A decorative initial letter 'V' featuring a floral or foliate design.

TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS DUKE OF SAXONY, AND PRINCE OF THURINGIA AND MEISSEN, MAURICE, Georgius Agricola sends greetings.

Since all excellent things have always been considered worthy of diligent contemplation, this is especially true of natural things, because once they are known, man is thought to have perceived something greater than what seemed to be given to the mortal race. He always has it at hand, whereby he can delight his mind and, as it were, feed it. For these reasons, the ancient philosophers, and especially the Greeks, found and explained all parts of nature, which contains all things, and all its members, except for very few, and among them, indeed, those things that lie under the earth, a good part of which has either been abandoned by those same philosophers or is by no means sufficiently explained. For Aristotle, that supreme observer of nature—although he seems to most of those who study physical theories today to have followed the origins and causes of subterranean things most diligently in those books in which he hands down the perturbations and mutations that occur in the air and fire—yet he did not touch upon others at all, and others only lightly. Indeed, he could not attain all those he did investigate; for he said nothing about the origin of the vessels that conceive the materials from which fossil objects arise, nor did he open up the causes of the concrete juices, nor did he clearly and entirely find the origin of remarkable earths, stones, and metals, to say nothing of others for now. But as for Theophrastus, the auditor and disciple of Aristotle, what he thought about many things of this kind cannot be known, because of his books in which he treats this subject, only one survives, inscribed On Stones. Moreover, Seneca collected many opinions of many men about the origin of waters and the causes of earthquakes; about the rest, which are likewise produced in the hidden seats of the earth, he said absolutely nothing. Those whom we see—both Greeks and Latins—who have been engaged in the knowledge of things for more than a thousand years, all to a man have interpreted the writings of Plato or Aristotle and have followed their opinions; and thus, they have brought fewer unexplained things into question and illustrated them in writing. For our Albertus, having undertaken to learn about the origin of things that are dug up, confuses the decrees of philosophers, astrologers, and chemists into one. Since these things are so, it seemed to me that I should investigate more accurately the causes of all things which the earth brings forth inside in channels, and of the channels themselves. While I struggle in this, I sometimes argue more vehemently against those things which have been written by others; yet not with this intent, that I desire to inveigh against men who have put forth the greatest effort in the consideration of things...