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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici
+Furori), by Giordano Bruno
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori)
+       An Ethical Poem
+
+Author: Giordano Bruno
+
+Translator: L. Williams
+
+Release Date: November 15, 2006 [EBook #19817]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEROIC ENTHUSIASTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sjaani, Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+HEROIC ENTHUSIASTS
+
+(_GLI EROICI FURORI_)
+
+An Ethical poem
+
+BY GIORDANO BRUNO
+
+PART THE FIRST
+
+TRANSLATED BY
+
+L. WILLIAMS
+
+_WITH AN INTRODUCTION, COMPILED CHIEFLY FROM DAVID LEVI'S
+GIORDANO BRUNO O LA RELIGIONE DEL PENSIERO_
+
+
+LONDON
+GEORGE REDWAY
+YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
+1887
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+When this Translation was begun, more than two years ago, for my own
+pleasure, in leisure hours, I had no knowledge of the difficulty I
+should find in the work, nor any thought of ever having it printed; but
+as "Gli Eroici Furori" of Giordano Bruno has never appeared in English,
+I decided to publish that portion of it which I have finished.
+
+I wish to thank those friends who have so kindly looked over my work
+from time to time, and given me their help in the choice of words and
+phrases. I must, moreover, confess that I am keenly alive to the
+shortcomings and defects of this Translation.
+
+I have used the word "Enthusiasts" in the title, rather than
+"Enthusiasms," because it seemed to me more appropriate.
+
+L. W.
+
+FOLKSTONE, _September 1887_.
+
+
+
+
+ERRATA
+
+Page 3, line 10, _for_ "also mother" _read_ "also my mother."
+Page 47, line 9, _for_ "poisons" _read_ "poison."
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Nola, a city founded by the Chalcidian Greeks, at a short distance from
+Naples and from Vesuvius, was the birth-place of Giordano Bruno. It is
+described by David Levi as a city which from ancient times had always
+been consecrated to science and letters. From the time of the Romans to
+that of the Barbarians and of the Middle Ages, Nola was conspicuous for
+culture and refinement, and its inhabitants were in all times remarkable
+for their courteous manners, for valour, and for keenness of perception.
+They were, moreover, distinguished by their love for and study of
+philosophy; so that this city was ever a favourite dwelling-place for
+the choice spirits of the Renaissance. It may also be asserted that Nola
+was the only city of Magna Graecia which, in spite of the persecutions of
+Pagan emperors and Christian princes and clergy, always preserved the
+philosophical traditions of the Pythagoreans, and never was the sacred
+fire on the altar of Vesta suffered to become entirely extinct. Such was
+the intellectual and moral atmosphere in which Bruno passed his
+childhood. His paternal home was situated at the foot of Mount Cicada,
+celebrated for its fruitful soil. From early youth his pleasure was to
+pass the night out on the mountain, now watching the stars, now
+contemplating the arid, desolate sides of Vesuvius. He tells how, in
+recalling those days--the only peaceful ones of his life--he used to
+think, as he looked up at the infinite expanse of heaven and the
+confines of the horizon, with the towering volcano, that this must be
+the ultimate end of the earth, and it appeared as if neither tree nor
+grass refreshed the dreary space which stretched out to the foot of the
+bare smoky mountain. When, grown older, he came nearer to it, and saw
+the mountain so different from what it had appeared, and the intervening
+space that, seen from afar, had looked so bare and sterile, all covered
+with fruit-trees and enriched with vineyards, he began to see how
+illusory the judgment of the senses may be; and the first doubt was
+planted in his young soul as he perceived that, while the mind may grasp
+Nature in her grandeur and majesty, the work of the sage must be to
+examine her in detail, and penetrate to the cause of things. When he
+appeared before the tribunal of the Holy Office at Venice, being asked
+to declare who and what he was, he said: "My name is Giordano, of the
+family of Bruno, of the city of Nola, twelve miles from Naples. There
+was I born and brought up. My profession has been and is that of
+letters, and of all the sciences. My father's name was Giovanni, and my
+mother was Francesca Savolini; and my father was a soldier. He is dead,
+and also mother. I am forty-four years old, having been born in 1548."
+He always regarded Nola with patriotic pride, and he received his first
+instruction in his father's house and in the public schools. Of a sad
+disposition, and gifted with a most lively imagination, he was from his
+earliest years given to meditation and to poetry. The early years of
+Bruno's life were times of agitation and misfortune, and not propitious
+to study. The Neapolitan provinces were disturbed by constant
+earthquakes, and devastated by pestilence and famine. The Turks fought,
+and ravaged the country, and made slaves of the inhabitants; the
+neighbouring provinces were still more harassed by hordes of bandits and
+outlaws, who invested Calabria, led by a terrible chief called Marcone.
+The Inquisition stood prepared to light its fires and slaughter the
+heretic. The Waldensians, who had lately been driven out of Piedmont,
+and had sought a shelter in the Calabrian territory, were hunted down
+and given over to the executioner.
+
+The convent was the only refuge from violence, and Bruno, either from
+religious enthusiasm, or in order to be able to devote himself to study,
+became a friar at the age of fifteen. There, in the quiet cloister of
+the convent of St. Dominic at Naples, his mind was nourished and his
+intellect developed; the cloistral and monkish education failed to
+enslave his thought, and he emerged from this tutelage the boldest and
+least fettered of philosophers. Everything about this church and this
+convent, famous as having been the abode of Thomas Aquinas, was
+calculated to fire the enthusiasm of Bruno's soul; the leisure and
+quiet, far from inducing habits of indolence, or the sterile practices
+of asceticism, were stimulants to austere study, and to the fervour of
+mystical speculations. Here he passed nearly thirteen years of early
+manhood, until his intellect strengthened by study he began to long for
+independence of thought, and becoming, as he said himself, solicitous
+about the food of the soul and the culture of the mind, he found it
+irksome to go through automatically the daily vulgar routine of the
+convent; the pure flame of an elevated religious feeling being kindled
+in his soul, he tried to evade the vain exercises of the monks, the
+puerile gymnastics, and the adoration of so-called relics. His character
+was frank and open, and he was unable to hide his convictions; he put
+some of his doubts before his companions, and these hastened to refer
+them to the superiors; and thus was material found to institute a cause
+against him. It became known, that he had praised the methods used by
+the Arians or Unitarians in expounding their doctrines, adding that they
+refer all things to the ultimate cause, which is the Father: this, with
+other heretical propositions, being brought to the notice of the Holy
+Office, Bruno found himself in the position of being first observed and
+then threatened. He was warned of the danger that hung over him by some
+friends, and decided to quit Naples. He fled from the convent, and took
+the road to Rome, and was there received in the monastery of the
+Minerva. A few days after his arrival in Rome he learned that
+instructions for his arrest had been forwarded from Naples; he tarried
+not, but got away secretly, throwing aside the monk's habiliments by the
+way. He wandered for some days about the Roman Campagna, his destitute
+condition proving a safeguard against the bands of brigands that
+infested those lands, until arriving near Civita Vecchia, he was taken
+on board a Genoese vessel, and carried to the Ligurian port, where he
+hoped to find a refuge from his enemies; but the city of Geneva was
+devastated by pestilence and civil war, and after a sojourn of a few
+days he pursued once more the road of exile. Seeking for a place wherein
+he might settle for a short time and hide from his pursuers, he stayed
+his steps at Noli, situated at a short distance from Savona, on the
+Riviera: this town, nestled in a little bay surrounded by high hills
+crowned by feudal castles and towers, was only accessible on the shore
+side, and offered a grateful retreat to our philosopher. At Noli, Bruno
+obtained permission of the magistracy to teach grammar to children, and
+thus secured the means of subsistence by the small remuneration he
+received; but this modest employment did not occupy him sufficiently,
+and he gathered round him a few gentlemen of the district, to whom he
+taught the science of the Sphere. Bruno also wrote a book upon the
+Sphere, which was lost. He expounded the system of Copernicus, and
+talked to his pupils with enthusiasm about the movement of the earth and
+of the plurality of worlds.
+
+As in that same Liguria Columbus first divined another hemisphere
+outside the Pillars of Hercules, so Bruno discovered to those astonished
+minds the myriads of worlds which fill the immensity of space. Columbus
+was derided and banished by his fellow-citizens, and the fate of our
+philosopher was similar to his. In the humble schoolmaster who taught
+grammar to the children, the bishop, the clergy, and the nobles, who
+listened eagerly to his lectures on the Sphere, began to suspect the
+heretic and the innovator. After five months it behoved him to leave
+Noli; he took the road to Savona, crossed the Apennines, and arrived at
+Turin. In Turin at that time reigned the great Duke Emanuele Filiberto,
+a man of strong character--one of those men who know how to found a
+dynasty and to fix the destiny of a people; at that time, when Central
+and Southern Italy were languishing under home and foreign tyranny, he
+laid the foundations of the future Italy.
+
+He was warrior, artist, mechanic, and scholar. Intrepid on the field of
+battle, he would retire from deeds of arms to the silence of his study,
+and cause the works of Aristotle to be read to him; he spoke all the
+European languages; he worked at artillery, at models of fortresses, and
+at the smith's craft; he brought together around him, from all sides of
+Italy, artisans and scientists to promote industry, commerce, and
+science; he gathered together in Piedmont the most excellent compositors
+of Italy, and sanctioned a printer's company.
+
+Bruno, attracted to Turin by the favour that was shown to letters and
+philosophy, hoped to get occupation as press reader; but it was
+precisely at that time that the Duke, instigated by France, was
+combating, with every kind of weapon, the Waldensian and Huguenot
+heresies, and had invited the Jesuits to Turin, offering them a
+substantial subsidy; so that on Bruno's arrival he found the place he
+had hoped for, as teacher in the university, occupied by his enemies,
+and he therefore moved on with little delay, and embarked for Venice.
+
+Berti, in his Life of Bruno, remarks that when the latter sought refuge
+in Turin, Torquato Tasso, also driven by adverse fortune, arrived in the
+same place, and he notes the affinity between them--both so great, both
+subject to every species of misfortune and persecution in life, and
+destined to immortal honours after their death: the light of genius
+burned in them both, the fire of enthusiasm flamed in each alike, and on
+the forehead of each one was set the sign of sorrow and of pain.
+
+Both Bruno and Tasso entered the cloister as boys: the one joined the
+Dominicans, the other the Jesuits; and in the souls of both might be
+discerned the impress of the Order to which they belonged. Both went
+forth from their native place longing to find a broader field of action
+and greater scope for their intellectual powers. The one left Naples
+carrying in his heart the Pagan and Christian traditions of the noble
+enterprises and the saintly heroism of Olympus and of Calvary, of Homer
+and the Fathers, of Plato and St. Ignatius; the other was filled with
+the philosophical thought of the primitive Italian and Pythagorean
+epochs, fecundated by his own conceptions and by the new age;
+philosopher and apostle of an idea, Bruno consecrated his life to the
+development of it in his writings and to the propagation of his
+principles in Europe by the fire of enthusiasm. The one surprised the
+world with the melody of his songs; being, as Dante says, the "dolce
+sirena che i marinari in mezzo al mare smaga," he lulled the anguish
+that lacerated Italy, and gilded the chains which bound her; the other
+tried to shake her; to recall her to life with the vigour of thought,
+with the force of reason, with the sacrifice of himself. The songs of
+Tasso were heard and sung from one end of Italy to the other, and the
+poet dwelt in palaces and received the caress and smile of princes;
+while Bruno, discoursing in the name of reason and of science, was
+rejected, persecuted, and scourged, and only after three centuries of
+ingratitude, of calumny, and of forgetfulness, does his country show
+signs of appreciating him and of doing justice to his memory. In Tasso
+the poet predominates over the philosopher, in Bruno the philosopher
+predominates over and eclipses the poet. The first sacrifices thought to
+form; the second is careful only of the idea. Again, both are full of a
+conception of the Divine, but the God that the dying Tasso confessed is
+a god that is expected and comes not; while the god that Bruno proclaims
+he already finds within himself. Tasso dies in his bed in the cloister,
+uneasy as on a bed of thorns; Bruno, amidst the flames, stands out as on
+a pedestal, and dies serene and calm. We must now follow our fugitive to
+Venice.
+
+At the time Giordano Bruno arrived in Venice that city was the most
+important typographical centre of Europe; the commerce in books extended
+through the Levant, Germany, and France, and the philosopher hoped that
+here he might find some means of subsistence. The plague at that time
+was devastating Venice, and in less than one year had claimed forty-two
+thousand victims; but Bruno felt no fear, and he took a lodging in that
+part of Venice called the Frezzeria, and was soon busy preparing for the
+press a work called "Segni del Tempo," hoping that the sale of it would
+bring a little money for daily needs. This work was lost, as were all
+those which he published in Italy, and which it was to the interest of
+Rome to destroy. Disappointed at not finding work to do in Venice, he
+next went to Padua, which was the intellectual centre of Europe, as
+Venice was the centre of printing and publishing; the most celebrated
+professors of that epoch were to be found in the University of Padua,
+but at the time of Bruno's sojourn there, Padua, like Venice, was
+ravaged by the plague; the university was closed, and the printing-house
+was not in operation. He remained there only a few days, lodging with
+some monks of the Order of St. Dominic, who, he relates, "persuaded me
+to wear the dress again, even though I would not profess the religion it
+implied, because they said it would aid me in my wayfaring to be thus
+attired; and so I got a white cloth robe, and I put on the hood which I
+had preserved when I left Rome." Thus habited he wandered for several
+months about the cities of Venetia and Lombardy; and although he
+contrived for a time to evade his persecutors, he finally decided to
+leave Italy, as it was repugnant to his disposition to live in forced
+dissimulation, and he felt that he could do no good either for himself
+or for his country, which was then overrun with Spaniards and scourged
+by petty tyrants; and with the lower orders sunk in ignorance, and the
+upper classes illiterate, uncultivated, and corrupt, the mission of
+Giordano Bruno was impossible. "Altiora Peto" was Bruno's motto, and to
+realize it he had gone forth with the pilgrim's staff in his hand,
+sometimes covered with the cowl of the monk, at others wearing the
+simple habit of a schoolmaster, or, again, clothed with the doublet of
+the mechanic: he had found no resting-place--nowhere to lay his head, no
+one who could understand him, but always many ready to denounce him. He
+turned his back at last on his country, crossed the Alps on foot, and
+directed his steps towards Switzerland. He visited the universities in
+different towns of Switzerland, France, and Germany, and wherever he
+went he left behind him traces of his visit in some hurried writings.
+The only work of the Nolan, written in Italy, which has survived is "Il
+Candelajo," which was published in Paris. Levi, in his Life of Bruno,
+passes in review his various works; but it will suffice here to
+reproduce what he says of the "Eroici Furori," the first part of which
+I have translated, and to note his remarks upon the style of Bruno,
+which presents many difficulties to the translator on account of its
+formlessness. Goethe says of Bruno's writings: "Zu allgemeiner
+Betrachtung und Erhebung der Geistes eigneten sich die Schriften des
+Jordanus Brunous von Nola; aber freilich das gediegene Gold and Silber
+aus der Masse jener zo ungleich begabten Erzgaenge auszuscheiden und
+unter den Hammer zu bringen erfordert fast mehr als menschliche Kraefte
+vermoegen."
+
+I believe that no translation of Giordano Bruno's works has ever been
+brought out in English, or, at any rate, no translation of the "Eroici
+Furori," and therefore I have had no help from previous renderings. I
+have, for the most part, followed the text as closely as possible,
+especially in the sonnets, which are frequently rendered line for line.
+Form is lacking in the original, and would, owing to the unusual and
+often fantastic clothing of the ideas, be difficult to apply in the
+translation. He seems to have written down his grand ideas hurriedly,
+and, as Levi says, probably intended to retouch the work before
+printing.
+
+Following the order of Levi's Life of Bruno, we next find the fugitive
+at Geneva. He was hardly thirty-one years old when he quitted his
+country and crossed the Alps, and his first stopping-place was Chambery,
+where he was received in a convent of the Order of Predicatori; he
+proposed going on to Lyons, but being told by an Italian priest, whom he
+met there, that he was not likely to find countenance or support, either
+in the place he was in or in any other place, however far he might
+travel, he changed his course and made for Geneva.
+
+The name of Giordano Bruno was not unknown to the Italian colony who had
+fled from papal persecution to this stronghold of religious reform. He
+went to lodge at an inn, and soon received visits from the Marchese di
+Vico Napoletano, Pietro Martire Vermigli, and other refugees, who
+welcomed him with affection, inquiring whether he intended to embrace
+the religion of Calvin, to which Bruno replied that he did not intend to
+make profession of that religion, as he did not know of what kind it
+was, and he only desired to live in Geneva in freedom. He was then
+advised to doff the Dominican habit, which he still wore; this he was
+quite willing to do, only he had no money to buy other clothing, and was
+forced to have some made of the cloth of his monkish robes, and his new
+friends presented him with a sword and a hat; they also procured some
+work for him in correcting press errors.
+
+The term of Bruno's sojourn in Geneva seems doubtful, and the precise
+nature of his employment when there is also uncertain; but his
+independent spirit brought him into dispute with the rigid Calvinists of
+that city, who preached and exacted a blind faith, absolute and
+compulsory. Bruno could not accept any of the existing positive
+religions; he professed the cult of philosophy and science, nor was his
+character of that mould that would have enabled him to hide his
+principles. It was made known to him that he must either adopt Calvinism
+or leave Geneva: he declined the former, and had no choice as to the
+latter; poor he had entered Geneva, and poor he left it, and now turned
+his steps towards France.
+
+He reached Lyons, which was also at that time a city of refuge against
+religious persecutions, and he addressed himself to his compatriots,
+begging for work from the publishers, Aldo and Grifi; but not succeeding
+in gaining enough to enable him to subsist, after a few days he left,
+and went on his way to Toulouse, where there was a famous university;
+and having made acquaintance with several men of intellect, Bruno was
+invited to lecture on the Sphere, which he did, with various other
+subjects, for six months, when the chair of Philosophy becoming vacant,
+he took the degree of Doctor, and competed for it; and he continued for
+two years in that place, teaching the philosophy of Aristotle and of
+others. He took for the text of his lectures the treatise of Aristotle,
+"De Anima," and this gave him the opportunity of introducing and
+discussing the deepest questions--upon the Origin and Destiny of
+Humanity; The Soul, is it Matter or Spirit? Potentiality or Reality?
+Individual or Universal? Mortal or Eternal? Is Man alone gifted with
+Soul, or are all beings equally so? Bruno's system was in his mind
+complete and mature; he taught that everything in Nature has a soul, one
+universal mind, penetrates and moves all things; the world itself is a
+_sacrum animal_. Nothing is lost, but all transmutes and becomes. This
+vast field afforded him scope for teaching his doctrines upon the world,
+on the movement of the earth, and on the universal soul. The novelty and
+boldness of his opinions roused the animosity of the clergy against him,
+and after living two years and six months at Toulouse, he felt it wise
+to retire, and leaving the capital of the Languedoc, he set his face
+towards Paris.
+
+The two books--the fruit of his lectures--which he published in
+Toulouse, "De Anima" and "De Clavis Magis," were lost.
+
+The title of Doctor, or as he said himself, "Maestro delle Arti," which
+Bruno had obtained at Toulouse, gave him the faculty of teaching
+publicly in Paris, and he says: "I went to Paris, where I set myself to
+read a most unusual lecture, in order to make myself known and to
+attract attention." He gave thirty lectures on the thirty Divine
+attributes, dividing and distributing them according to the method of
+St. Thomas Aquinas: these lectures excited much attention amongst the
+scholars of the Sorbonne, who went in crowds to hear him; and he
+introduced, as usual, his own ideas while apparently teaching the
+doctrines of St. Thomas. His extraordinary memory and his eloquence
+caused great astonishment; and the fame of Bruno reached the ears of
+King Henry III., who sent for him to the Court, and being filled with
+admiration of his learning, he offered him a substantial subsidy.
+
+During his stay at Paris, although he was much at Court, he spent many
+hours in his study, writing the works that he afterwards published.
+
+Philosophical questions were discussed at the Sorbonne with much
+freedom: Bruno showed himself no partisan of either the Platonic or the
+Peripatetic school; he was not exclusive either in philosophy or in
+religion; he did not favour the Huguenot faction more than the Catholic
+league; and precisely by reason of this independent attitude, which kept
+him free of the shackles of the sects, did he obtain the faculty of
+lecturing at the Sorbonne. Nor can we ascribe this aloofness to
+religious indifference, but to the fact that he sought for higher things
+and longed for nobler ones. The humiliating spectacle which the positive
+religions, both Catholic and Reformed, presented at that time--the
+hatreds, the civil wars, the assassinations which they instigated--had
+disgusted men of noble mould, and had turned them against these
+so-called religions; so that in Naples, in Tuscany, in Venice, in
+Switzerland, France, and England, there were to be found societies of
+philosophers, of free-thinkers, and politicians, who repudiated every
+positive religion and professed a pure Theism.
+
+In the "Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante" he declares that he cannot ally
+himself either to the Catholic or the Lutheran Church, because he
+professes a more pure and complete faith than these--to wit, the love of
+humanity and the love of wisdom; and Mocenigo, the disciple who
+ultimately betrayed and sold him to the Holy Office, declares in his
+deposition that Bruno sought to make himself the author of a new
+religion under the name of "Philosophy." He was not a man to conceal his
+ideas, and in the fervour of his improvisation he no doubt revealed what
+he was; some tumult resulted from this free speaking of Bruno's, and he
+was forced to discontinue his lectures at the Sorbonne.
+
+Towards the end of the year 1583 the King became enthralled by religious
+enthusiasm, and nothing was talked of in Paris but the conversion of
+King Henry. This fact changed the aspect of affairs as far as Bruno was
+concerned; he judged it prudent to leave Paris, and he travelled to
+England.
