TV. ANTHROPOLOGY 



THE GENERATION OF MAN 



'All that Aristoteles and his followers have written 

 about the generation of man, is not based upon observa- 

 tion or reading within the light of nature ; but consists 

 merely of theories which they have invented and elabo- 

 rated with a great deal of cunning and trouble. It is 

 merely phantastry and devoid of truth ; for although the 

 light of nature has not refused them anything, it has also 

 given them nothing. What we teach is not the result 

 of opinion and speculation, but of actual experience. 

 Our philosophy has not originated in the realm of the 

 imagination, but is copied from the book of nature itself. 

 We believe that for the terrestrial man there is no nobler 

 enjoyment than to know the laws of nature ; but we 

 reject that kind of smartness and cunning which invents 

 systems of so-called philosophy, based upon arguments 

 which have no foundation in truth. All that these 

 writers can talk about is the sensual world, such as they 

 perceive with their senses ; but we claim that this world 

 of external appearances is only the fourth part of the 

 actual world ; not that the world were still three times 

 bigger than it appears to us, but that there are still 

 three-fourths of it of which we are unconscious. We 

 say that there is a world within the (element of) water, 

 and that it has its own inhabitants ; and another world 

 within the (element of) the earth ; and there are volcanic 

 people, who live in the fourth part of the world, in the 

 element of the fire " (De Generatio Hominis), 



