Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.18

The first three kinds of destiny briefly explained. The definition or description of them all. The Stoics slightly and briefly excused.

"I call mathematical destiny that which ties and knits firmly all actions and events to the power of the planets and dispositions of the stars. Of which the Chaldeans and astrologists were the first authors. And among the philosophers that lofty Mercurius is principal and abettor, who subtly and wisely distinguishing providence, necessity, and destiny, says: providence is an absolute and perfect knowledge of the celestial God; which has two faculties nearly allied unto it, necessity and destiny. 

"Destiny truly serves and assists providence, and also necessity, but unto destiny itself the stars do minister. For neither may any man avoid the force of fate, nor beware of the power and influence of the stars. For these be the weapons and armor of destiny, at whose pleasure they do and perform all things to nature and men. In this foolish opinion are not only the common crew of astrologers, but, I shame to speak it, some divines. 

"I call natural fate the order of natural causes, which, not being hindered, by their force and nature do produce a certain and the selfsame effect. Aristotle is of this sect, if we give credit to Alexander of Aphrodisias his interpreter. Likewise, Theophrastus, who writes plainly, that destiny is the nature of each thing. By their opinion it is destiny that a man begets a man; and so that he dies of inward natural causes and not by violence or force, it is destiny. Contrarily, that a man should engender a serpent or a monster, it is besides destiny: also to be killed with a sword or by fire. 

"This opinion is not very offensive, for that indeed it ascends not so high as the force of fate or destiny. And does not everyone escape falling that keeps himself from climbing aloft? Such a one is Aristotle, almost everywhere writing ought of celestial matters, except it be in his book of the world, which is a golden treatise savoring of a more celestial air. I read moreover in a Greek writer that Aristotle thought that fate was no cause, but that chance was in some sort an alteration or change of the cause of such things as were disposed by necessity. 

"O the heart of a philosopher: that dares to account fortune and chance among the number of causes but not destiny. But let him pass: I come to the Stoics my friends (for I profess to hold that sect in estimation and account) who were the authors of violent fate, which with Seneca I define to be a necessity of all things and actions, which no force can withstand or break. And with Chrysippus, a spiritual power, governing orderly the whole world. 

"These definitions swerve not far from the truth if they be soundly and modestly expounded. Neither, happily, their opinion generally, if the common people had not condemned the same already by a prejudicate conceit. They are charged with two impieties, that they make God subject to the wheel of destiny, and also the actions of our will. I cannot boldly acquit them of both these faults: for out of some of their writings (few being at this day extant) we may gather those sayings, and out of some other we collect more wholesome sentences.

"Seneca, a principal pillar of that sect, stumbles at the first block of his book on providence where he says, the very same necessity binds God: an irrevocable course carries away both human and divine things. The maker and ruler of all things decreed destinies but now follows them; he commanded once, but he obeys forever. And that same indissoluble chain and linking together of causes which binds all things and persons seems plainly to infer force or constraint. 

"But the true Stoics never professed such doctrines, and if by chance any like sentence passed from them in the vehemency of their writing or disputing, it was more in words than in substance and sense. Chrysippus, who first corrupted that grave sect of philosophers with crabbed subtleties of questions, clears it from depriving man of free liberty. And our Seneca does not make God subject to fate (he was wiser than so) but God to God, after a certain kind of speech. For those Stoics that came nearest the truth do call destiny sometimes providence and sometimes God. 

"Therefore Zeno when he had called destiny a power moving about the same matter, after one and the same manner, he adds, which it boots not whether you call it providence or nature. Likewise Chrysippus elsewhere called destiny the eternal purpose or decree of providence. Panaetius the Stoic said, that God himself was fate, Seneca being of the same mind says, when you list you may call the author of nature and all things, by this or that name: you may justly term him the best and great Jupiter and thundering and Stator, that is stable and standing, not so called as historians deliver because after a vow undertaken, he stayed the Roman army from flying away; but because all things stand by his free benefit, therefore was he named stander or establisher. 

"If you call him also fate or destiny, you shall not belie him. For since that destiny is nothing but a folded order of causes, he is the principal and first cause of all whereon the residue does depend. Which last words are so godly spoken that slander itself cannot slander them. In this point dissented not from the Stoics that great writer to a great king: I think that necessity ought not to be called anything else but God, as a steadfast and stable nature. And destiny that which knits together all things and holds his course freely, without let or impediment. Which sayings, if they have any taste of temerity in them, yet not impiety; and being rightly interpreted differ not much from our true fate and destiny. 

"I do in good earnest give this commendation to the Stoics, that no other sect of philosophers avowed more the majesty and providence of God, nor drew men nearer to heaven and eternal things. And if in treading this trace of destiny they went somewhat astray, it was through a laudable and good desire they have to withdraw blind men from the blind goddess, I mean fortune: the nature whereof they did not only mightily hiss out of their company, but even the very name." 

IMAGE: John William Waterhouse, Destiny (1900) 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.17

We come to that necessity which is of destiny. First destiny itself avouched. That there has been a general consent therein of the common people and wise men; but different in part. How many ways destiny has been taken among the ancients.

Thus spoke Langius, and with his talk caused the tears to trickle down my cheeks; so clearly seemed he to behold the vanity of human affairs. 

With that lifting up my voice, "Alas," said I, "what are we or all these matters for which we thus toil? What is it to be somebody? Man is a shadow and a dream, as says the poet." 

Then spoke Langius to me, "But you, young man, do not only contemplate on these things, but condemn them. Imprint constancy in your mind amid this casual and inconstant variableness of all things. I call it inconstant in respect of our understanding and judgment; for that if you look unto God and his Providence, all things succeed in a steady and immovable order. 

