Ocellus Lucanus: On the Nature of the Universe

Thus men [are] not as inhabitants and residents, but as if spectators of things above and celestial, the sight of which pertains to no other kind of living creature; and as Seneca says: "I give thanks to the nature of things then, when I see her not
Nat. q. l. 1

from this side which is public, but when I have entered her more secret places." When we have reached these by noble labor, who would doubt that that part of philosophy is also to be sought after which strives to promote civil matters
Philo Iud De Ioseph

skillfully? "For civil government among peoples is an addition to the nature of the world which is linked to all things" (for civil administration, which peoples use, is an addition to the nature of things).

Division & order

This exceptional work I have divided into a physical and a political part by a new sectioning, so that each person might apply himself with less labor to that part which his own genius required; and so, by diminishing the Reader’s labor, I might fail less against the public convenience. Since the first text provides the most abundant occasion for handing down the order and division of the parts, I shall exhibit it there depicted as if in a very brief synopsis of the work.

Proportion.

No proportion is to be sought in this work; for if this be required in a complete work, the series of parts handed down here in the first text will show it; but if anyone should inquire into that [proportion] which the book maintains with other similar ones, from which a perfect body of some science thereafter coalesces, it is excluded from here, as long as this little work does not contribute a part to another work, as indeed the book of Physics expounded by Averroes excelled, which constituted the principal part of the natural science written by Aristotle.

The path of doctrine.

The author proposes the path of doctrine in the first text of chapter 1, since he professes to have confirmed his dogmas both by inspecting the works of nature and by applying mature reasoning—a path which the things handed down there will confirm as the only one becoming a true philosopher.

The name of the book.

Ocellus entitled the book On the Nature of the Universe (περὶ τῆς τοῦ παντός φύσεως), which...