The Art of Medicine

or must be sought elsewhere. It is asked, therefore, whether it should be exacted by taxes and duties from subjects, or obtained by loan, or by pledging or selling lordships and possessions. But if it should happen that it is neither pleasant nor lawful to seek peace in these ways, other paths must be tracked by which you can attain it. Since, therefore, we were resolving the proposed end into victory and friendship, but could not attain victory in any way, or at least not conveniently, it is necessary to pass to another order of resolution, namely, friendship, which we will prepare for ourselves by yielding to the enemy regarding the law, or by redeeming it. By yielding regarding the law, we win friendship. It will be redeemed, however, either by money—the method of seeking which was just explained—or by exchange, or by marriage.

The second is from the composition of those things which were discovered through resolution.

Opposed to resolution is composition, just as synthesis composition is to analysis resolution among the Greeks. Therefore, those who know how to resolve also know how to compose, since composition returns to the end in the opposite order. For example, those who establish logic in the order of composition treat first simple words, then propositions, then the syllogism, and finally demonstration, from which they attain truth, toward which they tend as the proposed end.