Cornelius Agrippa - The Life Of Henry Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim, Doctor And Knight, Commonly Known As A Magician - Vol I The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim, Doctor and Knight, Commonly Known As a Magician

PREFACE. THIS narrative completes a design, upon the execu- tion ofwhich many hours of recreation have been occu- pied. It was not intended to produce an indefinite series of the Lives of Scholars of the Sixteenth Century, but it was thought possible, by help of the free speech about themselves, common tomen of genius in that age, for the lives of three men to be written, in whose histories there might be shown, with a minuteness perhaps not unim- portant to the student or uninteresting to the miscellaneous reader, what the life of a scholar was in the time of the revival of learning and the reformation of the Church. These biographies it never was proposed to unite under a common title each, it was felt, must make or miss its own way in the world. They are, no doubt, the issue of a single purpose, but they are not necessary to each other, and there is no reason why the possessor of one should possess all, or incur the penalty of owning a book marked as a fragment on the title-page or cover. It may be convenient, however, to some readers, and will be certainly a satisfaction to the writer, briefly to in- dicate what the intention was that has been carried out as well as power served in the writing of the trilogy of lives now brought to a conclusion. It was desired that of the three lives each should be in itself worth telling, and in itself an addition of some new and well-authenticated matter to the available stores of minute information that give colour and life to history. It was desired that they should treat not of political heroes, but of scholars, living in the same age of the world, although no two of the same country. It was desired, too, that they should be not onlyrepresentatives of separate nations of Europe, but also of separate and absolutely different careers of study. Palissy was a Frenchman, with the vivacity, taste, and inventive power commonly held to be characteristic of his nation Cardan was an Italian, with Italian passions but Agrippa was a contemplativeGerman, According even to the vulgar notion, therefore, they were characteristic men. Palissy was by birth a peasant Cardan belonged to the middle class Agrippa was the son of noble parents, born lo live a courtiers life. All became scholars. Palissy learnt of God and nature and however men despised his know- ledge, his advance was marvellous upon theunknown paths of truth he was the first man of his age as a true scholar, though he had heaven and earth only for his books. No heed was paid to the scholarship of Bernard Palissy, but the civilised world rang with the fame of the great Italian physician, who had read and written upon almost everything, Jerome Cardan. Hamperedby a misleading scholar- ship, possessed by the superstitions ofhis time, bounddown by the Church, Cardan, with a natural wit as acute as that of Palissy, became the glory of his day, but of no day succeeding it. The two men are direct opposites, as to their methods and results of study. In a strange place of hisown between them stands Agrippa, who began his life by mastering nearly the whole circle of the sciences and arts as far as books described it, and who ended by de- claring the Uncertainty and Vanity ofArts and Sciences. The doctrine at which he arrived was that, in brief, fruit- ful must be the life of a Palissy, barren the life of a Cardan since for the worlds progress it is needful that men shake offslavery to all scholastic forms, and travel forward with a simple faith in God, inquiring the way freely...