The Contest of Wisdom with Folly

From these things, it is permitted to see how secretly and cunningly this monk acts toward me, namely, that he is eager to assign to multiple uncertain and unnamed persons those things which pertain to me, and which he extracted totally and verbatim from my volume. But I will show the particular places of my physics from which he has stolen all these things. In Chapter 4, Book 1 of my history of the physics of the Macrocosm, we described the prima materia first matter or the subject of darkness (in whose bosom that greatest architect of the Macrocosm arranged the worldly structure). In the third chapter of the same, we discussed whether that matter was created or uncreated. That chemists call this mass the head of the crow is contained in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, we indicated the mode by which the lucid virtue, sent forth by divine inspiration, arranged that potential matter into an actual world, and not the Sun, as he himself falsely conjectures. And where he says that it is their opinion that all things will return to their original state when the sun's heat ceases, he is also mistaken in this and deceives his readers. For at the end of that chapter, you will read this superscription: Demonstrations by which it emerges that, with the form of lucid action ceasing (that is, the absence of divine light and not the sun), the whole matter of the world is to return to the first abyss, the dark, unformed state, etc.

Similarly, concerning the creation and nature of light, and its operation toward the production of the empyrean heaven, we treated this in Chapters 4 and 5 of the same second book. Afterward, we treated the nature or virtue of the elements, and especially of Fire, and the production of the lucid spirit in Chapters 11, 12, and 13. Finally, we made that fiery spirit the origin of the form of the elements in Chapter 15 of that same book. By these, it is declared clearly enough that although he secretly and falsely attributed to others the method of constituting such a worldly fabric—which pertains solely to me—he still did not deign to grant me the benevolence of ascribing to me by name those things which his own conscience discerns in those writings of ours to be good and approved. Whence he has clearly explained his cynical envy toward me to the world, perhaps suspecting that his lucubrations would not receive such great favor throughout all Europe unless he smeared those works of mine with calumnies and infamy before the world, insofar as both concern one and the same subject. Which the consequences will also show most easily to those who are moderately instructed in philosophy: for undoubtedly, if he had truly found so many and such great errors in me, he would refute them in the manner of a philosopher with an open pen, all envy set aside, and deal with me fundamentally, not with brawls, quarrels, and similar old-womanish things that pertain not at all to the matter. Thus, therefore, he continues in the recapitulation of my physical subject.

Col. 109.

That fire penetrates dense things to the center, and opens, dilates, resolves, attenuates, and makes them volatile, so that they are lifted upward; it gathers, digests, matures, fixes, and perfects homogeneous things; it cuts, disintegrates, repels, and reverberates heterogeneous things, which they say was produced by the Holy Spirit. Whence the Oracles of the Chaldeans contend that the Holy Spirit is called fiery love, the God of fire, and the divinity of the Spirit, an intellectual and fiery Spirit, not having a form, but transforming itself into whatever it wishes and making itself equal to all things. And Zoroaster and Heraclitus said that all things were generated from a single fire. Thus he says.