Boethius, On Geometry (with other geometrical works)

reason to learn, and through the sublimity of the mind's inspection, to gather from some part and recognize the maker of the world who has revealed such great and such hidden things. For this world is said to be gathered in a spherical roundness so that it might conclude the diverse forms of things within the circuit of itself. Whence Seneca formed a book by the agreeable disputation of philosophers, the title of which is On the Form of the World. For they think that in geometry, one part must be held as essential, and that it is useful for everyone to be agitated by objects. Nor without cause have men also devoted effort to this science. Since geometry is divided into numbers and forms, it is necessary not only for the plowman, but also for those who are at least learned in those matters, because it is most useful for subtlety, most useful for knowledge, and most pleasant for contemplation. In legal cases, it is very frequently asked: what is the primary order necessary for the Geometer? If [he possesses] all things and eloquence. From the aforementioned, the Geometer proves in sequence and in certain matters what is certain. You may find many who approach this art similarly with dialectic and rhetoric. For dialectic uses the syllogism, if truth is sought, from which they are most powerful; they approve of grammar, which in Greek are called apodixes logical demonstrations. And certainly the enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism, which is a rhetorical syllogism that in Latin is called a conception of the mind, which those who write on the art are accustomed to call imperfect. And he proves in turn whose form it is and although