XIV. Men, by affecting to despise others who know more than themselves, make use of the most vile and mean artifices imaginable; but notwithstanding this, it is the most sure method, to make them pass for persons of great knowledge, among people of groveling and plebeian minds. There can be no greater injustice committed, nor a vainer effort made, than that, of an envious man’s attempting to transfer the merit which he has purloined from another person to himself. It is true, that a small cloud may obstruct the splendor of the sun; but this obstruction does not prevent this luminary from being the illustrious torch of heaven, nor can such a circumstance be of more consequence than a speck in the atmosphere; nor does it require any science or learning, to enable a man to cast a thousand reflections and blemishes upon other people’s doctrines and writings. When there is no reason to conclude that such behaviour proceeds from envy or malevolence, we ought to suppose that it springs from pure ignorance. I remember to have read in a Treatise intitled The Man of Letters, written by Father Daniel Bartoli, that an ass once happening to stumble over the Iliad of Homer, he in a passion tore it to pieces with his teeth. Thus, in order to outrage, abuse, and destroy a noble writing, nothing is better qualified than a beast. XV. Being tenacious, insolent, and overbearing in argument, is also another means, which, although it is equally base and bad with the beforementioned, is sometimes very efficacious to gain a person the reputation of being a learned man.—Foolish people, such as the Megalopolitans, of whom we have an account in Pausanias, pay greater veneration to Boreas the god of the north-wind than to any other deity, and are apt to adore tumultuous geniuses as beings of supreme intelligence; and although it is absolutely irreconcileable and incompatible with it, to look upon barefaced arrogance as the child of superior learning. To this we may add another thing, that may have an effect to make them pass for wise and able persons, which is, that those who are truly learned, avoid as much as possible, all controversy or dispute with people who are of this tenacious overbearing disposition; and this prudent declining to contend with them, is often construed into fear of engaging them; as if it was necessary for men of learning, in order to shew their spirit, to encounter reptiles and venomous snakes. Cato’s lamentation, or repentance, was just and generous, when he regretted having led his troops into the burning deserts of Africa, where they had no other enemies to encounter but asps, horned serpents, vipers, fiery serpents, and basilisks. The horrors of the civil war in the plains of Pharsalia, where they engaged the invincible troops of Cæsar, appeared to him less frightful, than those they experienced among the burning sands of Libya, where the most vile and abominable reptiles fought on Cæsar’s side,