956 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
attitude toward them. “They err and they err shamefully 
who think that philosophy consists of mere words. They err 
as much, who think virtue words, as those who think that chips 
of wood make a grove; for the commendation of virtue lies in 
deeds and virtue is the inseparable companion of wisdom. 
Wherefore it is clear that those who cling to words alone, prefer 
to appear, ralher than be, wise men. They wander around the 
highways, they wear away the thresholds of more learned men, 
propound questions and purposely confuse their words so as to 
convey almost any meaning, more ready to err than to examine 
any difficulty that may arise. Yet they fear, these debasers, 
not lovers of wisdom, to show their own ignorance and that 
which they do not know, they prefer not to know through a 
perverted sense of shame, especially if there are others present 
to whom those things are known. 
“Their arrogance is unendurable. They speak on the spur of 
the moment on any subject; they judge everybody; others they 
find fault with, themselves they extol, boasting that they have 
discovered for the first time matter which was trite among the 
ancients and by the witness of books has been brought through 
many ages to our own time. Words are heaped on words so 
that they are often less known for weight and more for multi¬ 
tude than for any difficulty of subject matter. When one of 
them has so concealed his meaning that no one understands him 
he thinks that he deserves a place at the head of all philosophers 
and often he who knows the least propounds the most questions 
—questions which Pythagoras himself could not have answered. 
The same material he revolves over and over again, never chang¬ 
ing, but ever winding about in the same circle. As you listen 
at a distance you wonder whether a third Cato has fallen from 
the Heavens, for whoever the man he conveys the same impres¬ 
sion. If you inquire after his profession or his art, it is ‘Gram¬ 
maticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes, augur, schaenobates, 
medicus, magus, omnia novitd And more famous by far than 
the hungry Greek, he would upon request go into the very 
Heavens, and more wise than Daedalus he would transport you 
unharmed through the void whithersoever you wished. 
“But should you go to find out what authors mean in their 
