contentment. For in this his succinct copy of
verses, he summarily and briefly, yet fully enough
expresseth how he would have us to understand that
everyone in the project and enterprise of marriage
ought to be his own carver, sole arbitrator of his
proper thoughts, and from himself alone take counsel
in the main and peremptory closure of what his determination
should be, in either his assent to or dissent from
it. Such always hath been my opinion to you,
and when at first you spoke thereof to me I truly told
you this same very thing; but tacitly you scorned
my advice, and would not harbour it within your mind.
I know for certain, and therefore may I with the
greater confidence utter my conception of it, that
philauty, or self-love, is that which blinds your
judgment and deceiveth you.
Let us do otherwise, and that is this: Whatever
we are, or have, consisteth in three things—the
soul, the body, and the goods. Now, for the
preservation of these three, there are three sorts
of learned men ordained, each respectively to have
care of that one which is recommended to his charge.
Theologues are appointed for the soul, physicians
for the welfare of the body, and lawyers for the safety
of our goods. Hence it is that it is my resolution
to have on Sunday next with me at dinner a divine,
a physician, and a lawyer, that with those three assembled
thus together we may in every point and particle confer
at large of your perplexity. By Saint Picot,
answered Panurge, we never shall do any good that way,
I see it already. And you see yourself how the
world is vilely abused, as when with a foxtail one
claps another’s breech to cajole him. We
give our souls to keep to the theologues, who for
the greater part are heretics. Our bodies we
commit to the physicians, who never themselves take
any physic. And then we entrust our goods to
the lawyers, who never go to law against one another.
You speak like a courtier, quoth Pantagruel.
But the first point of your assertion is to be denied;
for we daily see how good theologues make it their
chief business, their whole and sole employment, by
their deeds, their words, and writings, to extirpate
errors and heresies out of the hearts of men, and
in their stead profoundly plant the true and lively
faith. The second point you spoke of I commend;
for, whereas the professors of the art of medicine
give so good order to the prophylactic, or conservative
part of their faculty, in what concerneth their proper
healths, that they stand in no need of making use of
the other branch, which is the curative or therapeutic,
by medicaments. As for the third, I grant it
to be true, for learned advocates and counsellors at
law are so much taken up with the affairs of others
in their consultations, pleadings, and such-like patrocinations
of those who are their clients, that they have no
leisure to attend any controversies of their own.
Therefore, on the next ensuing Sunday, let the divine
be our godly Father Hippothadee, the physician our
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