Silence After the Clamors

acknowledges hidden lurking places, in which it hides whatever it willed to be removed from the vulgar eye or left untouched by the hand, not as the greedy and envious are accustomed to do, out of the stimulus of vice, but to add a spur to the slow and the lazy toward virtue: namely, that which is abstruse should be sought, that which is found should be held in price, and that which is precious should be hidden. For just as things which lie open before our feet are generally ungrateful unless they are seasoned by rarity, so those which lie in the hidden are accustomed to be accepted unless they have increased in frequency, not always with respect to the essences of each thing, but also due to the inconstancy of minds and the appetite for novelty. Very many things lie hidden in the center of the earth, or in the caverns of mountains, buried on the shore and bottom of the Ocean, sea, or rivers, which are valued at a great price when they are rarer to find, whereas if they were had in number like sand, they would be valued the same as sand. But it is the task of the Philosopher not only to search these things, which are commonly sought, but also those, indeed rather those, which are hidden in other species of nature, whether these be to the common eye, or not: Who has ever sufficiently...