206 



BOOK XX. 



REMEDIES DEPwIVED FROM THE GARDEN PLANTS. 



CHAP. I. — INTfiODUCTION. 



We are now about to enter upon an examination of the greatest 

 of all the operations of Nature — we are about to discourse to 

 man upon his aliments,^ and to compel him to admit that he is 

 ignorant by what means he exists. And let no one, misled bj'' 

 the apparent triviality of the names which we sliall have to 

 employ, regard this subject as one that is frivolous or con- 

 temptible : for we shall here have to set forth the state of peace 

 or of war which exists between the various departments of 

 Nature, the hatreds or friendships which are maintained by 

 objects dumb and destitute of sense, and all, too, created — a 

 wonderful subject for our contemplation ! — for the sake of man 

 alone. To these states, known to the Greeks by the respec- 

 tive appellations '' sympathia" and ''autipathia," we are in- 

 debted for the first principles" of all things ; for hence it is that 

 water has the property of extinguishing fire, that the sun 

 absorbs water, that the moon produces it, and that each of 

 those heavenly' bodies is from time to time eclipsed by the 

 other. 



Hence it is, too, descending from the contemplation of a 

 loftier sphere, that the loadstone^ possesses the property of at- 



^ Fee remarks, that the commencement of this exordium is contrary to 

 truth, and that Pliny appears to forget that in the Eighteenth Book he 

 has treated, at very considerable length, of the various cereals, tlie art of 

 preparing bread, pottages, ptisans. &c. He suggests, that the author may 

 liave originally intended to place the Eighteenth Hook after the present 

 one, and tliat on changing his plan he may have neglected to alter the pre- 

 sent passage. Froui his mention, however, of man's "ignorance by what 

 means he exists," it is not improbable that he may have considered that 

 the nutritive qualiti(;s of plants are really based upon their medicinal vir- 

 tues, a point of view little regarded by the majority of mankind in his 

 time, but considered by Plinv to be the true key to a just api)reciatiou of 

 their utility. - " Quibus cuncta constant." See ii. xxiv. c. 1. 



» See 13. xxxiv. c. 42. 



