TO THE READER.

Truly, in this undertaking of ours, I have never realized more clearly the truth of that saying of Lucretius:

Just as wave is driven by wave,

So do various efforts agitate restless minds.

original: "Velut unda truditur unda / Sic varia exagitant tumidas molimina mentes." Although Kircher attributes this to Lucretius, the first line is famously from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Kircher uses it to describe the constant flow of intellectual labor.

A five-year period has now slipped away, benevolent Reader, since we published the work entitled THE GREAT ART of Light and Shadow, in which we presented—according to the modest measure of our talent—everything that could be related to Sight and the perception of visible things, the theory and benefit of shadows, which is to say, the Science of Vision, organized with an innumerable variety of subjects. Since I understood that this Work was received by the Republic of Letters with no unfavorable eye, a desire to always prepare new things immediately took hold of my mind, which was already pregnant with foreign ideas. That is, a most burning desire invaded me to treat the Acousticon The science or instrument of hearing, the companion of Sight, or the "workshop of hearing," with an equal depth of argument and an equal wealth and abundance of material.

Indeed, having established a certain parallel comparison, I discovered a remarkable affinity between Light and Shadow and Consonance and Dissonance. I found that light is nothing other than a certain Consonance to the eyes, while shadow is a certain Dissonance to them; yet from the mixture of both, there is born that exquisite fitness and remarkable harmony intended by Nature in the World. Therefore, it was not so difficult for my "laboring" mind Kircher uses the metaphor of childbirth ("parturienti ingenio") for the creative process to apply all the hidden mysteries of Light and Shadow to Consonance and Dissonance through a certain analogy. But as for the method and means of exhausting the difficulties that arose: here is Rhodes, here is the leap.
original: "hic Rhodus, hic Saltus." A Latin idiom derived from Aesop's fables, meaning "here is the proof" or "now show us what you can do." It signifies the point where theory must meet the test of reality.

For the science of sound has boundaries no less extended than those of light, and possesses retreats and recesses of its "phylacteries" Here used to mean secret cases or protective containers of knowledge that are utterly hidden and hitherto inaccessible. To overcome these, I can hardly say what incredible labors had to be exhausted, or how much sweat was required to resolve this subtle and arduous faculty into its genuine principles. Nevertheless, a great and tireless impulse of the soul and an innate propensity for searching out such treasures of hidden nature overcame every labor. Because of this, I have left nothing unattempted, nothing unexplored, so that I might finally reach my conceived goals.

I have therefore occupied myself with a work in ten parts (which, following a certain analogy to Light and Shadow, we call the Great Art of Consonance and Dissonance, or Universal Music-making), in which, as if on a well-ordered ten-stringed instrument decachord, we display the origin and propagation of sounds and the remarkable variety emanating from them. This present Organ Kircher envisions the book itself as a complex musical instrument, constituted at last from Consonances and Dissonances, has emerged, marvelous in the arrangement of its registers; we place it here before the eyes of the curious Reader in these ten books. So that you may thoroughly perceive our intent, we have thought it best to place here the Plan Idea of the entire Work.

Since, therefore, to perfectly distinguish the innermost recesses of phonosophy Kircher's term for the "wisdom of sound," combining the Greek 'phone' (sound) and 'sophia' (wisdom) and to build the high structure of the musical Encyclopedia with foundations of equal depth, it would be difficult to proceed without a perfect knowledge of the acoustic and vocal organs; hence, before all else, a "living anatomy" of said organs had to be attempted by us. We sought to discover to what end provident Nature ordained so many passages in the ear, so many bones, so many cartilages, so many pathways for sound and voice; and with what intention she arranged so many nerves and muscles in the larynx as the progenitors of sound and voice; from which that great [variety] of sou-