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

...by explaining the same thing. For no one ought to persuade himself that he can rightly understand any art unless experience has been added, and unless experiments render the force and efficacy of what has been perceived clear. But if someone runs through these things merely as if reading a history, he will certainly never be able to distinguish what good or evil is contained within them; rather, as soon as he sees me departing a little from the orbit of the rest, and deceiving the reader by expecting in individual places the same things he has read in others, or things very little different, he will easily think that I have not seen the writings of others at all, and that he has enough reason to despise ours. Nor indeed should students regret the labor required to be spent in learning this methodical use which, in truth, will not be great, considering the dignity of the subject; but however great it may be, it can never be so great that its utility will not compensate for it most abundantly. Indeed, if I had a son or any other young person equally dear to me, who hoped to have thirty years of leisure to spend on literary studies, I would urge him to spend twenty whole years in attaining the true use of method rather than, with that despised, giving all those thirty years to other studies, and I would have no doubt that it would be best for him. For I would hold it for certain that through the labor of the remaining ten years he would arrive at a greater and more solid erudition than if, deprived of this, he were to spend his whole age in studies alone.