he sees the function of serving as a furtherer of conversation 
“keeping the idle out of mischief” and “helping to shape the 
mind and language.” It is clear that the book was yet far from 
having become the main mode of politics and society. It was 
still a surface fact which had only begun to obscure the 
traditional lineaments of Western society. With regard to the 
continuing threat of scholastic renewal there is the ever-
present literary or visual complaint about oral scholasticism 
that it is words, words, words. Leibniz, writing on the “Art of 
Discovery,” says:

          Among the Scholastics there was a certain Jean 
     Suisset called the Calculator, whose works I have not yet 
     been able to find and I have seen only those of a few 
     disciples of his. This Suisset began to use Mathematics in 
     scholastic arguments, but few people imitated him