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rançois de La Mothe Le Vayer, “On Study”

 

François de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588?-1672) is usually associated with “erudite libertinage,” an eclectic philosophical movement of seventeenth-century France that revived the late Hellenistic philosophy of Skepticism.  Contemporaries frequently charged its adherents with atheism, and modern scholars have argued the point exhaustively.  La Mothe Le Vayer found favor at Louis XIII’s court.  He put his talents at Cardinal Richelieu’s disposal, writing in support of the government’s policies during the Thirty Years’ War and against the religious views of the Jansenists.  First and foremost, though, he was a humanist.  As such, he was devoted to the learning of the Ancients and convinced that humanistic study could make better, more tolerant human beings – much needed, in his opinion, at a time when religious difference continued to cause great suffering.  He emulated Montaigne in his many short, moralizing essays.  Though generally lacking his model’s verve and ambiguity, they are often charming. Here he praises intellectual endeavor, though he characteristically urges moderation.       

 

 

 

 

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ince the Arts to which we aspire are called liberal, we should not submit to them servilely, but rather as free people.  It is no less a failing to study too much than too little.  It was once said of a man too fond of hunting that he lived only when he hunted; we can vouch for the fact that many similarly study rather than live.

            I know well that the Muses esteem only those who love them passionately; that Archimedes was more worried about seeing the learned figures he’d traced in the sand erased than he was about losing his life when Syracuse was taken, an event he failed to notice; and that Carneades at table was so lost in thought that he would not have remembered to eat at all if his dear Melissa, interrupting him with a nudge, had not compelled him to finish his meals.  But this ardor, which is so praiseworthy and so necessary during our studies, does not hinder us from sometimes adjourning.  Those daughters of Mnemosyne, of whom we just spoke, do not always sing; they give a little of their time now to banqueting, now to dancing, amant alterna Camaenae.[1]  And just as Lucian maintains that, in his time, the rest that athletes took was the principal and most important part of their exercise, you will never be mistaken in maintaining that recreation and diversion are any less necessary to study than great ardor and extreme eagerness of spirit.  Seneca justly accuses a certain Portius Latro, who was so bereft of self-control, he could neither leave nor take up his books again.[2]

            This is not to say that one should fail to sketch a little at least each day, as did Apelles the painter.[3]  The spirit needs continual nourishment no less than the body.  And the craft of those who cultivate the sciences is such that, if one does not advance, one retreats, qui non proficit, deficit, just as those swimming against the current or striving to scale some very high and steep mountain cannot pause, however briefly, without falling back, eis non progredi, est regredi.[4]  We lose so much every day from memory that, if we do not also make up the losses, we should soon find ourselves dry and ignorant in the same fashion that, as Plato says, one must refill a leaky vessel  …  But one can refresh the understanding by means that are both varied and useful.  By amusing yourself with simple things, you recover from the pain previously caused by some more weighty thoughts.  And for the same reason that husbandmen refresh their lands by changing the grain they plant without leaving their fields idle, different objects and diverse meditations often have the power to restore the soul’s vigor and revive an exhausted spirit.

            This variety does not hinder you from always having a principal object to which you will always devote your midnight hours and towards which you will always proceed with firm and measured step.  You cannot advance along the path by flitting about or making sidetrips.  Guard especially against quitting that regal way, following some particular paths which appear to be shortcuts and which will lead you astray in the end.  The great avenue of the sciences is found in the classical authors, who have in all times offered the choicest study and who will lead you surely across Heaven and Earth and without whom you risk becoming lost.

            Do not resolve to know more than others; inasmuch as you are able, strive to know better than they what you plan to learn.  Each has his Sparta; the important thing is to become one of your city’s chief adornments.  Formerly the Thebans carried off the honors for flute playing; the men of Mitylene were reputed to be the most adroit in harp playing of anyone anywhere in Greece; and the Aegeans passed for the most supple and robust athletes and wrestlers.  Moreover, the city of Athens boasted that she had given the world the best painters and sculptors, while Croton claimed to furnish the wisest doctors.  To recommend a grammarian or a geometer, it sufficed to say that he hailed from Alexandria.[5]  That is why the number of Muses is so great.  We can thus seek after the good graces of the one who pleases us most, and then do all we can to obtain a place of favor and esteem among her servants.

