Preface

Knowledge is a great thing. Nothing is better in this life, because through it we are made happy, as Averroës Ibn Rushd, a 12th-century Andalusian philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle were foundational to medieval science. testifies in the prologue to the fourth book of Physics. Therefore, the author writes for the improvement of the present life, and he writes these things well for himself, because through wisdom, a man is rendered praiseworthy to God and to men.

When your favorable and gracious company asked me to more clearly reveal certain things which are hidden and secret regarding the nature and condition of women, having seen your petition, no laziness held me back from compiling a brief and concise little treatise once the material was obtained. But my small and youthful mind, which is drawn to other things according to its possibility and the opportunity of the time, nevertheless desiring to satisfy your appetite, I write to you this present letter. In it, you will find many things concerning what has been requested, written partly in a philosophical style and partly in a medicinal style, as seems appropriate to the subject matter. I have written this asking for your constancy, that you be steadfast and secretive in this work and business, and that you do not permit any boy—whether in age or in behavior—to come into its presence. If you do this, I promise to reveal more to you about these and other matters, and to transmit them with the present work and art for medicinal reasons, which I shall give more at length, the Lord permitting.

Here he shows the cause which could excuse him from the labor of this deed, and the meaning is clear from the text. Note that the author says that a youthful and small mind held him back, whereby he avoids arrogance; for a mind is called "small" when it is imbued with small conditions of knowledge. Hence the intellect is not properly small in itself, nor by accident, because the intellect is not extended by expansion nor by reduction. Note that appetite is twofold, namely natural and intellectual. Regarding the purpose, the text says "to the appetite," glossed as: "that is, to the natural intellect." Hence that priest The commentator here identifies the seeker as a priest or cleric. desired by natural appetite to know the natures of women. For men by nature desire to know, as stated in the first book of the Metaphysics Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book I.. Likewise, he desired it by intellectual appetite, because he saw the utility of knowing them.

As it is written in the second book of On the Generation of Animals Aristotle's work on biology and reproduction., generation is an eternal cycle. Moreover, the cause of eternity in the generation of ani—