t, so limpid that they
do not cloud it over with some petty question as if ruffled by a
breeze. It is [thought] characteristic of the most helpless
stupidity, not to find something which you may make obscure by
most intricate measures and involve in very hard and rigid
conditions, which you may twist and twist again. For you may
simply say: "Write to me,"--here comes a question, if not from
Grammar then from Logic, if not from Logic then from
Physics,--"What motions are made in writing?" Or, from
Metaphysics, "Is it substance or quality?"

And these boys are hearing the first rudiments of Logic who were
only yesterday, or the day before, admitted to the school. So
they are to be trained never to be silent, but vigorously to
assert whatever comes uppermost lest they may seem at any time to
have given in. Nor is one dispute a day enough, nor two, like a
meal. At lunch they dispute, after lunch they dispute, at dinner
they dispute, after dinner they dispute. Do they do these things
to learn, or to cook a new dish? They dispute at home, they
dispute away from home. At a banquet, in the bath, in the
tepidarium, at church, in the city, in the fields, in public, in
private, in all places and at all times they dispute.

Courtesans in charge of a panderer do not wrangle so many times,
or gladiators in charge of a trainer do not fight so many times
for a prize as these do under their teacher of philosophy. The
populace, not self-restrained and serious, but fickle, barbarous,
pugnacious, is wonderfully tickled with all this as with a mock
battle. So there are very many exceedingly ignorant men, utterly
without knowledge of literature in any form, who take more
pleasure in this form of show than in all else; and the more
easily to win the fight, they employ a quick and prompt mode of
fighting and deliver a blow every second, as it were, in order
the more speedily to use up their foe. They neither assail their
adversary with uninterrupted argument nor can they endure
prolonged talk from him. If by way of explaining himself he
should begin to enlarge, they raise the cry: "To the point! To
the point! Answer categorically!" Showing how restless and
flippant _their_ minds are who cannot stand a few words....

To such a degree did they go that instead o