Not only did the populace flock to this opinion--that the object of learning is to dispute, just as it is the object of military life to fight--but the public unanimity swept away the veterans, the _triarii_ [the more experienced soldiers who were placed in the third line] as it were, of the scholastic campaign (but these have no more ability and judgment than the dregs of the people), so that they regard him as superfluous and foolish who would call them back to mental activity and character and that quiet method of investigation, philosophy. [They think that] there is no other fruit of studies save to keep your wits about you and not give way to your adversary, either to attack him boldly or to bear up against him, and shrewdly to contrive by what vigor, by what skill, by what method of supplanting, he may be overturned. Therefore under this beautiful scheme, surpassing all others, it was the plan to break in the boy immediately and train him constantly; they began disputing as soon as they were born and ceased only at death. The boy brought to school, is bidden to dispute forthwith on the first day and is already taught to quarrel, before he can yet speak at all. So also in Grammar, in the Poets, in the Historians, in Logic, in Rhetoric, in absolutely every branch. Would any one wonder what they can find to do in matters that are perfectly open, very simple and elementary? There is nothing so transparent, so limpid that they do not cloud it over with some petty question as if ruffled by a breeze. It is [thought] characteristic of the most helpless stupidity, not to find something which you may make obscure by most intricate measures and involve in very hard and rigid conditions, which you may twist and twist again. For you may simply say: "Write to me,"--here comes a question, if not from Grammar then from Logic, if not from Logic then from Physics,--"What motions are made in writing?" Or, from Metaphysics, "Is it substance or quality?" And these boys are hearing the first rudiments of Logic who were only yesterday, or the day before, admitted to the school. So they are to be trained never to be silent, but vigorously to assert whatever comes uppermost lest they may seem at any time to have given in. Nor is one dispute a day enough, nor two, like a meal. At lunch they dispute, after lunch they dispute, at dinner they dispute, after dinner they dispute. Do they do these things to learn, or to cook a new dish? They dispute at home, they dispute away from home. At a banquet, in the bath, in the tepidarium, at church, in the city, in the fields, in public, in private, in all places and at all times they dispute.