Chapter 14 13. Erasmus

With every book there are crises, sometimes in the first fifty pages, sometimes not until near the end of the manuscript.Indeed, a book without crisis is like a child without smallpox, and perhaps that is the problem. The crisis of this book arose a few minutes ago, because it seemed rather absurd to want to write a treatise on the idea of ​​tolerance in 1925, and because all the precious time and painstaking labor I have so far devoted to this fundamental research may have It was useless.I would have liked to light a bonfire with Bury, Leckey, Voltaire, Montaigne, and White, as well as throw my own writings into the fire and burn them.

How can this be explained? Many reasons.First of all, the author is inseparable from the proposition he has set. After living together for so long, it is inevitable that he will feel boring.The second is to suspect that such books have no practical value at all.The third is the fear that the book will only serve as an excuse for less tolerant compatriots to justify their own heinous actions with minor historical sources. But apart from the above-mentioned problems (and they do exist in most serious books), there is an insurmountable difficulty in this book, namely its "structure."

For a book to be successful, it must have a beginning and an end.This book has a beginning, but can it have an end? This is where the problem lies. I could name many abominable crimes which, apparently in the name of justice and rectitude, were in reality the result of intolerance. I can describe the bitter days when intolerance was exalted to the place of supreme virtue. I can scold and mock intolerance until the readers cry out in unison: "Down with the abominable thing and let us all be tolerant!" But there is one thing I can't do.I can't tell how to achieve what I'm striving for.There are now all kinds of manuals that tell us about many things in the world, from after-dinner gossip to how to ventriloquist.Last Sunday I saw an advertisement for a correspondence course, no less than two hundred and forty-nine topics, in which the college guaranteed the highest level of excellence for a small fee.But so far no one has proposed how to explain "how to be tolerant" in forty (or four thousand) class hours.

History, which is said to hold the key to many mysteries, could not help me out of this critical situation. Indeed, one could write large professional books on slavery, free trade, capital punishment, and Gothic architecture because these issues were so specific.Even without any sources, we can at least study the lives of the men and women who fought or fought against free trade, slavery, and Gothic architecture.From the way in which these fine men state their propositions, from their personal habits, their social associations, their tastes for food, drink, and tobacco, even from the breeches they wear, we may patronize or vilify them ideals to draw certain conclusions.

But no one has ever made tolerance their profession.It is only by great chance that those who zealously engage in this great enterprise.Their tolerance is just a by-product.What they were after was something else.They are politicians, authors, kings, physicists or humble artists.In the king's business, in their medicine and in their engraving, they had time to say a few words about tolerance, but the struggle for tolerance was not their life's work, and they were as interested in it as they were in chess or the violin.The group was so oddly mixed (think of how Spinoza, Frederick the Great, Thomas, Jefferson, and Montaigne could have been friends!), that it was almost impossible to find commonalities in each other's personalities, although the general Generally speaking, there is a common character among those who engage in common work, whether it be military service, probing, or saving the world from its sins.

Writers are therefore tempted to resort to aphorisms.Somewhere in the world there is an epigram that can deal with all kinds of dilemmas.But the Bible, Shakespeare, Isaac Walton, and old Bayham have left us little in this particular matter.Perhaps Jonathan Swift (as far as I remember) approached the question by saying that most people are religious enough to justify hating others but not being able to love them.Unfortunately, this insight does not fully resolve our present difficulties.There are those who know religion as well as anyone, and who hate others most from the bottom of their hearts.There are those who are totally devoid of religious instincts, but have a sincere affection for wild cats, wild dogs, and the people of Christendom.

No, I have to come up with my own answer.After the necessary reflection (but not much certainty), I will state what I believe to be the truth. All those who fight for tolerance, however different they may be from each other, have one thing in common: their beliefs are always accompanied by doubts; they can honestly believe that they are right, but they can never convert their doubts into firm absolutes. belief. In today's age of hyper-patriotism, where we clamor fervently to believe 100 percent of this and 100 percent of that, we might as well take a look at what Nature has taught us, which always seems to be averse to standardized ideals.

