Tabulae totius dialectices, aliarum artium instrumenti ...

CORNELIUS VALERIUS’S TABLES ON THE ENTIRE ART OF DISCOURSE.

What Dialectics is, and how many are its parts.
CHAPTER I.

A decorative drop cap 'D' features a bird and floral motifs.DIALECTICS is defined by Cicero in the second book of De Oratore On the Orator as the art of reasoning well, and of truly discoursing and judging the false. And in the second book of De Finibus On Ends, it is said to contain in itself the entire science of both perceiving what knowledge is in any given thing, and of judging what kind each thing is, and of disputing by reason and method. And, as Rodolphus Agricola hands down, of discoursing probably about any proposed subject, according to what each nature is capable of believing. Dialectics is named from dialegesthai to discourse, which Plato interprets as logo chresthai to use reason; because those instructed in this faculty of discourse use reason better. This is acquired, like all arts, by talent, precepts, and exercise, which are the efficient causes of this art. Its form is the method and way of teaching and arguing. Its end is the judgment of the true and the false. Its matter is the question proposed about any thing, which requires the disquisition of reason. The same Cicero posited two parts of Dialectics: one of finding original: "inueniendi", the other of judging original: "iudicandi"; the former the Greeks call technen heuretiken the art of discovery, the latter kritiken the art of criticism.

In the Topics, Dialectics is defined diligently. And in the first book of De Legibus, the art of understanding, what follows in each thing, and what the reasoning of each is, and the power to distinguish the true and the false is innate and implanted in our minds, from which Cicero calls Dialectics the arbiter and judge, so to speak, of the true and the false. 10 in Alcibiades. And in Philebus. Three efficient causes of the arts, Form, End, Matter, Parts, etc., in Topics.