Silence After the Clamors

For since there is such a variety of human speculation, it very rarely receives the vote of approval from experience, which is the cause of the vanity of many arts introduced by the ingenuity of men. For an example, let there be the art of liver-divination original: "aruspicina" and the art of augury and those which depend on the changing of leaves of fortune. Although the true axioms of the arts were discovered from the beginning and were instructed by precepts or rules leading to a certain end, it nonetheless often happens that through the passage of time and the variety of wits, they arrive at abuse or a depraved sense, or are distorted so that they are very far from nature and never conform to the properties latent in its bosom. Whence such arts scarcely ever achieve their prefixed end, except by fortuitous chance. For just as gold in its own nature is homogeneous and pure, but through continuous use acquires heterogeneous impurities by which it is obscured and hindered from its natural splendor, so too sciences are in themselves pure and accommodated to their axioms and correspond to the end, but the luxury of the minds of those reading or using them—that is, interpreting them according to their own