"Now I cast aside my sword and come to my engines; neither will I any longer assault sorrow with handy weapons but with great ordnance, running against it with the strong and terrible ram which no power of man is able to put back nor policy to prevent. This place is somewhat slippery, yet I will enter into it, but warily, slowly, and, as the Grecians speak, with a quiet foot.

"And first that there is a kind of fatal destiny in things, I think neither yourself, Lipsius, nor any people or age has ever doubted of."

Here I interrupting him said, "I pray you pardon me if I hinder you a little in this course. What? Do you oppose destiny unto me? Alas, this is but a weak engine pushed on by the feeble Stoics. I tell you plainly I care not a rush for the destinies nor the ladies of them. And I say with the soldier in Plautus, I will scatter this troupe of old wives with one blast of breath, even as the wind does the leaves." 

Langius looking sternly on me, "Will you so rashly and unadvisedly," said he, "delude or deny utterly destiny? You are not able, except if you can at once take away the divine Godhead and the power thereof, for, if there be a God, there is also Providence; if it, a decree and order of things, and of that follows a firm and sure necessity of events. 

"How do you avoid this blow? Or with what axe will you cut off this chain? For God and that eternal spirit may not otherwise be considered of by us, than that we attribute unto it an eternal knowledge and foresight. We must acknowledge him to be stayed, resolute and immutable, always one, and like himself, not wavering or varying in those things which once he willed and foresaw. For the eternal God never changes his mind, says Homer. 

"Which if you confess to be true, as indeed you must if there be in you any reason or sense, this also must be allowed that all God's decrees are firm and immovable even from everlasting unto all eternity; of this grows necessity, and that same destiny which you deride. The truth whereof is so clear and commonly received, that there was never any opinion current among all nations. And whosoever had any light of God himself and his Providence, had the like of destiny. 

"The most ancient and wisest poet Homer, believe me, traced his divine muse in none other path than this of destiny. Neither did the other poets, his progeny, stray from the steps of their father. See Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, and among the Latins Virgil. 

"Shall I speak of historiographers? This is the voice of them all, that such and such a thing came to pass by destiny, and that by destiny kingdoms are either established or subverted. 

"Would you hear the philosophers, whose chief care was to find out and defend the truth against the common people? As they jarred in many things through an ambitious desire of disputing, so it is a wonder to see how they agreed universally upon the entrance into this way which leads to destiny. 

"I say in the entrance of that way, because I do not deny that they follow some by pathways which may be reduced into these four kinds of destiny, namely, mathematical, natural, violent, and true. All of which I will expound briefly, only touching them a little, because from such matters commonly grows confusion and error." 

IMAGE: Alexander Rothaug, The Three Fates (c. 1910) 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.16

Examples of necessary alteration, or death in the whole world. That heaven and the elements are changed, and shall perish; the like is to be seen in towns, provinces, and kingdoms; finally, that all things here do turn about the wheel, and that nothing is stable or constant.

"It is an eternal decree, pronounced of the world from the beginning, and of all things therein, to be born and to die, to begin and to end. That supreme judge of all things would have nothing firm and stable but himself alone, as says the tragic poet, Sophocles: 

"From age and death God only stands free,
But all things else by time consumed be. 

"All these things which you behold and admire either shall perish in their due time, or at least be altered and changed: See you the sun? He faints. The moon? She labors and languishes. The stars? They fail and fall. 

"And howsoever the wit of man cloaks and excuses these matters, yet there have happened and daily do in the celestial body such things as confound both the rules and wits of the mathematicians. I omit comets strange in form, situation, and motion, which all the universities shall never persuade me to be in the air, or of the air. 

"But behold, our astrologers were sorely troubled of late with strange motions and new stars. This very year there arose a star whose increasing and decreasing was plainly marked, and we saw, a matter hardly to be credited, even in the heaven itself, a thing to have beginning and end. 

"And Varro cries out and affirms that the evening star called of Plautus Versperugo, and of Homer Hersperus, had changed his color, his bigness, his fashion, and his course. 

"Next unto the heaven, behold the air, it is altered daily and passes into winds, clouds, and showers. 

"Go to the waters. Those floods and fountains which we affirm to be perpetual, do sometimes fail altogether, and at other times change their channel and ordinary course. The huge ocean, a great and secret part of nature, is ever tossed and tumbled with tempests. And if you are wanting, yet has it its flowing and ebbing of waters, and that we may perceive it to be subject to decay; it swells and swages daily in its parts.

"Behold also the earth which is taken to be immovable, and to stand steady of its own force: it faints and is stricken with an inward secret blast that makes it to tremble; somewhere it is corrupted by the water, elsewhere by fire. For these same things do strive among themselves.

"Neither grudge you to see war among men, there is likewise between the elements. What great lands have been wasted, yea wholly swallowed up by the sudden deluges, and violent overflowings of the sea? 

"In old time the sea overwhelmed wholly a great island called Atlantis (I think not the story fabulous) and after that the mighty cities Helice and Bura. But to leave ancient examples, here in Belgica two islands with the towns and men in them. And even now in our time this lord of the sea Neptune opens to himself new gaps and sweeps up daily the weak banks of Friesland and other countries. 

"Yet does not the earth sit still like a slothful housewife, but sometimes revenges herself and makes new islands in the midst of the sea, though Neptune marvel and be moved thereby? And if these great bodies which to us seem everlasting are subject to mutability and alteration, why much more should not towns, commonwealths, and kingdoms, which must needs be mortal, as they that do compose them? 

"As each particular man has his youth, his strength, old age, and death, so fares it with those other bodies. They begin, they increase, they stand and flourish, and all to this end, that they may decay. 

"One earthquake under the reign of Tiberius overthrew twelve famous towns of Asia, and as many in Campania in Constantine's time. One war of Attila, a Scythian, prince destroyed a hundred cities. The ancient Thebes of Egypt is scarcely held in remembrance in this day, and a hundred towns of Crete not believed ever to have been. 

