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The Praise of Folly 63 of Sciences, by whose help he might recompence himself in Understanding for what Nature cut him short in other things. As if this had the least face of truth, that Nature, that was so sollicitously watchful in the production of Gnats, Herbs and Flowers, should have so slept when she made Man, that he should have need to be helpt by Sciences, which that old Devil Theuth, the evil Genius of mankind, first invented for his Destruction, and are so little conducing to happiness that they rather obstruct it; to which purpose they are properly said to be first found out, as that wise King in Plato argues touching the invention of Letters. Sciences therefore crept into the world with other the pests of mankind, from the same head from whence all other mischiefs spring; wee’l suppose it Devils, for so the name imports when you call them Demons, that is to say,!Knowing. For that simple people of the golden Age, being wholly ignorant of every thing call’d Learning, liv’d only by the guidance and dictates of Nature; for what use of Grammar, where every man spoke the same Language and had no 1 Sanpovas,
