Preface. There are many whom nature herself has left so destitute of intellect that they can scarcely grasp even those things which are easy to understand; and of these there seem to me to be two kinds. For there are some who, although they are not ignorant of their own dullness, nevertheless pant after knowledge with such effort as they are able, and pressing on tirelessly in study, what they lack in the achievement of the work they deserve to obtain by the effort of the will. But others, since they perceive that they can by no means comprehend the highest things, neglect even the least, and resting secure as it were in their own torpor, lose the light of truth in the greatest matters all the more, the more they flee from learning the least things which they could understand. Whence the Psalmist:
They would not, he says, understand, that they might do well. For it is one thing not to know, and quite another to be unwilling to know. To be ignorant indeed belongs to weakness, but to detest knowledge belongs to a depraved will. There is another kind of men whom nature has greatly endowed with intellect and granted an easy approach to attaining truth; in whom, even though the strength of intellect be unequal, yet not all have the same power or the same will to cultivate their natural sense through exercise and instruction.
For there are very many who, entangled in the affairs and cares of this world more than is necessary, or given over to the vices and pleasures of the body, bury God's talent in the earth, and from it seek neither the fruit of wisdom nor the interest of good work; and these are surely very detestable. Again, for others poverty of household means and a slender income lessens the opportunity of learning; yet we believe these can by no means be fully excused on this account, since we see very many, laboring under hunger, thirst, and nakedness, attaining to the fruit of knowledge. And yet it is one thing when you cannot, or, to speak more truly, cannot easily, learn, and another to be able and unwilling to know.
For just as it is more glorious, when no resources are at hand, to lay hold of wisdom by virtue alone, so it is surely more shameful to be vigorous in intellect, to abound in riches, and to grow sluggish in idleness. There are two things especially by which everyone is equipped for knowledge, namely reading and meditation; of which reading holds the prior place in instruction, and it is of this that the present book treats, giving precepts of reading. Now there are three precepts more necessary to reading: first, that each should know what he ought to read; second, in what order he ought to read, that is, what first and what after; third, how he ought to read. Of these three this book treats one by one. And it instructs the reader of both secular and divine writings.
Whence it is also divided into two parts, each of which has three distinctions. In the first part it teaches the reader of the arts, in the second part the divine reader. And it teaches in this manner: by showing first what is to be read, then in what order and how it is to be read. Now, that it may be known what is to be read, or what especially is to be read, in the first part it first enumerates the origin of all the arts, then their description and division, that is, how each contains another or is contained by another, dividing philosophy from the top down to its ultimate members. Then it enumerates the authors of the arts, and afterward shows which of these arts, namely, are especially to be read.
Then also it opens up in what order and how they are to be read. Last, it prescribes for readers the discipline of their life, and so the first part is ended. In the second part it determines which writings are to be called divine, then the number and order of the divine books, their authors, and the interpretations of their names. Afterward it treats of certain properties of divine Scripture which are more necessary. Then it teaches in what manner one ought to read Holy Scripture who seeks in it the correction of his morals and a form of living. Finally it teaches him who reads it for the love of knowledge, and so the second part too receives its end. On the origin of the arts.
Of all things to be sought, the first is wisdom, in which the form of the perfect good consists. Wisdom enlightens man so that he may know himself, who was like the rest when he did not understand that he had been made above the rest. For the immortal mind, illumined by wisdom, beholds its own principle and recognizes how unseemly it is that it should seek anything outside itself, for which what it itself is could have been enough. It is read written on the tripod of Apollo: gnothi seauton, that is, know thyself; for indeed man, if he were not forgetful of his own origin, would recognize how truly nothing is everything that is subject to mutability. A maxim approved among the philosophers asserts that the soul is compacted of all the parts of nature.
And Plato's Timaeus formed the entelechy out of substance divisible and indivisible and mixed, and likewise out of the same and the diverse, and out of a nature compounded of both, by which the universe is designated. For it grasps both beginnings and the things that follow upon beginnings, since it both comprehends through intelligence the invisible causes of things, and gathers through the passions of the senses the visible forms of actual things; and, cleft into twin orbits, it rolls together its motion, since whether through the senses it goes out to sensible things, or through intelligence it ascends to invisible things, drawing the likenesses of things to itself, it wheels round; and this is why that same mind, which is capable of all things, is fitted together out of every substance and nature, so as to present the figure of likeness.