"To come to more certainty, our elders saw the ruins of Carthage, Numantia, Corinth, and wondered thereat. And ourselves have beheld the unworthy relics of Athens, Sparta, and many renowned cities, yea even that Lady of all things and countries, falsely termed everlasting Rome, where is she? Overwhelmed, pulled down, burned, overflowed: she is perished with more than one kind of destruction, and at this day she is ambitiously sought for, but not found in her proper soil. 

"See you that noble Byzantium, being proud with the seat of two empires? Venice lifted up with the stableness of a thousand years continuance? Their day shall come at length. And thus also our Antwerp, the beauty of cities, in time shalt come to nothing. For this great master builder pulls down, sets up, and, if I may so lawfully speak, makes a sport of human affairs. And like an image maker, forms and frames to himself sundry sorts of portraitures in his clay.

"I have spoken of towns and cities. Countries likewise and kingdoms run the very same race. Once the East flourished. Assyria, Egypt and Jewry excelled in war and peace. That glory was transferred into Europe, which now like a diseased body seems unto me to be shaken, and to have a feeling of her great confusion nigh at hand. 

"Yea, and that which is more and never enough to be marveled at, this world having now been inhabited these five thousand and five hundred years, is at length come to its dotage. And that we may now approve again the fables of Anaxarchus, in old time hissed at, behold now there arises elsewhere new people, and a new world. 

"O the law of necessity, wonderful, and not to be comprehended! All things run into this fatal whirlpool of ebbing and flowing. And some things in this world are long lasting but not everlasting.

"Lift up your eyes and look about with me, for it grieves me not to stand long upon this point, and behold the alterations of all human affairs, and the swelling and swaging of them as of the sea: arise you; fall you; rule you; obey you; hide you your head; lift you up yours and let this wheel of changeable things run round, so long as this round world remains. 

"Have you Germans in time past been fierce? Be you now milder than most people of Europe. Have you Britons been uncivil heretofore? Now exceed you the Egyptians and people of Sybaris in delights and riches. Has Greece once flourished? Now let her be afflicted. Has Italy swayed the scepter? Now let her be in subjection. 

"You Goths, you Vandals, you vilest of the barbarians, peep you out of your lurking holes, and come rule the nations in your turn. Draw near you rude Scythians, and with a mighty hand hold you a whiles the reins of Asia and Europe; yet you again soon after give place and yield up the scepter to another nation bordering on the ocean. Am I deceived? Or else do I see the sun of another new empire arising in the West?" 

IMAGE by Kirk D. Keyes 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.15

A passage to the second argument for constancy, which is taken from necessity. The force and violence thereof, this necessity is considered two ways, and first in the things themselves.

"This is a sure brazen target against all outward accidents. This is that gold armor wherewith being fenced, Plato wills us to fight against chance and fortune, to be subject to God, and in all events to cast our mind upon that great mind of the world. I mean Providence, whose holy and happy troops having orderly trained forth. 

"I will now bring out another band under the banner of necessity. A band valiant, strong, and hard as iron, which I may fitly term the thundering legion. The power of this is stern and invincible, which tames and subdues all things. Wherefore, Lipsius, I marvel if you withstand it. 

"Thales being asked what was strongest of all things, answered, 'necessity', for it overcomes all things. And to that purpose there is an old saying, though not so warily spoken of, that the gods cannot constrain necessity. This necessity I join next unto Providence, because it is near kin to it, or rather born of it. For from God and his decrees necessity springs: and it is nothing else, as the Greek philosopher defines it, but a firm ordinance and immutable power of Providence. 

"That it has a stroke in all public evils that befall, I will prove two ways: from the nature of things themselves and from destiny. And first from the things, in that it is a natural property to all things created, to fall into mutability and alteration: as unto iron cleaves naturally a consuming rust, to wood a gnawing worm, and so a wasting rottenness. Even so to living creatures, cities, and kingdoms, there be certain inward causes of their own decay. 

"Look upon all things high and low, great and small, made with hand, or composed by the mind, they always have decayed, and ever shall. And as the rivers with a continual swift course run into the sea, so all human things through this conduit of wastings and calamities slide to the mark of their desolation. Death and destruction is this mark, and the means to come thither are plague, war, and slaughters. 

"So that if death be necessary, then the means in that respect are as necessary. Which to the end you may the better perceive by examples, I will not refuse in conceit and imagination to wander a whiles with you through the great university of the world." 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.14

That nothing is done but by the beck of this Providence. That by it desolations come upon men and cities; therefore we do not the parts of good and godly men to murmur or mourn for them. Finally, an exhortation to obey God against whom we strive unadvisedly and in vain. 

"If you conceive this rightly, and do believe heartily that this governing faculty insinuates itself, and, as the poet speaks, passes through every path of sea and eke of shore, I see not what further place can be left for your grief and grudging. For even the selfsame foreseeing intelligence which turns about the heaven daily, which causes the sun to rise and set, which brings forth and shuts up the fruits of the earth, produces all these calamities and changes which you so much marvel and mutter at. 

"Do you think that God gives us only pleasing and profitable things? No, he sends likewise noisome and hurtful; neither is anything contrived, tossed or turned, sin only excepted, in this huge theater of the world, the cause and fountain whereof proceeds not from that first cause of causes: for as Pindar says well, the dispensers and doers of all things are in heaven. And there is let down from thence a golden chain, as Homer expresses by a figment, whereto all these inferior things are fast linked. 

"That the earth has opened her mouth and swallowed up some towns, came of God's Providence. That elsewhere the plague has consumed many thousands of people, proceeds of the same cause. That slaughters, war, and tyranny rage in the Low Countries, there hence also comes it to pass. 