Cats and dogs raised purely by humans are known fools, because they die if no one picks them up from the rain.100 percent pure iron has long since been ditched in favor of a hybrid metal: steel.No jeweler will go to great lengths to make 100% pure gold or sterling silver jewelry.No matter how good a violin is, it must be composed of six or seven different kinds of wood.As for a meal, if it is 100% mushrooms, thank you very much, it is really hard for me to understand. In a word, most useful things in the world contain different ingredients, and I don't see why faith should be an exception.Were there not an alloy of doubt in the foundation of our certainties, our beliefs would always tinkle like a bell of pure silver, or piercing like a trombone of brass.

It is with this deep admiration that the heroes of tolerance part ways with the rest. In integrity of character, such as sincerity to faith, selfless fidelity to duty, and other known virtues, most of them could have been regarded by the Puritan courts as perfect and perfect men.I want to go a little deeper, at least half of them, alive and dead, would have been saints, but their special consciousness forced them to be open and terrible enemies of an institution that claimed power only to itself Canonize ordinary people as saints. These heroes doubt the gods of heaven. They know (like the ancient Romans and Greeks before them) that the problems they face are vast, and no one in their right mind can expect to solve them.While they hope and pray that the road they walk will lead them at last to a safe destination, they do not believe that this road is the only right one, and that all the rest are false paths, which they regard as charming as they are , enough to intoxicate the simple-minded, but not necessarily a sinful path to ruin.

That sounds like the diametrically opposed point of view in Religious Catechism and ethics textbooks.These books proclaim the absolute virtue of a world illuminated by the pure flame of absolute faith.Maybe so.But all through the centuries, while that flame burned with the greatest brightness, the common people could not be said to be happy.I don't want to make drastic changes, but in order to change it, I might as well try other lights, the brothers of the Tolerance Guild have been examining the world's affairs by it.If this experiment is unsuccessful, we can go back to the traditions of our parents.It seems that if the new light can shine a pleasant light on society, bring a little more kindness and restraint, and make society less harassed by ugliness, greed and hatred, then the harvest will be great. The cost will also be much lower.

