But letting this first reason alone, I think it better to say, that this evil proceeds from their applying themselves the wrong way to the study of the sciences; and that, after the manner we are instructed, it is no wonder if neither the scholars nor the masters become, though more learned, ever the wiser, or more able.  In plain truth, the cares and expense our parents are at in our education, point at nothing, but to furnish our heads with knowledge; but not a word of judgment and virtue.  Cry out, of one that passes by, to the people:  “O, what a learned man!” and of another, “O, what a good man!”—­[Translated from Seneca, Ep., 88.]—­they will not fail to turn their eyes, and address their respect to the former.  There should then be a third crier, “O, the blockheads!” Men are apt presently to inquire, does such a one understand Greek or Latin?  Is he a poet? or does he write in prose?  But whether he be grown better or more discreet, which are qualities of principal concern, these are never thought of.  We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned.

We only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.  Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at the tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad.  And here I cannot but smile to think how I have paid myself in showing the foppery of this kind of learning, who myself am so manifest an example; for, do I not the same thing throughout almost this whole composition?  I go here and there, culling out of several books the sentences that best please me, not to keep them (for I have no memory to retain them in), but to transplant them into this; where, to say the truth, they are no more mine than in their first places.  We are, I conceive, knowing only in present knowledge, and not at all in what is past, or more than is that which is to come.  But the worst on’t is, their scholars and pupils are no better nourished by this kind of inspiration; and it makes no deeper impression upon them, but passes from hand to hand, only to make a show to be tolerable company, and to tell pretty stories, like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other use or value, but to reckon with, or to set up at cards: 

          “Apud alios loqui didicerunt non ipsi secum.”

     ["They have learned to speak from others, not from themselves.” 
     —­Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes, v. 36.]

“Non est loquendum, sed gubernandum.”

     ["Speaking is not so necessary as governing.”—­Seneca, Ep., 108.]

Nature, to shew that there is nothing barbarous where she has the sole conduct, oftentimes, in nations where art has the least to do, causes productions of wit, such as may rival the greatest effect of art whatever.  In relation to what I am now speaking of, the Gascon proverb, derived from a cornpipe, is very quaint and subtle: