[141] Of Augustine’s treatises on grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, and music, all but that on music were lost within a very short time. They could have had but little influence. _Cf. Retract._, 1, c. 6, and Teuffel and Schwabe, _History of Roman Literature_, Sect. 440, 7. [142] M. Aurelii Cassiodori, _De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum_ and _De Artibus ac Disciplinis Liberalium Litterarum_. In Migne, _P. L._, vol. 70. Cassiodorus’ attitude toward these preliminary studies is a curious one. He believed that their subject-matter was to be found scattered through the Scriptures and that “the teachers of secular learning” had gathered together the disjointed bits of information and organized them into the seven liberal arts. As a consequence he thought that a knowledge of these arts was of assistance when any passage relating to them was met in the reading of the Scriptures. In spite of this, however, it seems to have been his opinion that the less use made of them the better, and that, if ignorance of the liberal arts was a fault, it was certainly one of a minor character and had the advantage of not endangering the Christian’s faith.[143] With Cassiodorus the problem of education was little more than that of securing a training sufficient to enable one to read and study the Scriptures. The speculation cannot be avoided as to whether, if Christianity had depended, like Druidism, on an oral tradition, Cassiodorus might not have been willing to dispense with education altogether.