Thus in our day, that little which
Aristotle can bring, is peculiar for its inventive reasoning, its
suggestiveness, its metaphysics, and is useful for other pedants, who
work with the same "Sursum corda," who institute new dialectics and
modes of forming the reason (judgment?) which are as much viler than
those of Aristotle, as may be the philosophy of Aristotle is
incomparably viler than that of the ancients. And it has been caused by
this, that certain grammarians having grown old in the birching of
children, and in anatomizing phrases and words, have sought to rouse the
mind to the formation of new logic and metaphysics, judging and
sentencing those which they had never studied nor understood: as also
these by the approbation of the ignorant multitude, with whose mind
they have most affinity, can easily demolish the humanities and
ratiocination of Aristotle, as the latter was the executioner of the
Divine philosophies of others. See, then, what it comes to, if all
should aspire to the sacred splendour, and yet are occupied about things
low and vain.
MAR.
Ride, si sapis, o puella, ride,
Pelignus, puto, dixerat poeta;
Sed non dixerat omnibus puellis;
Et si dixerat omnibus puellis,
Non dixit tibi. Tu puella non es.
Thus the "Sursum corda" is not the measure for all; but for those that
have wings. We see that pedantry has never been held in such esteem for
the government of the world as in our times, and it offers as many paths
of the true intelligible species and objects of infallible and sole
truth as there are individual pedants.
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