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Third dialogue<br />
the properties of drugs and medicine than Galen, Avicenna and all those<br />
who communicate with the Roman tongue. Philosophies and laws are lost,<br />
not through a penury of word-interpreters, but through a scarcity of<br />
profound thinkers.<br />
POLIINNIO. So, you number a man like me among the dull-witted<br />
multitude?<br />
GERVASIO. God forbid. I know that, with study and knowledge (rare<br />
and remarkable things), you and your peers are thoroughly equipped to<br />
judge doctrines, after having sifted through the opinions of the people who<br />
champion them.<br />
POLIINNIO. Since you are now speaking the pure truth, it is not so hard<br />
to persuade myself that you have some motive. If it is not too hard for you,<br />
pray take the trouble to set it out.<br />
GERVASIO. I will say this (submitting myself throughout to your wise<br />
and prudent judgement): it is a common proverb that those who are not in<br />
a game follow it better than the ones playing. Similarly, those watching a<br />
play can better judge of the performance than the actors on the stage, and<br />
in the same way music can be better heard by someone not part of the<br />
orchestra or choir. It is the same with card games, chess, fencing and the<br />
like: and so, you other gentlemen pedants, excluded from all scientific and<br />
philosophical activity, not having nor ever having had anything to do with<br />
Aristotle, Plato and their kind, can better judge and condemn them with<br />
your grammatical matchlessness and natural presumption, than the Nolan,<br />
who finds himself on the same stage and in such familiarity and intimacy<br />
with them, having made out their most profound and innermost notions,<br />
that he fights them easily. I say that you, because you are outside every<br />
practice of gentlemen or extraordinary wits, can better judge them.<br />
POLIINNIO. I have no idea how to answer this gross impudence pointblank.<br />
Vox faucibus haesit [The voice sticks in the throat] 8 .<br />
GERVASIO. So, your sort possess that presumption lacking in those<br />
whose feet are deep into the question; therefore, I assure you it is with good<br />
title that you usurp the function of approving this, reproving that, glossing<br />
still the other, here drawing up a table of concordances, there an appendix.<br />
POLIINNIO. This complete ignoramus wishes to infer from the fact<br />
that I am versed in letters that I am ignorant of philosophy!<br />
GERVASIO. Most learned Poliinnio, sir, I must tell you that even if you<br />
knew all the languages there are, which our preachers number seventy-two …<br />
8 Virgil, Aeneid, ii, 774.<br />
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