se bene velle putant_,) all fools that think not as he doth: he will not
say with Atticus, _Suam quisque sponsam, mihi meam_, let every man enjoy
his own spouse; but his alone is fair, _suus amor_, &c. and scorns all in
respect of himself [401]will imitate none, hear none [402]but himself, as
Pliny said, a law and example to himself. And that which Hippocrates, in
his epistle to Dionysius, reprehended of old, is verified in our times,
_Quisque in alio superfluum esse censet, ipse quod non habet nec curat_,
that which he hath not himself or doth not esteem, he accounts superfluity,
an idle quality, a mere foppery in another: like Aesop's fox, when he had
lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs. The Chinese
say, that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world
else is blind: (though [403]Scaliger accounts them brutes too, _merum
pecus_,) so thou and thy sectaries are only wise, others indifferent, the
rest beside themselves, mere idiots and asses. Thus not acknowledging our
own errors and imperfections, we securely deride others, as if we alone
were free, and spectators of the rest, accounting it an excellent thing, as
indeed it is, _Aliena optimum frui insania_, to make ourselves merry with
other men's obliquities, when as he himself is more faulty than the rest,
_mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur_, he may take himself by the nose for
a fool; and which one calls _maximum stultitiae specimen_, to be ridiculous
to others, and not to perceive or take notice of it, as Marsyas was when he
contended with Apollo, _non intelligens se deridiculo haberi_, saith [404]
Apuleius; 'tis his own cause, he is a convicted madman, as [405]Austin well
infers "in the eyes of wise men and angels he seems like one, that to our
thinking walks with his heels upwards." So thou laughest at me, and I at
thee, both at a third; and he returns that of the poet upon us again,
[406]_Hei mihi, insanire me aiunt, quum ipsi ultro insaniant_. We accuse
others of madness, of folly, and are the veriest dizzards ourselves. For it
is a great sign and property of a fool (which Eccl. x. 3, points at) out of
pride and self-conceit to insult, vilify, condemn, censure, and call other