The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society.
A new world was discovered, for the sake of which everything else was abandoned; to make sure of that world insight and intelligence were freely sacrificed; and, in the light that streamed from beyond, the absurdities of the present became wisdom, and its wisdom became foolishness.
Absurd as much that we find both in Albertus Magnus and the Ortus seems to modern eyes, if we go a step lower in the scale and consult the " Bestiaries " or treatises on animals which were common from the 12th to the 14th century we shall meet with many more absurdities.
Its affectations were burlesqued in Gilbert and Sullivan's travesty Patience (1881), which practically killed by ridicule the absurdities to which it had grown.
Some of the incidents given as facts by Dio Cassius are manifest absurdities; and Cicero paid more regard to the effect than to the truthfulness of an accusation.
