Commentary on the First and Second Chapters of the Thirtieth Book of the Natural History of Gaius Plinius Secundus

and affected arts, which this Pliny calls most imperial: that is, Physics, Metaphysics, and Astrology. Magic, therefore, is the consummation of all natural philosophy, provided that all speculative philosophy is usually divided into Physics, Metaphysics, and Astrology. Thus Magic, which is the active portion of natural science, contains them and has gathered into itself these most imperial arts. For Physics teaches the nature of those things which are in the world, and the causes, locations, effects, times, modes, integrities, and parts of others, and it solicits and attentively examines how many species of things there are: what are called elements, and as the Poet says:

, What heat achieves: what earth: what humus and air:
, What they generate: whence the beginnings of the great heaven:
, Whence the flux of the sea, or the rainbow with its various colors:
, What makes the clamorous thunder return, and the orbs:
, What secret torches by night, what cause brings forth
, The Comets: and what blind power shakes
, The swollen lands: what are the seeds of gold, what of iron,
, And the whole ingenious force of hidden nature.

Magic likewise embraces Metaphysics, which teaches us to know and examine nature extended into three dimensions, likewise to contemplate the progress of celestial things, and as the Poet says:

, Where the arduous stars are snatched by rapid motion:
, What forces the darkening Moon to grow dim at times:
, By what path the golden Sun rules the World, measured
, In certain parts, through the twelve stars of the world.

All of which are distinguished through Metaphysics: Hence we can predict tempests from a doubtful sky: Hence the day of harvest and the time for sowing. Magi also say that Magic embraces Astrology, which teaches: what the mind is: what a Demon is: what the soul is: what religion is: what sacred rites, observances, shrines, faith, and observations are: what, finally, is the virtue of words, and what miracles are, and as Apuleius says: It teaches us to collect the laws: the right of religions and the holiness of sacred rites. These are indeed the three arts which Pliny calls most imperial: and which Magic (I speak of natural [magic]) has gathered into itself.