A little heartfelt words, up for grabs.Now I must go on to the history. When the last Roman is buried, the last citizen of the world (in the best and broadest sense of the word) dies.The ancient world was full of the ancient spirit of humanity, which was characteristic of the advanced thinking of the time, and it was only after a long time that it returned safely to the earth, and society was once again safe. As you can see, this happened during the Renaissance. The revival of international business brought new capital to the poor countries of the West. New cities sprang up from the ground, and new classes emerged.They funded the arts, bought books, and invested in the universities that came with the prosperity.Some "humanitarian ideas" Boldly experimenting on the whole of humanity, the proponents of the Rebellion broke the narrow confines of the old scholasticism, and parted with the old pious, who regarded their interest in the wisdom and principles of the ancients as a sinful and dirty thing. The embodiment of dirty curiosity. The rest of this book is devoted to the stories of those who stood at the head of this little band of pioneers, the most admirable of all being that meek soul: Erasmus. Although he was docile, he also participated in all the great literary debates of the time, and made himself a thorn in the side of the enemy by precisely manipulating one of the most powerful weapons of all types, the humorous long-range cannon. Cannonballs filled with mustard gas made from his wits were fired straight into the enemy's land.Erasmus shells come in a wide variety and are dangerous.At first glance it seems harmless.It has no obvious crackling fuse, but more colorful fireworks, but God bless those who take these things home for children to play with.Poison gas is sure to enter the minds of young children, and is so deeply ingrained that four full centuries are not enough to save mankind from its aftermath. It was rather strange that such a person should have been born in a small, uninteresting town on the east coast of the North Sea silted up with silt.In the fifteenth century, these water-soaked lands had not yet reached their heyday of independence and prosperity, but a group of insignificant small duchies on the fringes of civilized society.For years they smelled of herring, which was their chief export.Even if a guest were to be recruited, it was only a desperate sailor whose ship sank on the rocks on the gloomy shore. Such a hostile environment fosters childhood fears, but it also stimulates curious children to struggle to escape and become the most recognizable figure of their time. He was born with troubles.He is an illegitimate child.The people of the Middle Ages were intimate and friendly with God and nature, and cared much more about such things than we do now.They regret it very much.Since this kind of thing shouldn't happen, they certainly don't agree with it.But other than that, they were too simple-minded to think of punishing the little life in the cradle, because it was no fault of the child.The irregular circumstances of Erasmus's birth did not cause him much inconvenience, it merely showed that his parents were too bewildered to cope with the situation, and had to leave the child and his older brother with relatives who were either fools or rascals look after. These uncles and guardians did not know what to do with their two little wards, who were left homeless upon the death of their mother, and were sent first to a prestigious school in Durhamt, where several Two teachers belonged to the Brotherhood of Living Together, but if we read Erasmus's later letters we can judge that these young men were only "communicating" in a quite different sense of the word Living Together.The two children were then separated, and the younger brother was taken to Gouda, under the direct supervision of the headmaster of the Latin school.The headmaster is one of three guardians appointed to manage the meager inheritance a child inherits.If the schools of Erasmus' time were as bad as the ones I visited four centuries later, I can only feel sorry for the poor boy.To make matters worse, the three guardians, who had by this time squandered every penny the boy had, had hastily sent him to a monastery to renounce him, in order to avoid prosecution (the Dutch courts were not lenient in such matters in those days), I also wish him happiness, because "now the future is guaranteed." The mysterious millstones of history have at last ground out of these terrible experiences something of great literary value.At the end of the Middle Ages, more than half of the people in all monasteries were illiterate country bumpkins and callused farmers. This overly sensitive young man was alone and forced to live with these people for many years. feel bad. Fortunately, the lax discipline at Steyn Abbey enabled Erasmus to devote most of his time to the Latin manuscripts in the collection of his predecessor abbot, long forgotten in the library.He sucked on voluminous works, and finally became a living encyclopedia of ancient learning.This will be of great help to him in the future.He is always on the move and rarely consults library books.But that didn't matter, because he could refer to it from memory.Anyone who has read the ten volumes containing his works, or has only read part of them (because human life is too short these days), will certainly admire what the fifteenth century called "classical knowledge". Erasmus, of course, left the old monastery in the end.A man like him is not swayed by his environment. Such a man creates his environment, and he creates it from materials that are not at all useful. Erasmus was free for the rest of his life, endlessly looking for a quiet place