For it was a Pythagorean doctrine that like is comprehended by like, namely, that unless the rational soul were composed of all things, it could in no way comprehend all things; according to which someone says: With earth we comprehend the earthy, with flames the aether, moisture with the liquid, and the breathable with our own breath. Yet we ought not to suppose that men most skilled in the whole nature of things meant this concerning a simple essence — that it should be extended by any quantity of parts — but, that they might more openly demonstrate its marvelous power, they said that it consisted of all natures, not according to composition, but according to the principle of composition.
For this likeness of all things is not to be believed to come to the soul from elsewhere or from without, but rather the soul itself grasps it in itself and from itself by a certain inborn power and its own proper virtue. For as Varro says in the Periphyseon: Not every variety happens to things from without, so that it should be necessary that whatever is varied either lose something it had, or take on from without something else and different which it did not have. We see that a wall, when a form comes to it from without, receives the likeness of any image whatever. But when a stamper impresses a figure upon metal, the metal indeed begins to represent now something else, not from without, but from its own proper virtue and natural aptitude.
So indeed the mind, signed with the likeness of all things, is said to be all things, and to receive composition from all, not to contain them integrally, but virtually and potentially; and this is that dignity of our nature which all alike possess naturally, but not all alike have come to know. For the soul, lulled to sleep by bodily passions and led outside itself through sensible forms, has forgotten what it was, and, because it remembers itself to have been nothing else, believes there to be nothing beyond what is seen. But we are restored through instruction, that we may recognize our own nature, and that we may learn not to seek outside what we can find within ourselves.
The highest solace in life, therefore, is the pursuit of wisdom; he who finds it is happy, and he who possesses it is blessed. That the pursuit of wisdom is philosophy. First of all men, Pythagoras named the pursuit of wisdom 'philosophy,' and preferred to be called philosophers; for before that they were called sophoi, that is, wise. Beautifully indeed does he call the seekers of truth not wise men but lovers of wisdom, because, to be sure, all truth lies so hidden that, however much the mind may burn with love of it, however much it may rise up to the inquiry of it, it can yet only with difficulty comprehend truth itself as it is. And he established philosophy as the discipline of those things which truly are and possess an immutable substance of their own.
Now philosophy is love and pursuit and, in a manner, friendship of wisdom — not of that wisdom which is occupied with certain tools and with some craftsman's skill and knowledge, but of that wisdom which, lacking nothing, is a living mind and the sole primal reason of things. And this love of wisdom is an illumination of the understanding mind by that pure wisdom, and in a manner a drawing-back and a calling of itself to itself, so that the pursuit of wisdom may be seen to be the friendship of divinity and of that pure mind. This wisdom, therefore, imposes upon the whole class of souls the merit of its divinity, and leads them back to the proper force and purity of their nature.
Hence is born the truth of speculations and of thoughts, and the holy and pure chastity of acts. But since this most excellent good of philosophy has been procured for human souls, that our discourse may proceed by a certain thread of the way, we must begin from the very faculties of the soul. On the threefold power of the soul, and that man alone is endowed with reason. A wholly threefold power of the soul is discerned in the quickening of bodies: of which one indeed supplies life only to the body, that it may grow by being born and subsist by being nourished; another offers the judgment of sense; the third is supported by the power of mind and reason.
Of these the office of the first is to be at hand for the creating, nourishing, and feeding of bodies, but to furnish no judgment of reason or of sense. This is the power of herbs and trees and whatever is held fixed by the root in the earth. The second is composite and conjoined, and, taking the first to itself and constituting it as a part, it takes a varied and manifold judgment concerning the things it can grasp. For every animal that is vigorous in sense is likewise both born, and nourished, and fed.
But the senses are diverse and increase up to the number of five; so that whatever is only fed does not also perceive, but whatever can perceive is also fed — to it the first power of the soul, namely of being born and nourished, is proved to be subject also. But those to which sense is present grasp not only those forms of things by which they are struck while the sensible body is present, but, even when sense has departed and the sensible objects are set aside, they retain the images of forms known by sense, and form memory, and, as each animal is able, keep it longer or more briefly.
