The Complete Essays (154 page)

[B] Even if everything that has come down to us about the past by report were true and known to someone, that would be nothing compared with what we do not know. And against the idea of a universe which flows on while we are in it, how puny and stunted is the knowledge of the most inquisitive men. A hundred times more is lost for us than what comes to our knowledge, not only of individual events (which sometimes are turned by Fortune into weighty
exempla
) but of the circumstances of great polities and nations. When our artillery and printing were invented we clamoured about miracles: yet at the other end of the world in China men had been enjoying them over a thousand years earlier.
²⁸
If what we saw of the world were as great as the amount we now cannot see, it is to be believed that we would perceive an endless [C] multiplication and [B] succession of forms. Where Nature is concerned, nothing is unique or rare: but where our knowledge is concerned much certainly is, which constitutes a most pitiful foundation for our scientific laws, offering us a very false idea of everything.

Just as we vainly conclude today that the world is declining into decrepitude using arguments drawn from our own decline and decadence –

Jamque adeo affecta est ætas, affectaque tellus
[Our age lacks vigour now: even the soil is less abundant]
²⁹

– so that same poet concluded that the world was yet newly born and young, from the vigour of the minds of his day, fertile in new inventions and the creation of various arts:

Verum, ut opinor, habet novitatem summa, recensque
Natura est mundi, neque pridem exordia cæpit:
Quare etiam quœdam nunc artes expoliuntur,
Nunc etiam augescunt, nunc addita navigiis sunt
Multa
.

[In my opinion our universe is new; the origin of the world is recent: it is but newly born. That is why some arts are still developing nowadays and growing still; the art of navigation is even now progressing.]

Our world has just discovered another one: and who will answer for its being the last of its brothers, since up till now its existence was unknown to the daemons, to the Sybils, and to ourselves? It is no less big and full and solid than our own; its limbs are as well developed: yet it is so new, such a child, that we are still teaching it its ABC; a mere fifty years ago it knew nothing of writing, weights and measures, clothing, any sort of corn or vine. It was still naked at the breast, living only by what its nursing Mother provided. If we are right to conclude that our end is nigh, and that poet is right that his world is young, then that other world will only be emerging into light when ours is leaving it. The world will be struck with the palsy: one of its limbs will be paralysed while the other is fully vigorous, yet I fear we shall have considerably hastened the decline and collapse of that young world by our contagion and that we shall have sold it dear our opinions and our skills.

That world was an infant: we whipped it and subjected it to our teaching, but not from any superior worth of ours or our natural energy; we neither seduced it by our justice and goodness nor subjugated it by our greatness of soul. Most of the responses of its peoples, and most of our negotiations with them, witness that they are in no ways beholden to us where aptitude and natural clarity of mind are concerned. The awe-inspiring magnificence of the cities of Cuzco and Mexico and, among similar things, the gardens of that king where all the trees and fruits and all the plants were, in size and arrangement, as in a normal garden, but all excellently wrought in gold, as were in his museum all the creatures which are born in his estates or in his seas;
³⁰
the beauty of their
works of art in precious stones, feathers and cotton as well as in painting shows that they were not behind us in craftsmanship either.

And as for their piety, observance of the laws, goodness, liberality, loyalty and frankness: well, it served us well that we had less of that than they did; their superiority in that ruined them, sold them and betrayed them.

As for bravery and courage; as for resolution, constancy and resistance to pain, hunger and death, I would not hesitate to compare the examples provided by them with the most celebrated ones of the Ancients written in the annals of our own world on this side of the seas.

As regards those men who subjugated them, were you to take from them the trickery and sleight-of-hand which they used to deceive them, the justified ecstasy of amazement which struck those peoples at the sight of the totally unexpected landing of bearded men, differing from them in language, religion, build and facial features, coming from a world so remote and from regions in which they had never even dreamed that there were any humans dwelling whatsoever; men mounted on big unknown monsters confronting men who had never seen not merely horses but any animal whatsoever trained to be ridden by man or to bear any other burden; men whose skin was shining and hard, men armed with a glittering cutting-instrument confronting men who would barter a vast wealth of gold or pearls for a looking-glass or a knife, the sheen of which to them appeared miraculous; men who, even if they had had the time, had neither the knowledge nor the materials to discover ways of piercing our steel; to which add the lightning flashes of our cannons, the thundering of our harquebuses (able to confuse the mind of Caesar himself in his day if they had surprised him when he was as ignorant of them as they were) opposed to people who were naked except in those areas which had been reached by the invention of a kind of woven cotton-cloth; peoples with no arms except (at the most) bows, stones, staves [C] or wooden shields; [B] peoples who, under pretence of friendship and good faith, were caught off their guard by their curiosity to see things strange and unknown: remove (I say) from the Conquistadores such advantages and you strip them of what made so many victories possible.

When I reflect on the indomitable ardour with which so many thousands of men, women and children came so many times and threw themselves into certain danger in defence of their gods and their freedom, and when I reflect on that great-souled stubborn determination to suffer any extremity, any hardship including death, rather than to submit to the domination of those who had so disgracefully deceived them – some of them preferring
once they were captured to die slowly of hunger than to accept food from the hands of enemies so vilely victorious: I maintain that, if they had been attacked equal to equal in arms and experience and numbers, then the conflict would have been as hazardous (or more so) as any other that we know of.

