PRÆFATIO.

I affirm; one will easily conjecture what great riches would be supplied to those who had the knowledge of extracting it, since those regions are filled with such rocks. For in stones which are turned into lime by combustion (which one could easily effect even without wood, using only dried turf or coal), saltpeter hides itself just as abundantly as in wood and other vegetables, and beyond the knowledge of extracting it in that manner, nothing else is desired.

If a harsh and wild region of that kind, in which nothing grows, were placed upon the philosophical balance the "philosophical scale" of alchemical comparison alongside another most fertile one, the former, hiding such great treasures in its stones and earth, would overcome the latter with easy effort and carry off the prize. Therefore, there is no reason why anyone should complain before God: the small one overcomes the slowness of the great and tall with its speed. The weak opposes the sharpness of its intellect to the forces of the stronger. The poor man enjoys quiet and patiently endures his harder circumstances. The wealthy man, on the contrary, is consumed by cares; which is also to be understood in this way regarding other living creatures. Everyone, by considering these things properly, will understand and notice that God has satisfied everyone everywhere, and there is no creature that can institute a just complaint.

It is reported of the region of Peru in America that it is enriched by the most wealthy silver mountain of Potosí, situated in a tract of the same region, which, encompassing fifty German miles in circumference, denies every opportunity of growth to any vegetables by its very cold air, and yet it has acquired such fame and such great power for the riches of that mountain that the city founded there abounds in the best wine, grain, sugar, and other necessary things of that kind, and in size and the structure of its buildings it barely yields to any city of all Germany, and it owes this happiness solely to the said mountain.