la BOOK I. 



mined, and seeing that when brought to light they have always proved the 

 cause of very great evils, it follows that mining is not useful to mankind, 

 but on the contrary harmful and destructive. Several good men have 

 been so perturbed by these tragedies that they conceive an intensely bitter 

 hatred toward metals, and they wish absolutely that metals had never been 

 created, or being created, that no one had ever dug them out. The more I 

 commend the singular honesty, innocence, and goodness of such men, the 

 more anxious shall I be to remove utterly and eradicate all error from their 

 minds and to reveal the sound view, which is that the metals are most useful 

 to mankind. 



In the first place then, those who speak ill of the metals and refuse to 

 make use of them, do not see that they accuse and condemn as wicked the 

 Creator Himself, when they assert that He fashioned some things vainly 

 and without good cause, and thus they regard Him as the Author of evils, 

 which opinion is certainly not worthy of pious and sensible men. 



In the next place, the earth does not conceal metals in her depths 

 because she does not wish that men should dig them out, but because 

 provident and sagacious Nature has appointed for each thing its place. She 

 generates them in the veins, stringers, and seams in the rocks, as though 

 in special vessels and receptacles for such material. The metals cannot be 

 produced in the other elements because the materials for their formation 

 are wanting. For if they were generated in the air, a thing that rarely 

 happens, they could not find a firm resting-place, but by their own force and 

 weight would settle down on to the ground. Seeing then that metals have 

 their proper abiding place in the bowels of the earth, who does not see that 

 these men do not reach their conclusions by good logic ? 



They say, " Although metals are in the earth, each located in its own 

 proper place where it originated, yet because they lie thus enclosed and 

 hidden from sight, they should not be taken out." But, in refutation of these 

 attacks, which are so annoying, I will on behalf of the metals instance the 

 fish, which we catch, hidden and concealed though they be in the water, even 

 in the sea. Indeed, it is far stranger that man, a terrestrial animal, should 

 search the interior of the sea than the bowels of the earth. For as birds are 

 born to fly freely through the air, so are fishes born to swim through the 

 waters, while to other creatures Nature has given the earth that they might 

 live in it, and particularly to man that he might cultivate it and draw out 

 of its caverns metals and other mineral products. On the other hand, they 

 say that we eat fish, but neither hunger nor thirst is dispelled by minerals, 

 nor are they useful in clothing the body, which is another argument by 

 which these people strive to prove that metals should not be taken out. But 

 man without metals cannot provide those things which he needs for food and 

 clothing. For, though the produce of the land furnishes the greatest 

 abundance of food for the nourishment of our bodies, no labour can be 

 carried on and completed without tools. The ground itself is turned up 

 with ploughshares and harrows, tough stalks and the tops of the roots are 

 broken off and dug up with a mattock, the sown seed is harrowed, the corn 



