Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais & Sir Thomas Urquhart & Peter Antony Motteux

Author:Francois Rabelais & Sir Thomas Urquhart & Peter Antony Motteux
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: classics
ISBN: 9781420933093
Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
Published: 2009-01-29T10:00:00+00:00

How Rondibilis, the physician, advises Panurge

CHAPTER 31

[Behind Rondibilis probably lies Dr Rondelet, a distinguished physician at Montpellier. Rondibilis advocates the teachings about semen of the Platonico-Hippocratic school which, on this matter, was opposed to Galen. Rabelais draws freely on the Laws of Marriage of his friend Tiraqueau.

For the tale of Cupid, see Lucían, Dialogues of the Gods, 19.

At least one adage of Erasmus is relevant: II, III, XCVII, ‘Venus is cold without Ceres and Bacchus’.

For Socrates, to be a philosopher means ‘to practise dying’. (Plato: Phaedo, 67D–68B). Because a true philosopher strives to liberate his soul from his body in philosophical rapture, philosophy is truly a practising of death, death being conceived as the final separation on Earth of body and soul. For Erasmus and his followers that idea of Socrates is central to the whole of Christianity, conceived as the philosophy of Christ.]

Panurge, continuing to talk, went on to say:

‘After he had dealt with Fray Cauldaureil, the first words uttered by the man who was castrating the brown-clad monks at Saussignac were “Now for the others!” I say the same: now for the others! Come on, Notre Maître Rondibilis: dispatch this for me! Should I marry or not?’

‘By the amblings of my mule!’ replied Rondibilis, ‘I have no idea how I ought to answer that problem. You state that you feel within you the barbed prickings of the flesh. I find from our faculty of medicine – and we have taken it from the conclusions of the ancient Platonists – that carnal concupiscence can be restrained by five means: By wine.’

‘I can believe that,’ said Frère Jean. ‘When I am really drunk, all I ask is to go to sleep.’

‘I mean, by wine taken intemperately, since lack of temperance produces a lowering of the temperature of the blood, a slackening of the sinews, a dispersing of the generative semen, an hebetation of the senses and a subverting of locomotion, all of which are impediments to the act of generation. You do indeed find Bacchus, the god of drunkards, painted beardless, dressed in women’s attire, as being entirely effeminate, a eunuch, a gelding.

‘It is otherwise with wine taken temperately, as is pointed out by that ancient proverb which says that without the company of Ceres and Bacchus Venus is frigid. According to the account in Diodorus Siculus it was the opinion of the Ancients (and particularly of the Lampsacians, as Pausanias bears witness) that Signor Priapus was the son of Bacchus and Venus.

‘Secondly: by certain drugs and simples which render a man feeble, spell-bound, and incapable of the generative act. Experiments have shown that to be true of nymphea heraclia, the Amerinian osier or willow, hempseed, honeysuckle, tamarisk, agnus-castus, mandrake, hemlock, the lesser orchis, the skin of an hippopotamus, etc., which, within the human body, by their elemental powers and specific qualities, freeze and deaden the fertile seed or alternatively disperse the spirits which must conduct it to the organs destined by Nature to that end, or else oppilate the

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