Civilian. Besides, your age corresponded as nearly to his, as the age of
Crassus did to that of Scaevola."--"As to my own abilities," said I, "the
rules of decency forbid me to speak of them: but your character of Servius
is a very just one, and I may freely tell you what I think of him. There
are few, I believe, who have applied themselves more assiduously to the
art of Speaking than he did, or indeed to the study of every useful
science. In our youth, we both of us followed the same liberal exercises;
and he afterwards accompanied me to Rhodes, to pursue those studies which
might equally improve him as a Man and a Scholar; but when he returned
from thence, he appears to me to have been rather ambitious to be the
foremost man in a secondary profession, than the second in that which
claims the highest dignity. I will not pretend to say that he could not
have ranked himself among the foremost in the latter profession; but he
rather chose to be, what he actually made himself, the first Lawyer of his
time."--"Indeed!" said Brutus: "and do you really prefer Servius to Q.
Scaevola?"--"My opinion," said I, "Brutus, is, that Q. Scaevola, and many
others, had a thorough practical knowledge of the law; but that Servius
alone understood it as _science_: which he could never have done by the
mere study of the law, and without a previous acquaintance with the art
which teaches us to divide a whole into its subordinate parts, to, decide
an indeterminate idea by an accurate definition: to explain what is
obscure, by a clear interpretation; and first to discover what things are
of a _doubtful_ nature, then to distinguish them by their different
degrees of probability; and lastly, to be provided with a certain rule or
measure by which we may judge what is true, and what false, and what
inferences fairly may, or may not be deduced from any given premises. This
important art he applied to those subjects which, for want of it, were
necessarily managed by others without due order and precision."--"You
mean, I suppose," said Brutus, "the Art of Logic."--"You suppose very
right," answered I: "but he added to it an extensive acquaintance with