xample, so that subjects
wishing to be superiors, and the ignoble to equal the noble, the order
of things would become perverted and confounded, so that a sort of
neutrality would supervene, and a brutal equality, such as is found in
certain deserts and uncultured republics. Do you not see what damage has
been done to science through this: _i.e._ pedants wishing to be
philosophers; to treat of natural things, and mix themselves with and
decide about things Divine? Who does not see how much evil has happened,
and does happen, through the mind having been moved through similar
facts to exalted affections? Who is there, of good sense, who cannot see
what a fine thing Aristotle made of it, when, being a master of belles
lettres at Alexandria, he set himself to oppose and make war against the
Pythagorean doctrine, and that of natural philosophy; seeking by means
of his logical ratiocination to propose definitions and notions,
certain fifth entities and other abortive portions of fantastical
cogitations, as principles and substance of things, more anxious about
the esteem of the vulgar stupid crowd, which is influenced and governed
by sophisms and appearances which are found in the superficies of things
rather than by the Truth, which is occult and hidden in the substance of
them, and is the substance itself of them? He roused his mind, not to
make himself a mediator, but judge and censor of things which he had
never studied, nor well understood. Thus in our day, that little which
Aristotle can bring, is peculiar for its inventive reasoning, its
suggestiveness, its metaphysics, and is useful for other pedants, who
work with the same "Sursum corda," who institute new dialectics and
modes of forming the reason (judgment?) which are as much viler than
those of Aristotle, as may be the philosophy of Aristotle is
incomparably viler than that of the ancients. And it has been caused by
this, that certain grammarians having grown old in the birching of
children, and in anatomizing phrases and words, have sought to rouse the
mind to the formation of new logic and metaphysics, judging and
sentencing those which they had never studied nor understood: as also
these by the approbation of the ignorant multitude, with whose mind
they have most affinity, can easily demolish the humanities and
ratiocination of Aristotle, as the latter was the executioner of the
Divine philosophies of others. See, then, what it comes to, if all
should aspire to