"From heaven, Lipsius, from heaven are all these miseries sent. Therefore Euripides said it well and wisely, that all calamities are from God. The ebbing and flowing of all human affairs depends upon that moon. The rising and fall of kingdoms comes from this sun. You therefore in losing the reins thus to your sorrow, and grudging that the country is so turned and overturned, do not consider what you are, and against whom you complain. What are you? A man, a shadow, dust? Against whom do you fret? I fear to speak it, even against God. 

"The ancients have fained that giants advanced themselves against God, to pull him out of his throne. Let us omit these fables: in very truth you querulous and murmuring men are these giants. For if it be so that God does not only suffer but send all these things, then you who thus strive and struggle, what do you else but, as much as in you lies, take the scepter and sway of government from him? 

"O blind mortality: the sun, the moon, stars, elements, and all creatures else in the world, do willingly obey that supreme law: only man, the most excellent of all God's works, lifts up his heel, and spurns against his maker. 

"If you hoist your sails to the winds, you must follow whither they will force you, not whither you will lead them. And in this great ocean sea of our life will you refuse to follow that breathing spirit which governs the whole world? Yet you strive in vain. For if you follow not freely, you shall be drawn after forcibly. 

"We may laugh at him who, having tied his boat to a rock, afterwards hauls the rope as though the rock should come to him, when he himself goes nearer to it. But our foolishness is far greater, who being fast bound to the rock of God's eternal Providence, by our hailing and pulling would have the same to obey us, and not we it. 

"Let us forsake this fondness, and if we are wise, let us follow that power which from above draws us, and let us think it good reason that man should be pleased with that which pleases God. 

"The soldier in camp, having a sign of marching forward given to him, takes up all his trinkets, but hearing the note of battle lays them down, preparing and making himself ready with heart, eyes, and ears, to execute whatsoever shall be commanded. So let us in this our warfare follow cheerfully and with courage wherever our general calls us. We are hereunto adjured by oath, says Seneca, even to endure mortality, nor to be troubled with those things which it is not in our power to avoid. We are born in a kingdom, and to obey God is liberty."  

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.13

The former impediments or lets being removed, we come in good earnest to the extenuating or taking away of public evils; which is assayed by four principal arguments. First here is spoke of Providence, which is proved to be in and over all human affairs. 

"I come now from skirmishes to handgrips, and from light bickerings to the main battle. I will lead forth all my soldiers in order under their ensigns, dividing them into four troops. 

"First I will prove that these public evils are imposed upon us by God himself. 

"Secondly, that they be necessary and by destiny. 

"Thirdly, that they are profitable for us. 

"Finally, that they are neither grievous nor strange. 

"To these troops, if they discharge their parts each one in his place, can the whole army of your sorrow make any resistance, or once open the mouth against me? No truly, I must have the victory. In token whereof sound the trumpets and strike up the drums. 

"Whereas, Lipsius, all affections that do disturb man's life proceed from a mind distempered and void of reason: yet none of them more in my conceit than that sorrow which is conceived for the commonwealth's sake. 

"For all others have some final cause and scope where to they tend: as the lover to enjoy his desire, the angry man to be avenged, the covetous churl to get, and so forth. Only this has no end proposed unto it. 

"And to restrain my talk unto some certainty, you, Lipsius, bewail the state of your country decaying. Tell me to what effect? Or what hope you to obtain thereby? To amend that which is amiss? To preserve that which is about to perish? Or by weeping to take away the plague or punishment that hangs over your country? 

"None of all these, but only that you may say with the common sort, 'I am sorry.' In all other respects your mourning is in vain and to no purpose. For that thing which is past, God himself would not have to be undone again. 

"Neither is this weeping of yours vain only, but also wicked and ungodly, if it be rightly considered. For you know well that there is an eternal spirit, whom we call God, which rules, guides, and governs the rolling spheres of heaven, the manifold courses of the stars and planets, the successive alterations of the elements, finally, all things whatsoever in heaven and earth. 

"Do you think that chance or fortune bears any sway in this excellent frame of the world? Or that the affairs of mortal men are carried headlong by chance medley? I know well you do not think not so, nor any man else that has either wisdom or wit in his head. It is the voice of nature itself, and which way soever we turn our eyes or minds, all things both mortal and immortal, heavenly and earthly, sensible and insensible do with open mouth cry out and affirm, that there is somewhat far above us that created and formed these so many wonderful works, which also continually governs and preserves the same. 

"This is God, to whose absolute perfection nothing is more agreeable than to be both able and willing to take the care and charge of his own workmanship. And why should he not be willing, seeing that he is the best of all? Why should he not be able, seeing he is the mightiest of all? Insofar as there is no strength above him, nor any but that proceeds from him, neither is he letted or troubled with the greatness or variety of all these things. 

"For this eternal light casts forth his bright beams everywhere, and in a moment pierces even into the bosom and bottom of the heavens, earth, and sea. It is not only president over all things, but present in them. And no marvel. What a great part of the world does the Sun lighten at once? What a mass of matter can our mind comprehend at once? O fools: cannot he that made this sun and this mind perceive and conceive far more things than they?  

"Well and divinely spoke one that had small skill in divinity: as is the pilot in a ship, the driver to his wagon, the cantor in a choir, the law in a commonwealth, and the general in an army, so is God in the world. Herein only is the difference, that their charge is to them laborsome, grievous, and painful. But God rules without all pain and labor or bodily striving. 

"Wherefore, Lipsius, there is in God a watchful and continual care, yet without anxiety, whereby he beholds, searches, and knows all things; and knowing them, disposes and orders the same by an immutable course to us unknown. 

