Nor does my mind fail to perceive how hard it is to make clear in Latin verses the dark discoveries of the Greeks, especially as many points must be dealt with in new terms on account of the poverty of the language and the novelty of the questions. But yet your worth and the looked for pleasure of sweet friendship prompts me to undergo any labour and leads me on to watch the clear night through, seeking by what words and in what verse I may be able in the end to shed on your mind so clear a light that you can thoroughly scan abstruse things. This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature; whose first principle we shall begin by thus stating, nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power. power. Fear in sooth takes such a hold of all mortals, because they see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by divine power. For these reasons when we shall have seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall then more correctly ascertain that which we are pursuing, both the elements out of which every thing can be produced and the manner in which all things are done without the hand of the gods.