Fools Set Stools for Wise Men to Stumble Over

This is what they call "a lark." Fools set stools for wise men to stumble over. To ask questions is as easy as kissing your hand; to answer them is hard as fattening a greyhound. Any fool can throw a stone into a deep well, and the cleverest man in the parish may never be able to get it up again. Folly grows in all countries, and fools are all the world over, as he said who shod the goose. Silly people are pleased with their own nonsense, and think it rare fun to quiz their betters. To catch a wise man tripping is as good as bowling a fellow out at a cricket-match.

"Folly is wise in her own eyes,
Therefore she tries Wit to surprise."

There are difficulties in everything except in eating pancakes, and nobody ought to be expected to untie all the knots in a net, or to make that straight which God has made crooked. He is the greatest fool of all who pretends to explain everything, and says he will not believe what he cannot understand. There are bones in the meat, but am I to go hungry till I can eat them? Must I never enjoy a cherry till I find one without a stone? John Ploughman is not of that mind. He is under no call to doubt, for he is not a doctor: when people try to puzzle him he tells them that those who made the lock had better make the key, and those who put the cow in the pound had better get her out. Then they get cross, and John only says—You need not be crusty, for you are none too much baked.

After all, what do we know if all our knowing was put together? It would all go in a thimble, and the girl's finger, too. A very small book would hold most men's learning, and every line would have a mistake in it. Why, then, should we spend our lives in perplexity, tumbling about like pigs in a sack, and wondering how we shall ever get out again? John knows enough to know that he does not know enough to explain all that he knows, and so he leaves the stools to the schools and the other—ools.