Iacobi Acontii Tridentini de methodo, hoc est, de recta investigandarum, tradendarumque artium, ac scientiarum ratione

A decorative drop cap letter CSince it is acknowledged among all those who are not entirely lacking in judgment that no art and no science can be rightly taught or grasped unless a diligent and certain method is employed; and since in ancient times, and in this age of ours, very many talents—indeed, those that were excellent and almost divine—have applied themselves with the greatest labors and the greatest diligence to ensure that they might leave behind the best possible counsel for the studies of posterity; I have truly never been able to wonder enough how it has happened that, although there is no art or faculty about which it is more important to have absolute and clear precepts than about Method (since it alone could bring light to all others), yet almost no one has appeared who seemed to have thought it worthy to apply the powers of their genius toward its—I will not say illustration, but even toward its proper understanding. From this, it has resulted that, although there is no art that has not had an almost infinite number of writers, yet the fact that (I might almost say) they all neglected the correct method is itself taught by the experience that they can never be sufficiently understood. I will speak, by way of example, of one or two: you may find very many who have often and diligently read through the precepts of Rhetoric that have been handed down in literature, and have, moreover, exercised themselves for a long time, and have proposed for themselves all the best orators to imitate, and have attained knowledge of many things, and are otherwise not at all inept by nature for speaking; yet even if their speech is proper, ornate, elegant, and copious, you will still desire in them the power and strength for persuasion. There can be no other cause for this than because they could not sufficiently grasp the art, because it was handed down without the right method—although I would not deny that what Aristotle wrote on that subject to Theodectes possesses the method in good part.