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The Praise of Folly 19
consider either the peril of Child-bearing, or
the trouble of bringing them up? So then,
if ye owe your beings to Wedlock, ye owe that
Wedlock to this my follower, Madness; and
what ye owe to me I have already told ye.
Again, she that has but once try’d what it is,
would she, do ye think, make a second venture,
if it were not for my other Companion, Obli¬
vion? Nay, even Venus her self, notwithstanding
what ever Lucretius has said, would not deny
but that all her vertue were lame and fruitless
without the help of my Deity. For out of that
little, odd, ridiculous May-game came the
supercilious Philosophers, in whose room have
succeeded a kind of people the world calls Monks,
Cardinals, Priests, and the most holy Popes.
And Lastly, all that Rabble of the Poets’-Gods,
with which Heaven is so thwack’t and throng’d,
that though it be of so vast an extent, they are
hardly able to croud one by another.
But I think it a small matter that ye thus owe
your beginning of life to me, unless I also shew
you that whatever benefit you receive in the
Progress of it is of my gift likewise. For what
other is this? Can that be call’d life where ye
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