Short Art

the artist inquires into the natural conjunction between subject and predicate, disposition, and proportion, so that he may be able to find the middle term to make a conclusion. For any principle taken by itself is entirely general, as when it is said: goodness and greatness. But when one principle is contracted to another, then it is subalternate, as when it is said: goodness is great, etc. And when a singular principle is contracted, then it is a most specific principle, as when it is said: the goodness of Peter is great, and thus the intellect has a scale of ascending and descending from the most general principle to the not-most-general nor most-specific, and from a principle that is not most general nor most specific to a most specific one. And thus of the ascent of this scale it can be said in its own way. In the principles of this figure is implicated whatever exists, for whatever exists is either good or great, etc., just as God and the angel who are good and great, etc.; for which reason whatever exists is reducible to the aforementioned principles.

The second figure is named by T. This figure contains within itself three triangles, and each one is general to all things. The first triangle is of difference, concordance, and contrariety, in which falls whatever exists according to its own mode.