CLAUDIUS GALENUS

The knowledge begins, from which all arts are constituted, through a path and method he wrote down. But we have treated that in another work; in this place, however, we set out the one which is made by the dissolution of definition. How much less in dignity, path, and reason it is than that which is made by resolving, by so much more is it known to contribute to the compendium of the whole. Indeed, all things can easily be committed to memory from the dissolution of definition, for the reason that a definition contains within itself the best points of the whole art; which some call substantial, distinct from those opposite to them, which are called noëmatic pertaining to the mind/intellect by the Greeks. For these consist of the accidents which are in the things to be defined; that consists of the substance. But we have diligently written down the whole commentary of medicine in many other works, which one may use for three doctrines. But we shall now approach that which is made by the dissolution of definition, if we add only this, that we are to teach only the headings, and as it were, the conclusions of those things which have been demonstrated at length.