Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/342

320 there; for semblably, the small parcels and fragments of wisdom, being cut into sundry portions, are ranged into their several ranks and become arts. A wonderful thing how these arts and sciences should have no dealing with fortune nor need her help, for to attain unto their proper ends; and yet prudence, which is the greatest sovereign and most perfect of them all, yea, and the very height of all the glory, reputation and goodness of man, should be just nothing. In the winding up and letting down of the strings of an instrument, there is one kind of wisdom, and that is called music; in the dressing and ordering of meats and viands there is another, which they name cookery; in washing and scouring of clothes and garments there is a third, to wit, the fuller's craft. As for our little children, we teach them to draw on their shoes, to make them ready and dress themselves in their clothes decently, to take meat in their right hand, and to hold bread in the left; an evident argument and proof that even such small matters as these depend not of chance and fortune, but require skill and heed taking.

Shall we say then that the greatest and most principal things that are, even those that be most material and necessary for man's felicity, use not wisdom, nor participate one whit with providence and the judgment of reason? There is no man so blockish and void of understanding, that after he hath tempered clay and water together, lets it alone and goeth his way when he hath so done, looking that of the own accord, or by fortune, there will be bricks or tiles made thereof: neither is any one such a sot, as when he hath bought wool and leather, sits him down and prays unto fortune that thereof he may have garments or shoes: and is there any man so foolish, think you, who having gathered together a great mass of gold and silver, gotten about him a mighty retinue of slaves and servants, and being possessed of divers fair and stately houses with many a door within and without, and those surely locked on every side, having before him in his eyesight a sort of sumptuous beds with their rich and costly furniture, and of tables most precious, will repose sovereign felicity therein, or think that all this can make him to live happily, without pain, without grief, secure of change and alteration, if he have not wisdom withal?

There was one that cavilled upon a time with Captain Iphicrates, and by way of reproach and minding to prove that he was of no reckoning, demanded what he was? For (quoth he) you are not a man-at-arms, nor archer, nor yet targetier: I am not indeed, I confess (quoth Iphicrates), but I am he who