After this cry the blind men above mentioned, who are infinite, as it were with one hand on the shoulder of these false 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.  Against such as these, Tullius exclaims in the beginning of his book, which he names the book “De Finibus,” because in his time they blamed the Roman Latin and praised the Greek grammar.  And thus I say, for like reasons, that these men vilify the Italian tongue, and glorify that of Provence.

The third faction against our Mother Tongue springs from greed of vainglory.  There are many who, by describing certain things in some other language, and by praising that language, deem themselves to be more worthy of admiration than if they described them in their own.  And undoubtedly to learn well a foreign tongue is deserving of some praise for intellect; but it is a blameable thing to applaud that language beyond truth, to glorify one’s self for such an acquisition.