Among men, or older persons, there was a kind of comparison of opinions and reasons, not aimed at victory but at unravelling the truth.  The very name testifies that they are called disputations because by their means the truth is, as it were, pruned or purged [dis = apart; puto = to prune, or to cleanse].  But after praise and reward came from listeners to the one who seemed to have the best ideas, and out of the praise often came wealth and resources, a base greed of distinction or money took possession of the minds of the disputants, and, just as in a battle, victory only was the consideration, and not the elucidation of truth.  So that they defended strenuously whatever they once had said, and overthrew and trampled upon their adversary.

Low and sordid minds such as with drooping heads look solely at such trivial and ephemeral results, regarded as of small consequence the great benefit that results from study:—­namely probity or knowledge of truth; and these two things they did not regard with sufficient acuteness nor did they comprehend their great value, but they sought the immediate reward of money or popular favor.

And so, in order to get a greater return for their labor, they admitted the populace to their contests like the spectators of a play brought out at the theatre.  Then, as one might expect when the standard is lowered, the philosopher laid aside his dignified, venerable character, and put on his stage dress that he might dance more easily:  the populace was made spectator, umpire, and judge, and the philosopher did that which the flute player does not do on the stage,—­he suited his music, not to his own ideas and to the Muses, as his old teacher advises, but wholly to the circle of onlookers and the crowd whence distinction and gain was likely to come back to the actors.

There was no need of real, solid teaching (at least, not in the opinion of those who are going to learn); but pretence and dust were thrown in the eyes of the crowd.  So the one plain road of obtaining the truth was abandoned; six hundred ways of pretending were made, by which each strove for what suited himself, especially since there is nothing made so ugly as to lack a sponsor.

Not only did the populace flock to this opinion—­that the object of learning is to dispute, just as it is the object of military life to fight—­but the public unanimity swept away the veterans, the triarii [the more experienced soldiers who were placed in the third line] as it were, of the scholastic campaign (but these have no more ability and judgment than the dregs of the people), so that they regard him as superfluous and foolish who would call them back to mental activity and character and that quiet method of investigation, philosophy. [They think that] there is no other fruit of studies save to keep your wits about you and not give way to your adversary, either to attack him boldly or to