But they take in those imaginations as confused and indistinct, so that they can effect nothing from their conjunction and composition; and therefore they indeed remember, though not all things equally, but they cannot gather up again and recall the forgetfulness once it is lost. And of the future they have no cognition. But the third power of the soul, which draws with it the prior powers of nourishing and perceiving, and uses them as it were as servants and obedient ones, is the same wholly established in reason, and is occupied either in the most firm conclusion concerning present things, or in the understanding of absent things, or in the inquiry of unknown things.
This alone is present to the human race, which grasps not only perfect and well-ordered senses and imaginations, but also, by the full act of intelligence, unfolds and confirms what imagination has suggested. And so, as has been said, for this divine nature not only those things suffice in cognition which it comprehends as subjected to the senses, but also it can impose names on things conceived by imagination from sensible things and on absent things, and what it comprehends by the reason of intelligence it also opens up by the positions of words. This too is proper to that nature: that through the things which are known to it, it should track out the unknown, and ought to recognize not only whether each thing is, but also what it is, and of what kind it is, and likewise why it is.
This threefold power of the soul, as has been said, the nature of man alone has obtained; whose soul's power does not lack the motions of intelligence, by which in these four matters it properly exercises the power of reason. For either it inquires whether something is, or, if it be established that it exists, it doubts what it is; and if it possesses the knowledge of both by reason, it tracks out of what kind each thing is, and in it investigates the other circumstances of accidents; and these being known, it asks why it is so, and tracks it out by reason no less.
Since, therefore, this is the act of the human mind, that it should always be occupied in the comprehension of present things, or in the understanding of absent things, or in the inquiry and discovery of unknown things, there are two things in which the reasoning power of the soul expends all its labor: one indeed, that it may know the natures of things by the reason of inquiry; the other, that it may first come to knowledge, which afterward moral seriousness may put into practice. What things pertain to philosophy. But, as I see, by the very order of speaking we have now fallen into an inextricable labyrinth, where not perplexed discourse but an obscure subject begets the difficulty for us.
For since we have undertaken to speak of the pursuit of wisdom, and have testified that it belongs to men alone by a certain privilege of nature, we seem consequently now to have set wisdom as a certain governess of all human acts. For if the nature of brute animals, which is ruled by no judgment of reason, pours out its motions according only to the passions of the senses, and in seeking or fleeing anything uses no discernment of intelligence, but is driven by a certain blind affection of the flesh, it remains that blind desire should not snatch away the acts of the rational soul, but that governing wisdom should always go before.
And if this be established as true, we shall now say, not incongruously, that not only those pursuits in which there is treatment either of the nature of things or of the discipline of morals, but also the principles of all human acts or pursuits, pertain to philosophy. According to which acceptation we can thus define philosophy: Philosophy is the discipline that fully investigates the principles of all things, human and divine. Nor ought it to disturb us that we said above that philosophy is the love and pursuit of wisdom — not of that which is unfolded by instruments, as is architecture, agriculture, and the rest of this kind, but of that wisdom which alone is the primal reason of things.
For the same act can both pertain to philosophy according to its principle, and be excluded from it according to its administration; for example, to speak of the present matter: the principle of agriculture belongs to the philosopher, its administration to the peasant. Moreover, the works of craftsmen, even if they are not nature, nevertheless imitate nature, and they express by principle the form of their exemplar — which is nature, by which they imitate. You see now by what principle we are compelled to diffuse philosophy into all the acts of men, so that it is now necessary that there be as many parts of philosophy as there are diversities of things, to which it has been established that it pertains. On the origin of the theoretical, practical, and mechanical.
Now of all human actions or pursuits which wisdom governs, the end and intention ought to look to this: that either the integrity of our nature be restored, or the necessity of the defects to which the present life is subject be tempered. Let me say more openly what I have said. There are two things in man: good and evil, nature and vice. The good, because it is nature, because it is corrupted, because it is diminished, is to be restored by exercise. The evil, because it is vice, because it is corruption, because it is not nature, is to be excluded. And if it cannot be utterly exterminated, at least, with a remedy applied, it is to be tempered. This is altogether what must be done: that nature be restored and vice be excluded.
Now the integrity of human nature is perfected by two things, knowledge and virtue, which alone are our likeness to the supernal and divine substances. For man, since he is not a simple nature, but is compacted of a twofold substance, according to one part of his, which is the better, and — to say more openly what is fitting — which he himself is, is immortal; but according to the other part, which is perishable, which alone is known to those who know not how to give faith save to the senses, he is subject to mortality and mutability, where he must die as often as he loses what he is. And this is the lowest part of things, which has a beginning and an end. On the three modes of things.
