Secret of Secrets

cited by Joannes Mesue in the chapter on diseases of the eyes, and by Hali in his book on the Secret of Secrets; therefore we believe it was his.

And even if it had not been edited by Aristotle, it should nonetheless be embraced with no less zeal. Second [point].

From that common saying of Aristotle in the Ethics—"Socrates is a friend, Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater friend"—we can elicit that sentiment of Seneca, that one ought to attend not to who speaks, but to what is said, which even the Divine Plato pronounced before both of them in the Phaedrus. If this is true (to omit the aspects of the planets, the division of times, the certain wondrous virtues of plants and stones, the doctrine of waging war and governing, the knowledge of Physiognomy, the most secret secret of secrets, and many other things which are declared in this book), since it is established in this golden volume that a sound mind should be held in a sound body, and even if Aristotle had never existed, who would be sorry to read, reread, learn, and even commit to memory such a great work?

That no one ought to be turned away from the reading of this book, even if certain things not sufficiently sincere are found therein. Third [point].

Nor should it deter anyone from reading the book that he will find some things therein which could offer scandal to a faithful Christian; for what book of the Gentiles is there that could not harm in some way? Indeed, many things are found in the books of Galen, Alexander, Averroes, Aristotle, and even Plato that might cause scandal—nay, that are most openly repugnant to our true faith—and yet they are not for this reason left unread by the most religious and even most holy men. Rather, one ought to imitate the little bee, which, flying to every flower and to every shrub, leaving behind what is harmful, extracts only that which is conducive to the making of honey; this is what the Divine Jerome confirms, writing to Damasus, saying: the type of this wisdom (he was surely speaking of the doctrine of the Gentiles) is also described in Deuteronomy under the figure of the captive woman, about whom the divine voice commands that if the Israelite wishes to have her as a wife, he should make her bald, cut her nails, and remove her hair, and when she has been made clean, then she may pass into the embraces of the victor. If we understand these things according to the letter, are they not ridiculous? And so, we also are accustomed to do this when we read the philosophers, when books of secular wisdom come into our hands. If we find anything in them useful, we convert it to our dogma; if anything, however, is superfluous—concerning idols, love, or the care of secular things—we scrape these away, we induce baldness upon them, we cut them away like nails with the sharpest iron.