In the _Metalogicus_ John tells us that he has scarcely touched a book of logic since he left the _palaestra_ of the dialecticians so many years ago, but he returns to the subject again in that work. In the _Polycraticus_ his literary tastes and interests are more manifest. He writes a good Latin style and shows a wide acquaintance with classical authors and ancient history as well as with patristic literature. The character and content of the _Polycraticus_ is more clearly suggested by its sub-title, “Courtiers’ Trifles and Philosophers’ Footprints” (_De nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum_). In part it is satirical, although there is considerable serious discussion of the state and philosophy and much moralizing for the benefit of contemporary courts and statesmen. John confesses that the entire work is little more than a patch-work of other men’s opinions, sometimes without specific acknowledgment of the authorities. He professes to believe that Thomas will recognize the sources of these passages without being told, while other readers who are more ignorant will be thereby spurred on to wider reading. These quotations, moreover, are either from ancient classical or comparatively early Christian writers. John does not epitomize recent literature and thought, although he makes application of the thought of the past to contemporary society and politics, and although he shows some acquaintance with the works of contemporary writers such as Bernard Silvester. In the main his attitude is essentially conservative; he repeats traditional views in an attractive but somewhat dilettante literary form, with such rational criticism as a study of the classics might be expected to produce when qualified by scrupulous adherence to medieval Christian dogma. This is especially true of his discussion of the magic arts and astrology. [Sidenote: Magic, _maleficia_, and _mathematica_.] John begins to discuss magic in the first of the eight books of the _Polycraticus_ after a few chapters have been taken up with such other triflings of courtiers as hunting, dicing, music, and theatrical shows and spectacles. More harmful than the illusions of the stage, he declares, are those of the magic arts and various kinds of disreputable _mathematica_, long since forbidden by the holy fathers who knew that all these _artificia_, or rather _maleficia_ arose from a fatal familiarity of men and demons.[464] John thus takes as practically synonymous the three terms, _magica_, _mathematica_ and _maleficium_. He presently explains that the word _mathesis_ in one sense denotes learning in general, but that when it has a long penultima, it signifies the figments of divination,[465] which belong under magic, whose varieties are many and diverse. Thus magic is John’s most general and inclusive term for all occult arts. [Sidenote: Use of Isidore on magic.]