Pupils, doctors, and oracles

Meaning

Pupils in the lowest class and the old oracles of the wisest doctors form a schoolroom comparison about where knowledge should be sought. Doctors here are learned teachers, not automatically physicians.

II.4.11 argues that inquiry should not stop with remote derivative things when more authoritative and primary sources are available. The comparison reinforces the appeal to ancient teaching about putrefaction and the fixed grain. It is a rhetorical ordering of instructional authority, not a proof that every attributed maxim is authentic or every pupil incapable of truth. The surrounding reasoning about preserved natures and death remains necessary; the honorific “oracle” does not replace it.

The English's learned-teacher sense keeps docteurs distinct from medical practitioners elsewhere. The school levels are a comparative image and are not reconstructed as a specific historical curriculum.