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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: is, of all others, most insupportable.
Nothing hath spoiled men more for conversation than the character
of being wits; to support which, they never fail of encouraging a
number of followers and admirers, who list themselves in their
service, wherein they find their accounts on both sides by pleasing
their mutual vanity. This hath given the former such an air of
superiority, and made the latter so pragmatical, that neither of
them are well to be endured. I say nothing here of the itch of
dispute and contradiction, telling of lies, or of those who are
troubled with the disease called the wandering of the thoughts,
that they are never present in mind at what passeth in discourse;
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