(1) In your recent letter, brother1 and dearest friend,2 you were anxious to persuade me to gather together certain rules of the art of logic into one treatise, and to send them to Your Honor.3 Since, therefore, moved by a love for your progress and for the truth, I cannot go against your requests, I shall try [to do] what you ask, and shall undertake a matter that is difficult for me but fruitful, I think, both for you and for me.
(2) For logic is the most useful tool of all the arts. Without it no science can be fully known. It is not worn out by repeated use, after the manner of material tools, but rather admits of continual growth through the diligent exercise of any other science. For just as a mechanic who lacks a complete knowledge of his tool gains a fuller [knowledge] by using it, so one who is educated in the firm principles of logic, while he painstakingly devotes his labor to the other sciences, acquires at the same time a greater skill at this art. Thus, I regard the common [saying], “The art of logic is a slippery art”,4 as appropriate only for those pay no heed to the study of wisdom.
(3) Therefore, proceeding with the content of the investigation of logic, one must take one’s beginning with terms, as from what is prior. Then there will follow the investigation of propositions, and finally of syllogisms and the other species of argumentation.
Translation by Paul Vincent Spade, CC BY 4.0. Source: Indiana University ScholarWorks. Changes: format conversion only (PDF to Markdown; footnotes, italics and paragraph numbers kept; margin line numbers and page headers dropped).
← The Prologue of Friar and Master Adam of England · Contents · Chapter 1 →
Footnotes
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‘brother’ = frater = Friar. Ockham is writing to a fellow Franciscan. (The Dominicans were also called “friars,” but it is unlikely Ockham is referring to a Dominican here.) ↩
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One manuscript of the Summa logicae describes Ockham’s Preface as directed to “his student mentioned above” — that is, to Adam Wodeham, who wrote the preceding Prologue. But another manuscript says that it was written to a certain “Friar William of Ambersbergh [Ambusbergh?] of the Order of [Friars] Minor from the English province.” I know nothing about that “Friar William.” ↩
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‘Your Honor’ = tuae dilectioni, a polite form of address. As far as I know, it is not an indication of any official rank or status. ↩
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I have never encountered this “common saying.” Ockham’s editors (p. 6 n. 1) cite Raymond Lull, De venatione substantiae accidentis et compositi: “Because logic is a difficult science, slippery and extensive …” I doubt that that is what Ockham was thinking of, but I can suggest nothing better. The exact sense of the saying is not clear. ↩