Jacob.  Mossur mustn’t take offence.  I talk only according to my simple understanding, and ask only in order to learn.  I should like to know whether, when Mossur wins the dispute, Peer the deacon will thereupon be turned a cock?

Montanus.  Nonsense!  He will stay the same as he before.

Jacob.  Well, then Mossur would lose!

Montanus.  I shall not allow myself to be drawn into dispute with a rogue of a peasant like you.  If you understood Latin, I should readily oblige you.  I am not accustomed to disputation in Danish.

Jacob.  That is to say, Mossur has become so learned that he cannot make clear his meaning in his mother-tongue.

Montanus.  Be silent, audacissime juvenis!  Why should I exert myself to explain my opinions to coarse and common folk, who don’t know what universalia entia rationis formae substantiales are?  It certainly is absurdissimum to try to prate of colors to the blind.  Vulgus indoctum est monstrum horrendum informe, cui lumen ademptum.  Not long ago a man ten times as learned as you wished to dispute with me, but when I found that he did not know what quidditas was, I promptly refused him.

Jacob.  What does that word quidditas mean?  Wasn’t that it?

Montanus.  I know well enough what it means.

Jacob.  Perhaps Mossur knows it himself, but can’t explain it to others.  What little I know, I know in such a way that all men can grasp it when I say it to them.

Montanus.  Yes, you are a learned fellow, Jacob.  What do you know?

Jacob.  What if I could prove that I am more learned than Mossur?

Montanus.  I should like to hear you.

Jacob.  He who studies the most important things, I think, has the most thorough learning.

Montanus.  Yes, that is true enough.

Jacob.  I study farming and the cultivation of the soil.  For that reason I am more learned than Mossur.

Montanus.  Do you believe that rough peasants’ work is the most important?

Jacob.  I don’t know about that.  But I do know that if we farmers should take a pen or a piece of chalk in our hands to calculate how far it is to the moon, you learned men would soon suffer in the stomach.  You scholars spend the time disputing whether the earth is round, square, or eight-cornered, and we study how to keep the earth in repair.  Does Mossur see now that our studies are more useful and important than his, and, therefore, Niels Christensen is the most learned man here in the village, because he has improved his farm so that an acre of it is rated at thirty rix-dollars more than in the time of his predecessor, who sat all day with a pipe in his mouth, smudging and rumpling Doctor Arent Hvitfeld’s Chronicle or a book of sermons?

Montanus.  You will be the death of me; it is the devil incarnate who is talking.  I never in all my life thought such words could come from a peasant-boy’s mouth.  For although all you have said is false and ungodly, still it is an unusual speech for one in your walk of life.  Tell me this minute from whom you have learned such nonsense.