Next, the Port-Royalists sought to give their pupils an early and a pleasing introduction to literature. The best literature in those days was the classical; and suitable works from that literature might be made intelligible _by means of translations_. In this way the Port-Royalists led their pupils to look upon some of the classical authors not as inventors of examples in syntax, but as writers of books that _meant_ something. And thus both the mother-tongue and literature were brought into the school-room. § 28. When the boys had by this means got some feeling for literature and some acquaintance with the world of the ancients, they began the study of Latin. Here again all needless difficulties were taken out of their way. No attempt indeed was made to teach language without grammar, the rationale of language, but the science of grammar was reduced to first principles (set forth in the _Grammaire Générale et Raisonnée_ of Arnauld and Lancelot), and the special grammar of the Latin language was no longer taught by means of the work established in the University, the _Latin_ Latin Grammar of Despautère, but by a “New Method” written in French which gave essentials only and had for its motto: “Mihi inter virtutes grammatici habebitur aliqua nescire—To me it will be among the grammarian’s good points not to know everything.” (Quintil.)[93] § 29. With this minimum of the essentials of the grammar and with a previous acquaintance with the sense of the book the pupils were introduced to the Latin language and were taught to translate a Latin author into French. This was a departure from the ordinary route, which after a course of learning grammar-rules in Latin went to the “theme,” _i.e._, to composition in Latin. The art of translating into the mother-tongue was made much of. School “construes,” which consist in substituting a word for a word, were entirely forbidden, and the pupils had to produce the old writer’s thoughts _in French_.[94] §30. From this we see that the training was literary. But in the study of form the Port-Royalists did not neglect the inward for the outward. Their great work, which still stands the attacks of time, is the Port-Royal _Logic, or the Art of Thinking_ (see Trans, by T. Spencer Baynes, 1850). This was substantially the work of Arnauld; and it was Arnauld who led the Port-Royalists in their rupture with the philosophy of the Middle Age, and who openly followed Descartes. In the _Logic_ we find the claims of reason asserted as if in defiance of the Jesuits. “It is a heavy bondage to think oneself forced to agree in everything with Aristotle and to take him as the standard of truth in philosophy.... The world cannot long continue in this restraint, and is recovering by degrees its natural and reasonable liberty, which consists in accepting that which we judge to be true and rejecting that which we judge to be false.” (Quoted by Cadet, p. 31.)[95]