The Works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Part 2

I shall depart, and I shall immediately finish the Pyrographia (a work such as the age has not yet seen, but one that will be of no use to anyone except some famous devastator of the world). Then I shall sprinkle myself with holy water, and wash myself in living water, so that, finally stripped of these fatal masks, I may return to being a man again, lest at some point by Pythagoreanizing too much, and migrating into such various beasts, I might eventually, like those of Lucian and Apuleius, be turned into a philosophizing ass. But you, now, fare most happily; and remember, when you read these things of mine, that to know nothing is the happiest life.

HENRICUS CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

to the Reader.

Will this my undertaking, studious reader, not seem to you magnificent, over-bold, and almost Herculean—to take up arms against that whole gigantomachy of all the sciences and arts, and to provoke all those most robust hunters of the sciences and arts into the arena? The eyebrow of the Doctors will bristle against me, the erudition of the Licentiates, the authority of the Masters, the efforts of the Bachelors, the zeal of all the schoolmen, the sedition of the mechanics; and if I defeat them, will it not be equal to, or even greater than, striking the Nemean lion with a club, killing the Lernean hydra with fire, slaying the Erymanthian boar, capturing the hind in the Maenalian grove bearing golden horns, transfixing the Stymphalian birds in the clouds with arrows, crushing Antaeus within one's arms, fixing columns in the Ocean, conquering the three-bodied Geryon, driving off cattle, slaying the bull, overcoming Achelous in single combat, abducting the horses of Diomedes, dragging Cerberus chained in bonds, seizing the golden apples of the Hesperides, and many more of that kind which were performed by Hercules with great labors and no less danger; since to overcome these monsters of the gymnasia and wrestling schools is a task of no less labor, and of the very greatest danger? For indeed, I do not fail to see what a bloody battle I must engage in here at close quarters, and what a war full of danger this is, when I am hedged about by an army of such powerful enemies. Alas, with what engines will they attack me, with what...