Word-for-word synonyms

Accordingly so much of St Mark's Gospel has been taken over word for word in the Gospels of St Luke and St Matthew that, if every copy of it had perished, we could still reconstruct large portions of it by carefully comparing their narratives.

This is obvious enough in the Metaphysics: it has two openings (Books A and a); then comes a nearly consecutive theory of being (B, F, E, Z, H, 0), but interrupted by a philosophical lexicon A; afterwards follows a theory of unity (1); then a summary of previous books and of doctrines from the Physics (K); next a new beginning about being, and, what is wanted to complete the system, a theory of God in relation to the world (A); finally a criticism of mathematical metaphysics (M, N), in which the argument against Plato (A 9) is repeated almost word for word (M 4-5).

In this as in the previous studies a compendium is learned by heart, and explanations are given from commentaries and noted down by the students word for word.