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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 in¬
vented 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 sup¬
pose 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,