disposes them to the next? But sure it is not in the complexion, for those that do but think themselves fair are presently inclined to this multiplicity of loves, which being but fair in conceit are false indeed. And so perchance when they are born to this beauty, or have made it, or have dreamt it, they easily believe all addresses and applications of every man, out of a sense of their own worthiness, to be directed to them, which others less worthy in their own thoughts apprehend not or discredit. But I think the true reason is that being like gold in many properties (as that all snatch at them, that all corruption is by them, that the worst possess them, that they care not how deep we dig for them, and that by the law of nature occupanti conceditur), they would be also like in this, that as gold to make itself of use admits allay, so they, that they may be tractable and malleable and current, have for their allay falsehood.

Paradox 10: That it is Possible to Find Some Virtue in Some Women

I am not of that seared impudency that I dare defend women, or pronounce them good. Yet when we see physicians allow some virtue in every poison, alas, why should we except women? Since certainly they are good for physic – at least, so as wine is good for a fever. And though they be the occasioners of most sins, they are also the punishers and revengers of the same sins. For I have seldom seen one which consumes his substance or body upon them escape diseases or beggary. And this is their justice. And if suum cuique dare be the fulfilling of all civil justice, they are most just: for they deny that which is theirs to no man.

Tanquam non liceat, nulla puella negat

And who may doubt of great wisdom in them, that doth but observe with how much labour and cunning our justices and other dispensers of the laws study to embrace them; and how zealously our preachers dehort men from them, only by urging their subtleties and policies and wisdom which are in them, yea, in the worst and most prostitute sort of them. Or who can deny them a good measure of fortitude, if he consider how many valiant men they have overthrown, and, being themselves overthrown, how much and how patiently they bear? And though they be all most intemperate, I care not; for I undertook to furnish them with some virtue, not all. Necessity, which makes even bad things good, prevails also for them; and we must say of them, as of some sharp punishing laws; if men were free from infirmities, they were needless; but they are both good scourges for bad men. These or none must serve for reasons; and it is my great happiness that examples prove not rules. For to confirm this opinion the world yields not one example.

IGNATIUS HIS CONCLAVE

In the twinkling of an eye, I saw all the rooms in Hell open to my sight. And by the benefit of certain spectacles (I know not of what making, but, I think, of the same by which Gregory the Great and Beda did discern so distinctly the souls of their friends when they were discharged from their bodies, and sometimes the souls of such men as they knew not by sight, and of some that were never in the world, and yet they could distinguish them flying into Heaven or conversing with living men) I saw all the channels in the bowels of the earth; and all the inhabitants of all nations and of all ages were suddenly made familiar to me…

Proceeding therefore to more inward places, I saw a secret place, where there were not many, beside Lucifer himself; to which only they had title which had so attempted any innovation in this life that they gave an affront to all antiquity, and induced doubts and anxieties and scruples, and, after a liberty of believing what they would, at length established opinions directly contrary to all established before…

Now to this place not only such endeavour to come as have innovated in matters directly concerning the soul, but also they which have done so either in the arts, or in conversation, or in anything which exerciseth the faculties of the soul, and may so provoke to quarrelsome and brawling controversies. For so the truth be lost, it is no matter how. But the gates are seldom opened, nor scarce oftener than once in an age. But my destiny favoured me so much that I was present then, and saw all the pretenders, and all that affected an entrance, and Lucifer himself, who then came out into the outward chamber, to hear them plead their own causes.

As soon as the door creaked, I spied a certain mathematician, which till then had been busied to find, to deride, to detrude Ptolemy, and now with an erect countenance and settled pace came to the gates, and with his hands and feet (scarce respecting Lucifer himself) beat the doors, and cried: ‘Are these shut against me, to whom all the Heavens were ever open; who was a soul to the Earth, and gave it motion?’

By this I knew it was Copernicus.