"And this is it which here I call Providence, whereof some man through infirmity may grudge or complain, but not doubt, except he is benumbed of his senses, and besotted against nature." 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.12

The third affection bridled, which is commiseration or pitying, being a vice. It is distinguished from mercy. How, and how far forth we ought to use it.

Langius with this conference having scattered abroad some dark mists from my mind, I spoke to him thus: "My father, what by admonitions, and what by instructions you have done me great good; so that it seems that I am now able to moderate my affection toward the native soil, or commonwealth wherein I was born, but not toward the persons of my fellow citizens and countrymen. 

"For how should I not be touched and tormented with the calamities of my country for my countrymen's sake, who are tossed in this sea of adversities, and do perish by sundry misfortunes?" 

Langius, taking my tale by the end, "This is not," said he, "properly sorrow, but rather commiseration or pitying, which must be despised of him that is wise and constant; whom nothing so much beseems as steadiness and steadfastness of courage, which he cannot retain, if he is cast down not only with his own mishaps, but also at other men's." 

"What Stoical subtleties are these?" Said I. "Will you not have me to pity another man's case? Surely it is a virtue among good men, and such as have any religion in them?" 

"I deny that," said Langius, "and I trust no good man will be offended with me, if I purge the mind of this malady, for it is a very dangerous contagion, and I judge him not far from a pitiful state that is subject to the pitying of others. 

"As it is a token of naughty eyes to wax watery when they behold other blear eyes, so is it of the mind that mourns at every other man's mourning. It is defined to be, the fault of an object and base mind, cast down at the show of another's mishap. 

"When then? Are we so unkind and void of humanity that we would have no man to be moved at another's misery? Yes, I allow that we be moved to help them, not to bewail or wail with them. I permit mercy, but it is not pitying I call mercy, an inclination of the mind to succor the necessity or misery of another. This is that virtue, Lipsius, which you see through a cloud, and instead whereof pity intrudes herself unto you. 

"But, you will say, it is incident to man's nature to be moved with affection and pity. Be it so, yet certainly it is not decent and right. Do you think that any virtue consists in softness and abjection of the mind? In sorrowing? In sighing? In sobbing together with such as weep? It cannot be so. 

"For I will show you some greedy old wives and covetous misers from whose eyes you may sooner wring a thousand tears than one small penny out of their purses. But he that is truly merciful in deed will not bemoan or pity the condition of distressed persons but yet will do more to help and succor them than the other. 

"He will behold men's miseries with the eye of compassion, yet ruled and guided by reason. He will speak unto them with a sad countenance but not mourning or prostrate. He will comfort heartily, and help literally. He will perform more in works than in words: and he will stretch out unto the poor and needy his hand rather than his tongue. 

"All this will he do with discretion and care, that he not infect himself with other men's contagion, and that, as fencers use to say, he bears not other's blows upon his own ribs. What is here savoring of inhumanity or churlishness? 

"Even so, all the wisdom seems austere and rigorous at the first view. But if you consider thoroughly of it, you shall find the same to be meek, gentle; yes, more mild and amiable than Venus herself. Let this suffice touching the three fore-rehearsed affections; whom if I have in part expelled from you, it will greatly avail me to get the victory in the battle that shall ensue." 

IMAGE: Evelyn De Morgan, Demeter Mourning for Persephone (c. 1906) 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.11

Here is confuted the second affection of too much love to our country; which love is falsely termed piety. Whence this affection springs, and what is our country properly and truly. 

Then Langius smiling replied: "Certainly you are a marvelous pious young man: and I fear that the brother of Marcus Antonius is now in danger to be deprived of his surname. But it falls out fitly that this affection offers itself in sallying before his ensign: I will assault him therefore, and overthrow him lightly. And first will I take from him the spoil of that precious garment wherewith he is unworthily attired. 

"This affection to our country is commonly called pietas, that is piety: why it should be so named I neither see nor can suffer it. For wherefore should we call it by the name of piety, which is an excellent virtue, and properly nothing else but a lawful and due honor and love towards God and our parents. 

"Why should our country be placed in the midst between these? Because, say they, it is our most ancient and holiest mother. O fools, injurious to reason and nature herself: is she our mother? How? Or wherefore? Truly I see no such reason: and if you, Lipsius, if you be sharper sighted than I, lighten my dark senses. 

"Is it because she first received us into this word? For so you seemed to affirm before. So might any taverner or innkeeper. Is it because she cherishes us? Much better does some silly maid or nurse. Is it because she nourishes us? So do cattle, trees, and corn daily: and, among the greater substances which do borrow nothing of the earth, the firmament, air, and water. Finally, change your habitation, and every other part of the world will do thus much for you. 

"These are floating and fleeing words, savoring of nothing, but an unpleasant juice of popular opinion. They alone are our parents that began, shaped, and bore us: we are seed of their seed, blood of their blood, and flesh of their flesh. If any of these things agree any ways to our country, then I confess that I go about wrongfully to bereave it of this duty of piety. 

"You will say that great learned clerics have so spoken of it. They have indeed so spoken, following the common opinion, but not that they were so persuaded themselves. But if you will follow the truth, you shall attribute that sacred and high title to God, and also, if you think good, to our parents; but as for this affection to our country, being first bridled and restrained to a mean, let it be contented in God's name with the title of Love or Charity. 

"Yet is this only a contention about the name; let us come nearer to the thing itself. Which I do not wholly take away, but temper, and, as it were, scarify it with the lance of right reason. For as a vine if it is not pruned, spreads itself too far abroad, so do affections fly about with full sail being blown with the plausible puffs of popularity. 

"And notwithstanding here by the way I confess—for I am not degenerated from a man, nor from a citizen—I confess, I say, that every one of us has an inclination and good will to his lesser country, the causes whereof I perceive are to you unknown. You would have it to be from nature: but the truth is, it grows of custom, or of some decree and ordinance. 

