Aquinas wrote a brief three-point introduction to the Summa explaining to students just why they often found it difficult to learn and to come to a clear knowledge of the truth.

The three reasons for the difficulty of learning are:

i) the baffling multiplicity of useless questions and arguments

ii) the frequent repetition of these questions causes confusion and boredom in minds of the students

iii) the things that we want to know are not treated according to the order of the discipline but only according to what is required for explaining some book or dispute

Aquinas thought that even the most obscure problem could be spelled out “briefly and lucidly”.