            Your readings should always be accompanied by meditation and accomplished in such a way that the resulting reflections will be useful in the future.  Thus the lifting of your spirit must resemble the flight of the hawk rather than that of the lark.  The former gains the heights to lay bare the countryside to its sight, pouncing on its prey when timely.  The other rises only for amusement, and all its soaring ends up being a useless promenade.  Do not doubt at all that by this means you can discover some hitherto unnoticed aspects of the books you study.  For these are the lands where, according to Seneca’s fancy, the bull finds pasture, the dog finds the hares, and the stork, the serpents.

            It is a great secret to gather carefully certain singular thoughts that occur to you while reading, and to exercise your reason thereon immediately rather than later.  You’ll forget them forever if you’re not diligent.  A scholar cannot amass any more precious treasure, because, being all his own revenue, he owes none of it to anyone.  You perceive well that I do not speak of those commonplaces of the mediocre which convey only other people’s sentiments or are prettily expressed.  As easy as it is to collect remarkable stones among the pleasing shells tossed up by the sea onto her shores, so much more difficult is it to plunge to the bottom to pull up coral or to find the conches which yield the pearls without price.  It does not require great industry or much work to gather beneath certain headings the opinions of diverse books so that all the world can understand them at a glance.  But few people know how to penetrate into the hidden essence of the great authors, and many fewer still are capable of finding in their writings anything that they had not previously conceived.  Thus the Pomegranate, whose fruit is hidden beneath the rind, was consecrated to Mercury,[6] and it is from those seeds taken from the interior that you can make a laudable collection which will serve your needs well. 

 

                                                           

 

©Translation and notes by April G. Shelford.  Shelford’s Master’s thesis (SUNY-Albany, 1989) analyzed La Mothe Le Vayer’s principal work against the Jansenists, De la Vertu des Payens (1641).  For an article based on the thesis, see “François de La Mothe Le Vayer and the Defence of Pagan Virtue,” The Seventeenth Century XV:1 (Spring 2000).

 

                                                                                                           

 


[1] Bedded by Zeus, the titan goddess Mnemosyne gave birth to the nine muses.  Historians owe a particular debt to one of them, Clio.  The sense of the tag is that the muses permit themselves pleasures besides such important duties as inspiring epic poetry.  The Camenae were goddesses of a spring near one of Rome’s gates who were identified with the Muses from the first century B.C.E.  (Thanks to Valerie French, classicist and professor emerita of AU’s History Department, for assistance in running down “Camenae.”)

            

[2] Humanist authors littered their writings with references to classical culture, assuming that their readers had received some advanced education.  Learning Latin and Greek (to a lesser extent) and becoming widely familiar with classical culture were central to the humanist curriculum.  A humanist education, like a college education today, could open the door to social advancement, and it was required for careers in medicine, law, and the church.   During La Mothe Le Vayer’s lifetime, only young boys were permitted to study in a school setting.  A young girl might receive such training if an attentive relative noticed her intellectual gifts and decided to develop them by hiring tutors.  Some women became renowned for their learning, as did Anna Maria van Schurman of the Netherlands during La Mothe Le Vayer’s lifetime.  The historical figures alluded to here are:  Archimedes, great Greek mathematician (third century B.C.E.); Carneades, ancient skeptical philosopher (second century B.C.E.); Lucian, the Greek rhetorician and satirist (second century C.E.);  and Seneca, the great Roman Stoic philosopher who was a particular favorite of La Mothe Le Vayer and other early modern humanists and who was eventually ordered to commit suicide by his infamous pupil, Nero, in 65 C.E.

 

[3]  No works survive by Apelles, reputed to be the greatest artist of antiquity (fourth century B.C.E).

 

[4] Latin tag:  “He who does not advance, loses ground.”  Latin Phrases, http://www.answers.com/topic/qui-non-proficit-deficit  The sense of the second tag is the same.  During the seventeenth century, “science” was not restricted to knowledge of the natural world as it is today.  As a body of knowledge, theology was a science, for example. 

 

[5] Sparta and Thebes were located in the territory we now regard as Greece.  Croton was a Greek colony in southern Italy, while Mitylene was located on the island of Lesbos off what is now the Turkish coast.  Established by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.E., Alexandria became renowned throughout the ancient world as a center of learning.

 

[6] Mercury (a.k.a. the Greek Hermes) was the messenger of the gods.  Why does La Mothe Le Vayer connect him with pomegranates?  D.K., but Valerie French speculates that it might have something to do with a cultic connection between Mercury and Ceres, goddess of agriculture, who was explicitly associated with the fruit.