Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/119

It was full of armed guards, to whom everyone who entered the street of the learned men had to render account; also had he to ask of them a safe conduct. And I saw what crowds of people, mostly young ones, came up, and immediately underwent divers severe examinations. Each one was first examined as to what pouch, what posteriors, what head, what brain (of this they judged by the secretions from the nostrils^[1]) and what skin he had. If, then, the head was of steel, the brain in it of quicksilver, the posteriors leaden, the skin iron, and the pouch golden, then these men were praised, and incontinently gladly conducted farther. But if one did not possess these five things, they either ordered him to retire or, though foreboding evil, they admitted him at random. And wondering at this, I said: "Why, then, do they lay such stress on these five metals that they search for them so industriously?" "They have great value indeed," quoth the interpreter. "If one has not a head of steel it will burst; if he has not within it a brain of liquid quicksilver, he will not obtain in it a looking-glass;^[2] if he has not a skin of tin he will not be able to endure the toil of education; if he has not leaden posteriors he will not be able to endure the sedentary life of the student, and will indeed lose everything; and without a golden pouch whence could a man obtain leisure, whence masters living and dead? Or dost thou think those things can be

 

1. According to the ideas of Komensky's time, these were believed to be secretions of the brain.
2. Komensky thus allegorically describes the imagination.