The dispute which divided learned Spain, in the same century, on the Mosarabic version, also terminated without ravaging provinces or shedding human blood. The spirit of chivalry, which then prevailed, permitted not the difficulty to be enlightened otherwise than in leaving the decision to two noble knights. As in that of the two Don Quixotes, whichever overthrew his adversary caused his own party to triumph. Don Ruis de Martanza, knight of the Mosarabic ritual, overthrew the Don Quixote of the Latin ritual; but as the laws of chivalry decided not positively that a ritual must be proscribed because its knight was unhorsed, a more certain and established secret was made use of, to know which of the books should be preferred. The expedient alluded to was that of throwing them both into the fire, it not being possible for the sound ritual to perish in the flames. I know not how it happened, however, but they were both burned, and the dispute remained undecided, to the great astonishment of the Spaniards. By degrees, the Latin ritual got the preference; and if any knight afterwards presented himself to maintain the Mosarabic, it was the knight and not the ritual which was thrown into the fire. In these fine times, we and other polished people, when we were ill, were obliged to have recourse to an Arabian physician. When we would know what day of the moon it was, we referred to the Arabs. If we would buy a piece of cloth, we must pay a Jew for it; and when a farmer wanted rain, he addressed himself to a sorcerer. At last, however, when some of us learned Latin, and had a bad translation of Aristotle, we figured in the world with honor, passing three or four hundred years in deciphering some pages of the Stagyrite, and in adoring and condemning them. Some said that without him we should want articles of faith; others, that he was an atheist. A Spaniard proved that Aristotle was a saint, and that we should celebrate his anniversary; while a council in France caused his divine writings to be burned. Colleges, universities, whole orders of monks, were reciprocally anathematized, on the subject of some passages of this great man--which neither themselves, the judges who interposed their authority, nor the author himself, ever understood. There were many fisticuffs given in Germany in these grave quarrels, but there was not much bloodshed. It is a pity, for the glory of Aristotle, that they did not make civil war, and have some regular battles in favor of quiddities, and of the "universal of the part of the thing." Our ancestors cut the throats of each other in disputes upon points which they understood very little better.