Or of COMBINATORICS, BOOK I.

...uses a concise acquisition of the sciences that differs from the Lullian method. Nevertheless, it is an admirable work, worthy of all praise, and a true image of the human intellect. However, just as it searches untraceablyoriginal: ἀνεξερεύνως (anexereunōs). Meaning in a way that cannot be tracked or scrutinized. for hidden paths toward the acquisition of knowledge through the metaphysical and abstract recesses of intellectual combinations, so too is it not granted to everyone to "reach this Corinth," A classical proverb meaning a difficult achievement not everyone can manage. unless they have been equipped with a distinguished full suit of armororiginal: πανoπλίᾳ (panoplia). Referring to a complete set of intellectual tools or weapons. of metaphysics and abstract cognitions. Therefore, I trust that some man of Herculean genius will eventually emerge to convert the hidden treasures lying beneath it to practical use and adapt them to the capacity of even mediocre minds.

CHAPTER IV.

In what the Lullian art consists.

The goal of the Lullian Art is to teach a method through which a great abundance of attributes, propositions, questions, and arguments may be supplied to those using it. It differs from Dialectic The formal logic of the schools. because the latter completes the entire scope of Aristotelian Dialectic through a great diversity of topics across four types of problems: namely, the problems of definition, property, genus, and accident. It differs from the Art of Invention which Aristotle proposes in Book 1 of the Topics, because there Aristotle looks only toward the invention of Syllogisms and refers everything to three general places: that is, to antecedents, consequents, and repugnancies—which are terms of "second intention" regarding their naming, as they say in the Schools. Technical scholastic terms referring to concepts that point to other concepts rather than physical things. But the Lullian Art, besides teaching the invention of syllogisms, also supplies a great abundance and variety of places for other Orations, narrations, accusations, and indeed every kind of attribute. It differs from Rhetoric because the latter is concerned with three types of cases: demonstrative, deliberative, and judicial; this Art, however, is bound to no single type, pertains to any being whatsoever, and enfolds all the principles of the sciences.

Since, therefore, for a long time now various men—not only those skilled in Philosophy but also Princes—struck by a certain curiosity, have sought my judgment on the Lullian art, I have attempted to satisfy their laudable curiosity in every way. I have approached Lullus’s book on the Great Art, bringing all the principles of the Art back to the anvil A metaphor for rigorous testing and reshaping. to be discussed with singular zeal and the highest mental scrutiny. I have also tried to examine my own long-conceived principles of the art against them, as if against a touchstone. I found at last that the rumors spread about it were true: its assumed principles, through the precision of the Combinatoric Art, can be applied to all arts and sciences, so that from there, that which has been so greatly sought by everyone may finally emerge to the significant benefit of the learned. Many things, however, were detected in it which, unless corrected and handed down with a more exact method, can be of hardly any use. The first of these is a style full of barbarisms, retaining hardly any traces of proper Latinity, joined with an extreme obscurity which could deter an Artist A practitioner of the Art. from reading it at first sight. The second is that he reduces everything to the first nine characters of the Alphabet as signs for the subjects assumed—excepting the first letter A, which is the mark of God, the Best and Greatest. The remaining letters in order are applied first to nine absolute attributes, then to as many relative ones. To these same letters, he then attributes the circumstances of nine questions to be made, and again to the same, the first nine subjects of all Nature. Thus, the letter B. corresponds: first, to the question "Whether?"; second, to the principle of essential goodness; third, to the subject, which is God; fourth, to the relative principle of difference with all those predicates which can be reduced in any way to goodness, difference, or the nature of the assumed subject; fifth, to the Virtues; sixth, to the opposite Vices. This system is indeed entangled in so many difficulties and involved in such intricacies that one would need a divine memory and imagination to properly remember every single thing pertaining to each letter. And so, I have learned by my own experience that it is impossible for anyone—with so many mental reflections and such a hodgepodge of predicates and subjects—to acquire the readiness to dispute exactly about any matter unless they are equipped with other aids. For the mind usually gets stuck in choosing the means to demonstrate something, stumbles in selecting them, wavers, and vacillates; the Artist does not know how or by what reasons the proposed question should be met—difficulties which are entangled all the more the more unrefined one is in Theoretical and Scholastic studies.