In the next place, the occupation of the miner is objectionable to nobody. For who, unless he be naturally malevolent and envious, will hate the man who gains wealth as it were from heaven? Or who will hate a man who to amplify his fortune, adopts a method which is free from reproach? A moneylender, if he demands an excessive interest, incurs the hatred of men. If he demands a moderate and lawful rate, so that he is not injurious to the public generally and does not impoverish them, he fails to become very rich from his business. Further, the gain derived from mining is not sordid, for how can it be such, seeing that it is so great, so plentiful, and of so innocent a nature. A merchant's profits are mean and base when he sells counterfeit and spurious merchandise, or puts far too high a price on goods that he has purchased for little; for this reason the merchant would be held in no less odium amongst good men than is the usurer, did they not take account of the risk he runs to secure his merchandise. In truth, those who on this point speak abusively of mining for the sake of detracting from its merits, say that in former days men convicted of crimes and misdeeds were sentenced to the mines and were worked as slaves. But to-day the miners receive pay, and are engaged like other workmen in the common trades.
Certainly, if mining is a shameful and discreditable employment for a gentleman because slaves once worked mines, then agriculture also will not be a very creditable employment, because slaves once cultivated the fields, and even to-day do so among the Turks; nor will architecture be considered honest, because some slaves have been found skilful in that profession; nor medicine, because not a few doctors have been slaves; nor will any other worthy craft, because men captured by force of arms have practised it. Yet agriculture, architecture, and medicine are none the less counted amongst the number of honourable professions; therefore, mining ought not for this reason to be excluded from them. But suppose we grant that the hired miners have a sordid employment. We do not mean by miners only the diggers and other workmen, but also those skilled in the mining arts, and those who invest money in mines. Amongst them can be counted kings, princes, republics, and from these last the most esteemed citizens. And finally, we include amongst the overseers of mines the noble Thucydides, the historian, whom the Athenians placed in charge of the mines of Thasos.[29] And it would not be unseemly for the owners themselves to work with their own hands on the works or ore, especially if they themselves have contributed to the cost of the mines. Just as it is not undignified for great men to cultivate their own land. Otherwise the Roman Senate would not have created Dictator L. Quintius Cincinnatus, as he was at work in the fields, nor would it have summoned to the Senate House the chief men of the State from their country villas. Similarly, in our day, Maximilian Cæsar would not have enrolled Conrad in the ranks of the nobles known as Counts; Conrad was really very poor when he served in the mines of Schneeberg, and for that reason he was nicknamed the "poor man"; but not many years after, he attained wealth from the mines of Fürst, which is a city in Lorraine, and took his name from "Luck."[30] Nor would King Vladislaus have restored to the Assembly of Barons, Tursius, a citizen of Cracow, who became rich through the mines in that part of the kingdom of Hungary which was formerly called Dacia.[31] Nay, not even the common worker in the mines is vile and abject. For, trained to vigilance and work by night and day, he has great powers of endurance when occasion demands, and easily sustains the fatigues and duties of a soldier, for he is accustomed to keep long vigils at night, to wield iron tools, to dig trenches, to drive tunnels, to make machines, and to carry burdens. Therefore, experts in military affairs prefer the miner, not only to a commoner from the town, but even to the rustic.
But to bring this discussion to an end, inasmuch as the chief callings are those of the moneylender, the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, and the miner, I say, inasmuch as usury is odious, while the spoil cruelly captured from the possessions of the people innocent of wrong is wicked in the sight of God and man, and inasmuch as the calling of the miner excels in honour and dignity that of the merchant trading for lucre, while it is not less noble though far more profitable than agriculture, who can fail to realize that mining is a calling of peculiar dignity? Certainly, though it is but one of ten important and excellent methods of acquiring wealth in an honourable way, a careful and diligent man can attain this result in no easier way than by mining.
END OF BOOK I.
FOOTNOTES:
[Pg 1][1] Fibrae—"fibres." See [Note 6, p. 70].
[2] Commissurae saxorum—"rock joints," "seams," or "cracks." Agricola and all of the old authors laid a wholly unwarranted geologic value on these phenomena. See description and footnotes, Book III., pages [43] and [72].
[3] Succi—"juice," or succi concreti—"solidified juice." Ger. Trans., saffte. The old English translators and mineralogists often use the word juices in the same sense, and we have adopted it. The words "solutions" and "salts" convey a chemical significance not warranted by the state of knowledge in Agricola's time. Instances of the former use of this word may be seen in Barba's "First Book of the Art of Metals," (Trans. Earl Sandwich, London, 1674, p. 2, etc.,) and in Pryce's Mineralogia Cornubiensis (London, 1778, p. 25, 32).
[4] In order that the reader should be able to grasp the author's point of view as to his divisions of the Mineral Kingdom, we introduce here his own statement from De Natura Fossilium, (p. 180). It is also desirable to read the footnote on his theory of ore-deposits on pages [43] to [53], and the review of De Natura Fossilium given in the [Appendix].
"The subterranean inanimate bodies are divided into two classes, one of which, because it is a fluid or an exhalation, is called by those names, and the other class is called the minerals. Mineral bodies are solidified from particles of the same substance, such as pure gold, each particle of which is gold, or they are of different substances such as lumps which consist of earth, stone, and metal; these latter may be separated into earth, stone and metal, and therefore the first is not a mixture while the last is called a mixture. The first are again divided into simple and compound minerals. The simple minerals are of four classes, namely earths, solidified juices, stones and metals, while the mineral compounds are of many sorts, as I shall explain later.