New Philosophy of Our Sublunary World

progress, the art of Arithmetic came into the light, and at the same time the foundations of Geometry were laid: a little later, methods for keeping time original: temporum habitae rationes; refers to the development of calendars were established, and several observations of Astronomy were initiated. Much later, however, the principles of things were debated and disputed in various ways through the kingdoms of the Assyrians, Persians, and Egyptians—lands favored by a certain exceptional fertility and by the very convenient access provided by their rivers and ports. As soon as that ancient and perverse liberty (which nowadays we observe in certain untamed indigenous peoples The author is likely referring to the "New World" indigenous populations being encountered by Europeans at the time of writing.) was suppressed by the tyranny of strong men and the conquest of peoples, those empires were indeed established in which the arts necessary for cultivating civil life began to be investigated. And so, from here and there, wisdom grew among mortals as if by steps, and honor was established for the wise who inquired into the causes of divine and human things; such as the Magi among the Persians, the Chaldeans among the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Gymnosophists literally "naked philosophers," a term used by Greeks for Indian ascetics and yogis among the Indians, the Priests among the Egyptians, the Prophets among the Jews, the Druids among the Britons and Gauls, and the Philosophers among the Greeks. Finally, their minds began to be gripped by various cares and reflections—once they had noticed that the whole nature of things, situated upon the globe of the earth, was destined for perpetual mutations—concerning by what principles, or by what causes, the world (perpetually propagated through its individual members) would never entirely grow old, but instead, day by day, new faces of things would succeed the old, and the whole would be adorned by a continuous succession.

CHAPTER II.

The law of nature, common to us and our first parents, by which—with a guiding spirit original: genio; refers to a personal guiding spirit or innate nature showing the way to each good person—to well