COMME nous voyons des terres oysiues, si elles sont grasses et fertilles, foisonner en cent mille sortes d’herbes sauuages et inutiles et que pour les tenir en office, il les faut assubiectir et employer à certaines semences, pour nostre seruice. Et comme nous voyons, que les femmes produisent bien toutes seules, des amas et pieces de chair informes, mais que pour faire vne generation bonne et naturelle, il les faut embesongner d’vne autre semence: ainsin est-il des esprits; si on ne les occupe à certain subiect, qui les bride et contraigne, ils se iettent desreiglez, par-cy par-là, dans le vague champ des imaginations.
We see that fallow lands, if they are rich and fertile, teem with a hundred thousand kinds of wild and useless weeds, and that to keep them doing their job we must subdue them and put them to certain seeds for our use. And we see that women, all by themselves, produce shapeless masses and lumps of flesh, but that to make a good and natural offspring they must be set to work with another seed. So it is with minds. If we do not occupy them with some definite subject that will bridle and restrain them, they throw themselves in disorder, this way and that, into the vague field of imaginings.
Sicut aquæ tremulum labris vbi lumen ahenis / Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunæ, / Omnia peruolitat latè loca, iámque sub auras / Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti. Et n’est folie ny réuerie, qu’ils ne produisent en cette agitation, velut ægri somnia, vanæ / Finguntur species. L’ame qui n’a point de but estably, elle se perd: Car comme on dit, c’est n’estre en aucun lieu, que d’estre par tout. Quisquis vbique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat.
As when the trembling light of water in bronze basins, / thrown back by the sun or the image of the radiant moon, / flits far and wide over every place, and now rises into the air / and strikes the paneled ceiling of the lofty roof. And there is no folly or raving that they do not produce in this agitation: like a sick man’s dreams, they shape / vain images. The mind that has no fixed goal loses itself; for, as they say, to be everywhere is to be nowhere. He who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere.
Dernierement que ie me retiray chez moy, deliberé autant que ie pourroy, ne me mesler d’autre chose, que de passer en repos, et à part, ce peu qui me reste de vie, il me sembloit ne pouuoir faire plus grande faueur à mon esprit, que de le laisser en pleine oysiueté, s’entretenir soy-mesmes, et s’arrester et rasseoir en soy: ce que i’esperois qu’il peust meshuy faire plus aysément, deuenu auec le temps, plus poisant, et plus meur; mais ie trouue, variam semper dant otia mentem, qu’au rebours faisant le cheual eschappé, il se donne cent fois plus de carriere à soy-mesmes, qu’il ne prenoit pour autruy: et m’enfante tant de chimeres et monstres fantasques les vns sur les autres, sans ordre, et sans propos, que pour en contempler à mon ayse l’ineptie et l’estrangeté, i’ay commencé de les mettre en rolle: esperant auec le temps, luy en faire honte à luy mesmes.
Lately, when I retired to my home, determined as far as I could to concern myself with nothing but spending in rest and seclusion the little life I have left, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to leave it in complete idleness, to entertain itself and to settle and rest in itself. I hoped it could do this more easily from now on, having grown weightier and riper with time. But I find—idleness always makes the mind unsteady—that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more free rein than it ever took for others. It gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one on top of another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their absurdity and strangeness at my leisure, I have begun to put them on record, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself.