182. It remains in the third place for me to answer those who take offence by the large number of my propositions, as if this burden lay on their shoulders and it were not rather I alone who have to endure this toil, as great as it may be.
183. It is surely unbecoming and excessively captious to wish to set limits to another's efforts and, as Cicero says, to desire mediocrity in a matter where the greater is the better.
184. In undertaking so great a venture it was necessary for me either to fail or to succeed. If I should succeed, I do not see why what is praiseworthy to do over ten theses should be deemed blameworthy to do over nine hundred.
185. If I should fail, they will have grounds for accusing me, if they hate me and for excusing me, if they love me.
186. For a young man who has failed through weakness of talent or want of learning in so serious and great an undertaking will be more deserving of pardon than of blame.
187. Indeed, according to the poet: "If strength fails, audacity will surely be praised; and in great undertaking to have willed is enough."
188. And if many in our age, imitating Gorgias of Leontini, have been accustomed, not without praise, to propose a disputation not merely on nine hundred questions but on all questions about all arts, why should I not be allowed to dispute without blame on many questions indeed, but at least fixed and determined?
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189. But they say this is needless and ambitious.
190. Yet I contend that I did this not needlessly, but of necessity; and if they should consider with me my reasons for philosophizing, they must even reluctantly admit that it is clearly of necessity.
191. For those who have devoted themselves to anyone of the schools of philosophy, siding for instance with Thomas or with Scotus, who are now most followed, can surely make trial of their doctrines in the discussion of but a few questions.
192. But not to swear by anyone's word, I have resolved myself to range through all masters of philosophy, to examine all books, and to become acquainted with all schools.
193. Therefore, since I had to speak of all philosophers, lest I might seem committed to a particular doctrine, should I have, as its defender, neglected the others, there could not fail to be very many questions concerning all of them together, even if only a few about each one were severally proposed.
194. Nor should anyone condemn me for it, that "wherever the circumstances bear me, there I am brought as a guest."
195. For it was a rule observed by all the ancients in studying every kind of writers never to pass over any commentaries they were able to read, and especially by Aristotle, who for this reason was called by Plato , that is, "the reader"; and it certainly shows narrowness of mind to confine oneself within one Porch or Academy.
196. Nor can anyone rightly choose his own doctrine from all, unless he has first made himself familiar with all of them.
197. Moreover, there is in each school something distinctive, which it has not in common with any other.
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198. And now, to begin with the men of our own faith to whom philosophy came last, we find in John [Duns] Scotus a vigorous dialectic, in Thomas [Aquinas] a balanced solidity, in Giles [of Rome] a neat precision, in Francis [of Meyronnes] a penetrating acuteness, in Albert [the Great] an ancient and grand amplitude, in Henry [of Ghent], as it has seemed to me, a constant and venerable solemnity.
199. Among the Arabs, we find in Averroes an unshaken firmness, in Avempace, as in Al-Farabi a thoughtful seriousness, in Avicenna a divine Platonic sublimity.
200. Among the Greeks philosophy is certainly terse in general and chaste in particular; in Simplicius it is rich and copious, in Themistius elegant and compendious, in Alexander [of Aphrodisias] learned and self-consistent, in Theophrastus seriously worked out, in Ammonius smooth and agreeable.
201. And if you turn to the Platonists, to mention but a few, in Porphyry you will be pleased by the wealth of his topics and the complexity of his religion; in Iamblichus you will be awed by an occult philosophy and the mysteries of the barbarians; in Plotinus there is no one thing in particular for you to admire, for he offers himself to admiration in every part, as the Platonists themselves take pains even in understanding his wisely allusive discourse, when he speaks divinely of things divine and far aloof humanity of human things.
202. I pass over the more recent ones, Proclus, abunding in Asian fertility, and those who stem from him, Hermias, Damascius, Olympiodorus, and many others, in all of whom that , that is, that divine something which is the distinctive mark of the Platonists, always shines out.
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203. It should be added that, if there is a school which attacks the more established truths and ridicules with calumny the valid arguments of reason, it strengthens rather than weakens the truth and, like a flame stirred by agitation, it excites rather than extinguishes it.
204. This is the reason which has moved me in wishing to call to the attention the opinions not only of a single doctrine (as some would have liked), but of every sort of doctrine, so that through the comparison of many schools and the discussion of several philosophies that "effulgence of truth'' which Plato mentions in his letters might shine more intensely to our minds, like a sun rising from the high.
205. What would have been the point of dealing only with the philosophy of the Latins, that is, of Albert, Thomas, Scotus, Giles, Francis and Henry, leaving /137r/ the Greek and Arab philosophers aside?
206. For all wisdom has flowed from the barbarians to the Greeks and from the Greeks to us.
207. So our authors have always thought it enough for them, in matters of philosophy, to rest on foreign discoveries and to cultivate the doctrines of others.
208. What would have been the point of dealing with natural things with the Peripatetics, without summoning the Academy of the Platonists, whose doctrine on divine things, as Augustine witnesses, has always been held the most sacred of all philosophies and now, as far as I now, has been brought forward by me for the first time after many centuries (may there be no envy in my words) to be submitted to public disputation?
209. And what would have been the point of dealing with the opinions of others, as many as they were, if like the one who comes to the banquet of the wise without contributing anything, I should bring nothing of mine, nothing produced and worked out by my own mind?
210. It is certainly undignifying, as Seneca says, to know only through the books and, as though the discoveries of our ancestors had closed the way to our own industry and the power of nature were exhausted in us, to bring about nothing from ourselves which, if it could not demonstrate the truth, might at least hint to it even from afar.
211. For if a farmer hates sterility in his field and a husband in his wife, certaily the divine mind the more will hate the barren soul which is joined and associated with itself, the more it expects from it a far nobler offspring.
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212. Hence I have not been content to add, beside the common doctrines, many principles taken from the ancient theology of Hermes Trismegistus, many more drawn from the teachings of the Chaldeans and of Pythagoras, and many others deriving from the more secret mysteries of the Jews, and I have also proposed for disputation a good many discoveries and reflections of my own both on things natural and divine.
§ 34 213. In the first place I have proposed the concord of Plato and Aristotle, believed by many before me, but adequately proved by no one. Among the Latins, Boethius promised to do it, but there is no evidence that he has ever done what he always wished to do.
214. Among the Greeks, Simplicius made the same declaration, but would that he had fulfilled his promise. 215. Agustine too writes that there were not a few Achademics who tried with their most subtle arguments to prove the same thing, namely, that the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle was the same.
216. John [Philoponos] the Grammarian likewise, although he says that Plato differs from Aristotle only for those who do not understand what Plato says, nevertheless left it to posterity to prove it.
217. I have also added many theses where I maintain that several statements by Thomas and Scotus which are thought to be discordant are in agreement, and many others where I maintain the same about statements by Averroes and Avicenna.
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218. In the second place, whoever holds not only the theses which I have discovered both in the Aritotelian and in the Platonic philosophy, but also the seventy-two new theses which I have proposed both in physics and in metaphysics (if I am not wrong, as will soon be clear to me) will be able to solve any question proposed about things natural and divine on a principle quite other than we are taught by that philosophy which is read in the schools and cultivated by the doctors of this age.
219. Nor it ought to induce so much to amazement that in my early years, at a tender age at which, as some contend, one is hardly permitted to read the works of others, I should wish to introduce a new philosophy, as much as it ought to induce either to praise if it is defensible, or to condemnation, if it is refutable, those who in the end, when they will judge of my discoveries and my learning, should reckon up not the years of their author, but rather their own merits or demerits.
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220. There is, beside this, still another way of philosophizing by means of numbers, which I have presented as new, but which is in fact old, and was observed by the ancient theologians, by Pythagoras in particular, by Aglaophamos, Philolaus and Plato, and by the earlier Platonists.
221. But in this age, this doctrine, like other famous ones, has so passed out of use by the carelessness of posterity, that hardly any traces of it are to be found.
222. Plato writes in the Epinomis that, among all liberal arts and contemplative sciences the science of number /137v/ is the chief and most divine.
223. And again, asking why man is the wisest of animals, he answers, "Because he knows how to number".
224. Aristotle also mentions this opinion in his Problems.
225. Abumasar writes that it was a saying of Avenzoar of Babylon that he who knows how to number knows all things.
226. These things could not possibly be true if they had understood by the art of number that art at which now the merchants are especially skilful. Also Plato witnesses this, when he openly warns us not to believe that this divine arithmetic be the arithmetic of the merchants.
227. Since it seemed to me, after long nights of study, that I had thoroughly examined that arithmetic which is so praised, in order to put these matters to a test, I promised that I would answer in public through the art of number to seventy-four questions which are considered among the most important in physics and divinity.
