who is the seeker? If it is driven, who is the
driver? If it moves of its own accord, it gives evidence of reasoning;
and reasoning in bodies which continually change their shape is
impossible, because in such bodies there is no consciousness.

[Sidenote: Against Occult Sciences]

99.

I wish to work miracles. I may have less than other and less energetic
men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great
poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to
make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still {180}
water to obtain life and perpetual motion, and to the supreme
fool,--the necromancer and the magician.

[Sidenote: Of Astrology]

100.

There is no part of astronomy which does not depend on the visual lines
and on perspective, the daughter of painting; because the painter is he
who by the necessity of his art has begotten perspective, and it is
impossible to do without lines which include all the various figures of
the bodies begotten by nature and without which the art of geometry is
blind. And while the geometrist reduces every surface surrounded by
lines to a square, and each body to the figure of the cube, and
mathematics do the same with their cube roots and square roots, these
two sciences deal only with the continuous and discontinuous quantity,
but they do not deal with the quality which constitutes the beauty of
the works of nature and the ornament of the world.

101.

Here the adversary will say that he does not want so much knowledge,
and the mere skill of depicting nature will suffice him. To which I
make reply that there is no greater error than to trust to our
judgement without other reasoning, as experience, the enemy of
alchemists, necromancers and other foolish intellects, has in all times
proved.

{181}

[Sidenote: Against Alchemists]

102.

The lying interpreters of nature affirm that quicksilver is the common
seed of all metals. They do not bear in mind that nature raises
substances according to the diversity of things which she wishes to
produce in the world.

[Sidenote: Against Necromancy]

103.

The belief in necromancy is reputed to be the most foolish of all human
opinions. It is the sister of alchemy which gives birth to simple and
natural things; but it is all the more reprehensible than alchemy,
inasmuch as it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is,
lies. This is not the case wi