For there are among things some which have neither beginning nor end, and these are named eternal; others which indeed have a beginning, but are shut in by no end, and are called perpetual; others which have both a beginning and an end, and these are temporal. In the first order we place that to which there is not one thing 'to be' and another 'what it is' — that is, whose cause and effect are not different, which has its subsistence not from elsewhere but from itself, as is the sole begetter and maker of nature. But that to which 'to be' is one thing and 'what it is' another — that is, which comes to being from elsewhere, and from a preceding cause flowed forth into act so as to begin to be — is nature, which contains the whole world. And this is divided into two.
There is something which, in order that it may begin to be from its primordial causes, comes forth into act with nothing moving it, by the sole arbitration of the divine will, and there abides immutable, free of all end and vicissitude. Of this sort are the substances of things, which the Greeks call ousiai, and all the bodies of the superlunary world, which are also for this reason — that they are not changed — called divine. The third part of things is that which has a beginning and an end, and does not come to being of itself, but they are the works of nature, which arise above the earth beneath the lunar globe, with the craftsman fire moving, which descends by a certain power to procreate sensible things. Of these, therefore, it has been said: Nothing in the world dies, in that no essence perishes.
For the essences of things do not pass away, but the forms. And when a form is said to pass away, it is not to be understood thus, as though some existing thing were believed to perish utterly and to lose its being, but rather to be varied — or perhaps thus: that things which had been joined are separated from one another, or things which had been separated are joined, or things which were here pass yonder, or things which were now subsist then; in all of which the being of things suffers no detriment. Of these it has been said: All things that arise set, and being grown, grow old, in that all the works of nature, just as they have a beginning, so also are not strangers to an end. Of those it has been said:
From nothing can nothing come, and into nothing can nothing return, in that every nature has both a primordial cause and a perpetual subsistence. Of these it has been said: And that returns to nothing which was nothing before, in that every work of nature, just as it flowed forth temporally from a hidden cause into act, so, that same act being temporally destroyed, will return to that whence it had come. On the superlunary and sublunary world. Hence it is that the mathematicians divided the world into two parts: namely, into that part which is from the circle of the moon upward, and into that which is downward.
And the superlunary world, because there all things consist by a primordial law, they called nature; the sublunary, the work of nature, that is, of the higher, because all the kinds of living things which are quickened in it by the infusion of the vital spirit receive their nourishment infused from the higher things through invisible passages, not only that they may grow by being born, but also that they may subsist by being nourished. That same higher world they also called time, because of the course and motion of the stars that are in it; the lower, temporal, because it is driven according to the higher motions. Likewise the superlunary, because of the perpetual tranquility of light and rest, they named Elysium; but this lower, because of the inconstancy and confusion of fluctuating things, they named the infernal region.
We have pursued these things a little more broadly in order to show that man, in the part in which he is a partaker of mutability, is in that part also subject to necessity; but in that part in which he is immortal, is akin to divinity. From which can be gathered that which was said above, namely, that the intention of all human actions concurs to this end: that either the likeness of the divine image be restored in us, or provision be made for the need of this life, which, the more easily it can be hurt by adversities, the more it needs to be cherished and preserved. In what man is like to God. Now there are two things which repair the divine likeness in man, that is, the speculation of truth and the exercise of virtue.
For in this respect man is like God, that he is wise and just; yet man is so changeably, while God is both wise and just unchangeably. But of those actions which serve the necessity of this life there are three kinds: the first, which provides nourishment for nature; the second, which fortifies against the troubles that can befall from without; the third, which furnishes a remedy against those that have already been inflicted. Therefore, when we devote ourselves to restoring our nature, the action is divine; but when we make provision for what is infirm in us, the action is human. Every action, then, is either divine or human.
Now we may not unfittingly call the former 'understanding' (intelligentia), since it is concerned with higher things, and the latter 'knowledge' (scientia), since it is concerned with lower things and stands, as it were, in need of deliberation. If, then, as was said above, wisdom governs all the actions that are done by reason, it follows that we should say that wisdom embraces these two parts, namely understanding and knowledge. Again, since understanding labors both in the investigation of truth and in the consideration of conduct, we divide it into two species: into the theoretical, that is, the speculative, and the practical, that is, the active, which is also called ethics, that is, moral philosophy.