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228. I have also proposed some theses about magic, in which I have shown that there are two forms of magic, one of which depends entirely on the work and powers of demons and is, in my faith, an execrable and monstrous thing.
229. The other is, when keenly examined, nothing but the absolute perfection of natural philosophy.
230. The Greeks mentioned both of them, but they call the former * * * , by no means honouring it by the name of magic, wheres they call the latter by the proper and exclusive name of * * * , the perfect and highest wisdom, as it were.
231. As a matter fact, as Porphyry says, in the Persian language magus means the same as expert and interpreter of divine things with us.
232. So there is a great or even, Fathers, the greatest difference and disparity between these two arts.
233. The former is condemned and abhorred not only by the Christian religion, but by all laws and every well-constituted state.
234. The latter is approved and embraced by all wise men and all peoples devoted to heavenly and divine things.
235. The former is the most deceitful of arts, the latter is the highest and most holy philosophy. The former is sterile and vain, the latter is sure, reliable and firm.
236. The former has always been concealed by whoever has practised it, because it would have been shameful and ignominious to its author, whereas since antiquity the highest renown and glory of letters has almost always been expected from the latter.
237. No philosopher nor man eager to learn good arts has ever been studious the former, but to learn the latter Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato and Democritus crossed the seas, taught it when they returned and held it chief among the arcane doctrines.
238. The former is not based on any principles nor approved by any reliable author; the latter, ennobled as it were by most celebrated parents, has two authors above all: Zalmolxis, who was imitated by Abbaris the Hyperborean, and Zoroaster, not the one of whom perhaps you are thinking, but the son of Oromasius.
239. If we ask Plato what is the magic of both these men, he will answer in the Alcibiades that the magic of Zoroaster is nothing else than that science of divine things in which the kings of the Persians educated their sons, so that they might learn to rule their state on the example of the order of the universe.
240. And in the Charmides he will answer that the magic of Zamolxis is the medicine of the soul, or that medicine by which temperance is obtained for the soul, as by the other one health is obtained for the body.
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241. Afterwards Charondas, Damigeron, Apollonius, Osthanes and Dardanus persevered in their footsteps.
242. And so did Homer, who concealed this wisdom too, in the manner he concealed all the other ones, under the wanderings of his Ulysses, as I shall sometime prove in my Poetic Theology.
243. Eudoxus and Hermippus persevered.
244. And almost all who have examined closely the Pythagorean and Platonic mysteries have persevered.
245. Among the later philosophers, then, I find three who have scented it, the Arabian Al-Kindi, Roger Bacon and William of Paris.
246. Plotinus also mentions it, where he shows that a magus is the minister and not the maker of nature. That most wise man approves /138r/ and justifies this kind of magic, so abhorring the other that, invited to the rites of evil demons, he said that it was more fitting for them to come to him than for him to go to them, and rightly so.
247. For just as the former makes man a slave and pawn of wicked powers, the latter makes him their lord and master.
248. The former, in the end, cannot claim for itself the name of euther art or science, whereas the latter, full as it is of the loftiest mysteries, comprises the deepest contemplation of the most secret things and ultimately the knowledge of all nature.
249. The latter, in calling out, as it were, from their hiding places into the light the good powers scattered and sown in the world by the benevolent care of God, does not so much make miracles, as sedulously serve nature which makes them.
250. Having looked with deeper insight into that harmony of the universe, which the Greeks more expressively call , and having observed the mutual cognition that natures have of each other, this latter, by addressing to each thing its innate charms, which are called called the of the magicians, brings out into the open, as if it were itself the maker, the miracles lying hidden in the recesses of the world, in the womb of nature, in the mysterious storerooms of God, and, as the farmer marries elm to vine, so does the magus marry earth to heaven, that is, the lower things to the endowments and powers of the higher.
251. Hence it comes about that the former appears as monstrous and harmful, as the latter divine and salutary.
252. And chiefly because the former, in subjecting man to the enemies of God, drives him away from Him, whereas the latter prompts him to admire the works of God, so that most surely follow such charity, faith and hope that lean on Him.
253. For nothing induces us more to religion and the worship of God than the assiduous contemplation of His wonders, so that, should we have aptly examined them by means of this natural magic I am discussing, more ardently aroused to the worship and love of their maker, we would be forced to sing: "The heavens are full, all of the earth is full of the majesty of Thy glory."
254. But this is enough about magic and I have said this much about it because I know that there are many who, just as dogs always bark at strangers, so they hate too what they do not understand.