IX
How Simplicissimus Was Changed from a Wild Beast Into a Christian
So I began to eat and ceased to prattle; all which lasted no longer than till I had appeased mine hunger: for then the good hermit bade me begone. Then must I seek out the most flattering words which my rough country upbringing afforded me, and all to this end, to move the hermit that he should keep me with him. Now though of a certainty it must have vexed him greatly to endure my troublesome presence, yet did he resolve to suffer me to be with him; and that more to instruct me in the Christian religion, than because he would have my service in his approaching old age: yet was this his greatest anxiety, lest my tender youth should not endure for long such a hard way of living as was his.
A space of some three weeks was my year of probation: in which three weeks St. Gertrude was at war with the gardeners: so was it my lot to be inducted into the profession of these last: and therein I carried myself so well that the good hermit took an especial pleasure in me, and that not so much for my work’s sake (whereunto I was before well trained) but because he saw that I myself was as ready greedily to hearken to his instructions as the waxen, soft, and yet smooth tablet of my mind showed itself ready to receive such. For such reasons he was the more zealous to bring me to the knowledge of all good things. So he began his instruction from the fall of Lucifer: thence came he to the Garden of Eden, and when we were thrust out thence with our first parents, he passed through the law of Moses and taught me, by the means of the ten commandments and their explications—of which commandments he would say that they were a true measure to know the will of God, and thereby to lead a life holy and well pleasing to God—to discern virtue from vice, to do the good and to avoid the evil. At the end of all he came to the Gospel and told me of Christ’s Birth, Sufferings, Death, and Resurrection: and then concluded all with the Judgment Day, and so set Heaven and hell before my eyes: and this all with befitting circumstance, yet not with superfluity of words, but as it seemed to him I could best comprehend and understand. So when he had ended one matter he began another, and therewithal contrived with all patience so to shape himself to answer my questions, and so to deal with me, that better he could not have shed the light of truth into my heart. Yet were his life and his speech for me an everlasting preaching: and this my mind, all wooden and dull as it was, yet by God’s grace left not fruitless. So that in three weeks did I not only understand all that a Christian should know, but was possessed with such love for this teaching that I could not sleep at night for thinking thereon.
I have since pondered much upon this matter and have found that Aristotle, in his second book Of the Soul, did put it well, whereas he compared the soul of a man to a blank unwritten tablet, whereon one could write what he would, and concluded that all such was decreed by the Creator of the world, in order that such blank tablets might by industrious impression and exercise be marked, and so be brought to completeness and perfection. And so saith also his commentator Averroes (upon that passage where the Philosopher saith that the Intellect is but a possibility which can be brought into activity by naught else than by Scientia or Knowledge: which is to say that man’s understanding is capable of all things, yet can be brought to such knowledge only by constant exercise), and giveth this plain decision: namely, that this knowledge or exercise is the perfecting of souls which have no power at all in them selves. And this doth Cicero confirm in his second book of the Tusculan Disputations, when he compares the soul of a man without instruction, knowledge, and exercise, to a field which, albeit fruitful by nature, yet if no man till it or sow it will bring forth no fruit.
And all this did I prove by my own single example: for that I so soon understood all that the pious hermit showed to me arose from this cause: that he found the smooth tablet of my soul quite empty and without any imaginings before entered thereupon, which might well have hindered the impress of others thereafter. Yet in spite of all, that pure simplicity (in comparison with other men’s ways) hath ever clung to me: and therefore did the hermit (for neither he nor I knew my right name) ever call me Simplicissimus. Withal I learned to pray, and when the good hermit had resolved himself to satisfy my earnest desire to abide with him, we built for me a hut like to his own, of wood, twigs and earth, shaped well nigh as the musketeer shapes his tent in camp or, to speak more exactly, as the peasant in some places shapes his turnip-hod, so low, in truth, that I could hardly sit upright therein; my bed was of dried leaves and grass, and just so large as the hut itself, so that I know not whether to call such a dwelling-place or hole, a covered bedstead or a hut.