+
+The principal works published by Bruno during his stay in Paris are "Il
+Candelajo" and "Umbrae Idearum." The former, says Levi, is a work of
+criticism and of demolition; in this comedy he sets in groups the
+principal types of hypocrisy, stupidity, and rascality, and exhibiting
+them in their true colours, he lashes them with ridicule. In the "Umbrae
+Idearum" he initiates the work of reconstruction, giving colour to his
+thought and sketching his idea. The philosophy of Bruno is based upon
+that of Pythagoras, whose system penetrates the social and intellectual
+history of Italy, both ancient and modern. The method of Pythagoras is
+not confined, as most philosophies are, to pure metaphysical
+speculations, but connects these with scientific observations and social
+practice. Bruno having resuscitated these doctrines, stamps them with a
+wider scope, giving them a more positive direction; and he may with
+propriety be called the second Pythagoras. The primal idea of
+Pythagoras, which Bruno worked out to a more distinct development is
+this: numbers are the beginning of things; in other words numbers are
+the cause of the existence of material things; they are not final, but
+are always changing position and attributes; they are variable and
+relative. Beyond and above this mutability there must be the Immutable,
+the All, the One.
+
+The Infinite must be one, as one is the absolute number; in the original
+One is contained all the numbers; in the One is contained all the
+elements of the Universe.
+
+This abstract doctrine required to be elucidated and fixed. From a
+hypothesis to concentrate and reduce it to a reality was the great work
+of Bruno.
+
+One is the perfect number; it is the primitive monad. As from the One
+proceeds the infinite series of numbers which again withdraw and are
+resolved into the One; so from Substance, which is one, proceed the
+myriads of worlds; from the worlds proceed myriads of living creatures;
+and from the union of one with the diverse is generated the Universe.
+Hence the progression from ascent to descent, from spirit to that which
+we call matter; from the cause to the origin, and the process of
+metaphysics, which, from the finite world of sense rises to the
+intelligent, passing through the intermediate numbers of infinite
+substance to active being and cosmic reason.
+
+From the absolute One, the sun of the sensible and intellectual world,
+millions of stars and suns are produced or developed. Each sun is the
+centre of as many worlds which are distributed in as many distinct
+series in an infinite number of concentric centres and systems. Each
+system is attracted, repelled, and moved by an infinite, internal
+passion, or attraction; each turns round its own centre, and moves in a
+spiral towards the centre of the whole, towards which centre they all
+tend with infinite passional ardour. For in this centre resides the sun
+of suns, the unity of unities, the temple, the altar of the universe,
+the sacred fire of Vesta, the vital principle of the universe.
+
+That which occurs in the world of stars is reflected in the telluric
+world; everything has its centre, towards which it is attracted with
+fervour. All is thought, passion, and aspiration.
+
+From this unity, which governs variety, from this movement of every
+world around its sun, of every sun around its centre sun--the sun of
+suns--which informs all with the rays of the spirit, with the light of
+thought--is generated that perfect harmony of colours, sounds, forms,
+which strike the sight and captivate and enthrall the intellect. That
+which in the heavens is harmony becomes, in the individual, morality,
+and in companies of human beings, law. That which is light in the
+spheres becomes intelligence and science in the world of the spirit and
+in humanity. We must study this harmony that rules the celestial worlds
+in order to deduce the laws which should govern civil bodies.
+
+In the science of numbers dwells harmony, and therefore it behoves us to
+identify ourselves with this harmony, because from it is derived the
+harmonic law which draws men together into companies. Through the
+revolution of the worlds through space around their suns, from their
+order, their constancy and their measure, the mind comprehends the
+progress and conditions of men, and their duties towards each other. The
+Bible, the sacred book of man, is in the heavens; there does man find
+written the word of God.
+
+Human souls are lights, distinct from the universal soul, which is
+diffused over all and penetrates everything. A purifying process guides
+them from one existence to another, from one form to another, from one
+world to another. The life of man is more than an experience or trial;
+it is an effort, a struggle to reproduce and represent upon earth some
+of that goodness, beauty, and truth which are diffused over the universe
+and constitute its harmony.
+
+Long, slow, and full of opposition is this educational process of the
+soul. As the terraqueous globe becomes formed, changed, and perfected,
+little by little, through the cataclysms and convulsions which, by means
+of fire, flood, earthquake, and irruptions, transform the earth, so it
+is with humanity. Through struggle is man educated, fortified, and
+raised.
+
+In the midst of social cataclysms and revolutions humanity has one
+guiding star, a beacon which shows its light above the storms and
+tempests, a mystical thread running through the labyrinth of
+history--namely, the religion of philosophy and of thought. The vulgar
+creeds would not, and have not dared to reveal the Truth in its purity
+and essence. They covered it with veils with allegories, with myths and
+mysteries, which they called sacred; they enshrouded thought with a
+double veil, and called it Revelation. Humanity, deceived by a
+seductive form, adored the veil, but did not lift itself up to the idea
+behind it; it saw the shadow, not the light.
+
+But we must return to our wandering hero.
+
+Bruno was about thirty-six years old when he left Paris and went to
+England. He was invited to visit the University of Oxford, and opened
+his lectures there with two subjects which, apparently diverse, are in
+reality intimately connected with each other--namely, on the Quadruple
+Sphere and on the Immortality of the Soul. Speaking of the immortality
+of the soul, he maintained that nothing in the universe is lost,
+everything changes and is transformed; therefore, soul and body, spirit
+and matter, are equally immortal. The body dissolves, and is
+transformed; the soul transmigrates, and, drawing round itself atom to
+atom, it reconstructs for itself a new body. The spirit that animates
+and moves all things is one; everything differentiates according to the
+different forms and bodies in which it operates. Hence, of animate
+things some are inferior by reason of the meanness of the organ in which
+they operate; others are superior through the richness of the same. Thus
+we see that Bruno anticipates the doctrine, proclaimed later by Goethe
+and by Darwin, of the transformation of species and of the organic unity
+of the animal world; and this alternation from segregation to
+aggregation, which we call death and life, is no other than mutation of
+form.
+
+After having criticised and scourged the religions of chimera, of
+ignorance, and hypocrisy, in "Lo Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante" and in
+"L'Asino Cillenico," the author, in "Gli Eroici Furori," lays down the
+basis for the religion of thought and of science. In place of the
+so-called Christian perfections (resignation, devotion, and ignorance),
+Bruno would put intelligence and the progress of the intellect in the
+world of physics, metaphysics, and morals; the true aim being
+illumination, the true morality the practice of justice, the true
+redemption the liberation of the soul from error, its elevation and
+union with God upon the wings of thought. This idea is developed in the
+work in question, which is dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. After
+treating of the infinite universe, and contemplating the innumerable
+worlds in other works, he comes, in "Gli Eroici Furori," to the
+consideration of virtue in the individual, and demonstrates the potency
+of the human faculties. After the Cosmos, the Microcosm; after the
+infinitely great, the infinitely small. The body is in the soul, the
+soul is in the mind, the mind is in God. The life of the soul is the
+true life of the man. Of all his various faculties, that which rules
+all, that which exalts our nature, is Thought. By means of it we rise to
+the contemplation of the universe, and becoming in our turn creators, we
+raise the edifice of science; through the intellect the affections
+become purified, the will becomes strengthened. True liberty is
+acquired, and will and action becoming one through thought, we become
+heroes.
+
+This education of the soul, or rather this elevation and glory of
+thought, which draws with it the will and the affections, not by means
+of blind faith or supernatural grace, not through an irrational and
+mystical impulse, but by the strength of a reformed intellect and by a
+palpable and well-considered enthusiasm, which science and the
+contemplation of Nature alone can give, this is the keynote of the poem.
+It is composed of two parts, each of which is divided into five
+dialogues: the first part, which may be called psychological, shows, by
+means of various figures and symbols drawn from Nature, how the divine
+light is always present to us, is inherent in man; it presents itself to
+the senses and to the comprehension: man constantly rejects and ignores
+it; sometimes the soul strives to rise up to it, and the poet describes
+the struggle with the opposing affections which are involved in this
+effort, and shows how at last the man of intelligence overcomes these
+contending powers and fatal impulses which conflict within us, and by
+virtue of harmony and the fusion of the opposites the intellect becomes
+one with the affections, and man realizes the good and rises to the
+knowledge of the true. All conflicting desires being at last united,
+they become fixed upon one object, one great intent--the love of the
+Divine, which is the highest truth and the highest good. In "Gli Eroici
+Furori" we see Bruno as a man, as a philosopher, and as a believer: here
+he reveals himself as the hero of thought. Even as Christ was the hero
+of faith, and sacrificed himself for it, so Bruno declares himself ready
+to sacrifice himself for science. It is also a literary, a
+philosophical, and a religious work; form, however, is sacrificed to the
+idea--so absorbed is the author in the idea that he often ignores form
+altogether. An exile wandering from place to place, he wrote hurriedly
+and seldom or ever had he the opportunity of revising what he had
+written down. His mind in the impulsiveness of its improvisation was
+like the volcano of his native soil, which, rent by subterranean
+flames, sends forth from its vortices of fire, at the same time smoke,
+ashes, turbid floods, stones, and lava. He contemplates the soul, and
+seeks to understand its language; he is a physiologist and a naturalist,
+merged in the mystic and the enlightened devotee.
+
+Bruno might have made a fixed home for himself in England, as so many of
+his compatriots had done, and have continued to enjoy the society of
+such men as Sir Philip Sydney, Fulke Greville, and, perchance, also of
+Shakespeare himself, who was in London about that time; but his
+self-imposed mission allowed him no rest; he must go forth, and carry
+his doctrines to the world, and forget the pleasures of friendship and
+the ties of comfort in the larger love of humanity; his work was to
+awaken souls out of their lethargy, to inspire them with the love of the
+highest good and of truth; to teach that God is to be found in the study
+of Nature, that the laws of the visible world will explain those of the
+invisible, the union of science and humanity with Nature and with God.
+
+Bruno returned to Paris in 1585, being at that time tutor in the family
+of Mauvissier, who had been recalled from England by his Sovereign.
+During Bruno's second sojourn in Paris efforts were made by Mendoza,
+the Spanish ambassador, and others, to induce him to return to his
+allegiance to the Church, and to be reconciled to the Pope; but Bruno
+declined these overtures, and soon after left Paris for Germany, where
+he arrived on foot, his only burden being a few books.
+
+He visited Marburg and Wurtemburg, remaining in the latter place two
+years, earning his bread by teaching.
+
+Prague and Frankfort were next visited; ever the same courage and
+boldness characterised his teaching, and ever the same scanty welcome
+was accorded to it, although in every city and university crowds of the
+intelligent listened to his lectures; but the Church never lost sight of
+Bruno, he was always under surveillance, and few dared to show
+themselves openly his friends. Absorbed in his studies and intent upon
+his work, writing with feverish haste, he observed nothing of the
+invisible net which his enemies kept spread about him, and while his
+slanderers were busy in doing him injury he was occupied in teaching the
+mnemonic art, and explaining his system of philosophy to the young
+Lutherans who attended his lectures; in settling the basis of a new and
+rational religion, and in writing Latin verses; using ever greater
+diligence with his work, almost as if he felt that the time was drawing
+near in which he would be no longer at liberty to work and teach.
+
+It was during the early part of the pontificate of Gregory XIV. that
+Bruno received letters from Mocenigo in Venice, urging him to return to
+Italy, and to go and stay with him in Venice, and instruct him in the
+secrets of science. Bruno was beginning to tire of this perpetually
+wandering life, and after several letters from Mocenigo, full of fine
+professions of friendship and protection, Bruno, longing to see his
+country again, turned his face towards Venice.
+
+In those days men of superior intellect were often considered to be
+magicians or sorcerers; Mocenigo, after enticing Bruno to Venice,
+insisted upon his teaching him "the secret of memory and other things
+that he knew."
+
+The philosopher with untiring patience tried to instil into this dull
+head the principles of logic, the elements of mathematics, and the
+rudiments of the mnemonic art; but the pupil hated study, and had no
+faculty of thought; yet he insisted that Bruno should make science
+clearly known to him! But this was probably only to initiate a quarrel
+with Bruno, whom he intended afterwards to betray, and deliver into the
+hands of the Church.
+
+The Holy Office would have laid hands on Bruno immediately on his
+arrival in Italy, but being assured by Mocenigo that he could not
+escape, they left him a certain liberty, so that he might more surely
+compromise himself, while his enemies were busy collecting evidence
+against him. When at last his eyes became opened to what was going on
+about him, and he could no longer ignore the peril of his position, it
+was too late; Bruno could not get away, and was told by Mocenigo that if
+he stayed not by his own will and pleasure, he would be compelled to
+remain where he was. Bruno, however, made his preparations for
+departure, and sent his things on to Frankfort, intending to leave the
+next day himself; but in the morning, while he was still in bed,
+Mocenigo entered the chamber, pretending that he wished to speak with
+him; then calling his servant Bartolo and five or six gondoliers, who
+waited without, they forced Bruno to rise, and conducted him to a
+garret, and locked him in. There he passed the first day of that
+imprisonment which was to last for eight years. The next day he went
+over the lagoon in a gondola, in the company of his jailors, who took
+him to the prison of the Holy Office, and left him there. Levi devotes
+many pages to the accusations brought against Giordano Bruno by the
+Inquisitors, and the depositions and denunciations made against him by
+his enemies. The Court was opened without delay, and most of the
+provinces of Italy were represented by their delegates in the early part
+of the trial; Bruno himself, being interrogated, gave an account in
+detail of his life, of his wanderings, of his occupations and works:
+serene and dignified before this terrible tribunal, he expounded his
+doctrine, its principles, and logical consequences. He spoke of the
+universe, of the infinite worlds in infinite space, of the divinity in
+all things, of the unity of all things, the dependence and
+inter-dependence of all things, and of the existence of God in all.
+After nine months' imprisonment in Venice, towards the end of January
+1593, Bruno, in chains, was conveyed from the Bridge of Sighs through
+the lagoons to Ancona, where he remained incarcerated until the prison
+of the Roman Inquisition received him. If we look upon "Gli Eroici
+Furori" as a prophetical poem, we see that his sufferings in the
+loneliness of his prison and in the torture-chamber of the Inquisition
+passed by anticipation before his mind in the book written when he was
+free and a wanderer in strange lands.
+
+    "By what condition, nature, or fell chance,
+    In living death, dead life I live?"
+
+he writes eight years and more before he ever breathed the stifling air
+of a dungeon; and again:
+
+    "The soul nor yields nor bends to these rough blows,
+    But bears, exulting, this long martyrdom,
+    And makes a harmony of these sharp pangs."
+
+Further details of the trial of Giordano Bruno are to be found in Levi's
+book. It is well known how he received the sentence of death passed upon
+him, saying: "You, O judges! feel perchance more terror in pronouncing
+this judgment than I do in hearing it." The day fixed for the burning,
+which was to take place in the Campo dei Fiori, was the 17th February in
+the year 1600. Rome was full of pilgrims from all parts, come to
+celebrate the jubilee of Pope Clement VIII. Bruno was hardly fifty years
+old at this time; his face was thin and pale, with dark, fiery eyes; the
+forehead luminous with thought, his body frail and bearing the signs of
+torture; his hands in chains, his feet bare, he walked with slow steps
+in the early morning towards the funeral pile. Brightly shone the sun,
+and the flames leapt upwards and mingled with his ardent rays; Bruno
+stood in the midst with his arms crossed, his head raised, his eyes
+open; when all was consumed, a monk took a handful of the ashes and
+scattered them in the wind. A month later, the Bishop of Sidonia
+presented himself at the Treasury of the Pope, and demanded two scudi in
+payment for having degraded Fra Giordano the heretic.
+
+    "L'incendio e tal, ch'io m'ardo e non mi sfaccio."
+
+    EROICI FURORI.
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+HEROIC ENTHUSIASTS.
+
+
+
+
+=First Dialogue.=
+
+TANSILLO, CICADA.
+
+
+TANS. The enthusiasms most suitable to be first brought forward and
+considered are those that I now place before you in the order that seems
+to me most fitting.
+
+CIC. Begin, then, to read.
+
+TANSILLO.
+
+1.
+
+    Ye Muses, that so oft I have repulsed,
+    That, now importuned, haste to cure my pain,
+    And to console me in my woes
+    With verses, rhymes, and exaltation
+    Such as to others ye did never show,
+    Who yet do vaunt themselves of laurel and of myrtle
+    Be near me now, my anchor and my port,
+    Lest I for sport should towards some others turn.
+
+    O Mount! O Goddesses! O Fountain!
+    Where and with whom I dwell, converse and nourish me,
+    Where peacefully I ponder and grow fair;
+    I rise, I live: heart, spirit, brows adorn;
+    Death, cypresses, and hells
+    You change to life, to laurels, and eternal stars!
+
+It is to be supposed that he oftimes and for divers reasons had repulsed
+the Muses; first, because he could not be idle as a priest of the Muses
+should be, for idleness cannot exist there, where the ministers and
+servants of envy, ignorance, and malignity are to be combated. Moreover,
+he could not force himself to the study of philosophies, which though
+they be not the most mature, yet ought, as kindred of the Muses, to
+precede them. Besides which, being drawn on one side by the tragic
+Melpomene, with more matter than spirit, and on the other side by the
+comic Thalia, with more spirit than matter, it came to pass that,
+oscillating between the two, he remained neutral and inactive, rather
+than operative. Finally, the dictum of the censors, who, restraining him
+from that which was high and worthy, and towards which he was naturally
+inclined, sought to enslave his genius, and from being free in virtue
+they would have rendered him contemptible under a most vile and stupid
+hypocrisy. At last, in the great whirl of annoyances by which he was
+surrounded, it happened that, not having wherewith to console him, he
+listened to those who are said to intoxicate him with such exaltation,
+verses, and rhymes, as they had never demonstrated to others; because
+this work shines more by its originality than by its conventionality.
+
+CIC. Say, what do you mean by those who vaunt themselves of myrtle and
+laurel?
+
+TANS. Those may and do boast of the myrtle who sing of love: if they
+bear themselves nobly, they may wear a crown of that plant consecrated
+to Venus, of which they know the potency. Those may boast of the laurel
+who sing worthily of things pertaining to heroes, substituting heroic
+souls for speculative and moral philosophy, and praising them and
+setting as mirrors and exemplars for political and civil actions.
+
+CIC. There are then many species of poets and crowns?
+
+TANS. Not only as many as there are Muses, but a great many more; for
+although genius is to be met with, yet certain modes and species of
+human ingenuity cannot be thus classified.
+
+CIC. There are certain schoolmen who barely allow Homer to be a poet,
+and set down Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod, Lucretius, and many others
+as versifiers, judging them by the rules of poetry of Aristotle.
+
+TANS. Know for certain, my brother, that such as these are beasts. They
+do not consider that those rules serve principally as a frame for the
+Homeric poetry, and for other similar to it, and they set up one as a
+great poet, high as Homer, and disallow those of other vein, and art,
+and enthusiasm, who in their various kinds are equal, similar, or
+greater.
+
+CIC. So that Homer was not a poet who depended upon rules, but was the
+cause of the rules which serve for those who are more apt at imitation
+than invention, and they have been used by him who, being no poet, yet
+knew how to take the rules of Homeric poetry into service, so as to
+become, not a poet or a Homer, but one who apes the Muse of others?
+
+TANS. Thou dost well conclude that poetry is not born in rules, or only
+slightly and accidentally so; the rules are derived from the poetry, and
+there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are kinds and
+sorts of true poets.
+
+CIC. How then are the true poets to be known?
+
+TANS. By the singing of their verses; in that singing they give delight,
+or they edify, or they edify and delight together.
+
+CIC. To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful?
+
+TANS. To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could not
+sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who, having no Muse of his own,
+would coquette with that of Homer.
+
+CIC. Then they are wrong, those stupid pedants of our days, who exclude
+from the number of poets those who do not use words and metaphors
+conformable to, or whose principles are not in union with, those of
+Homer and Virgil; or because they do not observe the custom of
+invocation, or because they weave one history or tale with another, or
+because they finish the song with an epilogue on what has been said and
+a prelude on what is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and
+censure, from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves, if
+the fancy took them, could be the true poets; and yet in fact they are
+no other than worms, that know not how to do anything well, but are born
+only to gnaw and befoul the studies and labours of others; and not being
+able to attain celebrity by their own virtue and ingenuity, seek to put
+themselves in the front, by hook or by crook, through the defects and
+errors of others.
+
+TANS. Now, to return from this long digression, I say that there are as
+many sorts of poets as there are human sentiments and ideas; and to
+these it is possible to adapt garlands, not only of every species of
+plant, but also of other kinds of material. So the crowns of poets are
+made not only of myrtle and of laurel, but of vine leaves for the
+white-wine verses, and of ivy for the bacchanals; of olive for sacrifice
+and laws; of poplar, of elm, and of corn for agriculture; of cypress for
+funerals, and innumerable others for other occasions; and, if it please
+you, also of that material signified by a good fellow when he exclaimed:
+
+    O Friar Leek! O Poetaster!
+    That in Milan didst buckle on thy wreath
+    Composed of salad, sausage, and the pepper-caster.
+
+CIC. Now surely he of divers moods, which he exhibits in various ways,
+may cover himself with the branches of different plants, and may hold
+discourse worthily with the Muses, for they are his aura or comforter,
+his anchor or support, and his harbour, to which he retires in times of
+labour, of agitation, and storm. Hence he cries: "O mountain of
+Parnassus, where I abide! Muses, with whom I converse! Fountain of
+Helicon, where I am nourished. Mountain, that affordest me a quiet
+dwelling-place! Muses, that inspire me with profound doctrines.
+Fountain, that cleanses me! Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises!
+Muses, that in discourse revive my spirit. Well, whose arbours cool my
+brows! Change my death into life, my cypress to laurels, and my hells
+into heavens: that is, give me immortality, make me poet, render me
+illustrious!"
+
+TANS. Well; because to those whom Heaven favours the greatest evils turn
+to greatest good, for needs or necessities bring forth labours and
+studies, and these most often bring the glory of immortal splendour.
+
+CIC. For to die in one age makes us live in all the rest. Go on.
+
+TANS. Then follows:
+
+2.
+
+    In form and place like to Parnassus is my heart,
+    And up unto this mount for safety I ascend;
+    My Muses are my thoughts, and they present to me
+    At every hour new beauties counted out.
+    The frequent tears that from my eyes do pour,
+    These make my fount of Helicon.
+    By such a mount, such nymphs, such floods,
+    As Heaven did please, was I a poet born.
+    No king of any kingdom,
+    No favouring hand of emperor,
+    No highest priest nor great pastor,
+    Has given to me such graces, honours, privileges,
+    As are those laurel leaves with which
+    O'ershadowed are my heart, my thoughts, my tears.
+
+Here he declares his mountain to be the exalted affection of his heart,
+his Muses he calls the beauties and attributes of the object of his
+affections, and the fountain is his tears. In that mountain affection is
+kindled; through those beauties enthusiasm is conceived, and by those
+tears the enthusiastic affection is demonstrated; and he esteems himself
+not less grandly crowned by his heart, his thoughts, and his tears than
+others are by the hand of kings, emperors, and popes.
+
+CIC. Explain to me what he means by his heart being in form like
+Parnassus.
+
+TANS. Because the human heart has two summits, which terminate in one
+base or root; and, spiritually, from one affection of the heart proceed
+two opposites, love and hate; and the mountain of Parnassus has two
+summits and one base.
+
+CIC. On to the next!
+
+3.
+
+    The captain calls his warriors to arms,
+    And at the trumpet's sound they all
+    Under one sign and standard come.
+    But yet for some in vain the call is heard,
+    Heedless and unprepared, they mind it not.
+    One foe he kills, and the insane unborn,
+    He banishes from out the camp in scorn.
+    And thus the soul, when foiled her high designs,
+    Would have all those opponents dead or gone;
+    One object only I regard,
+    One face alone my mind does fill,
+    One beauty keeps me fixed and still;
+    One arrow pierced my heart, and one
+    The fire with which alone I burn,
+    And towards one paradise I turn.
+
+This captain is the human will, which dwells in the depths of the soul
+with the small helm of reason to govern and guide the interior powers
+against the wave of natural impulses. He, with the sound of the
+trumpet--that is, by fixed resolve--calls all the warriors or invokes
+all the powers; called warriors because they are in continual strife and
+opposition; and their affections, which are all contrary thoughts, some
+towards one and some towards the other side inclining, and he tries to
+bring them all under one flag--one settled end and aim. Some are called
+in vain to put in a ready appearance, and are chiefly those which
+proceed from the lower instincts, and which obey the reason either not
+at all, or very little; and forcing himself to prevent their actions and
+condemn those which cannot be prevented, he shows himself as one who
+would kill those and banish these, now by the scourge of scorn, now by
+the sword of anger. One only is the object of his regards, and on this
+he is intently fixed; one prospect delights and fills his imagination,
+one beauty pleases, and he rests in that, because the operation of the
+intelligence is not a work of movement but of quiet; from thence alone
+he derives that barb which, killing him, constitutes the consummation of
+perfection. He burns with one fire alone; that is, one affection
+consumes him.
+
+CIC. Why is love symbolized by fire?
+
+TANS. For many reasons, but at present let this one suffice thee: that
+as love converts the thing loved into the lover, so amongst the elements
+fire is active and potent to convert all the others, simple and
+composite, into itself.
+
+CIC. Go on.
+
+TANS. He knows one paradise--that is, one consummation, because paradise
+commonly signifies the end; which is again distinguished from that which
+is absolute in truth and essence from that which is so in appearance and
+shadow or form. Of the first there can only be one, as there can be only
+one ultimate and one primal good. Of the second the modes are infinite.
+
+4.
+
+    Love, Fate, Love's object, and cold Jealousy,
+    Delight me, and torment, content me, and afflict.
+    The insensate boy, the blind and sinister,
+    The loftiest beauty, and my death alone
+    Show to me paradise, and take away,
+    Present me with all good, and steal it from me,
+    So that the heart, the mind, the spirit, and the soul,
+    Have joy, pain, cold, and weight in their control.
+    Who will deliver me from war?
+    Who give to me the fruit of love in peace?
+    And that which vexes that which pleases me
+    (Opening the gates of heaven and closing them)
+    Who will set far apart
+    To make acceptable my fires and tears?
+
+He shows the reason and origin of passion; and whence it is conceived;
+and how enthusiasm is born, by ploughing the field of the Muses and
+scattering the seed of his thoughts and waiting for the fruitful
+harvest, discovering in himself the fervour of the affections instead of
+in the sun, and in place of the rain is the moisture of his eyes. He
+brings forward four things: Love, Fate, the Object, and Jealousy. Here
+love is not a low, ignoble, and unworthy motor, but a noble lord and
+chief. Fate is none other than the pre-ordained disposition and order of
+casualties to which he is subject by his destiny. The object is the
+thing loved and the correlative of the lover. Jealousy, it is clear,
+must be the ardour of the lover about the thing loved, of which it boots
+not to speak to him who knows what love is, and which it is vain to try
+to explain to others. Love delights, because to him who loves it is a
+pleasure to love; and he who really loves would not cease from loving.
+This is referred to in the following sonnet:
+
+5.
+
+    Beloved, sweet, and honourable wound,
+    From fairest dart that love did choose,
+    Lofty, most beauteous and potential zeal,
+    That makes the soul in its own flames find weal!
+    What power or spell of herb or magic art
+    Can tear thee from the centre of my heart,
+    Since he, who with an ever-growing zest,
+    Tormenting most, yet most does make me blest?
+    How can I of this weight unburdened be,
+    If pain the cure, and joy the sore give me?
+    Sweet is my pain: to this world new and rare.
+    Eyes! ye are the bow and torches of my lord!
+    Double the flames and arrows in my breast,
+    For languishing is sweet and burning best.
+
+Fate vexes and grieves by undesirable and unfortunate events, or because
+it makes the subject feel unworthy of the object, and out of proportion
+with the dignity of the latter, or because a perfect sympathy does not
+exist, or for other reasons and obstacles that arise. The object
+satisfies the subject, which is nourished by no other, seeks no other,
+is occupied by no other, and banishes every other thought. Jealousy
+torments, because although she is the daughter of Love, and is derived
+from him, and is his companion who always goes with him, and is a sign
+of the same, being understood as a necessary consequence wherever love
+is found (as may be observed of whole generations who, from the coldness
+of the region and lateness of development, learn little, love less, and
+of jealousy know nothing), yet, notwithstanding its kinship,
+association, and signification, jealousy comes to trouble and poisons
+all that it finds of beautiful and of good in Love. Therefore I said in
+another sonnet:
+
+6.
+
+    Oh, wicked child of Envy and of Love!
+    That turnest into pain thy father's joys,
+    To evil Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good.
+    Minister of torment! Jealousy!
+    Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal!
+    Who steals and poisons others' good,
+    Under thy cruel breath does languish
+    The sweetest flower of all my hopes.
+    Proud of thyself, unlovely one,
+    Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill,
+    The heart thou visitest by thousand doors;
+    If entrance unto thee could be denied,
+    The reign of Love would so much fairer be,
+    As would this world were death and hate away.
+
+To the above is added, that Jealousy not only is sometimes the ruin and
+death of the lover, but often kills Love itself, because Love comes to
+be so much under its influence that it is impelled to despise the
+object, and in fact becomes alienated from it, especially when it
+engenders disdain.
+
+CIC. Explain now the ideas which follow. Why is Love called the
+"insensate boy"?
+
+TANS. I will tell you. Love is called the insensate boy, not because he
+is so of himself, but because he brings certain ones into subjection,
+and dwells in such subjects, since the more intellectual and speculative
+one is, the more Love raises the genius and purifies the intellect,
+rendering it alert, studious, and circumspect, promoting a condition of
+valorous animosity and an emulation of virtues and dignities by the
+desire to please and to make itself worthy of the thing loved; others,
+and they are the largest number, call him mad and foolish, because he
+drives them distracted, and hurries them into excesses, by which the
+spirit, soul, and body become sickly, and inept to consider and
+distinguish that which is seemly from that which is distorted; thus
+rendering them subject to scorn, derision, and reproach.
+
+CIC. It is commonly said that love makes fools of the old and makes the
+young wise.
+
+TANS. That drawback does not happen to all the aged, nor that advantage
+to all the young; the one is true of the weak, and the other of the
+robust. One thing is certain, that he who loves wisely in youth will in
+age not go astray. But derision is for those of mature age, into whose
+hands Love puts the alphabet.
+
+CIC. Tell me now why Fate is called blind and bad.
+
+TANS. Again, blind and bad is not said of Destiny itself, because it is
+of the same order and number and measure as the universe; but as to the
+subjects it is said to be blind, for they are blind to fate, she being
+so uncertain. So also is Fate said to be evil, because every living
+mortal who laments and complains, blames her. As the Apulian poet says:
+
+    How is it, or what means it, Maecenas,
+    That none on earth contented with that fate appear,
+    Which Reason or Heaven has assigned to them?
+
+In the same way he calls the object the highest beauty, as it is that
+alone which has power of attracting him to itself; and thus he holds it
+more worthy, more noble, and feels it predominant and superior as he
+becomes subject and captive to it. "My death itself," he says of
+Jealousy, because as Love has no more close companion than she, so also
+he feels he has no greater enemy; as nothing is more hurtful to iron
+than rust, which is produced by it.
+
+CIC. Now, since you have begun so, continue to show bit by bit that
+which remains.
+
+TANS. So will I. He says next of Love: he shows me Paradise, in order to
+prove that Love himself is not blind, and does not himself render any
+lovers blind, except through the ignoble characteristics of the subject;
+even as the birds of night become blind in the sunshine. As for himself,
+Love brightens, clears, and opens the intellect, permeating all and
+producing miraculous effects.
+
+CIC. Much of this, it seems to me, the Nolano demonstrates in another
+sonnet:
+
+7.
+
+    Love, through whom high truth I do discern,
+    Thou openest the black diamond doors;
+    Through the eyes enters my deity, and through seeing
+    Is born, lives, is nourished, and has eternal reign;
+    Shows forth what heaven holds, earth and hell:
+    Makes present true images of the absent;
+    Gains strength: and drawing with straight aim,
+    Wounds, lays bare and frets the inmost heart.
+    Attend now, thou base hind unto the truth,
+    Bend down the ear to my unerring word;
+    Open, open, if thou canst the eyes, foolish perverted one!
+    Thou understanding little, call'st him child,
+    Because thou swiftly changest, fugitive he seems,
+    Thyself not seeing, call'st him blind.
+
+Love shows Paradise in order that the highest things may be heard,
+understood, and accomplished; or it makes the things loved, grand--at
+least in appearance. He says, Fate takes love away; because, often in
+spite of the lover, it does not concede, and that which he sees and
+desires is distant and adverse to him. Every good he sets before me, he
+says of the object, because that which is indicated by the finger of
+Love seems to him the only thing, the principal, and the whole. "Steals
+it from me," he says of Jealousy, not simply in order that it may not be
+present to me; removing it from my eyesight, but in order that good may
+not be good, but an acute evil; sweet, not sweet, but an agonized
+longing; while the heart--that is, the will, has joy by the great force
+of love, whatever may be the result; the mind--that is, the intellectual
+part, has pain through the Fear of Fate, which fate does not favour the
+lover; the spirit--that is, the natural affections, are cold because
+they are snatched from the object which gives joy to the heart, and
+which might give pleasure to the mind; the soul--that is, the suffering
+and sensitive soul, is heavy--that is, finds itself oppressed with the
+heavy burden of jealousy which torments it. To this consideration of his
+state he adds a tearful lament, and says: "Who will deliver me from
+war, and give me peace? or who will separate that which pains and
+injures me from that which I so love, and which opens to me the gates of
+heaven, so that the fervid flames in my heart may be acceptable, and
+fortunate the fountains of my tears?" Continuing this proposition, he
+adds:
+
+8.
+
+    Ah me! oppress some other, spiteful Fate!
+    Jealousy, get thee hence--begone! away!
+    These may suffice to show me all the grace
+    Of changeful Love, and of that noble face.
+    He takes my life, she gives me death,
+    She wings, he burns my heart,
+    He murders it, and she revives the soul:
+    My succour she, my grievous burden he!
+    But what say I of Love?
+    If he and she one subject be, or form,
+    If with one empire and one rule they stamp
+    One sole impression in my heart of hearts,
+    Then are they two, yet one, on which do wait
+    The mirth and melancholy of my state!
+
+Four beginnings and extremes of two opposites he would reduce to two
+beginnings and one opposite: he says, then, oppress others--that is, let
+it suffice thee, O my Fate! that thou hast so much oppressed me; and
+since thou canst not exist without exercise of thyself, turn elsewhere
+thy anger. Get thee hence out of the world, thou Jealousy, because one
+of those two others which remain can supply your functions and offices;
+yet, O Fate! thou art none other than my love; and thou, Jealousy, art
+not external to the substance of the same. He alone, then, remains to
+deprive me of life, to burn me, to give me death, and to be to me the
+burden of my bones; for he delivers me from death--wings, enlivens, and
+sustains. Then two beginnings and one opposite he reduces to one
+beginning and one result, exclaiming: But what do I say of Love? If this
+presence, this object, is his empire, and appears none other than the
+empire of Love, the rule of Love and its own rule; the impression of
+Love which appears in the substance of my heart, is then no other
+impression than its own, and therefore after having said "Noble face,"
+replies "Inconstant Love."[A]
+
+[A] Vago amore.
+
+
+
+
+=Second Dialogue.=
+
+TANSILLO.
+
+
+Now begins the enthusiast to display the affections and uncover the
+wounds which are for a sign in his body, and in substance or essence in
+his soul, and he says thus:
+
+9.
+
+    Of Love the standard-bearer I;
+    My hopes are ice, and glowing my desires.
+    At once I tremble, sparkle, freeze, and burn;
+    Am mute, and fill the air with clamorous plaints.
+    Water my eyes distil, sparks from my heart.
+    I live, I die, make merry and lament.
+    Living the waters, the burning never dies,
+    For in my eyes is Thetys, and Vulcan in my heart.
+    Others I love; myself I hate.
+    If I be winged, others are changed to stone;
+    They high as heaven, if I be lowly set.
+    I cease not to pursue, they ever flee away;
+    If I do call, yet none will answer me.
+    The more I search, the more is hid from me.
+
+In accordance with this, I will continue with that which just before I
+said to thee, that one should not strive so hard to prove that which is
+so very evident--namely, that there is nothing pure and unalloyed; and
+some have said that no mixed thing is a real entity, as alloyed gold is
+not real gold, manufactured wine is not real simple wine. Almost all
+things are made up of opposites, whence it comes that the success of our
+affections, through the mixture that is in things, can afford no
+pleasure without some bitterness; and more than this, I will say, that
+were it not for the bitter, there would be no sweet; seeing that it is
+through fatigue that we find pleasure in repose; separation is the cause
+of our pleasure in union; and, examining generally, we shall ever find
+that one opposite is the reason that the other opposite pleases and is
+desired.
+
+CIC. Then there is no delight without the contrary?
+
+TANS. Certainly not; as without the opposite there is no pain; as is
+shown by that golden Pythagorean poet when he says:
+
+    Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, nec
+    Respiciunt, clausae tenebris, e carcere caeco.
+
+This, then, is what the mixture of things causes, and hence it is that
+no one is pleased with his own state, except some senseless blockhead,
+who is so all the more the deeper is the degree of obscure folly in
+which he is sunk; then he has little or no apprehension of pain; he
+enjoys the actual present without fearing the future; he enjoys that
+which is and that in which he finds himself, and has neither care nor
+sorrow for what may be; and, in short, has no sense of that opposition
+which is symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+CIC. From this we see that ignorance is the mother of sensual felicity
+and beatitude, and this same is the garden of paradise of the animals;
+as is made clear in the dialogues of the Kabala of the horse Pegasus;
+and as says the wise Solomon, "Whoso increases knowledge increases
+sorrow."
+
+TANS. Hence it appears that heroic love is a torment, because it does
+not enjoy the present, as does animal love, but is of the future and the
+absent; and, on the contrary, it feels ambition, emulation, suspicion
+and dread. One evening, after supper, a certain neighbour of ours said:
+"Never was I more jolly than I am now." John Bruno, father of the
+Nolano, answered him: "Never wert thou more foolish than now."
+
+CIC. You would imply, then, that he who is sad is wise, and that other
+who is more sad is wiser?
+
+TANS. On the contrary, I mean that there is in these another species of
+foolishness and a worse.
+
+CIC. Who, then, is wise, if foolish is he who is content, and foolish he
+who is sad?
+
+TANS. He who is neither merry nor sad.
+
+CIC. Who? He who sleeps? He who is without feeling--who is dead?
+
+TANS. No; but he who is quick, both seeing and hearing, and who,
+considering evil and good, estimating the one and the other as variable,
+and consistent in motion, mutation, and vicissitude, in such wise that
+the end of one opposite is the commencement of another, and the extreme
+of the one is the beginning of the other; whose spirit is neither
+depressed nor elated, but is moderate in inclinations and temperate in
+desires; to him pleasure is not pleasure, having ever present the end of
+it; equally, pain to him is not pain, because by the force of reasoning
+he has present the end of that too. So the sage holds all mutable things
+as things that are not, and affirms that they are no other than vanity
+and nothingness, because time has to eternity the proportion of the
+point to the line.
+
+CIC. So that we can never hold the proposition of being contented or
+discontented, without holding the proposition of our own foolishness,
+which we thereby confess; therefore no one who reasons, and
+consequently no one who participates, can be wise; in short, all men are
+fools.
+
+TANS. I do not intend to infer that; for I will hold of highest wisdom
+him who could really say at one time the opposite of what he says at
+another--never was I less gay than now; or, never was I less sad than at
+present.
+
+CIC. How? Do you not make two contrary qualities where there are two
+opposite affections? Why, I say, do you take as two virtues, and not as
+one vice and one virtue, the being less gay and the being less sad?
+
+TANS. Because both the contraries in excess--that is, in so far as they
+exceed--are vices, because they pass the line; and the same, in so far
+as they diminish, come to be virtues, because they are contained within
+limits.
+
+CIC. How? The being less merry and the being less sad are not one virtue
+and one vice, but are two virtues?
+
+TANS. On the contrary, I say they are one and the same virtue; because
+the vice is there where the opposite is; the opposite is chiefly there
+where the extreme is; the greatest opposite is the nearest to the
+extreme; the least or nothing is in the middle, where the opposites
+meet, and are one and identical; as between the coldest and hottest and
+the hotter and colder, in the middle point is that which you may call
+hot and cold, or neither hot nor cold, without contradiction. In that
+way whoso is least content and least joyful is in the degree of
+indifference, and finds himself in the habitation of temperance, where
+the virtue and condition of a strong soul exist, which bends not to the
+south wind nor to the north. This, then, to return to the point, is how
+this enthusiastic hero, who explains himself in the present part, is
+different from the other baser ones--not as virtue from vice, but as a
+vice which exists in a subject more divine or divinely, from a vice
+which exists in a subject more savage or savagely; so that the
+difference is according to the different subjects and modes, and not
+according to the form of vice.
+
+CIC. I can very well conceive, from what you have said, the condition of
+that heroic enthusiast, who says, "My hopes are ice and my desires are
+glowing," because he is not in the temperance of mediocrity, but, in the
+excess of contradictions, his soul is discordant, he shivers in his
+frozen hopes and burns in his glowing desires; in his eagerness he is
+clamorous, and he is mute from fear; his heart burns in its affection
+for others, and for compassion of himself he sheds tears from his eyes;
+dying in the laughter of others, he is alive in his own lamentations;
+and like him who no longer belongs to himself, he loves others and hates
+himself; because matter, as say the physicists, with that measure with
+which it loves the absent form, hates the present one. And so in the
+octave finishes the war which the soul has within itself; and when he
+says in the sistina, but if I be winged, others change to stone and that
+which follows; he shows his passion for the warfare which he wages with
+external contradictions. I remember having read in Jamblichus, where he
+treats of the Egyptian mysteries, this sentence: "Impius animam
+dissidentem habet: unde nec secum ipse convenire potest, neque cum
+aliis."
+
+TANS. Now listen to another sonnet, as sequel to what has been said:
+
+10.
+
+    By what condition, nature, or fell chance,
+    In living death, dead life I live?
+    Love has me dead, alack! and such a death,
+    That death and life together I must lose.
+    Devoid of hope, I reach the gates of hell,
+    And laden with desire arrive at heaven:
+    Thus am I subject to eternal opposites,
+    And, banished both from heaven and from hell,
+    No pause nor rest my torments know,
+    Because between two running wheels I go,
+    Of which one here, the other there compels,
+    And like Ixion I pursue and flee;
+    For to the double discourse do I fit
+    The crosswise lesson of the spur and bit.
+
+He shows how much he suffers from this dislocation and distraction in
+himself; while the affections, leaving the mean and middle way of
+temperance, tend towards the one and the other extreme, and so are
+wafted on high or towards the right, and are also transported downwards
+to the left.
+
+CIC. How is it that, not being really of one or the other extreme, it
+does not come to be in the conditions or terms of virtue?
+
+TANS. It is then in a state of virtue when it keeps to the middle,
+declining from one to the other opposite; but when it leads towards the
+extremes, inclining to one or the other of those, it fails so entirely
+from being virtue, that it is a double vice, which consists in this,
+that the thing recedes from its nature, the perfection of which consists
+in unity, and there where the opposites meet, its composition and virtue
+exist. This, then, is how he is dead alive, or living dying; whence he
+says, "In a living death a dead life I live." He is not dead, because
+he lives in the object; not alive, because he is dead in himself;
+deprived of death, because he gives birth to thoughts; deprived of life,
+because he does not grow or feel in himself. He is now most dejected
+through meditating on the high intelligence, and the perceived
+feebleness of power; and most elated by the aspiration of heroic
+longing, which passes far beyond his limits, and is most exalted by the
+intellectual appetite; which has not for its fashion or aim to add
+number to number, is most dejected by the violence done to him by the
+sensual opposite which drags him down towards hell. So that, finding
+himself thus ascending and descending, he feels within his soul the
+greatest dissension that is possible to be felt, and he remains in a
+state of confusion through this rebellion of the senses, which urge him
+thither where reason restrains, and _vice versa_. This same is
+thoroughly demonstrated in the following sentences, where the Reason,
+under the name of "Filenio" asks, and the enthusiast replies under the
+name of "Shepherd," who labours in the care of the flocks and herds of
+his thoughts, which he nourishes in the submission to and service of his
+nymph, which is the affection of that object to which he is captive.
+
+11.
+
+FILENIO. Shepherd!
+
+SHEPHERD. What wilt thou?
+
+F. What doest thou?
+
+S. I suffer.
+
+F. Wherefore?
+
+S. Because neither life has me for his own, nor death.
+
+F. Who's to blame?
+
+S. Love.
+
+F. That rascal?
+
+S. That rascal.
+
+F. Where is he?
+
+S. He holds me tight in my heart's core.
+
+F. What does he?
+
+S. Wounds me.
+
+F. Who?
+
+S. Me.
+
+F. Thee?
+
+S. Yes.
+
+F. With what?
+
+S. With the eyes, the gates of heaven and of hell.
+
+F. Dost hope?
+
+S. I hope.
+
+F. For pity?
+
+S. For pity.
+
+F. From whom?
+
+S. From him who racks me night and day.
+
+F. Has he any?
+
+S. I know not.
+
+F. Thou art a fool.
+
+S. How if such folly be pleasing to my soul?
+
+F. Does he promise?
+
+S. No.
+
+F. Does he deny?
+
+S. Not at all.
+
+F. Is he silent?
+
+S. Yes, for so much purity (_onesta_) robs me of my boldness.
+
+F. Thou ravest.
+
+S. How so?
+
+F. In vain efforts.
+
+S. His scorn more than my torments do I fear.
+
+Here he says that he craves for love, and he complains of it, yet not
+because he loves--seeing that to no true lover can love be displeasing;
+but because he loves unhappily, whilst those beams which are the rays of
+those lights, and which themselves, according as they are perverse and
+antagonistic, or really kind and gracious, become the gates which lead
+towards heaven or towards hell. In this way he is kept in hope of future
+and uncertain mercy, but actually in a state of present and certain
+torment, and although he sees his folly quite clearly, nevertheless he
+does not care to correct himself in it, or even to feel displeased with
+it, but rather does he feel satisfied with it, as he shows when he says:
+
+    Never let me of Love complain,
+    For Love alone can ease my pain.
+
+Here is shown another species of enthusiasm born from the light of
+reason, which excites fear and suppresses the aforesaid reason in order
+not to commit any action which might vex or irritate the thing loved.
+He says, then, that hope rests in the future, without anything being
+promised or denied; therefore, he is silent and asks nothing, for fear
+of offending purity (_l'onestade_). He does not venture to explain
+himself and make a proposition, lest he be rejected with repugnance or
+accepted with reserve; for he thinks the evil that there might be in the
+one would be over-balanced by the good in the other. He shows himself,
+then, ready to suffer for ever his own torment, rather than to open the
+door to an opportunity through which the thing loved might be perturbed
+and saddened.
+
+CIC. Herein he proves that his love is truly heroic; because he proposes
+to himself as the chief aim, not corporeal beauty, but rather the grace
+of the spirit, and the inclination of the affections in which, rather
+than in the beauty of the body, that love that has in it the divine, is
+eternal.
+
+TANS. Thou knowest that, as the Platonic ideas are divided into three
+species, of which one tends to the contemplative or speculative life,
+one to active morality, and the third to the idle and voluptuous, so are
+there three species of love, of which one raises itself from the
+contemplation of bodily form to the consideration of the spiritual and
+divine; the other only continues in the delight of seeing and
+conversing; the third from seeing proceeds to precipitate into the
+concupiscence of touch. Of these three modes others are composed,
+according as the first may be coupled with the second or the third, or
+as all the three modes may combine together, of which one and all may be
+divided into others, according to the affections of the enthusiast, as
+these tend more towards the spiritual object, or more towards the
+corporeal, or equally towards the one and the other. Hence it comes,
+that of those who find themselves in this warfare, and are entangled in
+the meshes of love, some aim at enjoying, and they are incited to pluck
+the apple from the tree of corporeal beauty, without which acquisition,
+or at least the hope of it, they hold vain and worthy only of derision
+every amorous care; and in such-wise run all those who are of a
+barbarous nature, who neither do nor can seek to exalt themselves by
+loving worthy things, and aspiring to illustrious things, and higher
+still to things divine, by suitable studies and exercises, to which
+nothing can more richly and easily supply the wings than heroic love;
+others put before themselves the fruit of delight, which they take in
+the aspect of the beauty and grace of the spirit, which glitters and
+shines in the beauty of the body, and certain of these, although they
+love the body and greatly desire to be united to it, bewailing its
+absence and being afflicted by separation, at the same time fear, lest
+presuming in this they may be deprived of that affability, conversation,
+friendship, and sympathy which are most precious to them; because to
+attempt this there cannot be more guarantee of success than there is
+risk of forfeiting that favour, which appears before the eyes of thought
+as a thing so glorious and worthy.
+
+CIC. It is a worthy thing, oh Tansillo! for its many virtues and
+perfections, and it behoves human genius to seek, accept, nourish, and
+preserve a love like that; but one should take great care not to bow
+down or become enslaved to an object unworthy and base, lest we become
+sharers of the baseness and unworthiness of the same: appositely the
+Ferrarese poet says
+
+    Who sets his foot upon the amorous snare,
+    Lest he besmear his wings, let him beware.
+
+TANS. To say the truth, that object, which beyond the beauty of the body
+has no other splendour, is not worthy of being loved otherwise than to
+make the race; and it seems to me the work of a pig or a horse to
+torment one's self about it, and as to myself, never was I more
+fascinated by such things than I am now fascinated by some statue or
+picture to which I am indifferent. It would then be a great dishonour to
+a generous soul, if, of a foul, vile, loose, and ignoble nature,
+although hid under an excellent symbol, it should be said: "I fear his
+scorn more than my torment."
+
+
+
+
+=Third Dialogue.=
+
+TANSILLO.
+
+
+There are several varieties of enthusiasts, which may all be reduced to
+two kinds. While some only display blindness, stupidity, and irrational
+impetuosity, which tend towards savage madness, others by divine
+abstraction become in reality superior to ordinary men. And these again
+are of two kinds, for some having become the habitation of gods or
+divine spirits, speak and perform wonderful things, without themselves
+understanding the reason. Many such have been uncultured and ignorant
+persons, into whom, being void of spirit and sense of their own, as into
+an empty chamber, the divine spirit and sense intrude, as it would have
+less power to show itself in those who are full of their own reason and
+sense. This divine spirit often desires that the world should know for
+certain, that those do not speak from their own knowledge and
+experience, but speak and act through some superior intelligence; for
+such, the mass of men vouchsafe more admiration and faith, while others,
+being skilful in contemplation and possessing innately a clear
+intellectual spirit, have an internal stimulus and natural fervour,
+excited by the love of the divine, of justice, of truth, of glory, and
+by the fire of desire and the breath of intention, sharpen their senses,
+and in the sulphur of the cogitative faculty, these kindle the rational
+light, with which they see more than ordinarily; and they come in the
+end to speak and act, not as vessels and instruments, but as chief
+artificers and experts.
+
+CIC. Of these two which dost thou esteem higher?
+
+TANS. The first have more dignity, power, and efficacy within
+themselves, because they have the divinity; the second _are_ themselves
+worthy, potential, and efficacious, and _are_ divine. The first are
+worthy, as is the ass which carries the sacraments; the second are as a
+sacred thing. In the first is contemplated and seen in effect the
+divinity, and that is beheld, adored, and obeyed; in the second is
+contemplated and seen the excellency of humanity itself. But now to the
+question. These enthusiasms of which we speak, and which we see
+exemplified in these sentences, are not oblivion, but a memory; they
+are not neglect of one's self, but love and desire of the beautiful and
+good, by means of which we are able to make ourselves perfect, by
+transforming and assimilating ourselves to it. It is not a
+precipitation, under the laws of a tyrannous fate, into the noose of
+animal affections, but a rational impetus, which follows the
+intellectual apprehension of the beautiful and the good, which knows
+whom it wishes to obey and to please, so that, by its nobility and
+light, it kindles and invests itself with qualities and conditions
+through which it appears illustrious and worthy. He (the enthusiast)
+becomes a god by intellectual contact with the divine object, and he has
+no thought for other than divine things, and shows himself insensible
+and impassive towards those things which are commonly felt, and about
+which others are mostly tormented; he fears nothing, and for love of the
+divine he despises other pleasures and gives no thought to this life. It
+is not a fury of black bile which sends him drifting outside of
+judgment, reason, and acts of prudence, and tossed by the discordant
+tempest, like those who, having violated certain laws of the divine
+Adrastia, are condemned to be scourged by the Furies, in order that they
+may be excited by a dissonance as corporeal through seditions,
+destructions, and plagues, as it is spiritual, through the forfeiture of
+harmony between the perceptive and enjoying powers; but it is aglow
+kindled by the intellectual sun in the soul, and a divine impetus which
+lends it wings, with which, drawing nearer and nearer to the
+intellectual sun, and ridding itself of the rust of human cares, it
+becomes a gold tried and pure, has the perception of divine and internal
+harmony, and its thoughts and acts accord with the symmetry of the law,
+innate in all things. Not, as drunk from the cups of Circe, does he go
+dashing and stumbling, now in this and then in that ditch, now against
+this or that rock, or like a shifting Proteus, changing now to this, now
+to the other aspect, never finding place, fashion, or ground to stay and
+settle in; but, without spoiling the harmony, conquers and overcomes the
+horrid monsters, and however much he may swerve, he easily returns to
+himself[B] by means of those inward instincts that, like the nine Muses,
+dance and sing round the splendours of the universal Apollo, and under
+tangible images and material things, he comes to comprehend divine laws
+and counsels. It is true that sometimes, having love for his trusty
+escort, who is double, and because sometimes through occasional
+impediments he finds himself defrauded of his strength, then, as one
+insane and furious, he squanders away the love of that which he cannot
+comprehend; whence, confused by the obscurity of the divinity, he
+sometimes abandons the work, and then again returns, to force himself
+with his will thither, where he cannot arrive with the intellect. It is
+true also that he commonly wanders, and transports himself, now into
+one, now into another form of the double Eros; therefore, the principal
+lesson that Love gives to him is, that he contemplate the divine beauty
+in shadow, when he cannot do so in the mirror, and, like the suitors of
+Penelope, he entertain himself with the maids when he is not permitted
+to converse with the mistress. Now, in conclusion, you can comprehend,
+from what has been said, what is this enthusiast whose picture is put
+forth, when it is said:
+
+12.
+
+    If towards the shining light the butterfly,
+    Winging his way knows not the burning flame,
+    And if the thirsty stag, unmindful of the dart,
+    Runs fainting to the brook,
+    Or unicorn, unto the chaste breast running,
+    Ignores the snare that is for him prepared,
+    I, in the light, the fount, the bosom of my love
+    Behold the flames, the arrows, and the chains.
+    If it be sweet in plaintiveness to droop,
+    Why does that lofty splendour dazzle me?
+    Wherefore the sacred arrow sweetly wound?
+    Why in this knot is my desire involved?
+    And why to me eternal irksomeness
+    Flames to my heart, darts to my breast and snares unto my soul?
+
+[B] Facilmente ritorna al sesso.
+
+Here he shows his love not to be like that of the butterfly, of the
+stag, and of the unicorn, who would flee away if they had knowledge of
+the fire, of the arrow, and of the snares, and who have no other sense
+than that of pleasure; but he is moved by a most sensible and only too
+evident passion, which forces him to love that fire more than any
+coolness; more that wound than any wholeness; more those fetters than
+any liberty. For this evil is not absolutely evil, but, through
+comparison with good (according to opinion), it is deceptive, like the
+sauce that old Saturn gets when he devours his own sons; for this evil
+absolutely in the eye of the Eternal, is comprehended either for good,
+or for guide which conduces to it, since this fire is the ardent desire
+of divine things, this arrow is the impression of the ray of the beauty
+of supernal light, these snares are the species of truth which unite our
+mind to the primal verity, and the species of good which unite and join
+to the primal and highest good. To that meaning I approached when I
+said:
+
+13.
+
+    With such a fire and such a noble noose,
+    Beauty enkindles me, and pureness binds,
+    So that in flames and servitude I take delight,
+    Liberty takes flight and dreads the ice.
+    Such is the heat, that though I burn yet am I not destroyed,
+    The tie is such, the world with me gives praise.
+    Fear cannot freeze, nor pain unshackle me;
+    For soothing is the ardour, sweet the smart.
+    So high the light that burns me I discern,
+    And of so rich a thread the noose contrived
+    That, thought being born, the longing dies.
+    And since, within my heart shines such pure flames,
+    And so supreme a tie compels my will,
+    Let my shade serve, and let my ashes burn.
+
+All the loves, if they be heroic and not purely animal, or what is
+called natural, and slaves to generation, as instruments of nature in a
+certain way, have for object the divinity, tend towards divine beauty,
+which first is communicated to souls and shines in them, and from them,
+or rather through them, it is communicated to bodies; whence it is that
+well-ordered affection loves the body or corporeal beauty, insomuch as
+it is an indication of beauty of spirit. Thus that which causes the
+attraction of love to the body is a certain spirituality which we see in
+it, and which is called beauty, and which does not consist in major or
+minor dimensions, nor in determined colours or forms, but in harmony and
+consonance of members and colours. This shows an affinity between the
+spirit and the most acute and penetrative senses; whence it follows that
+such become more easily and intensely enamoured, and also more easily
+and intensely disgusted, which might be through a change of the deformed
+spirit, which in some gesture and expressed intention reveals itself in
+such wise that this deformity extends from the soul to the body, and
+makes it appear no longer beautiful as before. The beauty, then, of the
+body has power to kindle, but not to bind, and the lover, unless aided
+by the graces of the spirit, such as purity, gratitude, courtesy,
+circumspection, is unable to escape. Therefore, said I, beautiful is
+that fire which burns me, and noble that tie which binds.
+
+CIC. I do not believe it is always like that, Tansillo; because,
+sometimes, notwithstanding that we discover the spirit to be vicious, we
+remain heated and entangled; so that, although reason perceives the evil
+and unworthiness of such a love, it yet has not power to alienate the
+disordered appetite. In this disposition, I believe, was the Nolano when
+he said:
+
+14.
+
+    Woe's me! my fury forces me
+    To union with the bad within,
+    And makes it seem a love supreme and good.
+    Wearied, my soul cares nought
+    That I opposing counsels entertain,
+    And with the savage tyrant
+    Nourished with want,
+    And made to put myself in exile,
+    More than with liberty contented am.
+    I spread my sails to the wind,
+    To draw me forth from this detested bliss,
+    And to reclaim me from the cloying hurt.
+
+TANS. This occurs when spirits are vicious and tinged as with the same
+hue; since, through conformity, love is excited, enkindled, and
+confirmed. Thus the vicious easily concur in acts of the same vice; and
+I will not refrain from repeating that which I know by experience, for
+although I may have discovered in a soul vices very much abominated by
+me--as, for instance, filthy avarice, base greediness for money,
+ingratitude for favours and courtesies received, or a love of quite vile
+persons, of which this last most displeases, because it takes away the
+hope from the lover, that by becoming or making himself more worthy he
+may become more acceptable--in spite of all this, it is true that I did
+burn for corporeal beauty. But how? I loved against my will; for, were
+it not so, I should have been more saddened than cheered by troubles and
+misfortunes.
+
+CIC. It is a very proper and nice distinction that is made between
+loving and liking.
+
+TANS. Truly; because we like many--that is, we desire that they be wise
+and just; but we love them not because they are unjust and ignorant;
+many we love because they are beautiful, but we do not like them,
+because they do not deserve it; and amongst other things of which the
+lover deems the loved one undeserving, the first is, being loved; and
+yet, although he cannot abstain from loving, nevertheless he regrets it,
+and shows his regret like him who said, "Woe is me! who am compelled by
+passion to coalesce with evil." In the opposite mood was he, either
+through some corporeal object in similitude or through a divine subject
+in reality, when he said:
+
+15.
+
+    Although to many pains thou dost subject me,
+    Yet do I thank thee, love, and owe thee much,
+    That thou my breast dost cleave with noble wound,
+    And then dost take my heart and master it.
+    Thus true it is, that I, on earth, adore
+    A living object, image most beautiful of God.
+    Let him who will think that my fate is bad
+    That kills in hope and quickens in desire.
+    My pasture is the high emprise,
+    And though the end desired be not attained,
+    And though my soul in many thoughts is spent,
+    Enough that she enkindle noble fire,
+    Enough that she has lifted me on high,
+    And from the ignoble crowd has severed me.
+
+Here his love is entirely heroic and divine, and as such, I wish it to
+be understood; although he says that through it he is subject to many
+pangs, every lover who is separated from the thing loved (to which being
+joined by affection he would also wish to be actually), being in anguish
+and pain, he torments himself, not forsooth because he loves, since he
+feels his love is engaged most worthily and most nobly, but because he
+feels deprived of that fruition which he would obtain if he arrived at
+that end to which he tends. He suffers, not from the desire which
+animates him, but from the difficulty in the cultivation of it which so
+tortures him. Others esteem him unhappy through this appearance of an
+evil destiny, as being condemned to these pangs, for he will never cease
+from acknowledging the obligation he is under to love, nor cease from
+rendering thanks to him because he has presented before the eyes of his
+mind such an intelligible conception through which, in this earthly
+life, shut in this prison of the flesh, wrapped in these nerves and
+supported by these bones, it is permitted to him to contemplate the
+divinity in a more suitable manner than if other conceptions and
+similitudes than these had offered themselves.
+
+CIC. The divine and living object, then, of which he speaks, is the
+highest intelligible conception that he has been able to form to himself
+of the divinity, and is not some corporeal beauty which might overshadow
+his thought and appear superficially to the senses.
+
+TANS. Even so; because no tangible thing nor conception of such can
+raise itself to so much dignity.
+
+CIC. Why, then, does he mention that conception as the object, if, as
+appears to me, the true object is the divinity itself?
+
+TANS. The divinity is the final object, the ultimate and most perfect,
+but not in this state, where we cannot see God except as in a shadow or
+a mirror, and therefore He cannot be the object except in some
+similitude, but not in such as may be extracted or acquired from
+corporeal beauty and excellence, by virtue of the senses, but such as
+may be formed in the mind, by virtue of the intellect. In which state,
+finding himself, he comes to lose the love and affection for every other
+thing senseful as well as intellectual, because this, conjoined to that
+light, itself also becomes light, and in consequence becomes a god:
+because it contracts the divinity into itself, it being in God through
+the intention with which it penetrates into the divinity so far as it
+can, and God being in it, so that after penetrating, it comes to
+conceive, and so far as it can, receive and comprehend the divinity in
+its conception. Now in such conceptions and similitudes the human
+intellect of this lower world nourishes itself, till such time as it
+will be lawful to behold with purer eye the beauty of the divinity. As
+happens to him, who, absorbed in the contemplation of some elaborate
+architectural work, goes on examining one thing after another in it,
+enchanted and feeding in a wonder of delight; but if it should happen
+that he sees the lord of all those pictures, who is of a beauty
+incomparably greater, leaving all care and thought of them, he is turned
+intently to the examination of him. Here, then, is the difference
+between that state where we see divine beauty in intelligible
+conceptions apart from the effects, labours, works, shadows, and
+similitudes of it, and that other state in which it is lawful to behold
+it in real presence. He says: "My pasture is the high emprise," because
+as the Pythagoreans remark, "The soul moves and turns round God, as the
+body round the soul."
+
+CIC. Then the body is not the habitation of the soul?
+
+TANS. No; because the soul is not in the body locally, but as intrinsic
+form and extrinsic framer, as that which forms the limbs indicates the
+internal and external composition. The body, then, is in the soul, the
+soul in the mind, the mind either is God or is in God, as Plotinus said.
+As in its essence it is in God who is its life, similarly through the
+intellectual operation, and the will consequent upon such operation, it
+agrees with its bright and beatific object. Fitly, therefore, this
+rapture of heroic enthusiasm feeds on such "high emprise." For the
+object is infinite, and in action most simple, and our intellectual
+power cannot apprehend the infinite except in speech or in a certain
+manner of speech, so to say in a certain potential or relative
+inference, as one who proposes to himself the infinity, so that he may
+constitute for himself a finality where no finality is.
+
+CIC. Fitly so, because the ultimate ought not to have an end seeing
+that it is ultimate. For it is infinite in intention, in perfection, in
+essence, and in any other manner whatsoever of being final.
+
+TANS. Thou sayest truly. Now in this life, that food is such that
+excites more than it can appease, as that divine poet shows when he
+says: "My soul is wearied, longing for the living God," and in another
+place; "Attenuati sunt oculi mei suspicientes in excelsa." Therefore he
+says, "And though the end desired be not attained, And that my soul in
+many thoughts is spent, Enough that she enkindle noble fire:" meaning to
+say that the soul comforts itself, and receives all the glory which it
+is able in that state to receive, and that it is a participator in that
+ultimate enthusiasm of man, in so far as he is a man in this present
+condition, as we see him.
+
+CIC. It appears to me that the Peripatetics, as explained by Averroes,
+mean this, when they say that the highest felicity of man consists in
+perfection through the speculative sciences.
+
+TANS. It is true, and they say well; because we, in this state, cannot
+desire nor obtain greater perfection than that in which we are, when our
+intellect, by means of some noble and intelligible conception, unites
+itself either to the substance of things hoped for, as those say, or to
+the divine mind, as it is the fashion to say of the Platonists. For the
+present, I will leave reasoning about the soul, or man in another state
+or mode of being than he can find himself or believe himself to be in.
+
+CIC. But what perfection or satisfaction can man find in that knowledge
+which is not perfect?
+
+TANS. It will never be perfect, so far as understanding the highest
+object is concerned; but in so far as our intellect can understand it.
+Let it suffice that in this and other states there be present to him the
+divine beauty so far as the horizon of his vision extends.
+
+CIC. But all men cannot arrive at that, which one or two may reach.
+
+TANS. Let it suffice that all "run well," and that each does his utmost,
+for the heroic nature is content and shows its dignity rather in
+falling, or in failing worthily in the high undertaking, in which it
+shows the dignity of its spirit, than in succeeding to perfection in
+lower and less noble things.
+
+CIC. Truly a dignified and heroic death is better than a mean, low
+triumph.
+
+TANS. On that theme I made this sonnet:
+
+16.
+
+    Since I have spread my wings to my desire,
+    The more I feel the air beneath my feet,
+    So much the more towards the wind I bend
+    My swiftest pinions,
+    And spurn the world and up towards heaven I go.
+    Not the sad fate of Daedalus's son
+    Does warn me to turn downwards,
+    But ever higher will I rise.
+    Well do I see, I shall fall dead to earth;
+    But what life is there can compare with this my death?
+    Out on the air my heart's voice do I hear:
+    "Whither dost thou carry me, thou fearless one?
+    Turn back. Such over-boldness rarely grief escapes."
+    "Fear not the utmost ruin then," I said,
+    "Cleave confident the clouds and die content,
+    That heaven has destined thee to such illustrious death."
+
+CIC. I understand when you say: "Enough that thou hast lifted me on
+high;" but not: "And from the ignoble crowd hast severed me;" unless it
+means his having come out from the Platonic groove on account of the
+stupid and low condition of the crowd; for those that find profit in
+this contemplation cannot be numerous.
+
+TANS. Thou understandest well; but thou mayst also understand, by the
+"ignoble crowd," the body, and sensual cognition, from which he must
+arise and free himself who would unite with a nature of a contrary
+kind.
+
+CIC. The Platonists say there are two kinds of knots which link the soul
+to the body. One is a certain vivifying action which from the soul
+descends into the body, like a ray; the other is a certain vital
+quality, which is produced from that action in the body. Now this active
+and most noble number, which is the soul, in what way do you understand
+that it may be severed from the ignoble number, which is the body?
+
+TANS. Certainly it was not understood according to any of these modes,
+but according to that mode whereby those powers which are not
+comprehended and imprisoned in the womb of matter, sometimes as if
+inebriated and stupefied, find that they also are occupied in the
+formation of matter and in the vivification of the body; then, as if
+awakened and brought to themselves, recognizing its principle and
+genius, they turn towards superior things and force themselves on the
+intelligible world as to their native abode, and from thence, through
+their conversion to inferior things, they are thrust into the fate and
+conditions of generation. These two impulses are symbolized in the two
+kinds of metamorphosis expressed in the following:
+
+17.
+
+    That god who shakes the sounding thunder,
+    Asteria as a furtive eagle saw;
+    Mnemosyne as shepherd; Danae gold;
+    Alcmene as a fish; Antiope a goat;
+    Cadmus and his sister a white bull;
+    Leda as swan, and Dolida as dragon;
+    And through the lofty object I become,
+    From subject viler still, a god.
+    A horse was Saturn;
+    And in a calf and dolphin Neptune dwelt;
+    Ibis and shepherd Mercury became;
+    Bacchus a grape; Apollo was a crow;
+    And I by help of love,
+    From an inferior thing, do change me to a god.
+
+In Nature is one revolution and one circle, by means of which, for the
+perfection and help of others, superior things lower themselves to
+things inferior, and, by their own excellence and felicity, inferior
+things raise themselves to superior ones. Therefore the Pythagoreans and
+Platonists say it is given to the soul that at certain times, not only
+by spontaneous will, which turns it towards the comprehension of Nature,
+but also by the necessity of an internal law, written and registered by
+the destined decree, they seek their own justly determined fate; and
+they also say that souls, not so much by determination of their own will
+as through a certain order, by which they become inclined towards
+matter, decline as rebels from divinity; wherefore, not by free
+intention, but by a certain occult consequence, they fall. And this is
+the inclination that they have to generation, as towards a minor good.
+Minor, I say, in so far as it appertains to that particular nature; not
+in so far as it appertains to the universal nature, where nothing
+happens without the highest aim, and which disposes of all things
+according to justice. In which generation finding themselves once more
+through the changes which permutably succeed, they return again to the
+superior forms.
+
+CIC. So that they mean, that souls are impelled by the necessity of
+fate, and have no proper counsel which guides them at all.
+
+TANS. Necessity, fate, nature, counsel, will, those things, justly and
+rightfully ordained, all agree in one. Besides which, as Plotinus
+relates, some believe that certain souls can escape from their own evil,
+if knowing the danger, they seek refuge in the mind before the corporeal
+habit is confirmed; because the mind raises to things sublime, as the
+imagination lowers to inferior things. The mind always understands one,
+as the imagination is one in movement and in diversity; the mind always
+understands one, as the imagination is always inventing for itself
+various images. In the midst is the rational faculty, which is a
+mixture of all, like that in which the one agrees with the many,
+sameness with variety, movement with fixedness, the inferior with the
+superior. Now these transmutations and conversions are symbolized in the
+wheel of metamorphosis, where man sits on the upper part, a beast lies
+at the bottom, a half-man, half-beast descends from the left, and a
+half-beast, half-man ascends from the right. This transmutation is shown
+where Jove, according to the diversity of the affections and the
+behaviour of those towards inferior things, invests himself with divers
+figures, entering into the form of beasts; and so also the other gods
+transmigrate into base and alien forms. And, on the contrary, through
+the knowledge of their own nobility, they re-take their own divine form;
+as the passionate hero, raising himself through conceived kinds of
+divine beauty and goodness, with the wings of the intellect and rational
+will, rises to the divinity, leaving the form of the lower subject. And
+therefore he said, "I become from subject viler still, a god. From an
+inferior thing do change me to a god."
+
+
+
+
+=Fourth Dialogue.=
+
+TANSILLO.
+
+
+Thus is described the discourse of heroic love, in all which tends to
+its own object, which is the highest good; and heroic intellect, which
+devotes itself to the study of its own object, which is the primal
+verity, or absolute truth. Now the first discourse holds the sum of this
+and the intention, the order of which is described in five others
+following:
+
+18.
+
+    To the woods, the mastiffs and the greyhounds young Actaeon leads,
+    When destiny directs him into the doubtful and neglected way,
+    Upon the track of savage beasts in forests wild.
+    And here, between the waters, he sees a bust and face more beautiful
+          than e'er was seen
+    By mortal or divine, of scarlet, alabaster, and fine gold;
+    He sees, and the great hunter straight becomes that which he hunts.
+    The stag, that towards still thicker shades now goes with lighter
+          steps,
+    His own great dogs swiftly devour.
+    So I extend my thoughts to higher prey, and these
+    Now turning on me give me death with cruel savage bite.
+
+Actaeon signifies the intellect, intent on the pursuit of divine wisdom
+and the comprehension of divine beauty. He lets loose the mastiffs and
+the greyhounds, of whom the latter are more swift and the former more
+strong, because the operation of the intellect precedes that of the
+will; but this is more vigorous and effectual than that; seeing that, to
+the human intellect, divine goodness and beauty are more loveable than
+comprehensible, and love it is that moves and urges the intellect, and
+precedes it as a lantern. The woods, uncultivated and solitary places,
+visited and penetrated by few, and where there are few traces of men.
+The youth of little skill and practice, as of one of short life and of
+wavering enthusiasm. In the doubtful road of uncertain and distorted
+reason--a disposition assigned to the character of Pythagoras--where you
+see the most thorny, uncultivated, and deserted to be the right and
+difficult path, where he lets loose the greyhounds and the mastiffs upon
+the track of savage beasts, that is, the intelligible kinds of ideal
+conceptions, which are occult, followed by few, visited but rarely, and
+which do not disclose themselves to all those who seek them. Here,
+amongst the waters,--that is, in the mirror of similitude, in those
+works where shines the brightness of divine goodness and splendour,
+which works are symbolized by the waters superior and inferior, which
+are above and below the firmament, he sees the most beautiful bust and
+face--that is, external power and operation, which it is possible to
+see, by the habit and act of contemplation and the application of mortal
+or divine mind, of man or any god.
+
+CIC. I do not believe that he makes a comparison, nor puts as the same
+kind the divine and the human mode of comprehending, which are very
+diverse, but as to the subject they are the same.
+
+TANS. So it is. He says "of red and alabaster and gold," because that
+which in bodily beauty is red, white, and fair, in divinity signifies
+the scarlet of divine vigorous power, the gold of divine wisdom, the
+alabaster of divine beauty, through the contemplation of which the
+Pythagoreans, Chaldeans, Platonists, and others, strive in the best way
+that they can to elevate themselves. "The great hunter saw," he
+understood as much as was possible, and became the hunted. He went out
+for prey, and this hunter became himself the prey, by the operation of
+the intellect converting the things learned into itself.
+
+CIC. I understand. He forms intelligible conceptions in his own way and
+proportions them to his capacity, so that they are received according to
+the manner of the recipient.
+
+TANS. And does he hunt through the operation of the will, by the act of
+which he converts himself into the object?
+
+CIC. As I understand: because love transforms and converts into the
+thing loved.
+
+TANS. Well dost thou know that the intellect learns things
+intelligibly--_i.e._, in its own way, and the will pursues things
+naturally, that is, according to the reason that is in themselves. So
+Actaeon with those thoughts--those dogs--which hunted outside themselves
+for goodness, wisdom, and beauty, thus came into the presence of the
+same, and ravished out of himself by so much splendour, he became the
+prey, saw himself converted into that for which he was seeking, and
+perceived, that of his dogs or thoughts, he himself came to be the
+longed-for prey; for having absorbed the divinity into himself it was
+not necessary to search outside himself for it.
+
+CIC. For this reason it is said "the kingdom of Heaven is in us;"
+divinity dwells within through the reformed intellect and will.
+
+TANS. It is so. See then, Actaeon hunted by his own dogs--pursued by his
+own thoughts--runs and directs these novel paces, invigorated so as to
+proceed divinely and "more easily," that is, with greater facility and
+with refreshed vigour "towards the denser places," to the deserts and
+the region of things incomprehensible. From being such as he first was,
+a common ordinary man, he becomes rare and heroic, his habits and ideas
+are strange, and he leads an unusual life. Here his great dogs "give him
+death," and thus ends his life according to the mad, sensual, blind, and
+fantastic world, and he begins to live intellectually; he lives the life
+of the gods, fed on ambrosia and drunk with nectar.
+
+Next we see under the form of another similitude the manner in which he
+arms himself to obtain the object. He says:
+
+19.
+
+    My solitary bird! away unto that region
+    Which overshadows and which occupies my thought,
+    Go swiftly, and there nestle; there every
+    Need of thine be strengthened,
+    There all thy industry and art be spent!
+    There be thou born again, and there on high,
+    Gather and train up thy wandering fledglings
+    Since adverse fate has drawn away the bars
+    With which she ever sought to block thy way.
+    Go! I desire for thee a nobler dwelling-place,
+    And thou shalt have for guide a god,
+    Who is called blind by him who nothing sees.
+    Go! and ever be by thee revered,
+    Each deity of that wide sphere,
+    And come not back to me till thou art mine.
+
+The progress symbolized above by the hunter who excites his dogs, is
+here illustrated by a winged heart, which is sent out of the cage, in
+which it lived idle and quiet, to make its nest on high and bring up its
+fledglings, its thoughts, the time being come in which those impediments
+are removed, which were caused, externally, in a thousand different
+ways, and internally by natural feebleness. He dismisses his heart then
+to make more magnificent surroundings, urging him to the highest
+propositions and intentions, now that those powers of the soul are more
+fully fledged, which Plato signifies by the two wings, and he commits
+him to the guidance of that god, who, by the unseeing crowd, is
+considered insane and blind, that is Love, who, by the mercy and favour
+of heaven, has power to transform him into that nature towards which he
+aspires, or into that state from which, a pilgrim, he is banished.
+Whence he says, "Come not back to me till thou art mine," and not
+unworthily may I say with that other--
+
+    Thou has left me, oh, my heart,
+    And thou, light of my eyes, art no more with me.
+
+Here he describes the death of the soul, which by the Kabbalists is
+called the death by kisses, symbolized in the Song of Solomon, where the
+friend says:
+
+    Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,
+    For, when he wounds me,
+    I suffer with a cruel love.
+
+By others it is called sleep; the Psalmist says:
+
+    It shall be, that I give sleep unto mine eyes,
+    And mine eyelids shall slumber,
+    And I shall have in him peaceful repose.
+
+The soul then is said to be faint, because it is dead in itself, and
+alive in the object:
+
+20.
+
+    Give heed, enthusiasts, unto the heart!
+    For mine condemns me to a life apart,
+    Bound by unmerciful and cruel ties,
+    He dwells with joy, there where he faints and dies.
+    At every hour I call him back by thoughts:
+    A rebel he, like gerfalcon insane,
+    He feels no more the hand that did restrain,
+    And is gone forth not to return again.
+    Thou beauteous beast that dost in punishment
+    Knit up the soul, spirit and heart content'st
+    With pricks, with lightnings, and with chains!
+    From looks, from accents, and from usages,
+    Which faint and burn and keep thee bound,
+    Where shall he that heals, that cools, and loosens thee be found?
+
+Here the soul, sorrowful, not from real discontent, but on account of
+pains which she suffers, directs the discourse to those who are affected
+by passions similar to her own: as if she had not of her own free will
+and of her own desire dismissed her heart, which goes running whither it
+cannot arrive, stretches out to that which it cannot reach, and tries to
+enfold that which it cannot comprehend, and with this, because he vainly
+separates from her, ever more and more goes on aspiring towards the
+infinite.
+
+CIC. Whence comes it, oh Tansillo, that the soul in such progression
+delights in its own torments? Whence comes that spur which urges it ever
+beyond that which it possesses?
+
+TANS. From this, which I will tell thee now. The intellect being
+developed to the comprehension of a certain definite and specific form,
+and the will to a love commensurate with such comprehension; the
+intellect does not stop there, but by its own light it is prompted to
+think of this: that it contains within itself the germ of everything
+intelligible and desirable, until it comes to comprehend with the
+intellect the depth of the fountain of ideas, the ocean of every truth
+and goodness. So that it happens, that whatever conception is presented
+to the mind, and becomes understood by it, from that which is so
+presented and comprehended it judges, that above it, is other greater
+and greater, and finds itself ever in a certain way discoursing and
+moving with it. Because it sees that all which it possesses is only a
+limited thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient of itself, nor good of
+itself, nor beautiful of itself; because it is not the universal nor the
+absolute entity; but contracted into being this nature, this species,
+this form, represented to the intellect and present to the soul. Then
+from the beautiful that is understood, and consequently limited, and
+therefore beautiful through participation, it progresses towards that
+which is really beautiful, which has no margin, nor any boundaries.
+
+CIC. This progression appears to me useless.
+
+TANS. Not so. For it is not natural nor suitable that the infinite be
+restricted, nor give itself definitely, for it would not then be
+infinite. To be infinite, it must be infinitely pursued with that form
+of pursuit which is not incited physically, but metaphysically, and is
+not from imperfect to perfect, but goes circulating through the grades
+of perfection to arrive at that infinite centre which is not form, and
+is not formed.
+
+CIC. I should like to know how, by circumambulating, one is to arrive at
+the centre?
+
+TANS. I cannot know that.
+
+CIC. Why do you say it?
+
+TANS. I can say it, and leave it to you to consider.
+
+CIC. If you do not mean that he who pursues the infinite is like him who
+talks about the circumference when he is seeking for the centre, I do
+not know what you mean.
+
+TANS. Quite the contrary.
+
+CIC. Now if you will not explain yourself, I cannot understand you; but
+tell me, prythee, what he means by saying the heart is bound by cruel,
+spiteful bonds.
+
+TANS. He speaks in similitude or metaphor; as you would say, cruel was
+one who did not allow a full enjoyment, and who lives more in the desire
+than in possession, and who, partially possessing, is not content, but
+desires, faints, and dies.
+
+CIC. What are those thoughts that call him back from the noble
+enterprise?
+
+TANS. The sensual and natural affections, which regard the government of
+the body.
+
+CIC. What have they to do with it, that in no way can either help or
+favour it?
+
+TANS. They have not to do with it, but with the soul, which, being so
+absorbed in one work or study, becomes remiss and careless in others.
+
+CIC. Why does he call him insane?
+
+TANS. Because he surpasses in knowledge.
+
+CIC. It is usual to call insane those who know nothing.
+
+TANS. On the contrary. Those are called insane who know not in the
+ordinary way, or who rise above the ordinary from having more intellect.
+
+CIC. I perceive that thou sayest truly. Now tell me what are the pricks,
+the lightnings, and the chains?
+
+TANS. Pricks are those experiences that stimulate and awaken the
+affection, to make it on the alert; lightnings are the rays of the
+present beauty, which enlighten those who watch and wait for them;
+chains are those effects and circumstances which keep fixed the eyes of
+attention and unite together the object and the powers.
+
+CIC. What are the looks, the accents, and the customs?
+
+TANS. Looks are the means by which the object is made present to us;
+accents are the means through which we are inspired and informed;
+customs are the circumstances which are most pleasant and agreeable to
+us. So that the heart that gently suffers, patiently burns and
+constantly perseveres in the work, fears that its hurt will heal, its
+fire be extinguished, and its bands be loosened.
+
+CIC. Now relate that which follows.
+
+TANS.:
+
+21.
+
+    Lofty, profound, and stirring thoughts of mine,
+    Ye long to sever the maternal ties
+    Of the afflicted soul, and like to proud
+    And able bowmen, draw at the mark,
+    Which is the germ of all your high conceits.
+    In those steep paths where cruel beasts may be,
+    Let not heaven leave ye!
+    Remember to return, and summon back
+    The heart that tarries with the wild wood nymph;
+    Arm ye with love,
+    Warm with the flame of domesticity,
+    And with strong repression guard thy sight,
+    That strangers keep thee not companioned with my heart;
+    At least bring news of that,
+    Which unto him is such delight and joy.
+
+Here he describes the natural solicitude of the attentive soul on the
+subject, of its inclination towards generation, which it has contracted
+with matter. She dispatches the armed thoughts, which, solicited and
+urged by disagreement with the inferior nature, are sent to recall the
+heart. The soul instructs them how they should conduct themselves, so
+that, being allured and attracted by the object, they do not become
+induced to remain, they also, captive and companions of the heart. She
+says, then, they are to arm themselves with love, with that love that is
+fired by the domestic flame; that is, the friend of generation, to whom
+they are bound, and in whose jurisdiction, ministry, and warfare they
+find themselves. Anon she orders them to repress their eyesight and to
+close their eyes, so that they may not behold other beauty or goodness
+than that which is present, friend and mother; and concludes at last
+with this, that if no other reason will cause them to return, they
+should at least do so, to give account of the discourse and of the state
+of the heart.
+
+CIC. Before you proceed further, I would understand from you what is
+that which the soul means when she tells the thoughts to repress the
+sight vigorously.
+
+TANS. I will tell thee. All love proceeds from seeing: intelligent love,
+from seeing intelligently; sensuous love, from seeing sensuously. Now
+this seeing has two meanings: either it means the visual power, that is
+the sight, which is the intellect, or truly the sense; or it means the
+act of that power, that is, that application which the eye or the
+intellect makes to the material or intellectual object. When the
+thoughts are counselled to repress the sight, it is not the first, but
+the second, mode that is meant, because that is the father of the
+subsequent affection of the sensuous or intellectual desire.
+
+CIC. This is what I wished to hear from you. Now, if the act of the
+visual power is the cause of the evil or good which proceed from seeing,
+whence comes it that in things divine we have more love than knowledge?
+
+TANS. We desire to see, because in some way we perceive the value of
+seeing. We are aware that, through the act of seeing, beautiful things
+offer themselves to us; and therefore we desire beautiful things.
+
+CIC. We desire the beautiful and the good; but seeing is not beautiful
+nor good; rather is it the touchstone or light by which we see, not only
+the beautiful and good, but also the evil and bad. Therefore it seems to
+me that seeing may be equally beautiful or good, as the thing seen may
+be white or black. If, then, the sight, which is an act, is not
+beautiful nor good, how can it fall into desire?
+
+TANS. If not for itself, yet certainly for some other reason, it is
+desired, seeing that there can be no apprehension of that other without
+it.
+
+CIC. What wilt thou say, if that other is not within the knowledge of
+the senses nor of the intellect? How, I say, can that be desired which
+is not seen, if there is no knowledge whatever of it--if towards it
+neither the intellect nor the sense has exercised any act whatever; but,
+on the contrary, it is even dubious whether it be intellectual or
+sensuous, whether a thing corporeal or incorporeal, whether it be one or
+two or more, or of one fashion or of another?
+
+TANS. I answer, that in the sense and the intellect there is one desire
+and one impulse to the sensuous in general; because the intellect will
+hear the whole truth, so that it may learn all that is beautiful or good
+intelligently; the power of the senses will inform itself of all that is
+sensuous, so that it may know all that is good and beautiful in the
+world of the senses. Hence it follows that not less do we desire to see
+things unknown and unseen than those known and seen. And from this it
+does not follow that the desire does not proceed from cognition, and
+that we desire something that is not known; but I say that it is certain
+and sure that we do not desire unknown things. Because, if they be
+occult as to particulars, they are not occult as to generals; as in the
+entire visual power is found the whole of the visible appositely, and in
+the intellect all the intelligible. Therefore, as the inclination to the
+act lies in its appropriateness, the result is that both these powers
+incline towards the universal action, as to a thing naturally
+comprehended as good. The soul, then, did not speak to the deaf or the
+blind when she counselled her thoughts to repress the sight, which,
+although it may not be the immediate cause of the will, is yet the
+primal and principal cause.
+
+CIC. What do you mean by this last saying?
+
+TANS. I mean that it is not the figure or the conception, sensibly or
+intelligently represented, which of itself moves us; because while one
+stands beholding the figure manifested to the eyes, he does not yet
+arrive at loving; but from that instant that the soul conceives within
+itself that figure, not visible, but thinkable; no longer dividual, but
+individual; no longer classed among things in general, but among things
+good and beautiful; then immediately love is born. Now this is the
+seeing, from which the soul desires to divert the eyes of her thoughts.
