me, saying that they were logicians and metaphysicians, and that they
had immersed their thoughts in such [sciences] without any other
end than that of acquiring a reputation for learning, and thus of
attaining to honours and wealth: they lamented that they now led a
miserable life, because they had studied these sciences for no other
end, and thus had not cultivated their Rational by means of them.
Their speech was slow and muffled. In the meantime there were two
conversing above my head, and when I asked who they were, I was told
that one of them was of the highest distinction in the learned world,
and it was given me to believe that he was Aristotle. Who the other
was, was not stated. He was then let into the state in which he had
been when he lived in the world, for every one can easily be let into
the state of life which he had had in the world, since every state
of his life remains with him. I was surprised to find that he applied
himself to the right ear, and he spoke there, hoarsely, indeed, but
still sensibly. From the purport of what he said I apperceived that he
was of quite a different genius from those Schoolmen who first arose,
namely, that he hatched what he wrote from his own thought, and from
the same source produced his philosophical system, so that the terms
which he invented, and applied to subjects of thought, were forms of
expression by which he described interior things; also that he was
excited to such pursuits by a delight of the affection, and by a
desire of knowing the things that belonged to the thought and the
understanding; and that he followed obediently whatever his spirit
had dictated. This was the reason he applied himself to the right ear,
differently from his followers, who are called Schoolmen, and who do
not proceed from thought to terms, but from terms to thoughts, thus by
a contrary way; and many of them do not even proceed to thoughts, but
stick fast entirely in terms, their application of which, when they
make any, being to confirm whatever they want to, and to invest