To the Most Illustrious and Distinguished

JOHANNES BERCK,

A large decorative woodcut initial C features ornate scrollwork and botanical flourishes.

Since it is of great importance to the human race that those things should not perish which men outstanding in learning and wisdom have set forth in their records: then this holds true especially in the case of history. For, even if all literature were to perish, and all learning were blotted out from the very minds of men: posterity would not necessarily be forever deprived of the most beautiful knowledge of those things which pertain to the discipline of reason, or the nature of things, or the science of morals. Because there would nevertheless remain the wondrous structure of the world, and the society of mortals, and the human mind as the observer of both, which, from things