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will it never discover any inventions more beau- tiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is no- thing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to corre- spond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body. This is not the proper place for this discourse, which belongs rather to the subject of the composition of ani- mated bodies ; and the rest of the definition of the soul I leave to the minds of the friars, the fa- thers of the people, who know all secrets by in- spiration. I leave the sacred books alone, because they are the supreme truth.

48.

Those who seek to abbreviate studies do injury to knowledge and to love because the love of anything is the daughter of this knowledge. The fervency of the love increases in proportion to the certainty of the knowledge, and the certainty issues from a complete knowledge of all the parts, which united compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. Of what value, then, is he who abbreviates the details of those matters of which he professes to render a com- plete account, while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the whole is com- posed? It is true that impatience, the mother of

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