On Balance and Weight.

common verse: original: "Contra negantem principia non est disputandum" One must not dispute with those who deny the first principles. But such principia may be named what one will, yet we consider them the foundation upon which the disputation in every art is based. For where such are denied, the entire disputation must also be changed. And this following is the first petition postulate, which in this art of the proper understanding of balance and weight is set down as certain and true.

The I. Petition, or Proposition.

A decorative initial letter F.For the first, we posit that every heavy bodily thing, by nature, strives straight downward to the centrum center.

The II. Petition.

A decorative initial letter E.Furthermore, we also set down as certain and true that the same corpus body, or bodily thing, is of greater power which most quickly strives downward and descends, and in the movement which is contrary to this—that is, in ascending—is the most slow.

The second and third figure of the copperplate N. I.

This is to be understood when one places it on the balance, but so that this petition or conditional proposition may be more understandable, we wish to prove and testify to it with evident examples in the subject matter. As I see, for example, two balances, or 2 wagbalcken balance beams ABC and DEF, which are equal to each other in their arms, as the two arms AB and BC are in all things equal to the two little arms of the other balance DE and DF, but