Knowledge, however, since it follows upon human works, is fittingly called 'mechanical,' that is, adulterate. Concerning the three works. For there are three works, namely the work of God, the work of nature, and the work of the craftsman who imitates nature. The work of God is to create what did not exist; whence that text: 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth.' The work of nature is to bring forth into act what lay hidden; whence that text: 'Let the earth bring forth the green herb,' and so on. The work of the craftsman is to join together what is separated, or to separate what is joined; whence that text: 'They sewed themselves aprons.' For neither could the earth create heaven, nor man bring forth the herb—man who cannot add even a hand's breadth to his stature.
Among these three works, human work—which is not nature but imitates nature—is appropriately named 'mechanical,' that is, adulterate, just as a key inserted from beneath is called a 'master' (mechanical) key. But to set forth in detail how the work of the craftsman imitates nature would be long and burdensome. We can, however, by way of example, demonstrate it in a few cases. He who cast a statue gazed upon a man. He who built a house looked to a mountain. For, as the prophet says, 'You send forth springs in the valleys; the waters shall pass between the midst of the hills.' The height of the mountains does not retain the waters. So too a house had to be raised up to a certain lofty peak, that it might safely ward off the assaults of the rushing storms.
He who first devised the use of clothing considered that each of the things that are born has certain defenses of its own, by which it guards its nature against harms. Bark surrounds the tree, the feather covers the bird, the scale clothes the fish, wool clothes the sheep, hair clothes beasts of burden and wild animals, the shell receives the tortoise, ivory makes the elephant unafraid of darts. And yet it was not without reason that, while each of the living creatures has weapons born together with it suited to its nature, man alone is born unarmed and naked.
For it was fitting that nature should provide for those which know not how to provide for themselves, while to man a greater occasion for exercising himself should thereby be granted, in that, by his own reason, he might discover for himself what to the rest has been naturally given. For the reason of man now shines forth far more brightly in discovering these very things than it would have shone in merely possessing them. Nor is it without reason that the proverb runs: 'Ingenious hunger has hammered out all the arts.' Indeed by this reasoning were discovered those things which you now see as most excellent in the pursuits of men. By this same reasoning arose the countless kinds of painting, weaving, sculpting, and casting, so that now we marvel at the craftsman together with nature itself. What nature is.
But since we have now so often named nature, although, as Tully says, 'it is difficult to define nature,' nevertheless the meaning of this word does not seem one to be passed over altogether in silence. Nor, because we cannot say all that we wish, ought we therefore to be silent about what we can. The ancients are found to have said many things about nature, yet nothing in such a way that there did not seem to remain something more. As far, however, as I am able to conjecture from their sayings, they were accustomed to use the signification of this word in three principal ways, assigning to each its own definition.
In the first way, by this name they meant to signify that archetypal exemplar of all things, which is in the divine mind, by whose pattern all things were formed; and they said that nature is the primordial cause proper to each single thing, from which it has not only its being but also its being-of-such-a-kind. To this signification such a definition is assigned: 'Nature is that which attributes to each thing its own being.' In the second way they said that nature is the proper being of each single thing; to which signification this definition is assigned: 'Nature is said to be that which informs each single thing by its proper difference.' According to this signification we are accustomed to say: 'It is the nature that all heavy things tend toward the earth, that light things seek the heights, that fire burns, that water moistens.'
The third definition is this: 'Nature is an artisan fire, proceeding from a certain power for the procreation of sensible things.' For the natural philosophers say that all things are procreated from heat and moisture; whence Virgil calls Ocean 'father,' and Valerius Soranus, in a certain verse concerning Jupiter understood as the ethereal fire, says: 'Almighty Jupiter, begetter of things and of kings, father and mother of the gods, truly one and the same.' On the origin of logic. Therefore, since we have now demonstrated the origin of the theoretical, the practical, and the mechanical, it remains to investigate also the origin of logic, which I number last for this reason: that it was discovered last.
