Nine Books on the Nature of Things

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.