Experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err, ye who look to her for effects which our experiments cannot produce. Because given a principle, that which ensues from it is necessarily the true consequence of that principle, unless it be impeded. Should there, however, be any obstacle, the effect which should ensue from the aforesaid principle will participate in the impediment as much or as little as the impediment is operative in regard to the aforesaid principle. 34. Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act. 35. All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions. {14} [Sidenote: Origin of Knowledge] 36. The sense ministers to the soul, and not the soul sense; and where the sense which ministers ceases to serve the soul, all the functions of that sense are lacking in life, as is evident in those who are born dumb and blind. [Sidenote: Testimony of the Senses] 37. And if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, I answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. And if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. Now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself? But the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eye-sight. {15} [Sidenote: Judgement prone to Error] 38. There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement. 39. The greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions. 40. Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience. [Sidenote: Intelligence of Animals] 41. Man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. 42. What is an element? It is not in man's power to define the quiddity of the elements, but a great many of their effects are known. 43. That which is divisible in fact is divisible in potentiality also; but not all quantities which are divisible in potentiality are divisible in fact. [Sidenote: Infinity incomprehensible] 44.