where he could work without the distraction of visiting guests. But it was not until he was about to die, when the remembrance of the "living God" in his childhood put his soul into a deep sleep of death, that he had a good taste of "true leisure" for a while.For those who follow in the footsteps of Socrates and Seno, this has been the best state few have ever had. These processes are often described, so I will not go into detail.Whenever two or more people come together in the name of true wisdom, sooner or later Erasmus must appear. He had studied in Paris, was a poor scholar, and nearly died of hunger and cold.He taught at Cambridge, printed books in Basel, and tried (almost in vain) to bring the light of enlightenment to the famed University of Louvain, to break through the rigid walls of orthodoxy.He spent a lot of time in London, earning a Doctorate in Divinity from the University of Turin.He knew the Grand Canal of Venice as well as he cursed the bad roads of New Zealand as he cursed Lombardy.Rome's heavenly kingdom, its parks, its walks, its libraries, were so impressed upon his mind that not even the water of the Lesser could wash the holy city from his memory.As long as he is in Venice, he will receive a generous annuity, and whenever a new university is established in Venice, he will definitely be invited to be a professor of any course he chooses, even if he does not want to teach, as long as he visits occasionally Campuses are also seen as a great boon. But he steadfastly declined such invitations because they contained a threat: bondage and dependence.Above all else he wants to be free.He prefers a cozy house to a shabby one, interesting company to stupid ones, he knows the difference between a fine wine from Burgundy and the pale red ink of the Apennines, but he will make his own life if he If you have to call others "masters", then all this will come to naught. The role he has chosen for himself is that of an intellectual searchlight.On the horizon of current events, Erasmus at once let the light of his wisdom shine upon it, whatever the circumstances, and endeavored to make the thing for what it was, to strip it of its decorations, to expose its folly and the ignorance which he abhorred . Erasmus's ability to do so during the most turbulent period of history, while avoiding the wrath of the Protestant zealots, and the friends of the Inquisition, was one of the most often reproached points of his life. The descendants of future generations seem to have sincere feelings for the martyrs when they mention the ancients. "Why didn't this Dutchman stand up to support Luther and risk his life to stand with other reformers?" This question seems to have puzzled at least twelve generations of scholars. The answer was: "Why would he do that?" It was not in Erasmus' nature to resort to violence, nor did he ever see himself as a leader of a movement.He has no sense of certainty that he claims to be right, although it is a characteristic of him to tell the world how it should be done for the next millennium.He also argues that we don't necessarily have to tear down old homes every time we feel the need to rearrange them.True, the foundations are in dire need of repairs, the sewers are outdated, and the gardens are in disarray, with a lot of junk left behind by people who moved away long ago.However, if the homeowner lives up to his promise and spends some money on immediate improvements, the look can be transformed.That's all Erasmus had to do.Although he was as "moderate" as his enemies ridiculed, he was no less successful (perhaps higher) than those "radicals" who brought two tyrants to the world when there was only one tyrant. Erasmus, like all truly great men, had no fondness for institutions.He believes that the salvation of the world lies in the efforts of everyone, and if everyone is transformed, the world is transformed. Therefore, he launched an attack on the existing rumors and appealed to the general public.He used very clever means. First, he wrote many letters, sending them to kings, emperors, popes, abbots, knights and villains.He wrote letters to everyone who wanted to get close to him (at that time, there was no need to postmark and write the address of the sender on the envelope), and he would read at least eight pages as soon as he picked up the pen. Second, he edited a large number of ancient texts, and these ancient texts are often copied very badly, and the text is not expressive.In order to be a good editor he had to learn Greek, and his painstaking efforts to master the grammar of a language banned by the Church led many pious archbishops to accuse him of being as bad at heart as a true heretic.This may sound absurd, but it is true.No decent Christian in the fifteenth century would have dreamed of learning this forbidden language.Knowing a little Greek can get a man into countless troubles.It would tempt one to compare the original text of the Gospels with translations which have long since been assured that it is a faithful reproduction of the original.This is the beginning.Before long he would go to the Jewish quarter, learn Hebrew grammar, and be on the verge of openly rebelling against the authority of the Church.For a long time, a book with weird and crooked characters can be a physical evidence of secret revolutionary tendencies. The head of the Presbyterian Church frequently broke into the house to search for contraband.Some Byzantine refugees were often expelled from the cities where they took refuge by teaching a little of their native language in order to make a living. Erasmus overcame these obstacles and learned Greek.When he edited the volumes of Cypriot and other priests of the Church, he added some notes, in which he