bear up against him, and shrewdly to contrive by what vigor, by what skill, by what method of supplanting, he may be overturned.  Therefore under this beautiful scheme, surpassing all others, it was the plan to break in the boy immediately and train him constantly; they began disputing as soon as they were born and ceased only at death.  The boy brought to school, is bidden to dispute forthwith on the first day and is already taught to quarrel, before he can yet speak at all.  So also in Grammar, in the Poets, in the Historians, in Logic, in Rhetoric, in absolutely every branch.  Would any one wonder what they can find to do in matters that are perfectly open, very simple and elementary?  There is nothing so transparent, so limpid that they do not cloud it over with some petty question as if ruffled by a breeze.  It is [thought] characteristic of the most helpless stupidity, not to find something which you may make obscure by most intricate measures and involve in very hard and rigid conditions, which you may twist and twist again.  For you may simply say:  “Write to me,”—­here comes a question, if not from Grammar then from Logic, if not from Logic then from Physics,—­“What motions are made in writing?” Or, from Metaphysics, “Is it substance or quality?”

And these boys are hearing the first rudiments of Logic who were only yesterday, or the day before, admitted to the school.  So they are to be trained never to be silent, but vigorously to assert whatever comes uppermost lest they may seem at any time to have given in.  Nor is one dispute a day enough, nor two, like a meal.  At lunch they dispute, after lunch they dispute, at dinner they dispute, after dinner they dispute.  Do they do these things to learn, or to cook a new dish?  They dispute at home, they dispute away from home.  At a banquet, in the bath, in the tepidarium, at church, in the city, in the fields, in public, in private, in all places and at all times they dispute.

Courtesans in charge of a panderer do not wrangle so many times, or gladiators in charge of a trainer do not fight so many times for a prize as these do under their teacher of philosophy.  The populace, not self-restrained and serious, but fickle, barbarous, pugnacious, is wonderfully tickled with all this as with a mock battle.  So there are very many exceedingly ignorant men, utterly without knowledge of literature in any form, who take more pleasure in this form of show than in all else; and the more easily to win the fight, they employ a quick and prompt mode of fighting and deliver a blow every second, as it were, in order the more speedily to use up their foe.  They neither assail their adversary with uninterrupted argument nor can they endure prolonged talk from him.  If by way of explaining himself he should begin to enlarge, they raise the cry:  “To the point!  To the point!  Answer categorically!” Showing how restless and flippant their minds are who cannot stand a few words....