As the time drew near for putting off the secular and donning the "religious" garb, the same conflict is repeated. Erasmus, looking back upon his youth, says that his only ambition was for scholarship, pure and simple, and that, therefore, his natural wish was to go to a university. His experience in the monastery had made it clear to him that this was not the life he wished to lead, but precisely why, he does not satisfactorily explain. Reasons, indeed, he gives in plenty: his health was not good; he needed plenty of good food and at regular intervals; he could not bear to be broken of his sleep, and so forth. His delicate constitution was plainly a source of pride to him as evidence of a finer spirit than those about him possessed. "All these things are a mere joke to the coarse-bred beasts who would thrive on hay and enjoy it. But skilled physicians know that this delicacy is the peculiarity of a specially refined body and of the rarer spirits, and prescribe for them food cooked so as to be digestible and eaten frequently but sparingly; whereas you will find others who, if you once fill them up, can hold out a long time without inconvenience, like vultures." Especially against fish, Erasmus says, he had such a loathing that the very smell of it gave him a headache and fever. These objections are highly trivial. They agree, for one thing, very ill with Erasmus' charges against monks, for of all things he accuses them most often of easy and luxurious living. There were ways enough, as he found out afterward for his own convenience, of getting around the burdensome requirements of the cloister and, on the other hand, out of these very restrictions there had gone forth many a vigorous leader of human thought and action. The fact is, probably, that Erasmus felt already stirring within him that restless impulse towards the free, unfettered development of his own individuality which was to be the guide and motive of his life. He accepted the monastery because under the circumstances there was nothing else to do; but it could not satisfy him. Such, at all events, is the impression he desired to produce when writing this account. He says: