OF THE NOBLE MAN,

HENRICUS CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, KNIGHT, AND DOCTOR OF BOTH LAWS,

Councilor and judicial archivist to His Sacred Imperial Majesty.

ON THE UNCERTAINTY AND VANITY

of the sciences and arts,

A DECLAMATION.

On the sciences in general. CHAP. I.

It is an ancient opinion, and a view almost universally held by all philosophers, that any given science brings a certain measure of divinity to man himself, according to his capacity and merit, such that it can often lift them beyond the limits of humanity into the choirs of the blessed gods. From this have sprung those various and countless encomia of the sciences, by which each person strives—in a speech no less ornate than long—to prefer above all others those arts and disciplines in which he has sharpened the powers of his own wit through long exercise, and to extol them even above the heavens themselves.

I, however, being persuaded by reasons of a different kind, judge that nothing more pernicious, nothing more pestilential to human life and the salvation of our souls, can happen than these very arts and sciences. Therefore, I believe we must proceed in reverse order, and it is my opinion that the sciences themselves ought not to be extolled with such great praise, but rather, for the most part, censured; nor is there any that lacks a just cause for reprehension, nor, conversely, any that merits any praise of itself, unless it borrows it from the probity of its possessor. I wish for this opinion of mine to be received by you with such modesty that you may not think me inclined to criticize others who think differently, nor to arrogate anything to myself with insolence. Therefore, you will grant me pardon for dissenting from the rest in this matter, until we begin this judgment by examining the faculties one by one in the order of the alphabet—not with vulgar arguments taken from the surface of things, but with the firmest reasoning, drawn from the deepest vitals of the subject, and not with that argumentative eloquence of Demosthenes or Chrysippus, which for me...