314 DESCRIPTIO GLOBI INTELLECTUALS. 



turn, ac nullatenus per inductionem sciri possunt. Erit 

 igitur talis inquisitionis et tempus congruum, et ratio et 

 modus quidam. De coelis vero et spatiis immateriatis, 

 religion! omnino standum et permittendum. Quae enim 

 a Platonicis et nuper a Patritio l (ut diviniores scilicet 

 habeantur in pliilosophia) dicuntur, non sine super- 

 stitione manifesta et jactantia et quasi mente turbata, 

 denique ausu nimio, fructu nullo, similia Valentini icon- 

 ibus 2 et somniis ; ea nos pro rebus commentitiis et lev- 

 ibus habemus. Nullo modo enim ferenda est Mortal 

 apotheosis, tanquam Divi Claudii : 3 quin pessimum est, 

 et plane pestis et tabes intellectus, si vanis accedat 

 veneratio, 



1 Patritius, or rather Patricias, from whom much of the latter part of the 

 present tract is taken, was bora at Cherso in 1529, and died in 1597. He 

 wrote a treatise on philosophy Nova de Universis Philosophia [which 

 was published in 1591]. It is an attempt, of no great value, to conciliate 

 Plato and Aristotle. In the last book, entitled Pancosmia, there is some in- 

 teresting information touching theories of the tides. 



2 [aconibus in the original.] Valentinus is the alchemist Basil Valen- 

 tine. He is said to have been a Benedictine of the congregation of St. 

 Peter's at Erfurdt, and to have lived in the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury. But it seems that the writings which bear his name are spurious. 

 See Sprengel. Hist. Med. iii. p. 267., and Morhof, Polyhistor, i. p. 84., who 

 mentions that Placcius, in the Pseudon. Catalog., is disposed to deny the 

 existence of any such person, and does not believe that his name could be 

 found either in the provincial catalogue of Benedictines at Erfurdt, or in 

 the general one at Rome. 



8 See the Ludus de Morte Claudii Cceaam of Seneca. 



