This is a part of the speeches that daily ring in my ears, and for this, O Mind, I advise you to be dumber than a dumpling. Where there is no profit, praise encourages to work, and without it the heart grows faint. But it is much worse, when instead of praises you earn insults! It is harder than for a tippler not to get his wine, or for a priest not to celebrate on Holy Week, or for a merchant to forego heady liquor. I know, O Mind, that you will boldly answer me that it is not easy for an evil-minded man to praise virtue; that the dandy, miser, hypocrite, and the like, must perforce scorn science, and that their malevolent discourse concerns no men of culture. Your judgment is excellent, correct; and thus it ought to be, but in our days the words of the ill-disposed control the wise. Besides, the sciences have other ill-wishers than those whom, for shortness’ sake, I merely mentioned or, to tell the truth, dared to mention. There are many more. The holy keepers of the keys of heaven and those to whom Themis has entrusted the golden scales little love, nearly all of them, the true adornment of the mind. You want to be an archbishop? Don a surplice, above it let a gorgeous chasuble adorn your body, put a golden chain[132] around your neck, cover your head with a high hat, your belly with a beard, order the crosier to be carried in pomp before you; place yourself comfortably in your carriage and, as your heart bursts with anger, cast your benedictions to the right and left. By these signs you will easily be recognised as the archpriest, and they will reverently call you “Father.” But science? What has the Church to gain from it? Some priest might forget a part, if he wrote out his sermon, and thus there would be a loss of the Church’s revenues, and these are the Church’s main privileges and greatest glory. Do you wish to become a judge? Don a wig full of locks, scold him who comes with a complaint but with empty hands, let your heart firmly ignore the tears of the poor, and sleep in your arm-chair when the clerk reads the brief. When someone mentions to you the civil code, or the law of nature, or the people’s rights, spit in his face; say that he lies at random and tries to impose an intolerable burden on the judges; that it is the clerk’s business to rummage through mountains of documents, but that it suffices for a judge to announce his sentence.