the dialectic whereby such results were reached, as distinguished from the results themselves, that also passed into doctrinal writings. The great Christian Fathers were masters of it. Augustine recognized it as a proper tool; but like other tools its value was not in itself but in its usefulness. As a tool, dialectic, or logic as it has commonly been called, was to preserve a distinct, if not independent, existence. Aristotle had devoted to it a group of special treatises.[1] No one had anything to add to this Organon, or Aristotelian tool, which was to be preserved in Latin by the Boëthian translations.[2] No attempt was made to supplant them with Christian treatises.
So it was with elementary education. The grammarians, Servius, Priscianus, and probably Donatus, were pagans. As far as concerned grammatical and rhetorical studies, the Fathers had to admit that the best theory and examples were in pagan writings. It also happened that the book which was to become the common text-book of the Seven Arts was by a pagan, of Neo-Platonic views. This was the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, by Martianus Capella.[3] Possibly some good Christian of the time could have composed a worse book, or at least one somewhat more deflected from the natural objects of primary education. But the De nuptiis is astonishingly poor and dry. The writer was an unintelligent compiler, who took his matter not from the original sources, but from compilers before him, Varro above all. Capella talks of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Euclid, Ptolemy; but if he had ever read them, it was to little profit. Book VI., for example, is occupied with "Geometria." The first part of it is simply geography; then come nine pages[4] of geometry, consisting of definitions, with a few axioms; and then, instead of following with theorems, the maid, who personifies "Geometria," presents as a bridal offering the books of Euclid, amid great
- ↑ See ante, Chapter III.
- ↑ See post, Chapter V.
- ↑ The substance of Capella's book is framed in an allegorical narrative of the Marriage of Philology and Mercury. For a nuptial gift, the groom presents the bride with seven maid-servants, symbolizing the Seven Liberal Arts—Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music. Cf. Taylor, Classical Heritage, etc., p. 49 sqq.
- ↑ In Eyssenhardt's edition.
