take this work in his
hand, I wonder whether, like a monkey, he will not smell it and ask me
if it is something to eat.

[Sidenote: On the Vulgar]

11.

Demetrius used to say that there was no difference between the words
and the voice of the {7} unskilled ignorant and the sounds and noises
of a stomach full of superfluous wind. And it was not without reason
that he said this, for he considered it to be indifferent whence the
utterance of such men proceeded, whether from their mouth or their
body; both being of the same substance and value.

12.

I do not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender
parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as
men of contemplation and high culture. They merely need a sack in
which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they
cannot be considered otherwise than as vehicles for food, for they seem
to me to have nothing in common with the human race save the shape and
the voice; as far as the rest is concerned they are lower than the
beasts.

13.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament
and food of the mind of man.

[Sidenote: Knowledge the supreme Good]

14.

Cornelius Celsus: Knowledge is the supreme good, the supreme evil is
physical pain. We are composed of two separate parts, the soul and the
the body; the soul is the greater of these two, the body the lesser.
Knowledge appertains to the {8} greater part, the supreme evil belongs
to the lesser and baser part. Knowledge is an excellent thing for the
mind, and pain is the most grievous thing for the body. Just as the
supreme evil is physical pain, so is wisdom the supreme good of the
soul, that is to say of the wise man, and no other thing can be
compared with it.

[Sidenote: Life and Wisdom]

15.

In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the
losses of thy old age. And if thou understandest that old age is fed
with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that
sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age.

[Sidenote: Praise of Knowledge]

16.

The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and
not of the man who possessed it, remains. Far greater is the glory of
the virtue of mortals than that of their riches. How many emperors and
how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and
they only sought to gain dominions and ric