Krey—John of Salisbury and the Classics. 957 
writings; should you inquire about and discuss literature, be 
will assail you for your rashness and will tell you that you are 
more stupid than the ass of Arcadia. You are duller than lead 
if you ask him to explain a passage, and if you insist, you are 
advised to flee, for literature is pernicious and it is deadly in its 
effects. Beware lest ye be the serpent that eats up the world 
all the days of his life. You must be making sport or telling 
stories, or perhaps you are deceived. 
“He who is the more verbose appears the more learned. He 
cares not whence or why or about what he is delivering opinions 
nor does he care about what anyone else propounds, so long as 
he is speaking. Nor does any one of these folk state for what 
reason he is debating, provided he can give not the true force 
but the mere shadow of the subject. What is true or what is 
false, what is probable or what is not probable, is looked for in 
vain, for the image of probability is prefixed to everything. 
State what you wish, something like it is taken up instead, for 
what holds in one thing, whether you will or not, they main¬ 
tain holds in another that is like it. Yet it is clear that what is 
like the truth, is not necessarily true and what seems to bo 
false is not always false; but if you attempt to disclose the real 
difference between two propositions that seem alike, they tell 
you that you are speaking nonsense. They will either prevent 
you with their shouting or will laugh at you for doing needless 
work since, they say, there must be some differences between all 
like things but that these things ought rightly to be called not 
like but the same things. To teach why this is not the case is 
considered by them not only frivolous but truly most laughable.. 
They tell you that they have come to hear the Peripatetic and 
not to listen to Hermagoras; yet they are like the Peripatetics 
only in their circumambulations and circumlocutions and not 
in any careful investigation of their subject matter. 
“However, if this deception is practiced for the purpose of 
gaining a supply of eloquence and if in likeness unlikenesses 
are looked for, it is a praiseworthy practice and one for which 
I could not easily mention a substitute that would be more 
profitable for youth, provided they did not allow their faculties 
to be clouded by the endlessness of fallacies. Nothing is more 
