Kabanata Kabanata 96 · Panurge continueth his disco

Chapter 3.IV.

Panurge continueth his discourse in the praise of borrowers and lenders.

On the contrary, be pleased to represent unto your fancy another world,

wherein everyone lendeth and everyone oweth, all are debtors and all

creditors. O how great will that harmony be, which shall thereby result

from the regular motions of the heavens! Methinks I hear it every whit as

well as ever Plato did. What sympathy will there be amongst the elements!

O how delectable then unto nature will be our own works and productions!

Whilst Ceres appeareth laden with corn, Bacchus with wines, Flora with

flowers, Pomona with fruits, and Juno fair in a clear air, wholesome and

pleasant. I lose myself in this high contemplation.

Then will among the race of mankind peace, love, benevolence, fidelity,

tranquillity, rest, banquets, feastings, joy, gladness, gold, silver,

single money, chains, rings, with other ware and chaffer of that nature be

found to trot from hand to hand. No suits at law, no wars, no strife,

debate, nor wrangling; none will be there a usurer, none will be there a

pinch-penny, a scrape-good wretch, or churlish hard-hearted refuser. Good

God! Will not this be the golden age in the reign of Saturn? the true idea

of the Olympic regions, wherein all (other) virtues cease, charity alone

ruleth, governeth, domineereth, and triumpheth? All will be fair and

goodly people there, all just and virtuous.

O happy world! O people of that world most happy! Yea, thrice and four

times blessed is that people! I think in very deed that I am amongst them,

and swear to you, by my good forsooth, that if this glorious aforesaid

world had a pope, abounding with cardinals, that so he might have the

association of a sacred college, in the space of very few years you should

be sure to see the saints much thicker in the roll, more numerous,

wonder-working and mirific, more services, more vows, more staves and

wax-candles than are all those in the nine bishoprics of Britany, St. Yves

only excepted. Consider, sir, I pray you, how the noble Patelin, having a

mind to deify and extol even to the third heavens the father of William

Josseaulme, said no more but this, And he did lend his goods to those who

were desirous of them.

O the fine saying! Now let our microcosm be fancied conform to this model

in all its members; lending, borrowing, and owing, that is to say,

according to its own nature. For nature hath not to any other end created

man, but to owe, borrow, and lend; no greater is the harmony amongst the

heavenly spheres than that which shall be found in its well-ordered policy.

The intention of the founder of this microcosm is, to have a soul therein

to be entertained, which is lodged there, as a guest with its host, (that)

it may live there for a while. Life consisteth in blood, blood is the seat

of the soul; therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is, to be making

blood continually.

At this forge are exercised all the members of the body; none is exempted

from labour, each operates apart, and doth its proper office. And such is

their heirarchy, that perpetually the one borrows from the other, the one

lends the other, and the one is the other’s debtor. The stuff and matter

convenient, which nature giveth to be turned into blood, is bread and wine.

All kind of nourishing victuals is understood to be comprehended in these

two, and from hence in the Gothish tongue is called companage. To find out

this meat and drink, to prepare and boil it, the hands are put to work, the

feet do walk and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass; the eyes

guide and conduct all; the appetite in the orifice of the stomach, by means

of (a) little sourish black humour, called melancholy, which is transmitted

thereto from the milt, giveth warning to shut in the food. The tongue doth

make the first essay, and tastes it; the teeth do chew it, and the stomach

doth receive, digest, and chylify it. The mesaraic veins suck out of it

what is good and fit, leaving behind the excrements, which are, through

special conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty.

Thereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being changed again, it by

the virtue of that new transmutation becomes blood. What joy, conjecture

you, will then be found amongst those officers when they see this rivulet

of gold, which is their sole restorative? No greater is the joy of

alchemists, when after long travail, toil, and expense they see in their

furnaces the transmutation. Then is it that every member doth prepare

itself, and strive anew to purify and to refine this treasure. The kidneys

through the emulgent veins draw that aquosity from thence which you call

urine, and there send it away through the ureters to be slipped downwards;

where, in a lower receptacle, and proper for it, to wit, the bladder, it is

kept, and stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due

time. The spleen draweth from the blood its terrestrial part, viz., the

grounds, lees, or thick substance settled in the bottom thereof, which you

term melancholy. The bottle of the gall subtracts from thence all the

superfluous choler; whence it is brought to another shop or work-house to

be yet better purified and fined, that is, the heart, which by its

agitation of diastolic and systolic motions so neatly subtilizeth and

inflames it, that in the right side ventricle it is brought to perfection,

and through the veins is sent to all the members. Each parcel of the body

draws it then unto itself, and after its own fashion is cherished and

alimented by it. Feet, hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears, back, breast, yea,

all; and then it is, that who before were lenders, now become debtors. The

heart doth in its left side ventricle so thinnify the blood, that it

thereby obtains the name of spiritual; which being sent through the

arteries to all the members of the body, serveth to warm and winnow the

other blood which runneth through the veins. The lights never cease with

its lappets and bellows to cool and refresh it, in acknowledgment of which

good the heart, through the arterial vein, imparts unto it the choicest of

its blood. At last it is made so fine and subtle within the rete mirabile,

that thereafter those animal spirits are framed and composed of it, by

means whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution,

deliberation, ratiocination, and memory have their rise, actings, and

operations.

Cops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of

myself when I enter into the consideration of the profound abyss of this

world, thus lending, thus owing. Believe me, it is a divine thing to

lend,--to owe, an heroic virtue. Yet is not this all. This little world

thus lending, owing, and borrowing, is so good and charitable, that no

sooner is the above-specified alimentation finished, but that it forthwith

projecteth, and hath already forecast, how it shall lend to those who are

not as yet born, and by that loan endeavour what it may to eternize itself,

and multiply in images like the pattern, that is, children. To this end

every member doth of the choicest and most precious of its nourishment pare

and cut off a portion, then instantly despatcheth it downwards to that

place where nature hath prepared for it very fit vessels and receptacles,

through which descending to the genitories by long ambages, circuits, and

flexuosities, it receiveth a competent form, and rooms apt enough both in

man and woman for the future conservation and perpetuating of human kind.

All this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence

have we this word, the debt of marriage. Nature doth reckon pain to the

refuser, with a most grievous vexation to his members and an outrageous

fury amidst his senses. But, on the other part, to the lender a set

reward, accompanied with pleasure, joy, solace, mirth, and merry glee.