Georgii Agricolae medici Bermannus, sive de re metallica

to recall from oblivion those things saved from extreme destruction, and with the greatest and most exceptional effort, to strive to assert them in liberty. This very thing, just as it was begun by many in the previous age, has proceeded well and happily. For now, not only does the purity of the Latin language, to say nothing of the Greek, flourish most beautifully in Italy, but also not a few foreign nations are embracing it. And shortly, unless something adverse—which God forbid—should happen, eloquence itself seems capable of recovering its own strength.

Yet truly, the knowledge of things, which extends most widely—nay, it extends through all things that can be comprehended and perceived by the senses and the mind—is still neglected in most of its parts. For, to omit many other things, very many matters are indeed clearly obscure and unknown to us in the individual kinds of living beings, in the plants born from the earth, and in those things which the earth itself produces within itself. Or if we do know them, and not rarely handle them with our hands, we are entirely ignorant of the names by which they were called among the ancients. Hence, it is necessarily the case that a great part of their utility remains unknown.