206 



BOOK XX. 



REMEDIES DERIVED FROM THE GARDEN PLANTS. 



CHAP. 1. INTRODUCTION. 



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, 1 and to compel him to admit that he is 

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

 the apparent triviality of the names which we shall 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 " antipathia," we are in- 

 debted for the first principles 2 of all things ; for hence it is that 

 water has the property of extinguishing fire, that the sun 

 absorbs water, that the inoon 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 3 possesses the property of at- 



1 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, the art of 

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

 have originally intended to place the Eighteenth Book after the present 

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

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

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

 the nutritive qualities 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 Pliny to be the true key to a just appreciation of 

 their utility. 2 " Quibus cuncta constant." See B. xxiv. c. 1. 



3 See B." xxxiv. c. 42. 



