The Various and Ingenious Machines

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PREFACE.

under the power of our eyes, because the height of such difficult things obscures the light of our spirits, just as the splendor of the clear Sun dazzles the eyes of tenebrous bats. But if something is confirmed with reason by the Mathematicians in Geometry or Arithmetic, we esteem that as assured as if it were spoken by the oracle of Apollo. From there, one sees that just as the Mathematical sciences are of very great importance, as much for administering public and private affairs as for making our spirit perfect, so one cannot imagine anything more honest, nor more useful, nor more necessary to the human race than the Mathematical disciplines, since the other sciences, after the creation of the world, discovered their use with the long succession of time. But this Mechanical art itself, from the very beginning of the world, was so necessary to men that if it had been taken away, it would have seemed as if the light of the sun were extinguished from the world. And to begin with Adam, the first father of the human generation, all the means and industry he used to safeguard his life from earthly necessities by fabricating small houses covered with straw, and raising small roofs to defend himself from the inclemency of the sky, the intemperature of the air, the injuries of time, and many inconveniences of the earth, or to cover his body with diverse and poor clothing to ward off the rains and avoid the great impetuosity of the winds, the fervent ardor of the Sun, and the bitterness of the cold; all that proceeded from the Mechanical art. To this art, that which is accustomed to happen to the winds does not happen; winds which, exiting with very great vehemence from the deep centers where they are born, and with their furious force splitting mountains, opening the earth, breaking thick walls, felling high towers, and submerging great ships in the great sea, little by little weakened and enfeebled lose their course, and then vanish. But this often happens to great rivers, which, being small at their source and growing continually by many