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SILENCE AFTER

THE CLAMORS,

THAT IS,

APOLOGETIC

TREATISES

CHAPTER I.

That the hiding places of nature are not so exhausted that all her secrets are known, but rather that more things lie hidden than are known, namely those which are truthful and, like effects, bear witness to their cause.

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NATURE, which reigns diffused through the four elements and the circles of the heavens, that is, the universe, acknowledges as many hidden lurking places for its mysteries as it has produced species of things at the nod of the Supreme Creator, in which it hides whatever it wished to be removed from the common eye or left untouched by the hand. It does not do this out of the stimulus of vice, as the greedy and envious are accustomed to do, but to add a spur to the slow and the lazy toward virtue: namely, that which is abstruse should be sought, that which is found should be held in high value, and that which is precious should be concealed. For just as things that lie open before our feet are usually unappreciated unless they are seasoned by rarity, so those that lie in hiding are usually accepted, unless they have become common through frequency, not always with respect to the essences of each thing, but also due to the inconstancy of minds and the appetite for novelty. Many things lie hidden in the center of the earth, or in the caverns of mountains, buried on the shore and bottom of the Ocean, sea, or rivers, which are estimated at a great price when they are rarer to find; but if they were held in the same number as sand, they would be valued as sand. But it is the task of the Philosopher not only to search out these things which are commonly sought, but also those, indeed rather those, which are hidden in other species of nature, whether these are visible to the common eye or not. Who has ever sufficiently [known] the nature of man, that is, the goods and gifts of both the mind and the body?