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He possessed many works of the wisest and most subtle disciples

of the school of Aristotle among the moderns; as to those of his

opponents, he would not read them, "because it would be a waste

of time," he said, "nor buy them, because it would be a waste of

money." In the judgment of the learned, therefore, Don Ferrante

passed for an accomplished peripatetic, although this was not the

judgment he passed on himself, for, more than once, he was heard

to declare, with singular modesty, that the essence, the

universals, the soul of the world, and the nature of things, were

not matters so clear as people thought.