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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: illiterate traders between us and the stars, who import a yearly
stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer
to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from
no greater a height than their own brains.
I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of
this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at
present than that it hath been in all ages defended by many learned
men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as
undoubtedly the wisest of uninspired mortals: to which if we add
that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned,
having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or
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