Agricola, Georgius, De re metallica, 1912/1950

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    <archimedes>
      <text>
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          <chap>
            <p type="main">
              <s>
                <pb pagenum="12"/>
              mined, and seeing that when brought to light they have always proved the
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              cause of very great evils, it follows that mining is not useful to mankind
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              but on the contrary harmful and destructive. </s>
              <s>Several good men have
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              been so perturbed by these tragedies that they conceive an intensely bitter
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              hatred toward metals, and they wish absolutely that metals had never been
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              created, or being created, that no one had ever dug them out. </s>
              <s>The more I
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              commend the singular honesty, innocence, and goodness of such men, the
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              more anxious shall I be to remove utterly and eradicate all error from their
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              minds and to reveal the sound view, which is that the metals are most useful
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              to mankind.</s>
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            <p type="main">
              <s>In the first place then, those who speak ill of the metals and refuse to
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              make use of them, do not see that they accuse and condemn as wicked the
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              Creator Himself, when they assert that He fashioned some things vainly
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              and without good cause, and thus they regard Him as the Author of evils
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              which opinion is certainly not worthy of pious and sensible men.</s>
            </p>
            <p type="main">
              <s>In the next place, the earth does not conceal metals in her depths
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              because she does not wish that men should dig them out, but because
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              provident and sagacious Nature has appointed for each thing its place. </s>
              <s>She
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              generates them in the veins, stringers, and seams in the rocks, as though
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              in special vessels and receptacles for such material. </s>
              <s>The metals cannot be
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              produced in the other elements because the materials for their formation
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              are wanting. </s>
              <s>For if they were generated in the air, a thing that rarely
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              happens, they could not find a firm resting-place, but by their own force and
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              weight would settle down on to the ground. </s>
              <s>Seeing then that metals have
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              their proper abiding place in the bowels of the earth, who does not see that
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              these men do not reach their conclusions by good logic?</s>
            </p>
            <p type="main">
              <s>They say, “Although metals are in the earth, each located in its own
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              proper place where it originated, yet because they lie thus enclosed and
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              hidden from sight, they should not be taken out.” But, in refutation of these
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              attacks, which are so annoying, I will on behalf of the metals instance the
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              fish, which we catch, hidden and concealed though they be in the water, even
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              in the sea. </s>
              <s>Indeed, it is far stranger that man, a terrestrial animal, should
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              search the interior of the sea than the bowels of the earth. </s>
              <s>For as birds are
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              born to fly freely through the air, so are fishes born to swim through the
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              waters, while to other creatures Nature has given the earth that they might
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              live in it, and particularly to man that he might cultivate it and draw out
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              of its caverns metals and other mineral products. </s>
              <s>On the other hand, they
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              say that we eat fish, but neither hunger nor thirst is dispelled by minerals,
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              nor are they useful in clothing the body, which is another argument by
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              which these people strive to prove that metals should not be taken out. </s>
              <s>But
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              man without metals cannot provide those things which he needs for food and
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              clothing. </s>
              <s>For, though the produce of the land furnishes the greatest
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              abundance of food for the nourishment of our bodies, no labour can be
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              carried on and completed without tools. </s>
              <s>The ground itself is turned up
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              with ploughshares and harrows, tough stalks and the tops of the roots are
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              broken off and dug up with a mattock, the sown seed is harrowed, the corn </s>
            </p>
          </chap>
        </body>
      </text>
    </archimedes>
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