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has put together some flowers of speech for ostentatious display, which is the only thing he strives after, but still he is useful as he supplies certain technical expressions.
The pupil should know thoroughly the Dialectic of Aristotle. The books of Aristotle have been arranged and quoted by the ancient writers, Tullius Cicero, Laertius Diogenes, Servius Honoratus and others, in a way quite different from that in which they have been divided by the more recent writers, but we, to whom those early writings are unknown, may follow the later authorities.
The Greek expositors of Aristotle are Psellus, Mangenetus, and Ammonius, who overwhelm the readers with empty words, as is almost the custom of the commentators of that race. James Faber wrote on Aristotle and then composed a Dialectica himself, in which he drew out as it were from the mud many of the opinions current in his time a9
In the course of a long discussion, Vives points out the two divisions of dialectics,
The method of searching out of evidence is one of the two parts of dialectics, the other is the one I have mentioned above, viz. the theory of judgment or the test of truth. Nevertheless I have separated them in treating of instruction, since this course is beneficial to the pupils.70
After this transition, Vives comes finally to the works for studying topics, inventio, "the method of searching out of evidence."
For study in forming judgments the master will expound at length the Topica of Cicero, and will add the commentaries of Boethius, or, as I prefer, the Dialectica of Rudolph Agricola, most eloquently and ingeniously ex-pounded in three sections. Let the pupil read several times for himself Cicero and Boethius, for to M. Tullius we owe almost the whole of this art, which was discovered indeed by Aristotle, though what he wrote was only expounded in a slight manner, not nearly enough for those who wish to know the subject thoroughly. Let the pupil also read privately the fifth book of Quintilian and two books de Innentione of Cicero, which work he says he completed when a youth. In addition the commentaries of Victorinus should be read. Again and again he will carefully study the eight books of the Topica of Aristotle (as indeed all the works of this great philosopher), not so much with a view to refining and adapting this instrument for judging what is credible, but much rather so as to observe the maxims and the precepts upon all matters which are gathered together in that work, and to have them at hand when the subject under consideration requires it. The master, like a diligent bee, must fly round through all the garden plots of knowledge, and, particularly for his pupils' sake, gather and collect examples which he has observed. However, for the affairs of human life the orators supply abundant material, and the tragic poets abound in illustrations of every kind.71
a' Watson, Vises: On Education, p. 165. 70 Watson, Pives: On Education, p. 177. 7' Watson, Vises: On Education, pp. 178-179.
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