"For after that men forsook their wild and savage manner of living, and began to build houses and walled towns, to join in society, and to use means offensive and defensive, behold then a certain communion necessarily began among them, and a social participation of diverse things. They parted the earth between them with certain limits and bounds; they had temples in common; also marketplaces, treasuries, seats of judgment; and principally ceremonies, rites, laws. 

"All which things our greediness began in time so to esteem and make account of, as if they were our own in particular, and so they be in some sort, for that every private citizen had some interest in them, neither did they differ from private possessions, saving that they were not wholly in one man's power. This consociation and fellowship gave the form and fashion to a new erected state, which now we call properly the commonwealth, or our country. 

"Wherein when men saw the chiefest stay of each person's safety to consist, laws were enacted for the succor and defense thereof; or at the least such customs were received by tradition from the predecessors to their posterity, that grew to be of like force as laws. Herehence it comes to pass that we rejoice at the good of the commonwealth, and be sorry for her harm; because our own private goods are secure by her safety, and are lost by her overthrow. 

"From this fountain does spring the streams of our goodwill and love toward her; which affection in respect of the common good (the secret providence of God leading thereunto) our ancestors increased, by all possible means establish and maintaining the majesty of their country. 

"It appears therefore in my judgment, that this affection had his beginning from custom, and not from nature, as you pretend. Else why should not the same measure of that affection be indifferently in all men? Why should the nobility and rich men have more care of their country than the poor people, who commonly take care for their private matters but none at all for the public affairs? Which thing falls out otherwise in all passions that be governed by the instinct of nature. 

"Finally what reason can you allege that so small and light an occasion should oftentimes assuage, yea wholly extinguish it? See how every day some for anger, some for love, some for ambition forsake their country? And what a multitude are drawn away by that idol lucre? How many Italians forsaking Italy the queen of countries only for greediness of gain have removed their dwellings into France, Germany, yea even into Sarmatia? How many thousand Spaniards do ambition draw daily into another world from us? These arguments prove invincibly that the band whereby we are linked thus to our country is but external and accidental, in that it is so easily broken by one inordinate lust. 

"Moreover, Lipsius, you are greatly deceived in describing this country of ours: for you tie it very narrowly to that native soil where we were born and had our education, with other like frivolous allegations, from whence you labor in vain to pick out natural causes of our affection toward her. 

"And if it be the native soil where we were born that deserves this title of our country then were Brussels only my country, and Iscanum yours; and to some other man, a poor cottage or cell; yea unto many, not so much as a cottage, but a wood, or else the open field; what then? Shall my good will and affections be shut up within those narrow walls? Shall I settle my disposition and love upon one town or house as my country? What folly were that? 

"You see also that by your description none are happier than those that are born in the woods and open fields, which are always flourishing, and seldom or never be subject to desolation or wasting. No, no, our country is not as you take it, but it is, some one state, or as it were one common ship, under the regiment of one prince, or one law: which I confess we ought to love, to defend, and to die for it; yet must it not drive us to lament, wail and despair. Well said the poet, 

A happy quarrel is it and a good,
For country's cause to spend our dearest blood. 

"He said not that we should weep and lament, but die for our country. For we must so far forth be good commonwealth's men, that we also retain the person of good and honest men, which we lose if we betake us to childish and womanlike lamentations. 

"Last of all, Lipsius, I have you learn this one hidden and deep mystery, that if we respect the whole nature of man, all these earthly countries are vain and falsely so termed, except only in respect of the body, and not of the mind or soul, which descending down from that highest habitation, deems all the whole earth as a jail or prison, but heaven is our true and rightful country, whither let us advance all our cogitations, that we may freely say with Anaxagoras to such as foolishly ask us whether we have no regard to our country? Yes verily but yonder is our country, lifting our finger and mind up toward heaven." 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.10

A complaint against the former sharp reprehension of Langius. But he adds that it is the part of a philosopher so to speak freely. He endeavors to confute the former disputation speaking of duty and love to our country. 

This first skirmish seemed to me very hot, wherefore interrupting him I replied, "What liberty of speech is this that you use? Yea, what bitter taunting? Do you in this wise pinch and prick me? I may well answer you with Euripides' words, 

Add not more grief unto my strong disease,
I suffer more, God knows, than is mine ease."

Langius smiling at this, I perceived then, said he, "You expect wafer cakes or sweet wine at my hands; but a little while ago you desired either fire or razor: and therein you did well. For I am a philosopher, Lipsius, not a fiddler: my purpose is to teach, not to entice you; to profit, not to please you; to make you blush, rather than smile; and to make you penitent, not insolent. 

"The school of a philosopher is as a physician's shop, so said Rufus once, whither we must repair for health, not for pleasure. That physician dallies not, neither flatters but pierces, pricks, razes, and with the savory salt of good talk sucks out the filthy corruption of the mind. Wherefore look not hereafter of me for roses, oils, or pepper, but for thorns, lancing tools, wormwood, and sharp vinegar." 

Here I took him up, saying: "Truly, Langius, if I may be so bold as to be plain with you, you deal scarce well or charitably with me: neither do you like a stout champion overcome me in lawful striving, but undermine me by slights and subtleties, saying that I bewail my country's calamities feignedly, and not for good will to it; wherein you do me wrong. 

"For let me confess freely that I have some manner of regard to myself, yet not wholly. I lament the cause of my country principally, although the danger she is in extends not in any sort unto me. Good reason is there why I should do so. For she it is that first received me into this world, and after that nourished and bred me, being, by common consent of all nations, our most ancient and holiest mother. 

