The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter IX
How, although we preferred the works of the
ancients, we have not condemned the studies of the
moderns
Although the novelties of the moderns were never
disagreeable to our desires, who have always cherished with
grateful affection those who devote themselves to study and
who add anything either ingenious or useful to the opinions
of our forefathers, yet we have always desired with more
undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours of
the ancients. For whether they had by nature a greater
vigour of mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged
in closer application to study, or whether they were
assisted in their progress by both these things, one thing
we are perfectly clear about, that their successors are
barely capable of discussing the discoveries of their
forerunners, and of acquiring those things as pupils which
the ancients dug out by difficult efforts of discovery. For
as we read that the men of old were of a more excellent
degree of bodily development than modern times are found to
produce, it is by no means absurd to suppose that most of
the ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties,
seeing that in the labours they accomplished of both kinds
they are inimitable by posterity. And so Phocas writes in
the prologue to his Grammar:
Since all things have been said by men of
sense
The only novelty is--to condense.
But in truth, if we speak of fervour of learning and
diligence in study, they gave up all their lives to
philosophy; while nowadays our contemporaries carelessly
spend a few years of hot youth, alternating with the
excesses of vice, and when the passions have been calmed,
and they have attained the capacity of discerning truth so
difficult to discover, they soon become involved in worldly
affairs and retire, bidding farewell to the schools of
philosophy. They offer the fuming must of their youthful
intellect to the difficulties of philosophy, and bestow the
clearer wine upon the money-making business of life.
Further, as Ovid in the first book of the De Vetula
justly complains:
The hearts of all men after gold aspire;
Few study to be wise, more to acquire:
Thus, Science! all thy virgin charms are sold,
Whose chaste embraces should disdain their gold,
Who seek not thee thyself, but pelf through thee,
Longing for riches, not philosophy.
And further on:
Thus Philosophy is seen
Exiled, and Philopecuny is queen,
which is known to be the most violent poison of
learning.
How the ancients indeed regarded life as the only limit
of study, is shown by Valerius, in his book addressed to
Tiberius, by many examples. Carneades, he says, was a
laborious and lifelong soldier of wisdom: after he had lived
ninety years, the same day put an end to his life and his
philosophizing. Isocrates in his ninety-fourth year wrote a
most noble work. Sophocles did the same when nearly a
hundred years old. Simonides wrote poems in his eightieth
year. Aulus Gellius did not desire to live longer than he
should be able to write, as he says himself in the prologue
to the Noctes Atticae.
The fervour of study which possessed Euclid the Socratic,
Taurus the philosopher used to relate to incite young men to
study, as Gellius tells in the book we have mentioned. For
the Athenians, hating the people of Megara, decreed that if
any of the Megarensians entered Athens, he should be put to
death. Then Euclid, who was a Megarensian, and had attended
the lectures of Socrates before this decree, disguising
himself in a woman's dress, used to go from Megara to Athens
by night to hear Socrates, a distance of twenty miles and
back. Imprudent and excessive was the fervour of Archimedes,
a lover of geometry, who would not declare his name, nor
lift his head from the diagram he had drawn, by which he
might have prolonged his life, but thinking more of study
than of life dyed with his life-blood the figure he was
studying.
There are very many such examples of our proposition, but
the brevity we aim at does not allow us to recall them. But,
painful to relate, the clerks who are famous in these days
pursue a very different course. Afflicted with ambition in
their tender years, and slightly fastening to their untried
arms the Icarian wings of presumption, they prematurely
snatch the master's cap; and mere boys become unworthy
professors of the several faculties, through which they do
not make their way step by step, but like goats ascend by
leaps and bounds; and, having slightly tasted of the mighty
stream, they think that they have drunk it dry, though their
throats are hardly moistened. And because they are not
grounded in the first rudiments at the fitting time, they
build a tottering edifice on an unstable foundation, and now
that they have grown up, they are ashamed to learn what they
ought to have learned while young, and thus they are
compelled to suffer for ever for too hastily jumping at
dignities they have not deserved. For these and the like
reasons the tyros in the schools do not attain to the solid
learning of the ancients in a few short hours of study,
although they may enjoy distinctions, may be accorded
titles, be authorized by official robes, and solemnly
installed in the chairs of the elders. Just snatched from
the cradle and hastily weaned, they mouth the rules of
Priscian and Donatus; while still beardless boys they gabble
with childish stammering the Categorics and Peri
Hermeneias, in the writing of which the great Aristotle
is said to have dipped his pen in his heart's blood. Passing
through these faculties with baneful haste and a harmful
diploma, they lay violent hands upon Moses, and sprinkling
about their faces dark waters and thick clouds of the skies,
they offer their heads, unhonoured by the snows of age, for
the mitre of the pontificate. This pest is greatly
encouraged, and they are helped to attain this fantastic
clericate with such nimble steps, by Papal provisions
obtained by insidious prayers, and also by the prayers,
which may not be rejected, of cardinals and great men, by
the cupidity of friends and relatives, who, building up Sion
in blood, secure ecclesiastical dignities for their nephews
and pupils, before they are seasoned by the course of nature
or ripeness of learning.
Alas! by the same disease which we are deploring, we see
that the Palladium of Paris has been carried off in these
sad times of ours, wherein the zeal of that noble
university, whose rays once shed light into every corner of
the world, has grown lukewarm, nay, is all but frozen. There
the pen of every scribe is now at rest, generations of books
no longer succeed each other, and there is none who begins
to take place as a new author. They wrap up their doctrines
in unskilled discourse, and are losing all propriety of
logic, except that our English subtleties, which they
denounce in public, are the subject of their furtive
vigils.
Admirable Minerva seems to bend her course to all the
nations of the earth, and reacheth from end to end mightily,
that she may reveal herself to all mankind. We see that she
has already visited the Indians, the Babylonians, the
Egyptians and Greeks, the Arabs and the Romans. Now she has
passed by Paris, and now has happily come to Britain, the
most noble of islands, nay, rather a microcosm in itself,
that she may show herself a debtor both to the Greeks and to
the Barbarians. At which wondrous sight it is conceived by
most men, that as philosophy is now lukewarm in France, so
her soldiery are unmanned and languishing.
-
- The Philobiblon
by Richard de Bury
Chapter VIII
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