+Here the sight usually moves the affection to a greater love than the
+love of that which is seen; for, as I have just said, it always
+considers, through the universal knowledge that it holds of the
+beautiful and the good, that, besides the degrees of known conceptions
+of goodness and beauty, there are others and yet others _ad infinitum_.
+
+CIC. How is it that after we become informed of that conception of the
+beautiful which is begotten in the soul, we yet desire to satisfy the
+exterior vision?
+
+TANS. From this, that the soul would ever love that which it loves, and
+ever see that which it sees. Therefore she wills that, the conception
+which has been produced in her through seeing, should not become
+weakened, enervated and lost; but would ever see more and more, and that
+which becomes obscure in the interior affection, should be frequently
+brightened by the exterior aspect, which as it is the principle of
+being, must also be the principle of conservation. This results
+proportionately in the act of understanding and of considering, for as
+the sight has reference to visible things, so has the intellect to
+intelligible things. I believe now that you understand to what end and
+in what manner the soul tends, when she says "repress the sight."
+
+CIC. I understand very well. Now continue to unfold what happens to
+these thoughts.
+
+TANS. Now follows the disagreement between the mother and the aforesaid
+children, who having, contrary to her orders, opened their eyes, and,
+having fixed them on the splendour of the object, they remained in
+company with the heart.
+
+22.
+
+    Cruel sons are ye to me, me whom ye left
+    Still farther to exasperate my pain;
+    And ever without cease ye weary me,
+    Taking away from me my every hope!
+    Why should the sense remain? oh, grasping heavens!
+    Wherefore these broken ruined powers, if not
+    To make me subject and exemplar
+    Of such heavy martyrdom, such lengthened pain?
+    Leave, dear sons, my winged fire enchained,
+    And let me, some of you once more behold,
+    Come back to me from those retaining claws!
+    Oh, weariness! not one returns
+    To bring a late refreshment to my pains.
+
+Behold me, miserable one, deprived of heart, abandoned of thoughts, left
+by hope, I, who had fixed my all in them. Nothing is left to me but the
+sense of my poverty, my unhappiness and misery; why does not this too
+leave me? Why does not death succour me, now that I am deprived of life?
+To what use do I possess these natural powers if I be deprived of the
+use of them? How can I alone nourish myself with intelligible
+conceptions as with intellectual bread, if the substance of this bread
+be composed of this contingency. How can I linger in the intimacy of
+these friendly and dear members which I have woven round me, adjusting
+them with the symmetry of the elementary conditions, if my thoughts and
+all my affections abandon me, intent upon the care of the bread that is
+immaterial and divine? Up, up; oh my flying thoughts; up, oh my rebel
+heart; let live the sense of things that are felt, and the understanding
+of things intelligible, come to the succour of the body with matter and
+corporeal subject, and let the understanding delight in its own objects,
+to the end that this composition of the body may be realized, that this
+machine dissolve not, in which, by means of the spirit, the soul is
+united to the body. Why, unhappy as I am (more through domestic
+circumstances than through external violence), am I doomed to see this
+horrible divorce between my parts and members? Why does the intellect
+trouble itself to give laws to the sense and yet deprive it of its food?
+and this, on the other hand, resists; desiring to live according to its
+own decrees, and not according to the decree of others; for these and
+not those are able to maintain and bless it, therefore it ought to
+attend to its own comfort and life, and not to that of others. There is
+no harmony and concord where there is only one, where one individual
+absorbs the whole being, but where there is order and analogy in things
+diverse; where each thing serves its own nature. Therefore let the sense
+feed according to the law of things that can be felt, the flesh be
+obedient to the law of the spirit, the reason to its own law. Let them
+not be confounded nor mixed. Enough that one neither mar nor prejudice
+the law of the other, since it is not just that the sense outrage the
+law of reason. And verily it is a shameful thing that one should
+tyrannize over the other, particularly where the intellect is a pilgrim
+and strange, and the sense is more domesticated and at home. I am forced
+by you, my thoughts, to remain at home in charge of the house, while
+others may wander wherever they will. This is a law of Nature, and
+therefore a law of the author and originator of Nature. Sin on then, now
+that all of you, seduced by the charm of the intellect, leave the other
+part of me to the peril of death. How have you gotten this melancholy
+and perverse humour, which breaks the certain and natural laws of the
+true life, and which is in your own hands, for one, uncertain, and which
+has no existence except in shadow, beyond the limits of fantastic
+thought? Seems it to you a natural thing that they should live divinely
+and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and
+animals? It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt
+itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you
+follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is
+present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of
+others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that
+which she at present offers to you, you stupidly despise?
+
+    Heaven the second gift denies,
+    To him who does the first despise.
+
+With these and similar reasons the soul, taking part with the weakest,
+seeks to recall the thoughts to the care of the body. And these,
+although late, come and show themselves, but not in that form in which
+they departed, but only to declare their rebellion, and force her to
+follow. And the sorrowing one thus laments:
+
+23.
+
+    Ah, dogs of Actaeon, ah, proud ingrates!
+    Whom to the abode of my divinity I sent;
+    Without hope do ye return to me;
+    And, coming to the mother's side, ye bring
+    Back unto me a too unhappy boon;
+    Ye mangle me, and will that I live not.
+    Leave me, life, that I may mount up to my sun,
+    A double streamlet, mad, without my fount!
+    When shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve?
+    When shall it be, that, taking myself hence,
+    And swiftly rising to the heights above,
+    Together with my heart I may abide,
+    And with my thoughts I may be deified?
+
+The Platonists say that the soul, as to its superior part, always
+consists in the intellect, in which it has more of understanding than of
+soul, seeing that it is called soul only in so far as it vivifies the
+body and sustains it. So here, the same essence which nourishes and
+maintains the thoughts on high, together with the exalted heart, is
+induced by the inferior part to afflict itself, and recall them as
+rebels.
+
+CIC. So that they are not two contrary existences, but one, subject to
+two contradictory terms?
+
+TANS. So it is, precisely. As the ray of the sun which touches the
+earth, and is joined to obscure and to inferior things, which it
+brightens, vivifies, and kindles, and is then joined to the element of
+fire--that is, to the star, whence it proceeds, and has its beginning,
+and is diffused, and in which it has its own and original
+subsistence--so the soul, which is in the horizon of Nature, is
+corporeal and incorporeal, and contains that with which it rises to
+superior things and declines to things inferior. And this, you may
+perceive, does not happen by reason and order of local motion, but
+solely through the impulse of one and of another power or faculty. As
+when the sense rises to the imagination, the imagination to the reason,
+the reason to the intellect, the intellect to the mind, then the whole
+soul is converted into God, and inhabits the intelligible world; whence,
+on the other hand, she descends in an inverse manner to the world of
+feeling, through the intellect, reason, imagination, sense, vegetation.
+
+CIC. It is true that I have heard that the soul, in order to put itself
+in the ultimate degree of divine things, descends into the mortal body,
+and from this goes up again to the divine degrees, which are three
+degrees of intelligence. For there are others in which the intellectual
+surpasses the animal, which are said to be the celestial intelligences;
+and others in which the animal surpasses the intellectual, which are the
+human intelligences; others there are, of which those things are equal,
+as those of demons or heroes.
+
+TANS. The mind then cannot desire except that which is near, close,
+known, and familiar. The pig cannot desire to be a man, nor wish for
+those things that are suitable to the human appetite. He likes better
+to turn about in mud than in a bed of linen, he would prefer a sow to
+the most beautiful of women, because the affection follows the reason of
+the species. And amongst men the same thing is seen, according as some
+resemble one species of brute beast and some another: these having
+something of the quadruped, and those of birds, and, may be, some
+affinity, which I will not explain, but through which those have been
+known who are affected by certain sorts of beasts. Now, it is lawful for
+the mind which finds itself oppressed by the material conjunction of the
+soul, to raise itself to the contemplation of another state, to which
+the soul may arrive, comparing the two, and so through the future
+despise the present. If a beast had a sense of the difference which
+exists between his own condition and that of man, and the meanness of
+his own state with the nobility of the human state, which he would deem
+it not impossible to be able to reach, he would love death, which would
+open to him that road, more than that life which keeps him in the
+present state of being. When the soul complains, saying, "Ah! dogs of
+Actaeon!" she is represented as a thing which appears only in the
+inferior powers, and against which the mind rebels for having taken away
+the heart with it; that is to say, the entire affections, with all the
+army of the thoughts. So that, having a knowledge of the present state,
+and being ignorant of every other, and not believing that others exist
+about which she can have any knowledge, she complains of her thoughts,
+which, tardily turning towards her, come rather to draw her up than to
+make themselves accepted by her. And through the distraction which she
+endures on account of the ordinary love of the material and of things
+intelligible, she feels herself lacerated and mangled, so that at last
+she is forced to yield to the more vigorous impulse. And if, by virtue
+of contemplation, she rises or is caught up above the horizon of the
+natural affections, whence with purer eye she learns the difference
+between the one life and the other, then, vanquished by the lofty
+thoughts, and, as if dead to the body, she aspires to that which is
+elevated, and, although alive in the body, she vegetates there as if
+dead, being present as an animating principle and absent in operative
+activity; not because she does not act while the body is alive, but that
+the actions of this mass are intermittent, weak, and, as it were,
+purposeless.
+
+CIC. Thus a certain theologian, who was said to be transported to the
+third heaven and enchanted with the view of it, said that what he
+desired was the dissolution of his body.
+
+TANS. So; first complaining of the heart and quarrelling with the
+thoughts, she now desires to rise on high with them, and exhibits her
+regret for the connection and familiarity contracted with corporeal
+matter, and says: "Leave me life (corporeal), and do not impede my
+progress upwards to my native home, to my sun. Leave me now, for no
+longer do my eyes weep tears; neither because I cannot succour them (the
+thoughts), nor because I cannot remain divided from my happiness. Leave
+me, for it is not fit nor possible that these two streams should run
+without their source, that is, without the heart. I will not, I say,
+make two rivers of tears here below, while my heart, which is the source
+of such rivers, is flown away on high with its nymphs, which are my
+thoughts." Thus, little by little, from dislike and regret, she proceeds
+to the hatred of inferior things, which she partly shows, saying, "When
+shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve?" and that which follows.
+
+CIC. This I understand right well, and also that which you would infer
+about the principal intention; that is to say, that these are the
+degrees of the loves, of the affections, and of the enthusiasms,
+according to the degrees of greater and lesser light, of cognition, and
+of intelligence.
+
+TANS. Thou understandest rightly. From this thou oughtest to learn that
+doctrine taken from the Pythagoreans and Platonists, which is, that the
+soul makes the two progressions of ascent and descent, by the care that
+it has of itself and of matter; being moved by its own proper love of
+good, and being urged by the providence of fate.
+
+CIC. But, prythee, tell me briefly what you mean about the soul of the
+world, if she can neither ascend nor descend?
+
+TANS. If you ask of the world, according to the common
+signification--that is, in so far as it signifies what is called the
+universe--I say that, being infinite, it has no dimension or measure, is
+immobile, inanimate, and without form, notwithstanding it is the place
+of infinite moving worlds and is infinite space, in which are so many
+large animals that are called stars. If you ask according to the
+signification held by the true philosophers--that is, in so far as it
+signifies every globe, every star, such as this earth, the body of the
+sun, moon, and others--I say that such soul does not ascend nor descend,
+but turns in a circle. Thus, being compounded of superior and inferior
+powers, with the superior it turns round the divinity, and with the
+inferior, towards the mass of the worlds, which is by it vivified and
+maintained between the tropics of generation and the corruption of
+living things in those worlds, serving its own life eternally; because
+the act of the divine providence, always preserves it with divine heat
+and light, with the same order and measure, in the ordinary and
+self-same being.
+
+CIC. I have now heard enough upon this subject.
+
+TANS. It happens then that individual souls come to be influenced
+differently as to their habits and inclinations, according to the
+diverse degrees of ascension and descension, and come to display various
+kinds and orders of enthusiasms, of loves, and of senses, not only in
+the scale of Nature according to the orders of diverse lives which the
+soul takes up in different bodies, as is expressly declared by the
+Pythagoreans, Saduchimi and others, and by implication, Plato, and those
+who dive more profoundly into it, but still more in the scale of human
+affections, which has as many degrees as the scale of Nature; for man,
+in all his powers, displays every species of being.
+
+CIC. Therefore from the affections one may know souls, whether they are
+going up or down, or whether they are from above or from below, whether
+they are going on towards becoming beasts or towards divine beings,
+according to the specific being as the Pythagoreans understood it; or
+according to the similitude of the affections only, as is commonly
+believed, the human soul not being able, (so long as it is truly human)
+to become soul of a brute, as Plotinus and other Platonists well said,
+on account of the quality of its beginning.
+
+TANS. Now to come to the proposition: From animal enthusiasm, this soul,
+as described, is promoted to heroic enthusiasm, saying, "When shall it
+be that I rise up to the height of the object, there to dwell in company
+with my heart and with my fledglings[C] and his?" This same proposition
+he continues when he says:
+
+24.
+
+    Destiny, when, shall I that mountain mount,
+    Which, blissful to the high gates bringing, bring,
+    Where those rare beauties I shall counting, count,
+    When _he_ my pain with comfort comforting,
+    Who my disjointed members joined,
+    And leaves my dying powers not dead?
+    My spirit's rival more than rivalled is
+    If, far from sin, it unassailed may sail,
+    If thither tending, it may waiting, wait,
+    And up with that high object rising, rise,
+    And if my good alone, alone I take,
+    For which I sure remove of each defect effect,
+    And so at last may come to enjoy with joy,
+    As he who all foretells can tell.
+
+[C] Pulcini.
+
+O Destiny! O Fate! O divine immutable Providence! when shall it be that
+I shall climb that mount--that is, that I may arrive at such altitude of
+mind, as transporting me shall bring me into those outer and inner
+courts where I may behold and count those rare beauties? When shall it
+be, that he will effectually comfort my pain, loosening me from the
+tightened bonds of those cares in which I find myself, he, who formed
+and united my members, which before were disunited and disjoined: that
+is Love; he who has joined together these corporeal parts, which were as
+far divided as one opposite is divided from another; so that these
+intellectual powers which, through his action he has extinguished,
+should not be left quite dead, but be again re-animated and made to
+aspire on high? When, I say, will he fully comfort me, and give my
+powers free and speedy flight, by which means my substance may go and
+nestle there, where, by my efforts, I may make amends and correct my
+defects, and where (if I arrive) my spirit will be made effectual or
+prevail over my rival, because there, no excess will oppose, no
+opposition overcome, no error assail? Oh! if by force he may arrive
+there, at that height which he is waiting to reach, he will remain on
+high, at the elevation of his object, and he will take that good that
+cannot be comprehended by any other than one, that is, by himself,
+seeing that every other has it in the measure of his own capacity, and
+this one alone has it in all its fulness. Then will happiness come to me
+in that manner which he says, "who all foretells"; that is, at that
+elevation in which the saying all and the doing all is the same thing;
+in that manner that he says and does who all foretells, that is, who is
+sufficient for all things and primary, and whose word and pre-ordaining
+is the true doing and beginning. This is how, in the scale of things
+superior and inferior, the affection of Love proceeds, as the intellect
+or sentiment proceeds from these intelligible or knowable objects, to
+those, or from those to these.
+
+CIC. Thus the greater number of sages believe that Nature delights in
+this changeful circulation which is seen in the whirling of her wheel.
+
+
+
+
+=Fifth Dialogue.=
+
+
+I.
+
+CIC. Now show me how I may be able for myself to consider the conditions
+of these enthusiasts, through that which appears in the order of the
+warfare here described.
+
+TANS. Behold how they carry the ensign of their affections or fortunes.
+Let us leave the consideration of their names and habits; enough that we
+stand upon the meaning of the undertaking and the intelligibility of the
+writing, alike that which is put for the form of the body of the figure,
+as well as that which is mostly put as an elucidation of the
+undertaking.
+
+CIC. Thus will we do. Here then is the first, who carries a shield
+divided into four colours, and in the crest is depicted a flame under
+the head of bronze, from the holes in which, issue in great force a
+smoky wind, and about it is written: "At regna senserunt tria."
+
+TANS. For the explanation of this I would say: that the fire there is
+that which heats the globe, inside of it is the water, and it happens
+that this humid element, being rarefied and attenuated by virtue of the
+heat, and thus resolved into vapour, it requires much greater space to
+contain it, therefore if it does not find easy exit, it goes on with
+extreme force, noise, and destruction to break the vessel; but if it
+finds space and easy exit, so that it can evaporate, it goes out with
+less violence, little by little, and, according as the water is resolved
+into vapour, it is dissipated in puffs into the air. Here is signified
+the heart of the enthusiast where, by a cleverly planned allurement
+being caught by the amorous flame, it happens that some of the vital
+substance sparkles with fire, while some in the form of tearful cries
+rends the bosom, and some other by the expulsion of gusty sighs agitates
+the air. Therefore he says: "At regna senserunt tria." Now this "at"
+supposes a difference, or diversity, or opposite; as one might almost
+say there exists something which might have the same sense, but has it
+not, which is very well explained in the following rhymes:
+
+25.
+
+    From these twin lights of me--a little earth--
+    My wonted tears stream freely to the sea.
+    The greedy air receives from out my breast
+    No niggard part of all that breast contains;
+    And from my heart the lightnings are unlocked
+    That rise to heaven, and yet diminish not.
+    Thus pay I to the air, the sea, the fire,
+    The tribute of my sighs, my tears, my zeal.
+    The sea, the air, the fire, accept a part of me,
+    But my divinity no favour shows.
+    Unkind she turns away. Near her
+    My tears find no response;
+    My voice she will not hear,
+    Nor pitifully will she turn to note my zeal.
+
+Here the subject matter signified by "earth" is the substance of the
+enthusiast, which is poured from the twin lights--that is, from the
+eyes--in copious tears that flow to the sea; he sends forth from his
+breast into the wide air sighs in a great multitude, and the lightnings
+from his heart, not like a little spark or a weak flame, which, cooling
+itself in the air, smokes, and transmigrates into other beings; but,
+potent and vigorous--rather acquiring from others than losing of its
+own--it joins its congenial sphere.
+
+CIC. I understand it all. To the next.
+
+
+II.
+
+TANS. Close by is portrayed one who has on his shield a crest, also
+divided into four colours. There is a sun whose rays extend to the back
+of the earth, and there is a legend which says: "Idem semper ubique
+totum."
+
+CIC. I perceive that the interpretation of it will be difficult.
+
+TANS. The more excellent the meaning the less obvious is it, and you
+will see that it is unequalled, unique, and not strained. You are to
+consider that the sun, although with regard to the various regions of
+the earth he is for each one different as to time, place, and degree,
+yet in respect of the whole globe as such, he always and in every place
+accomplishes everything, for in whatever part of the ecliptic he is to
+be found, he makes winter, summer, autumn, and spring, and makes the
+whole globe of the earth to receive within itself the aforesaid four
+seasons; for never is it hot at one side unless it is cold on the other;
+when it is to us very hot in the tropic of Cancer it is very cold in the
+tropic of Capricorn; so that for the same reason it is winter in that
+part when it is summer in this, and to those who are in the middle, it
+is temperate according to the aspect, vernal or autumnal. So the earth
+always feels the rains, the winds, the heat, the cold; nor would it be
+damp here if it were not dry in another part, and the sun would not warm
+it on this side if it had not already left off warming it on the other.
+
+CIC. Even before you have finished, I understand what you would say. You
+mean that as the sun gives all the impressions to the earth, and this
+receives them whole and entire, so the Object of the enthusiast, with
+its active splendour, makes him the passive subject of tears, which are
+the waters, of ardours, which are the fires, and of sighs, which are
+certain vapours, which partake of both, which leave the fire, and go to
+the waters, or leave the waters and go to the fire.
+
+TANS. This is well explained below.
+
+26.
+
+    When as the sun towards Capricorn declines,
+    Then do the rains enrich the streams,
+    As towards the line he goes, or thence returns,
+    More felt is each AEolian messenger,
+    Warming the more with every lengthening day
+    What time towards burning Cancer he remounts.
+    And equal to this heat, this cold, this zeal
+    Are these my tears, my sighs, the ardour that I feel.
+    My constant sighs, my never waning flames
+    Are only equal to my tears.
+    My floods and flames howe'er intense they be,
+    Are never more so than my sighs;
+    I burn with fervid heat,
+    And, firmly fixed, I ever sigh and weep.
+
+CIC. This does not so much declare the meaning of the coat of arms, as
+the preceding discourse did, but it rather supplements or accompanies
+that discourse.
+
+TANS. Say, rather, that the figure is latent in the first part, and the
+legend is well explained in the second; as both the one and the other
+are very properly signified in the type of the sun and of the earth.
+
+CIC. Pass on to the third.
+
+
+III.
+
+TANS. The third bears on his shield a naked child, stretched upon the
+green turf, who rests his head upon his arm, with his eyes turned
+towards the sky to certain edifices, towers, gardens, and orchards,
+which are above the clouds, and there is a castle of which the material
+is fire, and in the middle is the sign inscribed: "Mutuo fulcimur."
+
+CIC. What does that mean?
+
+TANS. It means that enthusiast, signified by the naked child as simple,
+pure, and exposed to all the accidents of Nature and of fortune, who at
+the same time by the force of thought, constructs castles in the air,
+and amongst other things a tower, of which the architect is Love, the
+material is the amorous fire, and the builder is himself, who says:
+"Mutuo fulcimur"--that is, I build and uphold you there with my
+thought, and you uphold me here with hope; you would not be in existence
+were it not for the imagination and the thought with which I form and
+uphold you, and I should not be alive were it not for the refreshment
+and comfort that I receive through your means.
+
+CIC. It is true that there is no fancy so vain and so chimerical that
+may not be a more real and true medicine for an enthusiastic heart than
+any herb, mineral, oil, or other sort of thing that Nature produces.
+
+TANS. Magicians can do more by means of faith than physicians by the
+truth; and in the worst diseases the patients benefit more by believing
+this or that which the former say, than in understanding that which the
+latter do. Now let the rhymes be read.