"But you assign me the whole world for my country. Who denies that? Yet further you may not gainsay, that besides this large and universal country, there is another more near and dear unto me, to the which I am tied by a secret bond of nature, except you think there is no virtue persuasive nor attractive in that native soil which we first touched with our bodies and pressed with our feet; where we first drew our breath; where we cried in our infancy, played in our childhood, and exercised ourselves in manhood; where our eyes are acquainted with the firmament, floods, and fields; where have been by a long continuance of descents our kinsfolk, friends, and companions, and to many occasions of joy besides, which I may expect in vain in another part of the world. 

"Neither is all this the slander packthread of opinion, as you would have it seem, but the strong fetters of nature herself. Look upon all other living creatures. The wild beasts do both known and love their dens; and birds their nests. Fishes in the great and endless ocean sea, desire to enjoy some certain part thereof. What need I speak of men who, whether they be civil or barbarous, are so addicted to this their native soil that whosoever bears the face of a man will never refuse to die for and in it. 

"Therefore, Langius, this newfound curious philosophy of yours, I neither perceive as yet the depth of it, nor mind to make profession thereof. I will listen rather to the true saying of Euripides,

Necessity forces every wight
To love his country with all his might." 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.9

The vizard of dissimulation is more plainly discovered, by examples. By the way mention is made of our true country. Also the malice of men rejoicing at other men's harms when they themselves be without danger thereof. 

"Wherefore you yourself shall sit as judge in this cause, but yet with the veil removed from your face. 

"You fear the war. I know it. Why? Because war draws with it punishment and destruction. To whom? To others at this present, but it may be shortly to you. Behold the head, behold the fountain of your grief. For as a thunderbolt having stricken one man, makes all that stood near him to tremble: so in these universal and public calamities, the loss touches few, the fear redounds to all, which fear if it were away, there would be no place for sorrow. 

"Behold, if war be among the Ethiopians or Indians, it moves you not (you are out of danger): if it be in Belgica you weep, cry out, rub your forehead, and smite your thigh. But now if it were so that you did bewail the public evils as public, and for themselves, there should be no difference had of you between those countries and this. 

"You will say, 'It is none of my country.' O fool: are not they men, sprung first out of the same stock with you? Living under the same globe of heaven? Upon the same mold of earth? Think you that this little plot of ground environed by such and such mountains, compassed with this or that river, is your country? 

"You are deceived. The whole world is our country, wheresoever is the race of mankind sprung of that celestial seed. Socrates being asked of what country he was, answered: 'Of the world.' For a high and lofty mind will not suffer itself to be penned by opinion within such narrow bounds, but conceives and knows the whole world to be his own. 

"We scorn and laugh at fools, who suffer their masters to tie them with a straw or small thread to a post, where they stand as if they were fettered fast with iron. Our folly is not inferior to theirs, who with the weak link of opinion are wedded to one corner of the world. 

"But to let pass these deep arguments (which I doubt how you will conceive of them), I demand, if God would assure you in the midst of these broils, that your field should be unspoiled, your house and substance in safety, and yourself on some high mountain placed out of all danger: would you lament for all this? 

"I am loath to affirm it of you, but I am certain there are many that would be glad thereof, and feed their eyes greedily with the spectacle of such blood butcheries. Why do you turn aside? Why do you marvel at this? Such is the natural corruption of man, that, as the poet says, it rejoices at other men's harms. And as some apples there be though bitter in the belly yet relishing sweet in taste: so are other men's miseries, we ourselves being free from them. 

Suppose a man be on the shore beholding a shipwreck, it will move him somewhat, yet truly not without an inward tickling of his mind, because he sees other men's danger, himself being in security. But if he in person were in that distressed ship, he would be touched with another manner of grief. 

"Even so verily is it in this case, let us say, or make what show we list to the contrary. For we bewail our own misfortunes earnestly and from the heart, but public calamities in words only and for fashion's sake. 

"Wherefore, Lipsius, take away these stage-hangings, draw back the curtain that is before you, and without all counterfeiting or dissimulation, acquaint us with the true cause of your sorrow." 

IMAGE: Jan Martszen de Jonge, A Cavalry Skirmish with Two Fallen Soldiers (c. 1640) 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.8

A prevention against public evils: but first of all, three affections are restrained. And of those three, particularly in this chapter is repressed a kind of vainglorious dissimulation, whereby men that lament their own private misfortunes would seem that they bewail the common calamities. 

"What think you, Lipsius, have I not betrayed constancy into your hands in pleading the cause of your sorrow? Not so. But herein I have played the part of a good captain, in drawing out all your troops into the field, to the end that I might fight it out manfully with them. 

"But first I will begin with light skirmishes and afterward join with you in plain battle. In skirmishing I am to assault foot by foot, as the ancients speak, three affections utter enemies to this our constancy. Dissimulation, piety, commiseration or pity. 

"I will begin with the first of them. You say you cannot endure to see these public miseries, that it is a grief, yea even a death unto you. Do you speak that from your heart, or only from the teeth outward?" 

Herewithal I being somewhat angry, asked whether he jested or gibed with me. 

"Nay," said Langius. "I speak in good earnest for that many of your crew do beguile the physicians, making them believe that the public evils do grieve them when their private losses are the true cause. I demand therefore again, whether the care which now does boil and bubble in your breast, is for your country's sake or for your own?" 

 "What," said I, "do you make question of that? Surely, Langius, for my country's sake alone am I thus disquieted." 

"See it be so," said he, "for I marvel that there should be in you such an excellent sincere duty which few attain unto. I deny not but that most men do complain of common calamities, neither is there any kind of sorrow so usual as this in the tongues of people. But examine the matter to the quick, and you shall find many times great difference between the tongue and the heart. 

