Authority
26.
He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.
On Commentators
27.
Men who are creators and interpreters of nature to man, in comparison with boasters and exploiters of the works of others, must be judged {12} and esteemed like the object before the mirror as compared with its image reflected in the mirror.--one being something in itself, and the other nothing. Little to nature do they owe, since it is merely by chance they wear the human form, and but for it I might include them with herds of cattle.
28.
A well lettered man is so because he is well natured, and just as the cause is more admirable than the effect, so is a good disposition, unlettered, more praiseworthy than a well lettered man who is without natural disposition.
29.
Against certain commentators who disparage the inventors of antiquity, the originators of science and grammar, and who attack the creators of antiquity; and because they through laziness and the convenience of books have not been able to create, they attack their masters with false reasoning.
30.
It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.
Experience
31.
Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
Experience never Errs
32.
Wrongly men complain of experience, which {13} with great railing they accuse of falsehood. Leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. Wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations.
33.
Experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err, ye who look to her for effects which our experiments cannot produce.
9
Because given a principle, that which ensues from it is necessarily the true consequence of that principle, unless it be impeded. Should there, however, be any obstacle, the effect which should ensue from the aforesaid principle will participate in the impediment as much or as little as the impediment is operative in regard to the aforesaid principle.
34.
Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.
35.
All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.
{14} Origin of Knowledge
36.
The sense ministers to the soul, and not the soul sense; and where the sense which ministers ceases to serve the soul, all the func-
tions of that sense are lacking in life, as is evident in those who are born dumb and blind.
Testimony of the Senses
37.
And if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, I answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more
keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. And if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was mad-ness. Now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself ? But the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eyesight.
{15} Judgement prone to Error
38.
There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.
39.
The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions.
40.
Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.
Intelligence of Animals
41.
Man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
10
42.
What is an element? It is not in man's power to define the quiddity of the elements, but a great many of their effects are known.
43.
That which is divisible in fact is divisible in potentiality also; but not all quantities which are divisible in potentiality are divisible in fact.
Infinity incomprehensible
44.
What is that thing which is not defined and would {16} not exist if it were defined? It is infinity, which if it could be defined would be limited and finite, because that which can be defined ends with the limits of its circumference, and that which cannot be defined has no limits.
45.
O contemplators of things, do not pride yourselves for knowing those things which nature by herself and her ordination naturally conduces; but rejoice in knowing the purposes of those things which are determined by your mind.
Insoluble Questions
46.
Consider, O reader, how far we can lend credence to the ancients who strove to define the soul and life,--things which cannot be proved; while those things which can be clearly known and proved by experience remained during so many centuries ignored and misrepresented! The eye, which so clearly demonstrates its functions, has been up to my time defined in one manner by countless authorities; I by experience have discovered another definition.
Beauty of Nature's Inventions
47.
Although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet {17} will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body. This is not the proper place for this discourse, which belongs rather to the subject of the composition of animated bodies; and the rest of the definition of the soul I leave to the minds of the friars, the fathers of the people, who know all secrets by inspiration. I leave the sacred books alone, because they are the supreme truth.
Completeness in Knowledge
48.
Those who seek to abbreviate studies do injury to knowledge and to love because the love of anything is the daughter of this knowledge. The fervency of the love increases in proportion to the certainty of the knowledge, and the certainty issues from a complete knowledge of all the parts, which united compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. Of what value,