interpreter answered me: "Not everyone can be able to do that; but look at these." And I saw some who broke off branches, unrolled the leaves and fruit, and when they came to the nuts, gnawed at them till their teeth shook; but they said that they thus broke the shells, and, picking them up, boasted that they had obtained the kernel; and they showed it secretly to some, but only to few. But taking a careful view of them, I saw clearly that they had, indeed, broken and crushed the outward rind and bark, but that the hardest shell in which the kernel lay embedded was intact. Then seeing here also vain ostentation and idle striving (for some, indeed, stared till their eyes pained them, and gnawed till they broke their teeth), I proposed that we should go elsewhere.
(Among the Metaphysicians—Unum verum bonum.—P. Ramus.)[1]
7. Then we enter another hall, and behold here, these philosophical gentlemen—having before them cows, donkeys, wolves, serpents, and various wild animals, birds and reptiles, as well as wood, stones, water, fire, clouds, stars and planets, and even angels—disputed as to how each creature could be deprived of that which distinguished it from the others, so that all should become similar; and they
- ↑ Ramus or La Ramée, the well-known French philosopher, born 1515, killed in Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day (1572). Komensky greatly valued his writings, as being opposed to the teaching of Aristotle.
