APÆDUSIA, denotes ignorance or unskillfulness in what relates to learning and the sciences. Hence also persons un instructed and illiterate are called apædute. The term apædute was particularly used among the French in the time of Huet; when the men of wit at Paris were divided into two factions, one called by way of reproach apædute, and the others eruditi. The apædute are represented by Huet, as persons who, finding themselves either incapable or unwilling to undergo a severe course of study in order to become truly learned, conspired to decry learning, and turn the knowledge of antiquity into ridicule, thus making a merit of their own incapacity. The apædute in effect were the men of pleasure; the eruditi the men of study. The apædute in every thing preferred the modern writers to the ancient, to supersede the necessity of studying the latter. The eruditi derided the moderns, and valued themselves wholly on their acquaintance with the ancients.