AD LECTOREM.

...it will send and return the uncertain seeker through the twists and multiple deceptions of the paths into the inner sanctuaries and penetralia of the art, or, like a sure guiding star, will direct and station the wanderer on the marine waves to a happy port. Even if it does not demonstrate what the individual and infallible species of that matter is (which is alien to all reason), it nevertheless proposes very clearly what it is not, and many other things observed by us, which to a novice are otherwise incredible and not sufficiently explored, with this caution: lest anyone fall at the beginning into those multiple and fruitless digressions of labor, or, if he has fallen, know by what signs he may maturely turn his foot back, and seek other entrances into this Labyrinth, so that he may at last joyfully find the most welcome exit or desired end. For he who does not know what he is seeking does not know what he will find, and he who errs at the beginning will never reach the middle, much less the ends, since error begets and multiplies error.