2G6 ADVAifCfiMEHI? OF tSAltiJmo. [BOO^ vt. 



Jesuits judiciously retain the discipline among them. And 

 though the thing itself be disreputable in the profession of 

 it, yet it is excellent as a discipline ; we mean the action of 

 the theatre, which strengthens the memory, regulates the 

 tone of the voice and the efficacy of pronunciation ; grace- 

 fully composes the countenance and the gesture ; procures a 

 becoming degree of assurance ; and lastly, accustoms youth 

 to the eye of men. The example we borrow from Tacitus, 

 of one Vibulenus, once a player, but afterwards a soldier in 

 the Pannonian army. This fellow, upon the death of 

 Augustus, raised a mutiny ; so that Blesus, the lieutenant, 

 committed some of the mutineers ; but the soldiers broke 

 open the prison and released them. Upon which, Vibulenus 

 thus harangued the army : " You," says he, " have restored 

 light and life to these poor innocents ; but who gives back 

 life to my brother, or my brother to me 1 He was sent to 

 you from the German army for a common good, and that 

 man murdered him last night, by the hands of his gladiators, 

 whom he keeps about him to murder the soldiers. Answer, 

 Blesus, where hast thou thrown his corpse ? Even enemies 

 refuse not the right of burial. When I shall, with tears and 

 embraces, have performed my duty to him, command me also 

 to death ; but let our fellow-soldiers bury us, who are 

 murdered only for our love to the legions." ° With which 

 words, he raised such a storm of consternation and revenge 

 in the army, that unless the thing had presently appeared to 

 be all a fiction, and that the fellow never had a brother, the 

 soldiers might have murdered their leader ; but he acted the 

 whole as a part upon the stage. And thus much for the 

 logical sciences. 



We now come to that portion of our treatise which we 

 have allotted to rational knowledge. Let no one, however, 

 think that we hold the received division of the sciences of 

 small account, because we have wandered out of the beaten 

 paths. In so digressing we have been influenced by a 

 twofold necessity, — First, to unite two methods, which 

 both in their end and nature are altogether difierent, viz., 

 the ranging in the same class those things which are na- 

 turally related to each other, and to throw into one heap 

 all those things which are likely to be called immediately 

 « Annal. i. 22. 



