 Although these early writings are increasingly studied as significant works in their right, they have generally been regarded as important for tracing the development of various themes and ideas which Vico came to refine and express fully in his major and influential work, The New Science. In De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, for example, Vico takes up the theme of modernity and raises the question of “which study method is finer or better, ours or the Ancients?” and illustrates “by examples the advantages and drawbacks of the respective  methods.”[4]  Vico observes that the Moderns are equipped with the “instruments” of “philosophical ‘critique’” and “analytic geometry” (especially in the form of Cartesian logic) (DN, 7–9), and that these open realms of natural scientific inquiry (chemistry, pharmacology, astronomy, geographical exploration, and mechanics) and artistic production (realism in poetry, oratory, and sculpture) which were unknown and unavailable to the Ancients (DN, 11–12). Although these bring significant benefits, Vico argues, modern education suffers unnecessarily from ignoring the ars topica (art of topics) which encourage the use of imagination and memory in organizing speech into eloquent persuasion. The result, Vico argues, is an undue attention to the “geometrical method” modeled on the discipline of physics (DN, 21ff.), and an emphasis on abstract philosophical criticism over poetry. This undermines the importance of exposition, persuasion, and pleasure in learning; it “benumbs...[the] imagination and stupefies...[the] memory” (DN, 42), both of which are central to learning, complex reasoning, and the discovery of truth. Combining the methods of both Ancients and Moderns, Vico argues that education should aim ideally at cultivating the “total life of the body politic” (DN, 36): students “should be taught the totality of the sciences and arts, and their intellectual powers should be developed to the full” so that they “would become exact in science, clever in practical matters, fluent in eloquence, imaginative in understanding poetry or painting, and strong in memorizing what they have learned in their legal studies” (DN, 19).