favorable applause from all the
throng, a certain distinguished Doctor who both had lectured on
the Arts at Paris and long studied on the laws at Bologna, whose
name was Master Roger the Norman, ... broke out openly in
expressions of this sort: "There is not such knowledge under the
sun, and if it were by chance reported at Paris, it would, beyond
a doubt, carry incomparable weight there, far more so than
anywhere else." Now the opening--as it were, the proem--of that
talk I have not considered it inappropriate to introduce here; so
this is the way it began:

"I had proposed to hear before being heard, to learn before
speaking, to hesitate before debating. For to cultured ears and
to men of the highest eloquence my speech will appear to have
little marrow in its views, and its poverty of words will seem
jejune. For idle is it, and utterly superfluous, to offer that
which is arid to the eloquent, and that which is stale to men of
knowledge and wisdom. Whence our Moral Seneca, and, quoting from
him, Sidonius, says:

"'Until Nature has drunk in knowledge, it is not greater glory to
speak what you know than to be silent about what you do not
know.'

"And yet, since, on the testimony of Augustine, 'Every part out
of harmony with its whole is base,' that I may not seem the sole
anomaly among you, or, where others speak, be found by my silence
a disciple of Pythagoras surpassing the rest, I have chosen to be
found ridiculous for my speaking, rather than out of harmony for
my silence.

"What note then shall the noisy goose emit in the presence of the
clear-songed swans? Shall he offer new things, or things well
known? Things often considered and trite generate disgust; new
things lack authority. For, as Pliny says: 'It is an arduous task
to give novelty to old things, authority to new things,
brightness to things obsolete, charm to things disdained, light
to obscure things, credence to doubtful things, and to all things
naturalness!'

"The question which we have before us is old, but not
inveterate,--a question often argued, but whose decision is still
pending: Should a Judge decide according to the evidence, or
according to his conviction?"

Now he supported the second, but far less justifiable view, by
arguments taken f