Institutio Oratoria

For when the philosophers describe the ideal sage who is to be consummate in all knowledge and a very god incarnate, as they say, they would have him receive instruction not merely in the knowledge of things human and divine, but would also lead him through a course of subjects, which in themselves are comparatively trivial, as for instance the elaborate subtleties of formal logic: not that acquaintance

with the so called

horn

[*]( You have what you have not lost: you have not lost horns: therefore you have horns. ) or

crocodile

[*]( A crocodile, having seized a woman's son, said that he would restore him, if she would tell him the truth. She replied, You will not restore him. Was it the crocodile's duty to give him up? ) problems can make a man wise, but because it is important that he should never trip even in the smallest trifles.