“Bouha prou bouha, mas a remuda lous dits quem.”

     ["You may blow till your eyes start out; but if once you offer to
     stir your fingers, it is all over.”]

We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the manners of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle:  but what do we say ourselves?  What do we judge?  A parrot would say as much as that.

And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome,—­[Calvisius Sabinus.  Seneca, Ep., 27.]—­who had been solicitous, with very great expense, to procure men that were excellent in all sorts of science, whom he had always attending his person, to the end, that when amongst his friends any occasion fell out of speaking of any subject whatsoever, they might supply his place, and be ready to prompt him, one with a sentence of Seneca, another with a verse of Homer, and so forth, every one according to his talent; and he fancied this knowledge to be his own, because it was in the heads of those who lived upon his bounty; as they also do, whose learning consists in having noble libraries.  I know one, who, when I question him what he knows, he presently calls for a book to shew me, and dares not venture to tell me so much, as that he has piles in his posteriors, till first he has consulted his dictionary, what piles and what posteriors are.

We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning.  We must make it our own.  We are in this very like him, who having need of fire, went to a neighbour’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any with him home.—­[Plutarch, How a Man should Listen.]—­What good does it do us to have the stomach full of meat, if it do not digest, if it be not incorporated with us, if it does not nourish and support us?  Can we imagine that Lucullus, whom letters, without any manner of experience, made so great a captain, learned to be so after this perfunctory manner?—­[Cicero, Acad., ii.  I.]—­We suffer ourselves to lean and rely so strongly upon the arm of another, that we destroy our own strength and vigour.  Would I fortify myself against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca:  would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I borrow it from Cicero.  I might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason.  I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could become learned by other men’s learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom: 

     ["I hate the wise man, who in his own concern is not wise.” 
     —­Euripides, ap.  Cicero, Ep.  Fam., xiii. 15.]

Whence Ennius: 

     “Nequidquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi prodesse non quiret.”

     ["That wise man knows nothing, who cannot profit himself by his
     wisdom.”—­Cicero, De Offic., iii. 15.]

                              “Si cupidus, si
               Vanus, et Euganea quantumvis mollior agna.”