The others had been discovered earlier, but it was necessary that logic too be discovered, since no one can suitably discourse about things unless he has first come to know the method of speaking rightly and truthfully. For as Boethius says: 'When the ancients first bestowed their effort upon investigating the natures of things and the qualities of conduct, it was necessary that they often be deceived, because they did not have the discrimination of words and concepts'—as happened in many cases to Epicurus, who supposes that the world consists of atoms and falsely makes pleasure to be the honorable good. That this befell him and others is manifest for this reason: that through inexperience in disputing, whatever they had grasped by their reasoning, this they judged to come about in the things themselves as well.
But this is a great error. For things do not stand in reasonings as they do in numbers. For in numbers, whatever comes out on the fingers of one who computes rightly, this without doubt must also come out in the things themselves; so that if from a reckoning a hundred results, it is necessary that there be a hundred things subject to that number. But this is not equally preserved in disputation. For not whatever the course of words has found is thereby held fixed in nature. Wherefore it is necessary that those be deceived who, casting aside the science of disputing, would inquire into the nature of things.
For unless one first arrives at the science by which it may be known which reasoning holds the true path of disputing, which holds the merely probable, and recognizes which is to be trusted and which may be suspect, the uncorrupted truth of things cannot be discovered by reasoning. Since, then, the ancients, often lapsing into many errors, would gather to themselves in disputation certain false and contradictory things—and since it seemed impossible that, when a contradictory conclusion was drawn about the same matter, both should be true which their disagreeing reasoning had concluded, and it would be doubtful which reasoning ought to be believed—it seemed good first to consider the true and entire nature of disputation itself.
And once this was known, then also whatever was discovered through disputation could be understood as to whether it had been truly grasped. Hence, therefore, set forth the expertise of the discipline of logic, which prepares the modes of disputing and the very ways of distinguishing reasonings, so that one may recognize which reasoning is now true and now false, which is always false, and which can never be false. This discipline is indeed last in time, but first in order. For it is to be read first by those beginning philosophy, because in it is taught the nature of words and concepts, without which no treatise of philosophy can be reasonably unfolded. Logic is so called from the Greek 'logos,' which name has a twofold interpretation.
For 'logos' means 'speech' or 'reason,' and from it logic can be called either the verbal or the rational science. Rational logic, which is called argumentative (dissertiva), contains dialectic and rhetoric. Verbal logic is the genus with respect to grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, and contains under itself the argumentative. And this is the verbal logic which we number as the fourth after the theoretical, the practical, and the mechanical. Nor should it be thought that logic—that is, the verbal—is so called because before its discovery there were no discourses, and as if men had not previously had mutual conversations. There existed beforehand both common discourses and letters, but the method of discourses and letters had not yet been reduced into an art.
No precepts for speaking or disputing rightly had yet been given. For all the sciences existed in use before they existed in art. But then men, considering that use could be converted into art, and that what had been wandering and unregulated before could be confined by fixed rules and precepts, began, as has been said, to reduce to art the custom which had arisen partly by chance, partly by nature—correcting what use had crooked, supplying what it lacked, cutting away what it had in excess, and henceforth prescribing fixed rules and precepts for each thing. Of this kind was the origin of all the arts; running through these one by one, we find it to be true. Before there was grammar, men both wrote and spoke.
Before there was dialectic, men distinguished the true from the false by reasoning. Before there was rhetoric, they handled civil law. Before there was arithmetic, they had the science of counting. Before there was music, they sang. Before there was geometry, they measured fields. Before there was astronomy, they took the divisions of times by the courses of the stars. But the arts came—which, although they took their beginning from use, are nevertheless better than use. This would be the place to set forth who were the inventors of the several arts, when or where they lived, or how through them the beginning of these disciplines was taken; but I wish first, by a certain division of philosophy, to distinguish them one from another.
It is fitting, therefore, briefly to recapitulate what has been said above, so that the transition to what follows may be made easier. We have said that there are only four sciences which contain all the rest: namely, the theoretical, which labors in the contemplation of truth; the practical, which considers the discipline of conduct; the mechanical, which dispenses the actions of this life; and logic also, which furnishes the science of speaking rightly and disputing acutely. Here, then, not absurdly, can that quaternary of the soul be understood, which the ancients, out of reverence for it, took up into their oaths. Whence also that saying: 'By Him who gave to our soul the number four.'
How these are contained under philosophy, and again which things they contain under themselves, we shall show by briefly repeating the definition of philosophy.