+
+27.
+
+    Above the clouds in that high place,
+    When oft with dreaming I am fired,
+    For comfort and refreshment of my soul
+    An airy castle from my fires I build,
+    And if my adverse fate incline awhile,
+    And without scorn or ire will understand
+    This lofty grace for which I die,
+    Oh happy then my pains, happy my death.
+    The ardour of those flames she does not feel,
+    Nor is she hindered by those snares
+    With which, oh boy! thou'rt wont to enslave
+    And lead into captivity both men and gods;
+    By pity's hand alone, oh Love,
+    By showing all my woe, thou shalt prevail.
+
+CIC. He shows that which feeds his fancy and bathes his spirit; yet,
+inasmuch as he is without courage to explain himself and make known his
+sufferings, although he is so deeply subjected to that anguish, if it
+should happen that his hard, uncompromising fate should bend a little
+(as, in the end, fate must soothe him, by showing itself without scorn
+or anger for the high object), he would consider no happiness so great,
+no life so blessed, as in such a case would be his happiness in his
+woes, and his blessedness in his death.
+
+TANS. And with this he comes to declare to Love that the means by which
+he will gain access to that breast, is not in the ordinary way by the
+arms with which he usually captivates men and gods, but only by causing
+the fiery heart and his troubled spirit, to be laid bare, to obtain
+sight of which it is necessary that compassion open the way, and
+introduce him to that secret chamber.
+
+
+IV.
+
+CIC. What is the meaning of that butterfly which flutters round the
+flame, and almost burns itself? and what means that legend, "Hostis non
+hostis?"
+
+TANS. The meaning of the butterfly is not difficult, which, seduced by
+the fascinations of splendour, goes innocently and amicably to meet its
+death in the devouring flames. Thus, "hostis" stands written for the
+effect of the fire; "non hostis" for the inclination of the fly.
+"Hostis," the fly passively; "non hostis," actively. "Hostis," the
+flame, through its ardour; "non hostis," through its splendour.
+
+CIC. Now what is that which is written on the tablet?
+
+TANS.:
+
+28.
+
+    Be it far from me to make complaint of love,
+    Love, without whom I will not happy be,
+    And though through him these weary toils I bear.
+    Yet what is given my will shall not reject.
+    Be clear the sky or dark, burning or cold,
+    To that one phoenix e'er the same I'll be,
+    No fate nor destiny can e'er untie
+    That knot which death unable is to loose;
+    To heart, to spirit, and to soul,
+    No pleasure is, no liberty, no life,
+    No smile, no rapture, no delight,
+    So sweet, so grateful, so divine,
+    As these hard bonds, this death of mine,
+    To which by fate, by will, by nature I incline.
+
+Here, in the figure, he shows the resemblance between the enthusiast
+and the butterfly attracted towards the light; in the sonnet, however,
+he demonstrates rather difference and dissimilarity; as it is commonly
+believed, that if the butterfly foresaw its destruction, it would fly
+from the light more eagerly than it now pursues it, and would consider
+it an evil to lose its life through being absorbed into that hostile
+fire. But to him (the enthusiast) it is no less pleasing to perish in
+the flames of amorous ardour than to be drawn to the contemplation of
+the beauty of that rare splendour, under which, by natural inclination,
+by voluntary election, and by disposition of fate, he labours, serves,
+and dies more gaily, more resolutely, and more courageously than under
+whatsoever other pleasure which may offer itself to the heart, liberty
+which may be conceded to the spirit, and life which may be discovered in
+the soul.
+
+CIC. Tell me why he says, "ever the same I'll be?"
+
+TANS. Because it seems suitable to bring forward a reason for his
+constancy, seeing that the sage does not change with the moon, although
+the fool does so. Thus he is unique, as the phoenix is unique.
+
+
+V.
+
+CIC. But what signifies that branch of palm, around which is the legend,
+"Caesar adest?"
+
+TANS. Without further talk, all may be understood by that which is
+written on the tablet:
+
+29.
+
+    Unconquered victor of Pharsalia,
+    Though all thy warriors be well-nigh spent,
+    At sight of thee they rise once more;
+    Their strength returns, they conquer their proud foes;
+    So does my love--that equals love of heaven--
+    Become a living presence through my thoughts;
+    Thoughts that my haughty soul had killed with scorn,
+    Love brings again stronger than love himself;
+    Thy presence is enough, oh memory!
+    These to reanimate in all their strength,
+    And with imperious sov'reignty they rule
+    And govern each opposing force.
+    May I be happy in this governance
+    And with these bonds, and may that light ne'er cease.
+
+There are times when the inferior powers of the soul--like a vigorous
+and hostile army, which finds itself in its own country practised,
+expert, and ready--revolt against the foreign adversary, who comes down
+from the height of the intelligence to curb the people of the valley and
+of the boggy plains, where, through the baneful presence of the enemies
+and of such obstacles as deep ditches, advancing they lose themselves,
+and would be entirely lost, if there were not a certain conversion
+towards the splendour of intellectual things through the act of
+contemplation, by means of which they are converted from inferior
+degrees to superior ones.
+
+CIC. What degrees are these?
+
+TANS. The degrees of contemplation are like the degrees of light, which
+exist not at all in the darkness, slightly in shade, more in colours,
+according to their orders, from one opposite which is black to the other
+which is white; but more fully do they exist in the splendour diffused
+over pure transparent bodies, as in a looking-glass and in the moon, and
+still more brightly in the rays diffused by the sun, but principally and
+most brilliantly in the sun itself. Now the perceptive and the
+affectional powers are ordered in this way; the next following always
+has affinity for the next preceding, and by means of conversion to that
+which elevates it, it becomes fortified against the inferior, which
+lowers it; as the reason, through its conversion to the intellect, is
+not seduced or vanquished by knowledge or comprehension or by passionate
+affection, but rather, according to the law of the intellect, it is
+brought to govern and correct the same. It comes to this, therefore,
+that when the rational appetite strives against sensual concupiscence,
+if, by the act of conversion, the intellectual light is presented to
+the eyes, it causes the above appetite to take up again the lost virtue,
+and giving fresh strength to the nerves, it alarms and puts to rout the
+enemy.
+
+CIC. In what manner do you mean that such a conversion takes place?
+
+TANS. With three preparatives, which are noted by the contemplative
+Plotinus in the book of "Intellectual Beauty;" and, of these, the first
+is by proposing to conform himself to a divine pattern, diverting the
+sight from things which stand between him and his own perfection, and
+which are common to those things which are equal and inferior. The
+second is by applying himself, with full intention and attention, to
+superior things. The third is by bringing into captivity to God the
+whole will and affection: for from this it comes to pass that, without
+doubt, the divinity will influence him; who is everywhere present, and
+ready to come to the aid of whosoever turns to Him through the act of
+the intelligence, and who unreservedly presents himself with the
+affection of the will.
+
+CIC. It is not then corporeal beauty which can allure such an one?
+
+TANS. No, certes; because in that there is no true nor constant beauty,
+and for this reason it cannot evoke true nor constant love. That beauty,
+which is seen in bodies is accidental and transitory, and is like those
+which are absorbed, changed, and spoiled by the changing of the subject,
+which very often, from being beautiful, becomes ugly, without any change
+taking place in the soul. The reason then comprehends the truest beauty,
+through conversion, to that which makes the beauty of the body, and
+forms it in loveliness--it is the soul which has thus built and designed
+it. Now does the intellect rise still higher, and learns that the soul
+is incomparably more beautiful than any beauty that may be in bodies;
+but yet it cannot persuade itself that it is beautiful of itself and
+primarily, for if it be so, what is the cause of that difference which
+exists in the quality of souls, by which some are wise, amiable, and
+beautiful, others stupid, odious, and ugly. We must then raise ourselves
+to that superior intellect which is beautiful in itself and good in
+itself. This is that sole supreme captain who alone, placed before the
+eyes of the militant thoughts, enlivens, encourages, strengthens them,
+and renders them victorious above the scorn of every other beauty and
+the repudiation of every other good whatsoever. This is the presence
+which causes every difficulty to be overcome and all opposition to be
+subdued.
+
+CIC. I understand it all; but what is the meaning of, "May I be happy in
+this governance and with these bonds, and may that light not cease?"
+
+TANS. He means, and he proves, that every sort of love, the greater its
+dominion and the surer its hold, the more tight are the bonds, and the
+more firm the yoke, and the more ardent the flames that are felt, as
+compared with the ordinary princes and tyrants, who adopt a greater
+rigour wherever they see they have less hold.
+
+CIC. Go on.
+
+
+VI.
+
+TANS. Here we see described the idea of a flying phoenix, towards which
+is turned a boy who is burning in the midst of flames; and there is the
+legend, "Fata obstant." But in order better to understand it, let us
+read the tablet:
+
+30.
+
+    Sole bird of the sun, thou wandering phoenix!
+    That measurest thy days as does the world
+    With lofty summits of Arabia Felix.
+    Thou art the same thou wast, but I what I was not:
+    I through the fire of love, unhappy die;
+    But thee the sun with his warm rays revives;
+    Thou burn'st in one, and I, in every place;
+    Eros my fire, while thine Apollo gives.
+    Predestined is the term of thy long life;
+    Short span is mine,
+    And menaced by a thousand ills.
+    Nor do I know how I have lived, nor how shall live,
+    Me does blind fate conduct;
+    But thou wilt come again, again behold thy light.
+
+From the meaning of these lines, you will see that in the figure is
+drawn the comparison between the fate of the phoenix and that of the
+enthusiast; and the legend, "Fata obstant," does not signify that the
+fates are adverse either to the boy, or to the phoenix, or to both; but
+that the fatal decrees for each are not the same, but are diverse and
+opposite. The phoenix is that which it was, because the same matter, by
+means of the fire, renews itself, and becomes again the body of the
+phoenix, and the same spirit and soul come to inhabit it. The enthusiast
+is that which he was not, because the subject, which is a man, was first
+of some other species, according to innumerable differentiations. So
+that what the phoenix was, is known, and what it will be, is known; but
+this subject cannot return, except through many and uncertain means, to
+invest the same or a similar natural form. Then the phoenix, through the
+sun's presence, changes death into life, and that other, by the
+presence of love, transmutes life into death. The one kindles his fire
+on the aromatic altar, the other finds it ever present with him and
+carries it wherever he goes. The one again, has certain conditions of a
+long life; but the other, through the infinite differences of time and
+innumerable circumstances, has the mutable conditions of a short life.
+The one kindles with certainty, the other with doubt as to whether he
+will see the sun again.
+
+CIC. What do you think that this means?
+
+TANS. It means the difference that exists between the lower intellect
+called the intellect of power, either possible or passive, which is
+uncertain, multifarious, and multiform, and the higher intellect, which,
+perhaps, is like that which is said by the Peripatetics to be the lowest
+of the intelligences, and which exerts an immediate influence over all
+the individuals of the human species, and is called the active and
+acting intellect. This special human intelligence which influences all
+individuals is like the moon, which partakes of no other species but
+that one alone which always renews itself by the transmutation caused in
+it by the sun, which is the primal and universal intelligence; but the
+human intellect, both individual and collective, turns as do the eyes
+towards innumerable and most diverse objects; whence, according to the
+infinite degrees which exist, it takes on all the natural forms. Hence
+it is that this particular intellect may be as enthusiastic, vague, and
+uncertain, as that universal one is quiet, fixed, and certain, whether
+as regards the desire or the comprehension. Now therefore, as you may
+very well perceive for yourself, it means that the nature of the
+comprehension of sense and its varied appetite, is vague, inconstant,
+and uncertain, and the conception and definite appetite of the
+intelligence is firm and stable. This is the difference between sensual
+love, which has no stability nor discretion as to its object, and
+intellectual love, which aims only at one, sure and fixed, towards which
+it turns, through which it is illuminated in its conception, by which,
+being kindled in its affections, it becomes inflamed and brightened, and
+is maintained in unity and identity of condition.
+
+
+VII.
+
+CIC. But what is the meaning of that figure of the sun, with a circle
+inside and another outside, with the legend "Circuit."
+
+TANS. The meaning of this I am certain I should never have understood if
+I had not heard it from the designer of it himself. Now you must know
+that "Circuit" has reference to the movement the sun makes round the
+circle which is drawn inside and outside, in order to signify that the
+movement both makes and is made; and hence, as a consequence, the sun is
+to be found in every part of those circles; so that, if he moves and is
+moved, and is over the whole circumference of the circle equally, then
+you find in him both movement and rest.
+
+CIC. This I understood in the dialogues on the infinite universe and the
+innumerable worlds, where it is declared that the divine wisdom is
+extremely mobile, as Solomon said, and also that the same is most
+stable, as all those declare who know. Now go on and make me understand
+the proposition.
+
+TANS. It means that [D]his sun is not like this one, which is commonly
+believed to go round the earth with the daily movement in twenty-four
+hours, and with the planetary movement in twelve months, and by which he
+causes the four seasons of the year to be felt, according as he is found
+to be in the four cardinal points of the zodiac; but he is such an one,
+that, being the ethereal eternity itself, and consequently an entire and
+complete totality, he contains the winter, the spring, the summer, the
+autumn, together with the day and the night, for he is all and for all,
+in all points and places.
+
+[D] Il suo sole.
+
+CIC. Now apply that which you have said to the figure.
+
+TANS. It being impossible here to design the entire sun in every point
+of the circle, two circles are delineated; one which contains the sun to
+signify that the movement is made through him, the other which is
+contained by the sun to show that he is moved by it.
+
+CIC. But this explanation is not very clear and appropriate.
+
+TANS. Suffice it that it is the clearest and most appropriate that he
+was able to make. If you can make a better one, you shall have
+permission to remove this one and put it in its place, for this has only
+been put in, so that the soul should not be without a body.
+
+CIC. What do you say about that "Circuit?"
+
+TANS. That legend contains all the meaning of the thing in so far as it
+can be explained, for it means that he turns and is turned, that is to
+say movement present and accomplished.
+
+CIC. Excellent! And therefore those circles which so ill explain the
+circumstance of movement and rest, we can say are placed there to
+signify the circulation only. Thus am I satisfied with the subject and
+with the form of the heroic device. Now read the lines.
+
+TANS.:
+
+31.
+
+    Mild are thy rays, oh, Sol! from Taurus sent,
+    And from the Lion thy beams mature and burn,
+    And when thy light from pungent Scorpion darts
+    Transcendent is the ardour of thy flames.
+    From fierce Deucalion all is struck with cold,
+    Stiffened the lakes and locked the running streams.
+    With spring, with summer, autumn, and with winter,
+    I warm, I kindle, burn and blaze for ever.
+    So ardent my desire,
+    The object so supreme for which I burn;
+    Glowing and unencumbered I behold,
+    And make my lightnings flash unto the stars.
+    No moment can I count in all the year
+    To change the[E] inexorable cross I bear.
+
+Here observe that the four seasons of the year are signified, not by
+four movable signs, which are Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn, but
+by the four which are called fixed--namely, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and
+Aquarius, to signify the condition, fervour, and perfection of those
+seasons. Note further, that in virtue of those apostrophes, which are in
+the eighth line, you can read: I warm, kindle, burn, blaze; or, be thou
+warmed, kindled, burning, blazing; or, let him warm, kindle, burn,
+blaze.
+
+[E] Sordi affanni.
+
+You have farther to consider that these are not four synonyms, but four
+different terms, which signify so many degrees of the effects of the
+fire, which first warms, secondly kindles, thirdly burns, and fourthly
+blazes or inflames that which it has warmed, kindled, and burnt. And
+thus are denoted in the enthusiast, desire, attention, study, affection,
+in which he never for a moment feels any change.
+
+CIC. Why does he put them under the title of a cross?
+
+TANS. Because the object, which is the divine light, is, in this life,
+more felt as a painful longing than in quiet fruition, because our mind
+is towards that, as the eyes of night birds to the sun.
+
+CIC. Proceed; for from what you have said I understand all.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+TANS. On the next crest there is painted a full moon and the legend:
+"Talis mihi semper ut astro," which means that to the star--that is, to
+the sun--she is ever such as she here shows herself, full and clear in
+the entire circumference of the circle, which, in order that you may
+better understand, I will let you hear that which is written on the
+tablet.
+
+32.
+
+    Oh, changeful moon, inconstant moon!
+    With horns now full, now void, thou wanderest.
+    Mounting, thy sphere now white now dark appears.
+    The mountains and the valleys of the north thou brightenest,
+    And turning by thy dust-encumbered steps,
+    Thou lightest in the south the Lybian heights.
+    My moon for my continual pain.
+    Is constant ever, ever full.
+    So is my star,
+    Which ever from me takes and nothing gives,
+    For ever burns and ever shines,
+    Cruel always yet always beautiful.
+    This noble light of mine
+    Torments me still and still delights me.
+
+It seems to me, that it means that his particular intelligence is to the
+universal intelligence ever the same--that is to say, the one is ever
+illuminated by the other, over the whole hemisphere; notwithstanding
+that to the inferior powers, and according to the influence of his
+actions, it appears now dark, and now more and less clear. Or perhaps it
+means that his speculative intellect, which is ever invariable in its
+action, is always turned and affected towards the human intelligence
+signified by the moon. Because, as this is said to be the lowest of all
+the stars, and is nearest to us, so the illuminating intelligence of all
+of us in this state is the last in order of the other intelligences, as
+Averroes and the more subtle Peripatetics say. That intelligence, in so
+far as it is not in any act, goes down before, or sets to the potential
+intellect, or as if so to say, it emerged from the bottom of the occult
+hemisphere, and showed itself now void, now full, according as it gives
+more or less light of intelligence. Now its sphere is dark, now light,
+because sometimes it shows itself as a shadow, a semblance, and a
+vestige, and sometimes more and more openly: now it declines towards the
+south, now it mounts towards the north--that is, now it removes farther
+and farther away, and now it approaches nearer and nearer. But the
+intellect, active with its continual grief--seeing that it is not
+through its human condition and nature that it finds itself so wretched,
+so opposed, courted, solicited, distracted, and, as it were, torn by the
+inferior powers--sees its object stable, fixed and constant, and ever
+full, and in the same splendour of beauty. Thus it ever takes away, in
+so far as it does not concede, and ever gives, in so far as it concedes.
+It ever burns in the affection in so far as it shines in thoughts, and
+is always cruel in withdrawing itself through that which withdraws
+itself; as it is always beautiful in communication with, that to which
+it presents itself. Always does it torment when it is divided from him
+by difference of locality, as always it delights him being joined to it
+by affection.
+
+CIC. Now apply your intelligence to the legend.
+
+TANS. He says then, "talis mihi semper;" that is, because of the
+continual application of my intellect, my memory, and my will, because I
+will remember, understand and desire no other; she is ever the same to
+me, and in so far as I can understand her, she is entirely present, and
+is not separated from me by any distraction of my thoughts, nor does she
+become darkened to me through any want of attention, for there is no
+thought that can divert me from that light nor any necessity of nature
+which forces me to a less constant attention; "talis mihi semper" on her
+side, because she is invariable in substance, in virtue, in beauty, and
+in effect, towards those things that are constant and invariable towards
+her. She says further, "ut astro," because in respect of the sun, the
+illuminator of her, she is ever equally luminous, seeing that she is
+ever turned equally towards him, and he at the same time diffuses his
+rays equally. As, physically, this moon that we see with the eyes,
+although towards the earth she appears now dark, now shining, now more,
+now less illuminated and illuminating, yet is she ever equally
+irradiated by the sun, because she always reflects his rays over at
+least the whole of her hemisphere. So also is the hemisphere of this
+earth ever equally irradiated, although from the watery surfaces she
+from time to time sends her splendours unequally to the moon,--which
+like innumerable other stars we consider as another earth--in the same
+manner, she also sends hers to the earth, on account of the periodical
+changes which both experience in finding themselves now the one, now the
+other, nearer to the sun.
+
+CIC. How can this intelligence be signified by the moon which lights up
+the hemisphere?
+
+TANS. All the intelligences are signified by the moon, in so far as they
+are sharers in act and in power, in so far as they have the light
+materially and by participation, receiving it from another; I say that,
+as not being lights of themselves, nor by their own nature, but by
+reflection from the sun, which is the first intelligence, which is pure
+and absolute light, as it is also pure and absolute action.
+
+CIC. All those things, then, that are dependent, and are not the first
+act and cause, are they composed of light and shade, of matter and
+form, of power and action?
+
+TANS. It is so. Furthermore this soul of ours, in all its substance, is
+signified by the moon which shines through the hemisphere of the
+superior powers, by which it is turned towards the light of the
+intelligible world, and is dark through the inferior powers, by which it
+is occupied with material things.
+
+
+IX.
+
+CIC. It seems to me that what has just been said has some connection and
+analogy with the impression that I see on the next shield, where stands
+a gnarled and rugged oak, against which the wind is raging, and it is
+circumscribed by the legend, "ut robori robur," and here is the tablet,
+which says:
+
+33.
+
+    Old oak, that spread'st thy branches to the air,
+    And firmly in the earth dost fix thy roots;
+    No shifting of the land, no mighty elements,
+    Which Heaven from the stormy north unlocks;
+    Nor whatso'er the gruesome winter sends,
+    Can tear thee from the spot where thou art chained.
+    Thou art the veritable portrait of my faith,
+    Which, fixed, remains 'gainst every casual chance.
+    Ever the self-same ground dost thou
+    Grasp, cultivate and comprehend; and stretch
+    Thy grateful roots unto the generous breast.
+    Upon one only object I
+    Have fixed my spirit, sense, and intellect.
+
+TANS. The legend is clear, by which the enthusiast boasts of having the
+strength and vigour of the oak, and as before said of being ever the
+same in respect to the one only phoenix, and in the next preceding one,
+conforming himself to that moon which ever shines so brightly and is so
+beautiful, and also in that he does not resemble this antichthon between
+our earth and the sun in so far as it changes to our eyes, but in that
+it ever receives within itself an equal amount of the solar splendour,
+and through this remains constant and firm against the rough winds and
+tempests of winter, through the stability that he has in his star, in
+which he is planted by affection and intention, as the roots of the oak
+twist and weave themselves into the veins of the earth.
