four great
difficulties would follow, so that theirs can not be a good reason.

The first is that the better human nature might be the more difficult
and the more tardy would be the generation of nobility, which is a
great difficulty; since the better a thing is the more it is honored
and the more good it causes; and nobility would be commemorated among
the good things. And that this would be so is proved; for if rank or
rather nobility (which is understood to be the same thing) is
generated by oblivion, then the sooner men are forgotten the quicker
is their nobility generated, for so much the sooner would nobility
come for all. Therefore, the sooner men were forgotten, the sooner
they would be ennobled, and, on the contrary, the better the memory of
them the more tardy would be their nobility.

The second difficulty is that in no case except man's could such a
distinction be made, that is, between noble and vile, which is a great
difficulty. For in every kind of thing we see an appearance of
nobility or of vileness, whence we often call one horse noble and one
vile, or one falcon noble and one vile, or one pearl noble and one
vile. And that this distinction could not be made is proved thus: If
the forgetting of ignoble ancestors is a cause of nobility, where the
ancestors never were ignoble there could be no oblivion, since
oblivion is the destruction of memory. And in the said animals and
plants and minerals degrees of higher and lower are not noted, because
they spring from one nature and are of equal condition, and in their
generation there can be nothing of nobility or the reverse, seeing
that both extremes must be regarded as a possession or privation
possible to the same subject; and, therefore, in them no such
distinction can exist.

And if our opponent were to say that in other things nobility is
understood to be the goodness therefore, but in man is understood as
the forgetfulness of his low estate, one would like to answer not with
words but with the knife to such stupidity as would give goodness to
the cause of nobility in other things, but in man forgetfulness as its
origin.

The third difficulty is that those generated would often come before
the generation, which is quite impossible; and this may be
demonstrated thus:

Let us suppose that Gherardo de Cammino was a grandson of the lowest
peasant that ever drank of Sile or Cagnano, and that his grandfather
were not yet buried in oblivion; who would