Was Hildegard influenced by Bernard Silvester?--(Bibliographical note)--Her personality and reputation--Dates of her works--Question of their genuineness--Question of her knowledge of Latin--Subject-matter of her works--Relations between science and religion in them--Her peculiar views concerning winds and rivers--Her suggestions concerning drinking-water--The devil as the negative principle--Natural substances and evil spirits--Stars and fallen angels; sin and nature--Nature in Adam’s time; the antediluvian period--Spiritual lessons from natural phenomena--Hildegard’s attitude toward magic--Magic Art’s defense--True Worship’s reply--Magic properties of natural substances--Instances of counter-magic--Ceremony with a jacinth and wheaten loaf--Her superstitious procedure--Use of herbs--Marvelous virtues of gems--Remarkable properties of fish--Use of the parts of birds--Cures from quadrupeds--The unicorn, weasel, and mouse--What animals to eat and wear--Insects and reptiles--Animal compounds--Magic and astrology closely connected--Astrology and divination condemned--Signs in the stars--Superiors and inferiors; effect of stars and winds on elements and humors--Influence of the moon on human health and generation--Relation of the four humors to human character and fate--Hildegard’s varying position--Nativities for the days of the moon--Man the microcosm--Divination in dreams. [Sidenote: Was Hildegard influenced by Bernard Silvester?] The discussion of macrocosm and microcosm, _nous_ and _hyle_, by Bernard Silvester in the _De mundi universitate_ is believed by Dr. Charles Singer, in a recent essay on “The Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard,” to have influenced her later writings, such as the _Liber vitae meritorum_ and the _Liber divinorum operum_. He writes “The work of Bernard ... corresponds so closely both in form, in spirit, and sometimes even in phraseology to the _Liber divinorum operum_ that it appears to us certain that Hildegard must have had access to it.”[338] Without subscribing unreservedly to this view, we pass on from the Platonist and geomancer of Tours to the Christian “sibyl of the Rhine.”[339] [Sidenote: Her personality and reputation.]