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The Praise of Folly 67 Than which how much more were the life of flies or birds to be wish’d for, who living by the instinct of Nature look no further than the present, if yet man would but let ’em alone in it And if at any time they chance to be taken, and being shut up in Cages endeavour to imitate our speaking, ’tis strange how they degenerate from their native gaiety. So much better in every respect are the works of Nature than the adulteries of Art. In like manner I can never sufficiently praise that Pythagoras in a Dung-hill Cock, who being but one had been yet every thing; a Philosopher, a Man, a Woman, a King, a private man, a Fish, a Horse, a Frog, and I believe too, a Sponge ; and at last concluded that no Creature was more miserable than man, for that all other Creatures are content with those bounds that Nature set them, onely Man endeavours to exceed them. And again, among men he gives the precedency not to the learned or the great, but the Fool. Nor had that Gryllus less wit than 1 Ulysses with his many counsels, who chose tather to lie grunting in a Hog-sty than be 1 modduntis ‘Odvaceds. F2
