al to
gods, and to understand the good and the beautiful which philosophy
promises.

CES. A grand thing, indeed, that time, which does not suffice for
necessary things, however carefully we use it, should come to be chiefly
consumed about superfluous things, and things vile and shameful.

Is it not rather a thing to laugh at than to praise in Archimedes, that
at the time when the city was in confusion, everything in ruins, fire
broken out in his room, enemies there at his back who had it in their
power to make him lose his brain, his life, his art; that he, meanwhile,
having abandoned all desire or intention of saving his life, lost it
while he was inquiring, perhaps, into the proportion of the curve to the
straight line, of the diameter to the circle, or other similar mathesis,
as suitable for youth, as it were unsuitable for one who, being old,
should be intent upon things more worthy of being put as the end of
human desires?

MAR. In connection with this I like what you said just now, that there
must be all sorts of persons in the world, and that the number of the
imperfect, the ugly, the poor, the unworthy and the villanous, should
be the greater, and, in short, it ought not to be otherwise than as it
is. The long life of Archimedes, of Euclid, of Priscian, of Donato, and
others, who were found up to their death occupied with numbers, lines,
diction, concordances, writings, dialectics, syllogisms, forms, methods,
systems of science, organs, and other preambles, is ordained for the
service of youth, so that they may learn to receive the fruits of the
mature age of those (sages) and be full of the same even in their green
age, so that when they are older they may be fit and ready to arrive
without hindrance to higher things.

CES. I am not wrong in the proposition I moved just now when I spoke of
those who make it their study to appropriate to themselves the place and
the fame of the ancients with new works which are neither better nor
worse than those already existing, and spend their life in considering
how to turn wheat into tares,[M] and find the work of their life in the
elaboration of those studies which are suited for children and are
generally profitable to no one, not even to themselves.

[M] E spendono la vita su le considerazioni da mettere avanti lana
di capra, o l'ombra de l'asino.

MAR. But enough has been said about those who neither can nor dare to
have their mind roused to highest love.