The wise man thinks of reason only and leaves all the passions to Folly, but when this kind of thing has its perfect work, as among the Stoics, then you have left "not so much a man as a new kind of god that never yet existed anywhere and never will; or rather, to say it plainly, a marble image of a man, dull and almost devoid of human sensibility; a man who measures everything by the line, never makes any mistakes himself, but has the eye of a lynx for the least failings of others. That's the kind of a beast your truly wise man is!" But who has any use for such a creature? Who would have him for a ruler, a general, a husband, a friend? "Who would not prefer one taken out of the very midst of the crowd of fools, who being a fool himself would know how to command and obey fools, who would be agreeable to his kind, namely, the great majority of men, pleasant to his wife, merry with his friends, a lively table-companion, a good-tempered comrade, in short a man '_qui nihil humani a se alienum putet_'--'who holds nothing human foreign to himself.'" This comes as near a definition of his "_stultus_" as any hinted at by Erasmus. In this sense the book might have been called "the praise of human nature," for "wisdom" is treated systematically as meaning something contrary to natural human instinct. Such over-wise wisdom embitters life, but folly makes it sweet and precious. "Now, I think, you see what would happen if men were wise all the time. Faith! we should have need of another clay and another Prometheus for a potter. But I, Folly, sometimes by ignorance, sometimes by thoughtlessness, sometimes by forgetfulness of evils or the hope of good, and scattering the sweetest pleasures, so comfort men in the greatest misfortunes that they are not glad to die even when the measure of the Fates is fulfilled and life has actually left them. The less reason they have to cling to life the more they rejoice in living, so far are they from being wearied with its burden." Real misery is to be out of harmony with Nature--shall we call man miserable because he cannot fly like the birds, nor walk on all fours like beasts? "We might as well call a war-horse unhappy because he doesn't know grammar and cannot eat pie." So Erasmus goes on, in extravagant praise, to glorify Nature as contrasted with Art. That life alone is happy which comes near to Nature, as that of bees and birds; the nearer these natural creatures are brought to the life of man, the more they degenerate. Of all men the happiest are those we call "_moriones_," "_stultos_," "_fatuos_," "_bliteos_"; they have no fears, no ambitions, neither envy nor love. They are always merry; everyone likes them and pets them; the very beasts recognise in them a kind of sacred being. Princes cannot live without them, and value their plain-speaking more than the flatteries of their counsellors.