“Nor is he wise who, full of unrest, dims his eyes over a smoking fire, in order to learn the properties of ores. We have passed our A B C, and we can tell without all that the difference between gold, silver and copper. The science of herbs and diseases is idle talk. You have a headache, and the physician looks for signs of it in your hand! The blood is the cause of all, if we are to put faith in them. When we feel weak, it is because our blood flows too slowly; if it moves fast, there is a fever, he says boldly, though no one has ever seen the inside of a living body. And while he passes his time in such fables, the contents of our money-bags go into his. Of what use is it to calculate the course of the stars, and without rhyme or reason pass sleepless nights, gazing at one spot: for mere curiosity’s sake to lose your rest, trying to ascertain whether the sun moves, or we with the earth? We can read in the almanac, for every day in the year, the date of the month and the hour of sunrise. We can manage to divide the land in quarters without Euclid, and we know without algebra how many kopeks there are in a rouble.” Sylvan praises but one science to the skies,--the one that teaches how to increase his income and to save expenses. To labour in that from which your pocket does not swell at once, he deems a very dangerous occupation for a citizen. Red-faced Lucas, belching thrice, speaks in a chanting voice: “Study kills the companionship of men. We have been created by God as social beings, and we have been given intelligence not for our own sakes alone. What good does it do anybody, if I shut myself up in my cabinet, and for my dead friends lose the living--when all my comradeship, all my good fellows, will be ink, pen, sand and paper? In merriment, in banquets we must pass our lives. Life is short, why should we curtail it further, worry over books, and harm our eyes? Is it not better to pass your days and nights over the winecup? Wine is a divine gift, there is much good in it: it befriends people, gives cause for conversation, makes glad, dispels heavy thoughts, eases misery, gives courage to the weak, mollifies the cruel, checks sullenness, and leads the lover more readily to his goal. When they will begin to make furrows in the sky, and the stars will shine through the surface of the earth; when swift rivers will run to their sources, and past ages will return; when at Lent the monk will eat nothing but dried sturgeon, then will I abandon my cup and take to books.” Medor is worried because too much paper is used for letters and for printed books, and because he will soon be left without paper to curl his locks with. He would not change for Seneca a pound of good face-powder; in comparison with Egór,[130] Vergil is not worth two farthings to him, and he showers his praises on Rex,[131] not Cicero.