Didascalicon, Book III: the art of study (discipline and method)
Chapter III. Which arts are especially to be read
Of all the sciences enumerated above, the ancients in their studies had specially fixed upon seven for the work of those to be instructed, in which they saw so great a usefulness above all the rest, that whoever had firmly grasped the discipline of these would afterwards come to the knowledge of the others more by inquiring and exercising than by hearing. For they are as it were the best instruments and rudiments, by which the way is prepared for the mind to the full knowledge of philosophic truth. Hence the trivium and the quadrivium received their name, because by them, as by certain roads, the lively mind enters into the secrets of wisdom. No one in that time seemed worthy of the name of master who could not profess the knowledge of these. Pythagoras is read to have kept this custom in his studies, that for a septennium, according to the number of the seven liberal arts, none of his disciples dared to demand a reason for the things he said, but gave faith to the master’s words until he had heard everything, and then could himself find the reason of them. Some are read to have learned these seven with such zeal that they held them all in memory so completely that whatever writings they afterwards took in hand, whatever questions they proposed to be solved or proved, they did not seek in the leaf of a book the rules and reasons for deciding what was in doubt, but had each immediately prepared in the heart. Hence it happened, surely, that in that time there were so many wise men that they themselves wrote more than we can read. Our scholars, however, either will not or do not know how to keep a fitting measure in learning, and therefore we find many students, few wise. It seems to me that the reader ought to be provided for with no less care, lest he spend his labor on useless studies, than lest he remain lukewarm in a good and useful purpose. It is bad to do good negligently, worse to spend many labors in vain. But since not all can have this discernment to understand what is expedient for them, I will briefly show the reader which writings seem to me more useful, and then add a few things on the manner of discoursing.