On Automata, or Self-Moving Machines

-tion, as was said, the pneumatics; the stationary self-movers somewhat greater; the mobile self-movers then the greatest. From the industry required to bring these things to completion, a marvel reveals itself to me, and it is this: that according to , those arts are most ingenious, and consequently noble, which more employ and less the body; and such being the nature of these—namely, that their artisans, above all others, avail themselves of the and less of the body—yet for all that, they are esteemed vile and persons of no account. The cause, in my opinion, is this: that as the persons who attend to them are for the most part plebeian, of abject mind, , and entirely given to the sordidness of gain, the matters treated by them become in a certain way affected by this, and lose that reputation which their own perfection ought to bring them. And this happens just as it does to mathematics and the art of medicine, of which—though the former among the , in the judgment of the best philosophers, is greatly noble, and the latter among the arts deserves the first place—nevertheless, it seems that among the people they have lost in part their natural splendor since , , , and other infamous and folk began to mistreat them. This has caused the word , which to Greek ears sounded with the honored title of inventor and maker of machines, to signify nothing else to the people of this time, and particularly the Italians, except a vile , abject, vulgar, and sordid person. Although others might perhaps say that this arose from the error made by ignorant persons, who, without distinguishing between the and the manual laborer, have given the name of to the manual laborer himself; as happens when they call those infamous reciters of comedies who go about, giving