who, both from nature and education, is properly qualified for such
an arduous undertaking; that is one who possesses a naturally good
disposition; is sagacious and acute, and is inflamed with an ardent
desire for the acquisition of wisdom and truth; who from his childhood
has been well instructed in the mathematical disciplines; who, besides
this, has spent whole days, and frequently the greater part of the night,
in profound meditation; and, like one triumphantly sailing over a raging
sea, or skillfully piercing through an army of foes, has successfully
encountered an hostile multitude of doubts;--in short, who has never
considered wisdom as a thing of trifling estimation and easy access, but
as that which cannot be obtained without the most generous and severe
endurance, and the intrinsic worth of which surpasses all corporeal good,
far more than the ocean the fleeting bubble which floats on its surface.
To such as are destitute of these requisites, who make the study of words
their sole employment, and the pursuit of wisdom but at best a secondary
thing, who expect to be wise by desultory application for an hour or two
in a day, after the fatigues of business, after mixing with the base
multitude of mankind, laughing with the gay affecting airs of gravity
with the serious, tacitly assenting to every man's opinion, however
absurd, and winking at folly however shameful and base--to such as
these--and, alas! the world is full of such--the sublimest truths must
appear to be nothing more than jargon and reverie, the dreams of a
distempered imagination, or the ebullitions of fanatical faith.

But all this is by no means wonderful, if we consider that two-fold
ignorance is the disease of the many. For they are not only ignorant with
respect to the sublimest knowledge, but they are even ignorant of their
ignorance. Hence they never suspect their want of understanding, but
immediately reject a doctrine which appears at first sight absurd,
because it is too splendid for their bat-like eyes to behold. Or if they