PREFACE.

The subject of this book is mobile being, contracted to the nature of the secrets of women, so that when they are infirm, we may be able to provide remedies, and when they confess, we may know how to assign the penances due for their offenses. It is divided first into two parts, namely the introductory and the executive. The executive part begins where it is written, "As it is written," etc. First, the author greets the person to whom he is writing, saying:

I, Albertus, dwelling in Paris, to his beloved companion and friend in Christ.
Here the efficient, moving, and moved cause is touched upon. The moving cause was a certain priest who asked Lord Albertus to write for him a book on the secrets of women. And this is because women are poisonous at the time of their menstrual flow, such that they intoxicate animals by their gaze, infect infants in their cradles, stain a well-polished mirror, and sometimes make the man who has intercourse with them become leprous, and sometimes cancerous. And because an evil is not avoided unless it is known, it is therefore necessary for those wishing to abstain to understand the impurity of intercourse, and many other things which are taught in this book. And thus, Albertus, seeing that he asked justly, consented to him, and thus the efficient cause is touched upon. The "moved" cause is when it is said, "I write," etc. Wisdom is the knowledge of God and of eternal effects. And therefore the philosopher says in the preface to the Metaphysics, "Of God, there is not properly science." There is nothing better in this life than this, because through it we are happy, as Averroes attests in the prologue to the fourth book of the Physics. Therefore, the author writes for an increase of the present life, and he writes these things to him well, because...