Physiological Introduction or Principles of the Human Body

as a bride, adorning You with the Ducal Cap. It always looked up to the highest gifts and virtues in You, worthy of the best Prince, by which it came to pass that You were such from the beginning as other Princes only promise themselves they will be in the future. I would be unjust to Your modesty and to public fame if I wished to recall each one to count them; for, even if they like to be hidden, they reveal themselves by their very splendor, which they have from the fact that they belong to great Princes, who, according to Seneca's saying, cannot remain hidden any more than the Sun, against which there is always much light. That which binds the minds of all to You above all others is that You cultivate Justice, the soul of the Republic, in such a way that You always intermingle the oils of Clemency with its balance or sword. As taught by the Roman prince of politics, Tacitus, nothing is as useful to those beginning a new empire as the reputation for Clemency. For just as (it is Thomas More’s sentiment) he is a most unskilled physician who knows not how to cure a disease except by causing a disease: so he who knows not how to correct the life of citizens except by removing the comforts of life, let him confess that he knows not how to rule over free men. And this was the subject of the most recent—and, by everyone’s wish, everlasting—joy: to have received a Prince differing in nothing from his Father, because he is good, because he is the best. But while I say "Father," the memory of my sweetest parent, Your Archiater Chief Physician, occurs to me, inspired by whose command and example I have dared to implore Your Most High Auspices: by command, for whom would he wish his own to be sacred, if not to Him whom he himself serves? By example, since soon at the first hour of Your most auspicious reign—a fact that he and all his contemplate with constant mind and with the greatest sense of joy—he drank first from the fountain of Your Graces, having the care of Your body most clemently entrusted to him.