Also, whether he who bought the whole cloak bought the
cowl. Decidedly incongruous was the speech in which these words,
"congruous" and "incongruous argument" and "reason" did not make
a great noise, with multifold negative particles and transitions
through "esse" and "non-esse." ... A wordy clamor was enough to
secure the victory, and he who introduced anything from any
source reached the goal of his proposition.... Therefore they
suddenly became expert philosophers, for he who had come there
illiterate delayed in the schools scarcely longer than the time
within which young birds get their feathers. So the fresh
teachers from the schools and the young birds from the nests flew
off together, having lingered an equal length of time.... They
talked only of congruity or reason, and argument resounded from
the lips of all, and to give its common name to an ass, or a man,
or any of nature's works, was like a crime, or was much too
inelegant or crude, and abhorrent to a philosopher.... Hence this
seething pot of speech in which the stupid old man exults,
insulting those who revere the originators of the Arts because
when he pretends to devote his energies to them he finds nothing
useful in them.[10]
John's own training was in marked contrast to all this. Instead of
remaining in the schools "scarcely longer than the time within which
young birds get their feathers," he spent, as above noted, twelve years
in study.
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