Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/454

 THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER posed your fallacy; for methinks I am bound to do so for the honour of my Lady, whom you, forsooth, would have of less dig- nity than this Courtier of yours, and I will not allow it." 45-— My lord Ottaviano laughed, and said: " My lord Magnifico, it would be more praise to the Court Lady to exalt her until she equalled the Courtier, than to abase the Courtier until he equalled the Court Lady; for it would be by no means forbidden the Lady to teach the mistress also, and with her to tend towards that aim of Courtiership which I said befits the Courtier with the prince. But you seek more to censure the Courtier than to praise the Court Lady; hence I too shall be allowed to take the Courtier's part. " To reply, then, to your objections, I declare I did not say that the Courtier's instruction ought to be the sole cause of making the prince such as we would have him. For if he were not by nature inclined and fitted to be so, all the Courtier's care and re- minders would be in vain: just as any good husbandman also would labour in vain if he were to set about cultivating barren sea-sand and sowing it with excellent seed, because such barren- ness is natural in that place; but when to good seed in fertile soil, and to mildness of climate and rains suited to the season, there is added also the diligence of human culture, very abundant crops are always found to spring up plenteously. Nor is it on that account true that the husbandman alone is the cause of this, although without him all the other things would avail little or nothing. Thus there are many princes who would be good if their minds were rightly cultivated; and it is of these that I am speaking, not of those who are like barren ground, and by nature so alien to good behaviour that no training avails to lead their minds in the straight path. 46.—" And since, as we have already said, our habits are what our actions make them, and virtue consists in action, it is not impossible or marvellous that the Courtier should turn the prince to many virtues, like justice, generosity, magnanimity, the prac- tice whereof the prince by his greatness can easily put in use and convert into habit; which the Courtier cannot do, because he has not the means to practise them; and thus the prince, allured to virtue by the Courtier, may become more virtuous than the 282