Bab Bab 57 · How the Thelemites were gove

Chapter 1.LVII.

How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living.

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to

their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they

thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to

it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to

constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had

Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their

order there was but this one clause to be observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest

companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto

virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour.

Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought

under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they

formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of

servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable

with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is

denied us.

By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation to do all of

them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should

say, Let us drink, they would all drink. If any one of them said, Let us

play, they all played. If one said, Let us go a-walking into the fields

they went all. If it were to go a-hawking or a-hunting, the ladies mounted

upon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on

their lovely fists, miniardly begloved every one of them, either a

sparrowhawk or a laneret or a marlin, and the young gallants carried the

other kinds of hawks. So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he

nor she amongst them but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical

instruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose in them all

very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant

knights, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and

a-horse-back, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better

handling all manner of weapons than were there. Never were seen ladies so

proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less froward, or more ready

with their hand and with their needle in every honest and free action

belonging to that sex, than were there. For this reason, when the time

came that any man of the said abbey, either at the request of his parents,

or for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it, he carried along with

him one of the ladies, namely, her whom he had before that chosen for his

mistress, and (they) were married together. And if they had formerly in

Theleme lived in good devotion and amity, they did continue therein and

increase it to a greater height in their state of matrimony; and did

entertain that mutual love till the very last day of their life, in no less

vigour and fervency than at the very day of their wedding. Here must not I

forget to set down unto you a riddle which was found under the ground as

they were laying the foundation of the abbey, engraven in a copper plate,

and it was thus as followeth.