Dedication to Johann Winckelsteiner

Latin witness: Frankfurt 1605, printed pp. 198–199, SUB Göttingen PPN578052199. Source facsimile: https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/id/PPN578052199?tify=%7B%22pages%22%3A%5B182%5D%7D

Theophrastus Paracelsus sends greetings to the honourable and discerning Johann Winckelsteiner of Fribourg, his intimate friend and dearest brother.

My intimate friend and dearest brother, it is right that I should answer the friendly and persistent requests with which you have approached me in your frequent letters. In your latest letter you ask most earnestly and courteously that I visit you once more, if I can conveniently do so. I cannot conceal from you that many obstacles prevent this. As for your other request, that I give you the good and clear instruction you are owed, I neither wish nor am able to refuse you; I am bound to oblige you in this. I know your good disposition very well. I also know that you gladly hear and see anything new and remarkable in this art, that you have spent much of your substance on the arts, and that you have devoted the greater part of your life’s course to them, and so on. Since you have shown me both goodwill and a brother’s fidelity, I cannot rightly forget your loyalty and kindness. I am bound to be grateful and, if perhaps I never see you again in person, to leave a brother’s farewell to you and yours as a remembrance of me. Here I shall not only answer the questions on which you consulted me and sought my help as a brother, giving you clear instruction; I shall also dedicate to you a separate book concerning them. I shall call it On the Nature of Things and divide it into nine short books. In this book all your requests are answered, and more than you asked of me.

You will nevertheless be greatly astonished at this, and perhaps seriously doubt whether everything is as I describe it here. Do not do so. Believe instead that these are practical matters arising from experience, rather than speculations and theories. Although I have not tried everything myself, I have received and tested these things from others and through others, and I know them by experience and by the light of nature.

Everything written here has been tested.

If in some places you do not sufficiently understand what I mean, and want a fuller explanation of one or more procedures, write to me privately. I shall explain the matter more clearly and give you sufficient instruction and understanding. Yet I believe this will be unnecessary, and that you will understand well enough without it, since I know how richly God has endowed you with skill in the arts and good judgement. Besides, you know my disposition and meaning; you will therefore understand me readily and easily. I fully hope, and do not doubt, that you will value the present work and cherish what has been entrusted to you, as it deserves. You will not publish it at all, but keep it a close secret for yourself and your family. It is indeed a hidden and great treasure, a noble jewel and a precious thing, which must not be thrown before swine—that is, sophists and people who despise all good natural arts and secrets. Such people do not deserve even to read them, much less to possess, know and understand them. Though this little book is very small and contains few, brief words, it is full of many great arcana. I shall write here from practice, from the light of nature and experience itself, rather than from speculation or theory; I shall not burden or weary you with many words, and so on.

Therefore, dearest friend and intimate brother, since I have written this little book out of love for you alone and for nobody else, I ask you to preserve it as something precious and secret. Keep it with you until your death, and before you die entrust it in the same way to your children or heirs, so that they too retain the book in secret. I particularly ask this of them as well: let it remain only within your family. Never let it become so widely known that it falls into the hands of sophists and mockers, who despise and bitterly slander everything that does not agree with them. They are pleased only with what is their own, as fools always are: they like only their own club and their own little bells, and nobody else’s, and they hate all wisdom. In their own minds they therefore think little of all wisdom, regarding it as folly greater than their own, because it does them no good and they do not know how to use it. Just as one craftsperson does not know how to handle another’s tools, no fool can wield any weapon better than his own club, nor is any sound sweeter to his ears than the ringing of his own bells.

Entrusting the book.

Dearest brother, then, take this faithful counsel as I have asked you, and do what I hope of you. In this way you will act rightly and well. Farewell in God’s protection. Dated at Villach in the year 1537.