Isatis herba

TO THE READER

To take up the matter from a higher point, did God not, at the very beginning, plant a garden in Eden, which He willed to be the dwelling and royal seat of man, so that Adam, established in it as a gardener, might learn of the wisdom and power of God through the life and virtue of the herbs and trees? The cultivation of the garden was to be for him a perpetual and most pleasant philosophy, in which he might exercise his faith and stir himself to invocation and thanksgiving. Not a mediocre or mutilated, but a most exact knowledge and wisdom shone in Adam, by which he contemplated all animals according to their nature and thus had such knowledge of their nature that he gave to each a name appropriate to its own nature. He knew the natures of all things much better than we do, even if we were to devote our whole life to the investigation of these things, aided also by the observation and experience of so many centuries. What great knowledge of herbs and the natures of beasts was in Solomon, the king, most wise of all?