smallness,
for many men are so vilely obstinate or stubborn that they cannot
believe that it is possible either for them or for others to know
things; and such men as these never of themselves seek knowledge, nor
ever reason; for what other men say, they care not at all. And against
these men Aristotle speaks in the first book of the Ethics, declaring
those men to be insufficient or unsatisfactory hearers of Moral
Philosophy. Those men always live, like beasts, a life of grossness,
the despair of all learning.

The third infirmity of mind is caused by the levity of nature; for
many men are of such light fancy that in all their arguments they go
astray, and even when they make a syllogism and have concluded, from
that conclusion they fly off into another, and it seems to them most
subtle argument. They start not from any true beginning, and truly
they see nothing true in their imagination. Of those men the
Philosopher says that it is not right to trouble about them, or to
have business with them, saying, in the first book of Physics, that
against him who denies the first postulate it is not right to dispute.
And of such men as these are many idiots, who may not know their A B
C, and who would wish to dispute in Geometry, in Astrology, and in the
Science of Physics.

Also through sickness or defect of body, it is possible for the Mind
to be unsound or sick; even as through some primal defect at birth, as
with those who are born fools, or through alteration in the brain, as
with the madmen. And of this mental infirmity the Law speaks when it
says: "In him who makes a Will or Testament, at the time when he makes
the Will or Testament, health of mind, not health of body, is
required."

But to those intellects which from sickness of mind or body are not
infirm, but are free, diligent, and whole in the light of Truth, I say
it must be evident that the opinion of the people, which has been
stated above, is vain, that is, without any value whatever, worthless.

Afterwards the Song subjoins that I thus judge them to be false and
vain; and this it does when it says, "Sound intellect reproves their
words As false, and turns away." And afterwards I say that it is time
to demonstrate or prove the Truth; and I say that it is now right to
state what kind of thing true Nobility is, and how it is possible to
know the man in whom it exists; and I speak of this where I say:

And now I seek to tell
As it appears to me,