ible by veritable dancing on the tight-rope of
sophistry. In the _Moria_ Erasmus is all the time hovering on the brink
of profound truths. But what a boon it was--still granted to those
times--to be able to treat of all this in a vein of pleasantry. For this
should be impressed upon our minds: that the _Moriae Encomium_ is a
true, gay jest. The laugh is more delicate, but no less hearty than
Rabelais's. 'Valete, plaudite, vivite, bibite.' 'All common people
abound to such a degree, and everywhere, in so many forms of folly that
a thousand Democrituses would be insufficient to laugh at them all (and
they would require another Democritus to laugh at them).'

How could one take the _Moria_ too seriously, when even More's _Utopia_,
which is a true companion-piece to it and makes such a grave impression
on us, is treated by its author and Erasmus as a mere jest? There is a
place where the _Laus_ seems to touch both More and Rabelais; the place
where Stultitia speaks of her father, Plutus, the god of wealth, at
whose beck all things are turned topsy-turvy, according to whose will
all human affairs are regulated--war and peace, government and counsel,
justice and treaties. He has begotten her on the nymph Youth, not a
senile, purblind Plutus, but a fresh god, warm with youth and nectar,
like another Gargantua.

The figure of Folly, of gigantic size, looms large in the period of the
Renaissance. She wears a fool's cap and bells. People laughed loudly and
with unconcern at all that was foolish, without discriminating between
species of folly. It is remarkable that even in the _Laus_, delicate as
it is, the author does not distinguish between the unwise or the silly,
between fools and lunatics. Holbein, illustrating Erasmus, knows but of
one representation of a fool: with a staff and ass's ears. Erasmus
speaks without clear transition, now of foolish persons and now of real
lunatics. They are happiest of all, he makes Stultitia say: they are not
frightened by spectres and apparitions; they are not tortured by the
fear of impending calamities; everywhere they bring mirth, jests, frolic
and laughter. Evidently he here means harmless imbeciles, who, indeed,
were often used as jesters. This identification of denseness and
insanity is kept up, however, like the confusion of the comic and the
simply ridiculous, and all this is well calculated to make us feel how
wide the gap has already become that separates us from Erasmus.