After Socrates had taken great pains to find a wise man, consulting philosophers, poets, and craftsmen for that purpose, he concluded that everyone was foolish. Although this provoked anger and much resentment against him, he would openly declare it in every company. In Pontano, Supputius travelled throughout Europe to converse with a wise man, but eventually returned with his mission unfulfilled: he could find none. Cardano agrees with him: “Few people, as far as I can see, are in their right minds.” So does Cicero: “I see everything being done foolishly and without proper thought.”

One goes left, another right; the same error catches both, but plays its tricks on everyone in different ways. One reels towards this wall, another towards that; the same error deceives them all. They are all deluded, but not alike: “Madness is not the same in everyone”—not of the same kind. One is greedy, a second lustful, a third ambitious, a fourth envious, and so on. Damasippus the Stoic has illustrated this well in the poet: They are all just as foolish as you.

It is an inborn illness in every one of us. There is “a seedbed of folly”—a nursery of foolishness—which, if stirred up or allowed to gain strength, will grow “without limit,” and varies endlessly according to our individual inclinations, says Baldassare Castiglione. It cannot easily be uprooted, for it takes such a firm hold; as Cicero puts it, “the deep roots of folly.” So we are brought up, and so we remain. Some distinguish two principal defects of understanding, error and ignorance, under which all others fall. Through ignorance we do not know what we need to know; through error we know it falsely. Ignorance is an absence, error a positive act. From ignorance comes vice; from error, heresy, and so on. But make as many kinds as you like, divide and subdivide them: few people escape or avoid falling into one kind or another. “So ignorance commonly drives fools,” as anyone who examines his own actions and other people’s will find.

In Lucian’s ingenious fiction, Mercury led Charon to a place where he could see the whole world at once. After Charon had looked around sufficiently, Mercury insisted on hearing what he had noticed. He replied that he saw an immense, jumbled crowd, their homes like molehills and the people like ants. He could make out cities like so many beehives, where every bee had a sting and did nothing but sting its neighbours; some lorded it over the others like larger hornets, some were thieving wasps, others drones. Above their heads hovered a confused swarm of disturbing passions—hope, fear, anger, greed, ignorance, and so on—and a multitude of diseases hung over them, which they continually pulled down on their own heads. Some brawled, some fought, rode, or ran, “anxiously canvassing for advancement, cunningly pursuing lawsuits,” for toys, trifles, and things that lasted only a moment.

Their towns and provinces were nothing but factions: rich against poor, poor against rich, nobles against craftsmen, craftsmen against nobles, and so on. In the end, he condemned them all as madmen, fools, idiots, and asses: “O fools, what madness is this?” O fools, O madmen, he exclaims; “mad pursuits, mad labours,” and so on. Mad efforts, mad actions, mad, mad, mad: “O foolish and witless age”—a giddy-headed age.

The philosopher Heraclitus reflected seriously on human lives, then began to weep, continually lamenting their misery, madness, and folly. Democritus, on the other hand, burst out laughing: their entire lives seemed so ridiculous to him. This mocking emotion carried him so far that the citizens of Abdera thought he was mad and sent envoys to Hippocrates the physician, asking him to treat him. Hippocrates tells the story at length in his letter to Damagetus. Since it is relevant to this discussion, I shall insert it almost “word for word,” as Hippocrates himself relates it, with all its accompanying circumstances.

When Hippocrates reached Abdera, the townspeople flocked around him, some weeping, some begging him to do his best. After a light meal he went to see Democritus, with the people following. As described earlier, he found him alone in his garden outside the town, sitting on a stone beneath a plane tree, without stockings or shoes, a book on his knees, dissecting several animals and busy with his studies. The crowd stood around watching the meeting. After a short pause, Hippocrates greeted him by name. Democritus returned the greeting, almost ashamed that he could not address Hippocrates by name in turn, or that he had forgotten it.

Hippocrates asked what he was doing. Democritus told him that he was busy dissecting several animals to discover the cause of madness and melancholy. Hippocrates praised his work, admiring his good fortune and leisure. “Why,” said Democritus, “do you not have that leisure?” “Because,” Hippocrates replied, “household affairs get in the way: things that must be done for ourselves, neighbours, and friends; expenses, illnesses, infirmities, and deaths that occur; wife, children, servants, and the business that takes up our time.” At this Democritus laughed abundantly, while his friends and the people standing nearby wept and lamented his madness.

Hippocrates asked why he laughed. He said it was at the vanities and follies of the age: to see people so devoid of virtuous actions, searching so far for gold, with no end to their ambition; taking endless trouble for a little glory and human favour; digging so deep into the earth for gold, often finding nothing and losing their lives and fortunes. Some love dogs, others horses; some want obedience throughout many provinces, yet will obey no one themselves. Some love their wives dearly at first, then abandon and hate them. They have children, spend much care and money on their education, yet when they reach adulthood despise and neglect them, leaving them exposed to the world’s mercy.

Do these actions not reveal their intolerable folly? When people live in peace, they long for war and hate tranquillity, deposing kings and putting others in their place, murdering men so that they can father children with their wives. How many strange impulses people have! When poor and needy, they seek wealth; when they have it, they do not enjoy it but bury it underground or squander it. O wise Hippocrates, I laugh at these actions, but still more when no good comes of them and when they serve such bad ends.

There is no truth or justice among them. Every day they sue one another: son against father and mother, brother against brother, relations and friends doing the same—all for riches they cannot possess after death. Yet they slander and kill one another, commit every unlawful act, and show contempt for God and humankind, friends and country. They prize many lifeless things, counting them among their greatest treasures: statues, pictures, and other possessions, bought at great cost and made so skilfully that they lack only speech; yet they hate living people who speak to them.

Others seek out difficulties: if they live on the mainland, they move to an island, then back to the mainland, never remaining constant in their desires. They praise courage and strength in war, yet let lust and greed conquer them. In short, their minds are as misshapen as Thersites’s body. Surely now, most worthy Hippocrates, you should not blame my laughter when you see so much foolishness in people. No one mocks his own folly, only the folly he sees in someone else; thus they rightly mock one another. A drunkard calls someone a glutton whom he knows to be sober. Many love the sea, others farming: in short, they cannot agree even in their trades and occupations, still less in their lives and actions.