‘Seeing things’: Amazons and cannibals

Abstract

I, when I value gold, may think upon The ductileness, the application, The wholesomeness, the ingenuity, From rust, from soil, from fire ever free, But if I love it, 'tis because 'tis made By our new Nature, use, the soul of trade. Donne, Elegy xviii ‘Love's Progress’, 11–16 Donne, although writing about love, is here manipulating two of the commonplaces that we associate with encounters in the Renaissance between the Old and New Worlds: gold, and the manner by which, when two peoples engage in trade, their natures are changed. ‘Nature’ in this poem is both external and internal, great creating Nature as well as that which makes up humanity. ‘Use’ also has two meanings, ‘usury’ and ‘cultural practice or custom’. Practice generates particular behaviour, so constituting a new ‘nature’ for individuals involved in that behaviour, here the process of trading. Translating this into slightly different terms, the behaviour of the market-place is a form of theatricalization. Donne may, I think, be seen here as a cultural relativist, someone who was prepared to conceive of Nature not as something transhistorical or transcultural, but as a power made by culture. We might compare Montaigne's aphorism from one of the greatest of his essays, ‘Of Custom, and How a Received Law Should Not Easily be Changed’: ‘Custom is a violent and deceiving school-mistress… we may plainly see her upon every occasion to force the rules of Nature: Usus efficassimus rerum omnium magister : Use is the most effectual master of all things.’

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