cleverly concealed many comments on current affairs, which would never have been printed if they had been the subject of a pamphlet. But the naughty genie of commentary appears in a quite different literary form created by Erasmus, by which I mean his collection of Greek and Latin idioms, as you all know.He grouped idioms together so that children at that time could learn ancient Chinese and become elegant.These so-called "spear boards" are full of intelligent commentary that, in the opinion of conservatives, was certainly not the work of the Friends of the Pope. In the end, he wrote a book that could be counted as one of the weirdest little books ever conceived by the spirits of the age.This kind of book was actually written for a few friends to laugh at, but it occupies a place in the history of classical literature, even the author himself did not expect it.The book is called Rewards for Fools, and we know exactly how it was written. In 1515, a pamphlet caused a sensation in the world.The book is so cleverly written that it's hard to tell whether it's attacking monks or defending monastic life.There was no name on the cover, but those who knew the author recognized it as the work of a somewhat eccentric man: Ulrik von Hutten.They guessed right, because the talented young man, poet laureate, and queer urban bum had a hand in this masterpiece, writing useful burlesque parts, and of which he was quite proud.He heard that even Thomas More, the leader of the British New School, had praised his book, so he wrote to Erasmus to ask him for some details. Erasmus did not like von Hutton.He had an orderly mind (shown in the orderliness of his life) and loathed the slovenly Teutons who spent mornings and afternoons frantically brandishing pen and sword for the cause of enlightenment before wandering off to nearby taverns Here, forgetting the passage of time, pouring sour beer endlessly. However, von Hutton had his own way, he was indeed a wit, and Erasmus's reply was also polite.In the course of his letters, von Hutton came to admire the virtues of his friends in London, and painted a charming picture of a happy family, which Sir Thomas's family always seemed to serve as an excellent model for other families.In this letter, he mentions how More, a remarkable humorist, gave him the original inspiration for "Reward for Fools", which was probably the well-intentioned farce (a real Noah's Ark) created by More. , son, daughter-in-law, daughter, son-in-law, birds, dogs, private zoo, private amateur gigs, and amateur violin band), inspired him to write the exciting work that made him famous. It reminds me vaguely of the English puppet show Punch and Judy, which for centuries was the only happy entertainment for Dutch children. Punch and Judy puppet show has a lot of crude dialogue, but maintains a serious and elegant atmosphere."Reaper" speaking with a hollow voice appeared on the stage.One by one, the actors approach the ragged protagonist and introduce themselves.The little audience always felt happy that they were hit on the head with a big stick one by one, and then thrown into the imaginary garbage dump. In "Rewards for Fools," the social veil of an entire era is carefully stripped away, and "Fools," like an enlightened coroner, sided with the wider public with its comments and praised them.In the collection of various characters, suitable images from the entire "main street of the Middle Ages" have been collected.Of course, the careerists at that time, the monks who talked about saving the world, together with their hypocritical lobbying and ignorance and grandstanding, were all written in the book and flogged. This will not be forgotten, nor will it be be forgiven. Popes, cardinals, and bishops, descendants of the poor fishermen and carpenters of Galilee, also appear in the list of characters and occupy several chapters. Still, Erasmus's Claws has more solid humanity than toy-painted humorous literature.Throughout the little book (and indeed in all he wrote) he preaches a philosophy of his own, which one may call "the philosophy of tolerance." The principle of being lenient to others is lenient to oneself, the emphasis on the substance of sacred canons rather than the commas and semicolons in their texts, the acceptance of religion only as ethics and not as some form of government. Hard-headed Catholics and Protestants denounced Erasmus as "an ungodly liar," an enemy of all true religion, and "slandering Christ."But they say nothing about the real meaning behind the interesting phrases in this pamphlet. The attacks (which continued until Erasmus' death) had no effect.The little, pointed-nosed man lived to be seventy years old, when anyone who tried to add or subtract a word from the official script was hanged.He has no interest in popular heroes, and openly says so.He never hoped for anything from sword and arquebus, for he knew well how much the world was at risk if a little dispute over theology led to a world-wide religious war. So, like a gigantic beaver, he builds day and night a dam of reason and common sense, in the dismal hope of holding back the ever-rising flood of ignorance and bigotry. Of course he failed.It was impossible to hold back the flood of evil intentions and hatred that rushed from the Germanic peaks and the Alps.Within a few years of his death, all his books were washed away. However, thanks to his outstanding efforts, the remains of many shipwrecks have washed up on the shores of future generations, and have become good material for the optimists who can never be subdued. They believe that one day, we will build a causeway, Really stop the flood. Erasmus died in June 1536. His sense of humor stayed with him.He died at the home of his publisher.