D E D I C A T I O N

you have composed [these things] more swiftly than your rivals, distracted by their own schemes, could even notice; and finally, with such ardor for religion that you seem not to know how to do what you ought not to be able to do. Thus, even your enemies themselves repeat nothing more often than the gifts of your Name, in which everything conspires toward eternity, through a most noble command and an even nobler character. Nor should this seem strange to anyone: for Royal Minds possess divine impulses, such as Aristotle referring to the Greek philosopher's views on the 'heroic' or 'divine' soul in the Nicomachean Ethics writes existed in Heroes. Whoever would deny that such movements and instincts exist in You should be considered not so much an enemy to Your Glory as a foe to Divine Glory, and ungrateful toward both.

It is GOD, surely, it is GOD, who has given to You, Caesar original: "Cæsar"; here used as a title for the Emperor, established as you are in the Springtime of your life, a mind equal to providing for, undertaking, and perfecting so many affairs, for which human life would scarcely be sufficient even to attempt. You have Him as the author of the counsels to be taken, and Him as the leader and presiding authority for those to be executed; He casts light upon Your Mind in doubtful and perplexed matters, so that you seem not so much to judge wisely regarding uncertainties, but rather to foresee future events with a certain prophetic mind. Since, therefore, you possess such a fullness of Knowledge; certainly You alone were to be chosen as the Guardian to read this, my Art of Knowing original: "Sciendi Artem"; likely the title or subject of the treatise,