TO THE READER.

...to defraud the industry of the mind of a posterity that, having followed through so many aids of a later age, will have more successfully performed those things where Gilbert’s labor—chaste indeed, but perhaps not everywhere reaching its goal (as we are a race prone to slip, especially in things confidently p? risked original Greek: ἀποκεκινδυνωμένοις, referring to bold or hazardous intellectual ventures)—might have failed. I raise one doubt which I do not untangle, and if it is of such great importance, I leave it to be unraveled by more fortunate conjecturers, and by those more instructed by that reading of Gilbert by which he has long been public: namely, whether this Physiology Physiology: In this period, the term referred generally to "natural philosophy" or the study of the physical world and its laws, rather than just biology, or his books On the Magnet (which won unanimous approval original: omne punctum, a Latin idiom for "every vote" among men of the most refined judgment, such as Galileo and others) were composed first. I seem to have gathered no slight evidence for these discussions about nature which might suggest the former, yet I also have reason to be more inclined toward the other side; thus, with my assent suspended, since I am permitted to determine nothing, I am forced to withhold judgment to withhold judgment: The editor uses the Greek term ἐπέχειν (epéchein), a core concept in Skeptic philosophy regarding the suspension of belief when evidence is balanced.

But leaving those matters aside, let my discourse return to its purpose. Although I do not interpose my own judgment on the physical treatise original Greek: πραγματείᾳ which we now provide—deferring instead to the one who will engage in these speculations and who greedily and candidly studies nature original Greek: φυσιολογοῦντι—nevertheless, I do not wish to hide this fact: this work was formerly read in manuscript by great men of most celebrated fame, who do not deign to spend their literary leisure on worthless writings. It was, unless I am mistaken, read from a more correct copy than those which have reached us, since [to read the current ones would] fatigue the patience and tor[ture] the wit...