A decorative woodcut border at the top of the page consisting of a repeating pattern of stylized floral or heart-shaped foliage motifs.

THE PRINTER

Greetings to the Reader. original: "Lectoris. S." where S. stands for "Salutem," a standard Latin greeting wishing health.

A large decorative drop-cap 'M' with ornate floral and foliate scrolling patterns in the background.

Experience itself—that indispensable teacher in matters involving action or creation—teaches us that there is a vast difference between the skilled masters of any profession and the unskilled. For this reason, when we are about to build, we do not run to tailors or shoemakers; rather, we turn to stonemasons, carpenters, architects, and others knowledgeable in the crafts pertaining to that task. And conversely, when we intend to buy or commission clothes or shoes, we do not go to the builders, but to the former.

And although it might seem to those who do not pay close attention that this principle applies only to the mechanical arts manual trades or crafts involving physical labor, we believe—following the advice of learned men and having observed it quite clearly ourselves despite our modest intellect—that the same holds true in all other fields where the primary goal is either an action or the completion of a specific work. Of this very kind are the civil arts the science of politics and governance and the military arts, which were called by these names by the ancients for that very reason—