"These words, 'my country's calamity afflicts me,' carry with them more vainglory than verity. And as it is recorded in histories of Polus, a notable stage-player, that playing his part on the stage wherein it behooved him to express some great sorrow, he brought with him privily the bones of his dead son, and so the remembrance thereof caused him to fill the theater with true tears indeed. Even so may I say by the most part of you. You play a comedy, and under the person your country, you bewail with tears your private miseries. 

"One says 'The whole world is a stage play.' Truly in this case it is so. Some cry out, 'These civil wars torment us, the blood of innocents spilt, the loss of laws and liberty.' Is it so? I see your sorrow indeed, but the cause I must search out more narrowly. Is it for the commonwealth's sake? O player, put off your mask: you yourself self are the cause thereof. 

"We see oftentimes the country boors trembling and running together with earnest prayers when any sudden misfortune or insurrection approaches, but as soon as the danger is past, examine them well and you shall perceive that every one was afraid of his own field and corn. 

"If fire should happen to be kindled in this city, we should have a general outcry: the lame and almost the blind would hasten to help quench it. What think you? For their country's sake? Ask them and you shall see, it was, because the loss would have redounded to all, or at the least, the fear thereof. 

"So falls it out in this case. Public evils do move and disquiet many men, not because the harm touches a great number, but because they themselves are of that number." 

IMAGE: Honoré Daumier, The Melodrama (c. 1860) 

Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.7

What and how many things do disturb constancy. That outward good and evil things do it. Evils are of two sorts, public and private. Of these two, public evils seem more grievous and dangerous. 

Langius having uttered these words with a more earnest voice and countenance than accustomed, I was somewhat inflamed with a spark of this good fire. 

"And then, my Father," I said, "let me rightly without dissimulation call you so, lead me and learn me as you list: direct and correct me; I am your patient prepared to admit any kind of curing, be it by razor or fire, to cut or sear." 

"I must use both those means," said Langius, "for that one while the stubble of false opinions is to be burned away, and another while the tender slips of affections to be off by the root. 

"But tell me whether had you rather walk or sit? Sitting would please me best, say I, for I begin to be hot." 

 So then Langius commanded stools to be brought into the porch, and I sitting close by him, he turned himself toward me and began his talk in this manner.

"Hitherto, Lipsius, have I laid the foundation whereupon I might erect the building of my future communication. Now, if it please you, I will come nearer the matter, and inquire the causes of your sorrow, for I must touch the sore with my hand. 

"There are two things that do assault this castle of constancy in us: false goods, and false evils. I define them both to be such things as are not in us but about us, and which properly do not help nor hurt the inner man, that is, the mind. 

"Wherefore I may not call those things good or evil simply in subject and in definition: but I confess they are such in opinion, and by the judgment of the common people. In the first rank of false goods I place riches, honor, authority, health, long life. In the second rank of false evils, poverty, infamy, lack of promotion, sickness, death. And to comprehend all in one word, whatsoever else is accidental and happens outwardly." 

"From these two roots do spring four principal affections which do greatly disquiet the life of man: desire and joy, fear and sorrow. The first two have respect to some supposed or imagined good, the two latter unto some supposed or imagined evil. All of them do hurt and distemper the mind, and without timely prevention do bring it out of all order, yet not each of them in like sort. For whereas the quietness and constancy of the mind rests, as it were, in an even balance, these affections do hinder this upright poise and evenness; some of them by puffing up the mind, others by pressing it down too much. 

"But here I will let pass to speak of false goods, which lift up the mind above measure (because your diseases proceeds from another humor) and will come to false evils, which are of two sorts, public and private. Public are those, the sense and feeling whereof touches many persons at one time. Private do touch some private men. Of the first kind are war, pestilence, famine, tyranny, slaughters, and such like. Of the second are sorrow, poverty, infamy, death and whatsoever else of like nature that may befall any one man. 

"I take it there is good cause for me thus to distinguish them, because we sorrow after another sort at the misery of our country, the banishment and a destruction of a multitude, than of one person alone. Besides that, the griefs that grow of public and private adversities are different, but yet the first sort are more heavy and take deeper root in us. For we are all subject to those common calamities, either for that they come together in heaps, and so with the multitude oppress such as oppose themselves against them, or rather because they beguile us by subtlety, in that we perceive not how our mind is diseased by the apprehension of them. 

"Behold if a man is overcome with any private grief, he must confess therein his frailty and infirmity, especially if he reclaim not himself, then is he without excuse. Contrarily, we are so far from confessing a fault in being disquieted at public calamities, that some will boast thereof, and account it for a praise: for they term it piety and compassion. So that this common contagion is now reckoned among the catalog of virtues, yea and almost honored as a God. 

"Poets and orators do everywhere extol to the skies a fervent affection to our country; neither do I disallow it, but hold and maintain that it ought to be tempered with moderation: otherwise it is a vice, a note of intemperance, a deposing of the mind from his right seat. On the other side I confess it to be a grievous malady, and of great force to move a man, because the sorrow that proceeds thereto is manifold, in respect of yourself and of others. 

"And to make the matter more plain by example: see how your country of Flanders is afflicted with sundry calamities, and swung on every side with the scorching flame of civil wars: the fields are wasted and spoiled, towns are overthrown and burned, men taken captive and murdered, women defiled, virgins deflowered, with such other like miseries as follow after wars. 

"Are you not grieved herewith? Yes I am sure, and grieved diversely, for yourself, for your countrymen, and for your country. Your own losses trouble you; the misery and slaughter of your neighbors; the calamity and overthrow of your country. One where you may cry out with the poet, 'O unhappy wretch, that I am.' Another while, 'O my father, O my country!' And who is not so moved with these matters, nor oppressed with the multitude of so many and manifold miseries must either be very stayed and wise, or else very hardhearted." 

IMAGE: Anonymous Dutch, The Spanish Fury in Antwerp (c. 1585)