How this Art is useful to you

This Art is useful in the highest degree and has many valuable features. 

First, it is useful on account of its general and transcendental character because its principles belong to the highest order of generality and are true, necessary and primordial (as has been shown) and the principles of other sciences can be tested with them. 

Thus, the Art is a way to gain access to any faculty of study, and not only in speculative areas such as theoretical physics, mathematics, metaphysics and theology, but also in the fields of psychology, the moral sciences, linguistics, mechanics as well as medicine, canon law and civil law. 

And there is nothing out of bounds for this Art in which all things are seen to emanate from one source; it is most useful as a very bright light that the intellect can use to destroy its enemy, namely ignorance. 

It is most useful to you as a learning tool because it comprehends many things in a small number of loci without any instability and while you discourse with it, all things fall into place in its loci where they can be readily retrieved by your memory. 

And it is extremely useful  because it is lofty and profound when it discourses in the most lofty and profound way about God and all the articles of faith while proving them to be true. 

It is useful in the highest degree because it can reach into all the subtlest intellectual concepts. 

And finally, it is most useful because by applying it you can learn more in one year than anyone could ordinarily expect to learn in twelve years, as many have experienced, and it is worth infinitely more than gold as it provides broad and ample access to acquiring perfect science in a short time to those who put it to use, as you can see when you consider its layout and discourse.
 

THE NEED FOR THIS ART

Currently, there are many sciences treated in many different ways by an abundance of different authorities with conflicting opinions that create confusion in the mind of the student: hence, we need one general Art with general, primordial and necessary principles to test and scrutinize the principles of all other sciences: now according to Aristotle, those principles with which the principles proper to other sciences can be individually tested, belong to all sciences in general, as do the principles of this Art. With the principles of this Art, all principles can stand, and without them, none can stand. This is why the Art is most necessary not only in view of its purpose, but simply per se, given that the specialized arts and sciences are proliferating beyond measure (as we have said) and human life is short and the intellect requires some kind of universal instrument to direct it to its desired objective or purpose, where the objective is universal just as the human intellect is also a universal power.

The objective is universal, because whatever is true can be understood and perceived by the intellect on account of its truth, and therefore the intellect must also be a univeral power, otherwise there would be a vacuum where the objective would be true, but totally unintelligible, and this is an impossibility. Therefore the human intellect:

* is a universal power 
* with an intelligible universal object 
* and requires a universal habit consisting of universal likenesses of things 
* to be used as a universal instrument for attaining its objective: 

without this, the objective remains out of reach. And this instrument is the General Art, a divine gift to be used by the human intellect as the general instrument it must have to fulfill its purpose, learn the truth about things and avoid opinions and errors by reaching a real understanding of what the truth is.

Inasmuch as it is a science, the Art is one universal habit to be applied to the other sciences because it makes the things we can know about other sciences potentially present in the intellect habituated to the Art. And this Art or science can be acquired by those on the path of knowledge as an intellectual habit: just as there is a science called metaphysics that deals with substantial and accidental being, likewise there can be one Art that deals with real being and rational being, encompasses the entire multitude of faculties of learning and unites them all. Aristotle states that all beings can be traced back  to some kind of common unity (Metaphysics XI), and since rational being presupposes the real being whose likeness it is and from which its own being is effectively derived, rational being can and must be reduced to real being as something that is imperfect must be reduced to something more perfect. 

Fr. Bernard de Lavinheta, O.F.M., in his Practical Compendium of the Art of Blessed Raymond Lull. First published in Latin, in France, in 1523 and reprinted by Minerva in Germany in 1977, in a critical edition by Fr. Wolfram Platzek O.F.M. This English translation from the Latin by Yanis Dambergs, May 1999.

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