Manuscripts for Friends of Secret Sciences

P r e f a c e .

...rare works, delivering into their hands what
envy and resentment kept buried for
centuries; if I have finally done even more
for the benefit of my fellow human beings,
for their reflection and personal well-being.
In this, I make no claim to
praise from those for whom these writings
are not intended, and I counter their criticism
with a stoic indifference that
will not be swayed by anything.
Accustomed to always saying straight out
what I think and what I intend to say,
I am neither a hypocrite nor capable of
speaking differently than I feel, or of writing
something of whose opposite I am convinced.
One should not be surprised, therefore, if one
hears me speak more than once in a tone
unlike that of the Enlightenment: The "Aufklärung" was an intellectual movement of the 18th century emphasizing reason and individualism over tradition. The author here positions himself against the more dismissive, skeptical side of this movement., as is now the custom;
if I do not immediately declare as nonsense
what I do not understand, or consider foolishness
what I do not grasp, and call everything
impossible, untrue, and an absurdity
simply because I myself was not
able to replicate it immediately.
I do not deny that I am, if not an
antipode: A person who holds a diametrically opposed view; literally, someone living on the opposite side of the globe. in thought to many of today’s physicists,
then certainly so in the openness
with which I state my opinions;
I have never actually devoted myself to alchemy,
nor to the arts that people are
accustomed to calling the secret sciences;