e witnesses, have
fallen into the ditch of false opinion, from which they know not how
to escape. From the use of the sight of discretion the mass of the
people are debarred, because each being occupied from the early years
of his life with some trade, he so directs his mind to that, by force
of necessity, that he understands nought else. And forasmuch as the
habit of virtue, moral as well as intellectual, cannot possibly be had
all on a sudden, but it must be acquired through long custom, and as
these people place their custom in some art, and care not to discern
other things, it is impossible to them to have discretion. Wherefore
it happens that often they cry aloud: "Long live Death!" and "Let Life
die!" because some one begins the cry. And this is the most dangerous
defect in their blindness. For this reason Boethius judges glory of
the people vain, because he sees it to be without discernment. These
persons are to be termed sheep and not men; for if a sheep should leap
over a precipice of a thousand feet, all the others would follow after
it; and if one sheep, for some cause or other, in crossing a road,
leaps, all the others leap, even when they see nothing to leap over.
And I once saw many leap into a well, because one had leapt into it,
believing perhaps that it was leaping a wall; notwithstanding that the
shepherd, weeping and shouting, with arms and breast set himself
against them.

The second faction against our Mother Tongue springs from a malicious
self-justification. There are many who would rather be thought masters
than be such; and to avoid the opposite--that is, to be held not to be
such--they always cast blame on the material they work on, or upon the
instrument; as the clumsy smith blames the iron given to him, and the
bad harpist blames the harp, thinking to cast the blame of the bad
blade and of the bad music upon the iron and upon the harp, and to
lift it from themselves. Thus there are some, and not a few, who
desire that a man may hold them to be orators; and to excuse
themselves for not speaking, or for speaking badly, they accuse or
throw blame on the material, that is, their own Mother Tongue, and
praise that of other lands, which they are not required to employ. And
he who wishes to see wherefore this iron is to be blamed, let him look
at the work which good artificers make of it, and he will understand
the malice of those who, in casting blame upon it, think thereby to
excuse themselves. A