II On the Glands, of the Mouth and the New Salivary Ducts Proceeding from Them

Abstract

Among other matters which, without understanding them, we reckon marvelous, the one which deserves the highest admiration is the capacity conceded by God to the human mind by which this imagines, whenever it likes, the figures of things perceived through the senses, and absent things as if they were present, and it gazes in imagination at all the parts observed in them previously, with the same shape, size, colour, position in a much better way than if they had been drawn from a living model by a Protogenes whose even incomplete works vie in veracity with nature. Indeed, we will wonder that the one who, eager to examine thoroughly the reasons of natural matters, spent his life in experiments, when old but enjoying vigorous old age goes in his mind through the huge universe extending over distances almost infinite and through the parts of this universe, inside a sphere of such small capacity, inside his skull. This one, flying up to the heavenly bodies will explain to us the constant order of the fixed stars, the undeceiving wanderings of the planets, the excursions of the comets deprived of any law. Hence, sliding down he will range in a moment through the air and will depict nice varieties of colours, amazing forms of volcanic eruptions showing themselves in these regions through intervals. Hence descending to the earth he will describe the different works of nature most carefully elaborated which present themselves there and images of art hardly yielding to these works of nature. Finally, he will penetrate in the inside of the earth and will reveal the concealedmysteries of minerals.