whom I tell a lie. This
commendable and generous custom is observed of the Persian nation, that
they spoke of their mortal enemies and with whom they were at deadly war,
as honourably and justly as their virtues deserved.

I know men enough that have several fine parts; one wit, another courage,
another address, another conscience, another language: one science,
another, another; but a generally great man, and who has all these brave
parts together, or any one of them to such a degree of excellence that we
should admire him or compare him with those we honour of times past, my
fortune never brought me acquainted with; and the greatest I ever knew, I
mean for the natural parts of the soul, was Etienne De la Boetie; his was
a full soul indeed, and that had every way a beautiful aspect: a soul of
the old stamp, and that had produced great effects had his fortune been
so pleased, having added much to those great natural parts by learning
and study.

But how it comes to pass I know not, and yet it is certainly so, there is
as much vanity and weakness of judgment in those who profess the greatest
abilities, who take upon them learned callings and bookish employments as
in any other sort of men whatever; either because more is required and
expected from them, and that common defects are excusable in them, or
because the opinion they have of their own learning makes them more bold
to expose and lay themselves too open, by which they lose and betray
themselves. As an artificer more manifests his want of skill in a rich
matter he has in hand, if he disgrace the work by ill handling and
contrary to the rules required, than in a matter of less value; and men
are more displeased at a disproportion in a statue of gold than in one of
plaster; so do these when they advance things that in themselves and in
their place would be good; for they make use of them without discretion,
honouring their memories at the expense of their understandings, and
making themselves ridiculous by honouring Cicero, Galen, Ulpian, and St.
Jerome alike.

I willingly fall again into the discourse of the vanity of our education,
the end of which is not to render us good and wise, but learned, and she
has obtained it. She has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and
prudence, but she has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; we
know how to decline Virtue, if we know not how to love it; if we do not
know what prudence is really and in effect,