They had sat discussing astrology, a forbidden science, and not pursued in the cloister. Narziss had said that it was a striving to order and arrange after their kinds the many diverse sorts of human beings, their predestined character and their fates,
Here Goldmund broke into his words. ‘You speak of nothing but differences! I have slowly begun to see that they form your own particular whimsey. When you speak of this great difference between us I always feel that it lies in nothing, save in your own strange hankering to find differences.’
Narziss: ‘Right. You have hit the nail on the head. That is what I mean - that to you differences mean little, while to me they are the most important things. Mine is the nature of a scholar, and my branch of scholarship is science. And science, to quote your own words, is nothing else than a “strange hankering after differences”. Her essence could not be better defined. For men of science nothing is so important, as the clear definition of differences. To find, for instance, on every man, those signs which mark him off from all other men: that is to know him.’
Goldmund : ‘But how? One has peasant’s shoes and is a peasant; another a crown on his head, and is a king. There are your differences! But these are seen by children, without, any science.’
Narziss; ‘Yet when peasant and king are clad alike children can no longer distinguish between them.’ Ch. IV

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "They had sat discussing astrology, a forbidden science, and not pursued in the cloister. Narziss had said that it was a striving to order and arrange after their kinds the many diverse sorts of human beings, their predestined character and their fates,
Here Goldmund broke into his words. ‘You speak of nothing but differences! I have slowly begun to see that they form your own particular whimsey. When you speak of this great difference between us I always feel that it lies in nothing, save in your own strange hankering to find differences.’
Narziss: ‘Right. You have hit the nail on the head. That is what I mean - that to you differences mean little, while to me they are the most important things. Mine is the nature of a scholar, and my branch of scholarship is science. And science, to quote your own words, is nothing else than a “strange hankering after differences”. Her essence could not be better defined. For men of science nothing is so important, as the clear definition of differences. To find, for instance, on every man, those signs which mark him off from all other men: that is to know him.’
Goldmund : ‘But how? One has peasant’s shoes and is a peasant; another a crown on his head, and is a king. There are your differences! But these are seen by children, without, any science.’
Narziss; ‘Yet when peasant and king are clad alike children can no longer distinguish between them.’ Ch. IV" in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.