The Works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Part 2

...can happen more pestilential than science: this is that true plague, which subverts the whole and entire human race to a man, which has driven out all innocence and made us subject to so many kinds of sin and to death, which has extinguished the light of faith, casting our souls into deep darkness, which, condemning the truth, has placed errors upon the highest throne. Wherefore, it seems to me that the Emperor Valentinian, who they say was a bitter enemy of letters, and the Emperor Licinius, who called letters a poison and a public plague, are no longer to be criticized; nay, Valerius reports that Cicero himself, the most abundant fountain of letters, finally came to despise letters. But such is the ample liberty and free amplitude of truth that it cannot be apprehended by the speculations of any science, by no pressing judgment of the senses, by no arguments of logical artifice, by no evident proof, by no demonstrating syllogism, nor by any human discursive reasoning, except by faith alone: he who possesses this is said by Aristotle in his book of Prior Analytics to be better disposed than if he were "knowing": which Philoponus, explaining, says that it is better to be a knower in this way than through demonstration, which occurs through cause. And Theophrastus in his Transnaturalia says this: To some extent we can indeed contemplate through cause, taking principles from the senses; but when we have passed to the very extremes and first things, we can no longer know, either because we do not have a cause, or because of the infirmity of our intellect. And Plato in the Timaeus says that to explain those things is more than our strengths suffice for, but he bids us believe those who have spoken before, even if they do not speak with any necessity of demonstration: for there were Academic philosophers in esteem who said: Nothing can be affirmed: there were Pyrrhonists, and many others, who indeed affirmed nothing. Nothing, therefore, does science have as a privilege over faith itself, where clearly the probity of the author moves the disciple's free will to believe. Hence that Pythagorean answer presumed about the Master: "He said it himself." And that common proverb of the Peripatetics: "Every expert in his own art is to be believed." Thus one believes the Grammarian about the meanings of words. The Dialectician believes what is accepted by the Grammarian regarding parts of speech. The Rhetorician assumes the places of argumentation from the Dialectician. The Poet borrows measures from the Musician. The Geometer takes proportions from the Arithmetician. The Astrologer gives credence to both. Then the transnaturalists use the conjectures of the naturalists, and every artist rightly presumes regarding the statutes of another. For every science has a certain...