DEDICATION.

...surely unusual kind of benefit, by which you most generously granted me the fixed and regular duties of practicing Medicine original: "Medicinæ facicundæ." This refers to his official license or appointment to practice medicine within the city of Frankfurt. in Your City, has daily spurred me toward expressing and returning thanks. It has bound me, however reluctant I might be, to enter into a just accounting of some public token of my devoted respect and of a soul that owes its loyalty to your names, and thus to strive to offer a sacrifice of a grateful mind. Furthermore, since many subjects in this most vast Kingdom of Nature original: "Naturæ Regno." A common early modern term for the natural world as a realm of divine order and study.

DEDICATION.

offered themselves as arguments, and were abundantly commended not only by their usefulness but also by their delight; I had intended to pluck certain most fragrant flowers from their innumerable abundance and, in the manner of the Ancients, to scatter them at the thresholds of Your houses, Greatest Patrons. Yet I know not by what chance, while I was fixed in these thoughts, Eirenaeus Philalethes A famous, though pseudonymous, 17th-century alchemist whose identity was a mystery at the time; he is now usually identified as the American-born George Starkey. The name is Greek for "peaceful lover of truth." occurred to me. He was an Englishman, and one especially skilled in those more secret writings original: "literis secretioribus." This refers to alchemical or hermetic literature, which was often called the "Secret Philosophy." that probe the hidden things of nature—a glory which is characteristic of that nation Faust is complimenting the English for their perceived excellence in the "secret" sciences of alchemy and chemistry during this period.