Oh why did it not fall to Alexander and those ancient Greeks and Romans to make of it a most noble conquest; why did such a huge transfer of so many empires, and such revolutions in the circumstances of so many peoples, not fall into hands which would have gently polished those peoples, clearing away any wild weeds while encouraging and strengthening the good crops that Nature had brought forth among them, not only bringing to them their world’s arts of farming the land and adorning their cities (in so far as they were lacking to them) but also bringing to the natives of those countries the virtues of the Romans and the Greeks? What a renewal that would have been, what a restoration of the fabric of this world, if the first examples of our behaviour which were set before that new world had summoned those peoples to be amazed by our virtue and to imitate it, and had created between them and us a brotherly fellowship and understanding. How easy it would have been to have worked profitably with folk whose souls were so unspoiled and so hungry to learn, having for the most part been given such a beautiful start by Nature. We, on the contrary, took advantage of their ignorance and lack of experience to pervert them more easily towards treachery, debauchery and cupidity, toward every kind of cruelty and inhumanity, by the example and model of our own manners. Whoever else has ever rated trade and commerce at such a price? So many cities razed to the ground, so many nations wiped out, so many millions of individuals put to the sword, and the most beautiful and the richest part of the world shattered, on behalf of the pearls-and-pepper business! Tradesmen’s victories! At least ambition and political strife never led men against men to such acts of horrifying enmity and to such pitiable disasters.

While sailing along the coast on the lookout for the natives’ mines there were some Spaniards who went ashore in a fertile, pleasant and densely populated countryside; they gave the inhabitants their usual warning, declaring that they were men of peace, coming to them after sailing far across the seas, sent on behalf of the King of Castile, the greatest monarch in the inhabited world, to whom the Pope, as Vicar of God on earth, had granted dominion over all the Indies; that, if they would pay that King tribute they would be most kindly treated; then they asked for victuals to eat, and for gold… which they needed as a medicine; they incidentally
insisted that there is only one God, that our religion is the true one which they advised them to adopt – adding a menace or two.

In reply they were told that, as for their being men of peace, if they were they did not look it; as for their King, he must be poor and needy since he came a-begging; as for that man who had apportioned that tribute, he was a man who loved dissension since he gave to a third party something which was not his to give, seeking to pick a quarrel with those who had long possessed it; as for victuals, they would supply some; as for gold, they had very little; it was something they did not highly value since it was of small practical use in life, whereas their aim was to live their lives in happiness and contentment; so the Spaniards could readily have whatever gold they could find, except the gold which was used in the service of their own gods. As for there being only one God, they were pleased by the argument but did not intend to change their religion, having so profitably followed their own for such a long time and being unaccustomed to taking advice from anyone but their friends and acquaintances. As for their menaces, it was a sign of lack of judgement in them to go about threatening people the nature of whose resources was unknown to them; so let them get out of their country, quickly, for they were not accustomed to take in good part such courtesies from armed men and warnings from foreigners. They would do to them what they had done to others – and they indicated the heads of men condemned to death and displayed about their city.

There is an example of their baby-talk for you!

So the Spaniards neither remained nor campaigned in that place nor in many others where they found none of the merchandise they were after, no matter what other delights could be found there. Witness my cannibals.
³¹

The last two kings whom the Spaniards hounded were kings over many kings, the most powerful kings in that new world and perhaps also in our own.

The first was the King of Peru. He was captured in battle and put to so huge a ransom that it defies all belief; he paid it faithfully and showed by his dealings that he was of a frank, noble and steadfast heart, a man of honest and tranquil mind. The Conquistadores, having already extracted gold weighing one million three hundred and twenty-five thousand five hundred ounces (not counting silver and other booty amounting to no less,
so that afterwards they even used solid gold to shoe their horses) were seized with the desire to discover what remained of the treasures of that king, no matter what it cost them in bad faith, [C] and to make free with whatever he had kept back. [B] They fabricated false evidence, accusing him of planning to get his territories to rise up in revolt and to set him free. Whereupon – a beautiful sentence, delivered by those who had got up this act of treachery! – he was condemned to be publicly hanged until he was dead, having first been compelled to buy off the agony of being burned alive at the stake by accepting baptism – which was administered to him while he was being tortured.

A horrifying, unheard-of action, which he nevertheless bore without demeaning, by look or word, his truly regal gravity and comportment. And then to placate the people who were stunned into an ecstasy of amazement by so outlandish a deed, they counterfeited great grief at his death and arranged a costly funeral.

The second was the King of Mexico: he had long held out during the siege of his city, showing (if ever a people did so) what can be achieved by endurance and constancy, yet he had the misfortune to fall alive into the hands of his enemies, but on terms of being treated like a king. (And during his captivity he showed nothing unworthy of that title.) But the Spaniards, not finding after that victory as much gold as they had anticipated, pillaged and ransacked everything and then proceeded to seek information by inflicting on the prisoners they had taken the most painful tortures that they could devise. But since nothing of value could be extorted from them, their hearts being stronger than the tortures, the Spaniards finally fell into such a fit of madness that, contrary to their word and to the law of nations, they sentenced the King and one of the chief lords of his court to be tortured in each other’s sight. That lord, overcome with pain, surrounded by blazing braziers, finally turned his gaze piteously towards his sovereign, as if to beg [C] forgiveness because he could stand it no longer. [B] That King
³²
proudly and severely fixed his eyes on him to reproach him for his cowardice and faint-heartedness and simply said these words in a firm hoarse voice: ‘What about me? Am I having a bat’? Am I any more at ease than you are?’ Straightway afterwards that lord succumbed to the pain and died where he was. The King was borne away, half-roasted, not so much out of pity (for what pity could ever touch the souls of men who, for dubious information about some golden
vessel or other that they would pillage, would grill a man before their very eyes, not to mention a King of so great a destiny and merit) but because his constancy rendered their cruelty more and more humiliating.