+
+CIC. I hold it better worth living in quiet and without vexation than to
+be forced to endure so much.
+
+TANS. That is a maxim of the Epicureans which, being well understood,
+would not be considered so unworthy as the ignorant hold it to be,
+seeing that it does not detract from what I have called virtue, nor
+does it impair the perfection of firmness, but it rather adds to that
+perfection as it is understood by the vulgar, for Epicurus does not hold
+that, a true and complete strength and firmness which feels and bears
+inconveniences, but that which bears them and feels them not. He does
+not consider him perfect in divine heroic love, who feels the spur, the
+check, or remorse or trouble about other love; but him who has no
+feeling of other affections; so that being fixed in one pleasure, there
+is no displeasure that has any power to jostle him or dislodge him from
+his place. And this it is to touch the highest blessedness of this
+state, to have rapture and no sense of pain.
+
+CIC. The ignorant do not believe in this meaning of Epicurus.
+
+TANS. Because they neither read his own books, nor those that report his
+maxims without invidiousness, but there are those who read the course of
+his life and the conditions of his death, where with these words he
+dictated the beginning of his testament: "Being in the last, and at the
+same time, the happiest day of our life, we have ordained this with a
+healthy, tranquil mind at rest; for whatever acute sorrow may torment us
+from one side, that torment is entirely annulled by the pleasure of our
+own inventions and the consideration of our end." And it is manifest
+that he no longer felt more pleasure than sorrow in eating, drinking,
+repose, and in generating, but in not feeling hunger, nor thirst, nor
+fatigue, nor sensuality. From this may be understood what is according
+to us the perfection of firmness; not in this, that the tree neither
+bends nor breaks, nor is rent, but in that it does not so much as stir,
+and its prototype keeps spirit, sense, and intellect, fixed there, where
+the shock of the tempest is not felt.
+
+CIC. Do you then think it is a thing to be desired, to bear shocks in
+order to prove that you are strong?
+
+TANS. You say "to bear;" and this is a part of firmness, but it is not
+the whole of that virtue, which consists in bearing strongly, as I say,
+or in not feeling, as Epicurus said. Now this loss of feeling is caused
+by being entirely absorbed in the cultivation of virtue, or of real good
+and felicity, in such wise that Regulus did not feel the chest, Lucretia
+the dagger, Socrates the poison, Anaxagoras the mortar, Scaevola the
+fire, Cocles the abyss, and other worthies felt not those things which
+would torment and fill with terror the vulgar crowd.
+
+CIC. Now pass on.
+
+
+X.
+
+TANS. Look at this other who bears the device of an anvil and a hammer,
+round which is the legend "ab Aetna!" But here Vulcan is introduced:
+
+34.
+
+    Not now to my Sicilian mount I turn,
+    Where thou dost forge the thunderbolts of Jove,
+    Here, rugged Vulcan will I stay;
+    Here, where a prouder giant moves,
+    Who burns and rages against Heaven in vain,
+    Soliciting new cares and divers trials.
+    Here is a better smith and Mongibello[F]
+    A better anvil, better forge and hammer;
+    For here behold a bosom full of sighs,
+    Which blows the furnace and the fire revives.
+    The soul nor yields nor bends to these rough blows,
+    But bears exulting this long martyrdom,
+    And makes a harmony from these sharp pangs.
+
+[F] Mount Etna.
+
+Here are shown the pains and troubles which beset love, principally love
+of a low kind, which is no other than the forge of Vulcan, that smith
+who makes the bolts of Jove which torment offending souls. For
+ill-ordered love has in itself the beginning of its own pain, seeing
+that there is a God near us, in us, and with us. There is in us a
+certain sacred mind and intelligence, which supplies an affection of its
+own, which has its own avenger, which, through remorse for certain
+shortcomings, flagellates the transgressing spirit as with a hammer. It
+notes our actions and our affections, and as it is treated by us, so are
+we treated by it. In every lover I say there is this smith Vulcan, and
+as there is no man that has not a god within him, so there is no lover
+that has not a god within him, and no lover within whom this god is not.
+Most certainly there is a god in every man, but what god it is in each
+one is not so easy to know. And even though we should examine and
+distinguish, yet do I believe that none other than Love could declare
+it, he being the one who pulls the oars, and fills the sails, and
+modifies this compound, so that it comes to be well or ill affected. I
+say well or ill affected as to that which it puts in execution through
+the moral actions and through contemplation; for the rest, all lovers
+are apt to experience some difficulties, things being as they are, so
+entangled; there being no good whatever, either of conception or of the
+affections, which is not joined to or stands in opposition to evil, as
+there is no truth which is not joined or opposed to what is false, so
+there is no love without fear, ardour, jealousy, rancour, and other
+passions, which proceed from their opposites, and which disturb us, as
+the other opposite causes satisfaction. Thus the soul striving to
+recover its natural beauty seeks to purify itself, to heal itself, and
+to reform itself, and to this end it uses fire, because, being like
+gold, mixed with earth and crude, with a certain rigour it tries to
+liberate itself from defilement, and this result is obtained when the
+intellect, the real smith of Jove, puts itself to the work and causes an
+active exercise of the intellectual powers.
+
+CIC. It seems to me that this is referred to in the "Banquet" of Plato,
+where it says that Love has inherited from his mother, Poverty, that
+dried-up, thin, pale, bare-footed, and submissive condition without a
+home, without anything, and through these is signified the torture of
+the soul that is torn with contrary affections.
+
+TANS. So it is; because the spirit, full of this enthusiasm, becomes
+absorbed in profound thoughts, stricken with urgent cares, kindled with
+fervent desires, excited by frequent crises: whence the soul, finding
+itself in suspense, becomes less diligent and active in the government
+of the body through the acts of the vegetative power; thus the body
+becomes lean, ill-nourished, attenuated, poor in blood, and rich in
+melancholy humours, and these, if they do not administer to the
+disciplined soul, or to a clear and lucid spirit, may lead to insanity,
+folly, and brutal fury, or at least to a certain disregard of self, and
+a contempt of its own being, which is symbolized by Plato in the bare
+feet. Love becomes subjected and flies suddenly down to earth when it is
+attached to low things, but flies high when it is fixed upon more worthy
+enterprises. In conclusion, whatever love it may be, it is ever
+afflicted and tormented in such a way that it cannot fail to supply
+material for the forge of Vulcan; because the soul, being a divine
+thing, and by nature, not a servant but the mistress of corporeal
+matter, she becomes troubled in that she voluntarily serves the body
+wherein she finds nothing to satisfy her, and albeit, fixed in the thing
+loved, yet now and then she becomes agitated, and fluctuates amidst the
+waves of hope, fear, doubt, ardour, conscience, remorse, determination,
+repentance, and other scourges, which are the bellows, the coals, the
+forge, the hammer, the pincers, and other instruments which are found in
+the workshop of the sordid grimy consort of Venus.
+
+CIC. Enough has been said upon this subject. Let us see what follows.
+
+
+XI.
+
+TANS. Here is a golden apple, rich with various kinds of precious
+enamel, and there is a legend about it which says, "Pulchriori detur."
+
+CIC. The allusion to the fact of the three goddesses who submitted
+themselves to the judgment of Paris is very common. But read the lines
+which more specifically disclose the meaning of the present enthusiast.
+
+TANS.:
+
+35.
+
+    Venus, the goddess of the third heaven
+    (Mother of the archer blind, who conquers all),
+    She whose father is the head of Zeus,
+    And Juno, most majestic wife of Jove,
+    These call the Trojan shepherd to be judge,
+    And to the fairest give the ruddy sphere.
+    Compared with Venus, Pallas, and the Queen of Heaven,
+    My perfect goddess bears away the palm.
+    The Cyprian queen may boast her royal limbs,
+    Minerva charm with her transcendent wit,
+    And Juno with a majesty supreme;
+    But she who holds my heart all these excels
+    In wisdom, majesty, and loveliness.
+
+Here he makes a comparison between his object (or ideal) which comprises
+all circumstances, all conditions, and all kinds of beauty, in one
+subject, and others which exhibit each only one, and that through
+various hypotheses, as with corporeal beauty, all the conditions of
+which Apelles could not find in one, but in many virgins. Now here,
+where there are three kinds of the beautiful, although it seems that all
+of these exist in each of the three goddesses--Venus not being found
+wanting in wisdom and majesty, Juno not lacking loveliness and wisdom,
+and Pallas being full of majesty and beauty, in each case it is a fact
+that one quality exceeds the others, so that it comes to be held as
+distinctive of the one, and the other as incidental to all, seeing that
+of those three gifts, one predominates in each and proclaims her
+sovereign over the others. And the cause of this difference lies in the
+fact of possessing these qualities, not primarily and in their essence,
+but by participation and derivation; as in all things which are
+dependent, their perfection depends upon the degrees of major and minor
+and more and less. But in the simplicity of the divine essence, all
+exists in totality, and not according to any measure, and therefore
+wisdom is not greater than beauty and majesty, and goodness is not
+greater than strength: not only are till the attributes equal, they are
+one and the same thing. As in the sphere all the dimensions are not only
+equal, the length being equal to the depth and breadth, but are also
+identical, seeing that what in a sphere is called deep, may also be
+called long and wide. Likewise is it, as to height in divine wisdom,
+which is the same as the depth of power and the breadth of goodness. All
+these perfections are equal, because they are infinite. Of necessity,
+one is according to the sum of the other, seeing that where things are
+finite it may result in this, that it is more wise than beautiful or
+good, more good and beautiful than wise, more wise and good than
+powerful, and more powerful than good or wise. But where there is
+infinite wisdom there cannot be other than infinite power, otherwise
+there would be no infinite knowledge. Where there is infinite goodness
+there must be infinite wisdom, otherwise there would be no infinite
+goodness. Where there is infinite power there must be infinite goodness
+and wisdom, because there is the being able to know and the knowing to
+be able. Now, observe how the object of this enthusiast, who is, as it
+were, inebriated with the drink of the gods, is incomparably higher
+than others which are different. I mean to say that the divine essence
+comprehends in the very highest degree perfection of all kinds, so that
+according to the degree in which this particular form may have
+participated, he can understand all, do all, and be such an attached
+friend to one that he may come to feel contempt and indifference towards
+every other beauty. Therefore to her should be consecrated the spherical
+apple as to her who seems to be all in all; not to Venus, who is
+beautiful but is surpassed in wisdom by Minerva, and by Juno in majesty;
+not to Pallas than whom Venus is more beautiful, and the other more
+magnificent; not to Juno, who is not the goddess of intelligence or of
+love.
+
+CIC. Truly, as are the degrees of Nature and of the essences, so in
+proportion are the degrees of the intelligible orders and the glories of
+the amorous affections and enthusiasms.
+
+
+XII.
+
+CIC. The following bears a head with four faces, which blow towards the
+four corners of the heavens, and are four winds in one subject; above
+these stand two stars, and in the centre the legend "Novae ortae
+aeoliae." I would like to know what that signifies.
+
+TANS. I think that the meaning of this device is consequent upon that
+which precedes it, for, as there the object is declared to be infinite
+beauty, so here is proposed what may be called a similar aspiration,
+study, affection, and desire. I believe that these winds are set to
+signify sighs; but this we shall see when we come to read the lines:
+
+36.
+
+    Sons of the Titan Astraeus and Aurora,
+    Who trouble heaven, earth, and the wide sea,
+    Leave now this stormy war of elements,
+    And fight anon with the high gods.
+    No more in my AEolian caves ye dwell,
+    No more does my restraining power compel;
+    But caught are ye and closed within that breast,
+    With moans and sobs and bitter sighs opprest.
+    Turbulent brothers of the stars,
+    Companions of the tempests of the seas,
+    Those lights are all that may avail
+    Peace to restore; murderous yet innocent;
+    Which, open or concealed,
+    Will bless with calm, or curse with pride.
+
+Evidently, here, AEolus is introduced as speaking to the winds, which he
+declares are no longer tempered by him in the AEolian caverns, but by two
+stars in the breast of this enthusiast. Here, the two stars do not mean
+the two eyes which are in the forehead, but the two appreciable kinds of
+divine beauty and goodness, of that infinite splendour, which so
+influences intellectual and rational desire, that it brings him to a
+condition of infinite aspiration, according to the way and the degree
+with which he comes to comprehend that glorious light. For love, while
+it is finite, contented, and fixed in a certain measure, is not in the
+form of the species of divine beauty, but as it goes on with ever higher
+aspirations, it may be said to verge towards the infinite.
+
+CIC.. How is breathing made to mean aspiring? What relation has desire
+with the winds?
+
+TANS. Whosoever in this present condition aspires, also sighs, and the
+same breathes; and therefore the vehemence of the aspiration is noted by
+the hieroglyph of strong breathing.
+
+CIC. But there is a difference between sighing and breathing.
+
+TANS. Therefore it is not put as if one stood for the other, or as being
+identical, but as being similar.
+
+CIC. Go on then with our proposition.
+
+TANS. The infinite aspiration then, indicated by the sighs and
+symbolized by the winds, is not under the dominion of AEolus in the AEolic
+caverns, but of the aforementioned two lights, which are not only
+blameless, but benevolent in killing the enthusiast, inasmuch as they
+cause him to die to every other thing, except the absorbing affection;
+at the same time, they, being closed and concealed, render him unquiet,
+and being open, they will tranquillize him, because at this time, when
+the eyes of the human mind in this body are covered with a nebulous
+veil, the soul, through such studies, becomes troubled and harassed, and
+he being thus torn and goaded, will attain only that amount of quiet as
+will satisfy the condition of his nature.
+
+CIC.. How can our finite intellect follow after the infinite ideal?
+
+TANS. Through the infinite potency it possesses.
+
+CIC. This would be useless, if ever it came into effect.
+
+TANS. It would be useless, if it had to do with a finite action, where
+infinite potency would be wanting, but not with the infinite action
+where infinite potency is positive perfection.
+
+CIC. If the human intellect is finite in nature and in act, how can it
+have an infinite potency?
+
+TANS. Because it is eternal, and in this ever has delight, so that it
+enjoys happiness without end or measure; and because, as it is finite
+in itself, so it may be infinite in the object.
+
+CIC. What difference is there between the infinity of the object and the
+infinity of the potentiality?
+
+TANS. This is finitely infinite, and that infinitely infinite. But to
+return to ourselves. The legend there says: "Novae Liparaeae aeoliae,"
+because it seems as if we are to believe that all the winds which are in
+the abysmal caverns of AEolus were converted into sighs, if we include
+those which proceed from the affection, which aspires continually to the
+highest good and to the infinite beauty.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+CIC. Here we see the signification of that burning light around which is
+written: "Ad vitam, non ad horam."
+
+TANS. Persistence in such a love and ardent desire of true goodness, by
+which in this temporal state the enthusiast is consumed. This, I think,
+is shown in the following tablet:
+
+37.[Transcribers Note: Original source said 34]
+
+    [G]What time the day removes the orient vault,
+    The rustic peasant leaves his humble home,
+    And when the sun with fiercer tangent strikes,
+    Fatigued and parched, he sits him in the shade;
+    Then plods again with hard, laborious toil,
+    Until black night the hemisphere enshrouds.
+    And then he rests. But I must ever chafe
+    At morning, noon-day, evening, and at night.
+    These fiery rays
+    Which stream from those two arches of my sun,
+    Ne'er fade from the horizon of my soul.
+    So wills my fate;
+    But blazing every hour
+    From their meridian they burn the afflicted heart.
+
+[G] Quando il sen d'oriente il giorno sgombra.
+
+CIC. This tablet expresses with greater truth than perspicacity the
+sense of the figure.
+
+TANS.. It is not necessary for me to make any effort to point out to you
+the appropriateness, as it only requires a little attentive
+consideration. The rays of the sun are the ways in which the divine
+beauty and goodness manifest themselves to us; and they are fiery
+because they cannot be comprehended by the intellect without at the same
+time kindling the affections. The two arches of the sun are the two
+kinds of revelation, that scholastic theologians call early and late,
+whence our illuminating intelligence, as an airy medium, deduces that
+species, either in virtue, which it contemplates in itself, or in
+efficacy, which it beholds in its effects. The horizon of the soul, in
+this place, is that part of the superior potentialities where the
+vigorous impulse of the affection comes to aid the lively comprehension
+of the intellect, being signified by the heart, which, burning at all
+hours, torments itself; because all those fruits of love that we can
+gather in this state are not so sweet that they have not united with
+them a certain affliction, which proceeds from the fear of imperfect
+fruition: as especially occurs in the fruits of natural affection, the
+condition of which I cannot do better than explain in the words of the
+Epicurean poet:
+
+    Ex hominis vera facie, pulchroque colore
+    Nil datur in corpus praeter simulacra fruendum
+    Tenuia, quae vento spes captat saepe misella.
+    Ut bibere in somnis sitiens cum quaerit, et humor
+    Non datur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit,
+    Sed laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laborat,
+    In medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans:
+    Sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis,
+    Nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram,
+    Nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris
+    Possunt, errantes incerti corpore toto.
+    Denique cum membris conlatis flore fruuntur
+    AEtatis, dum jam praesagit gaudia corpus,
+    Atque in eo est Venus, ut muliebria conserat arva,
+    Adfigunt avide corpus, iunguntque salivas
+    Oris, et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora,
+    Necquiquam, quoniam nihil inde abradere possunt,
+    Nec penetrare, et abire in corpus corpore toto.
+
+In the same way, he judges as to the kind of taste that we can have of
+divine things, which, while we force ourselves to penetrate, and unite
+with them, we find that we have more pain in the desire than pleasure
+in the realization. And this may have been the reason why that wise
+Hebrew said that he who increases knowledge increases pain; because
+from, the greater comprehension grows the greater desire. And this is
+followed by greater vexation and grief for the deprivation of the thing
+desired. So the Epicurean, who led a most tranquil life, said
+opportunely:
+
+    Sed fugitare decet simulacra, et pabula amoris
+    Abstergere sibi, atque alio convertere mentem,
+    Nec servare sibi curam certumque dolorem:
+    Ulcus enim virescit, et inveterascit alendo,
+    Inque dies gliscit furor, atque aerumna gravescit.
+    Nec Veneris fructu caret is, qui vitat amorem,
+    Sed potius, quae sunt, sine poena, commoda sumit.
+
+CIC. What is meant by the meridian of the heart?
+
+TANS. That part or region of the will which is highest and most exalted,
+and where it becomes most strongly, clearly, and effectually kindled. He
+means that such affection is not as in its beginning, where it stirs,
+nor as at the end, where it reposes, but as in the middle, where it
+becomes fervid.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+CIC. But what means that glowing arrow, which has flames in place of a
+hard point, around which is encircled a noose with the legend: "Amor
+instat ut instans"? Say, what does it mean?
+
+TANS. It seems to me to mean that love never leaves him, and at the same
+time eternally afflicts him.
+
+CIC. I see the noose, the arrow, and the fire. I understand that which
+is written: "Amor instat"; but that which follows I cannot
+understand--that is, that love as an instant, or persisting, persists;
+which has the same poverty of idea as if one said: "This undertaking he
+has feigned as a feint; he bears it as he bears it, understands it as he
+understands it, values it as he values it, and esteems it as he who
+esteems it."
+
+TANS. It is easy for him to decide and condemn who does not even
+consider. That "instans" is not an adjective from the verb "instare,"
+but it is a noun substantive used for the instant of time.
+
+CIC. Now, what is the meaning of the phrase "love endures as an
+instant?"
+
+TANS.. What does Aristotle mean in his book on Time, when he says that
+eternity is an instant, and that all time is no more than an instant?
+
+CIC. How can this be, seeing that there is no time so short that it
+cannot be divided into seconds? Perhaps he would say that in one instant
+there is the Flood, the Trojan war, and we who exist now; I should like
+to know how this instant is divided into so many centuries and years,
+and whether, by the same rule, we might not say that the line is a
+point?
+
+TANS. If time be one, but in different temporal subjects, so the instant
+is one in different and all parts of time. As I am the same I was, am,
+and shall be; so I myself am always the same in the house, in the
+temple, in the field, and wheresoever I am.
+
+CIC. Why do you wish to make out that the instant is the whole of time?
+
+TANS. Because if it were not an instant, it would not be time; therefore
+time in essence and substance is no other than an instant, and let this
+suffice, if you understand it, because I do not intend to perorate upon
+the entire physics; so that you must understand that he means to say
+that the whole of love is no less present than the whole of time;
+because this "instans" does not mean a moment of time.
+
+CIC. This meaning must be specified in some way, if we do not wish to
+see the motto invalidated by equivocation, by which we are free to
+suppose that he meant to say that his love was but for an instant--that
+is, for an atom of time, and of nothing more, or that he means that it
+is as you interpret it, everlasting.
+
+TANS. Surely, if these two contrary meanings were implied, the legend
+would be nonsense. But it is not so, if you consider well, for it cannot
+be that in one instant, which is an atom or point, love persists or
+endures; therefore one must of necessity understand the instant in
+another signification. And for the sake of getting out of the mesh, read
+the stanza:
+
+38.
+
+    One time scatters and one gathers;
+    One builds, one breaks; one weeps, one laughs;
+    One time to sadness, one to gaiety inclines;
+    One labours and one rests; one stands, one sits;
+    One proffers and one takes away;
+    One stays and one removes; one animates, one kills.
+    In all the years, the months, the days, the hours,
+    Love waits on me, strikes, binds, and burns.
+    To me continual dissolution,
+    Continual weeping holds me and destroys.
+    All times to me are full of woe;
+    All things time takes from me,
+    And gives me naught, not even death.
+
+CIC. I understand the meaning quite perfectly, and confess that all
+things agree very well. It is time to proceed to the next.
+
+XV.
+
+TANS. Here behold a serpent languishing in the snow, where a labourer
+has thrown it, and a naked child burning in the midst of the fire, with
+certain other details and circumstances, with the legend which says:
+"Idem, itidem non idem." This seems more like an enigma than anything
+else, and I do not feel sure that I can explain it at all; yet I do
+believe that it means that the same fate vexes, and the same torments
+both the one and the other--that is, immeasurably, without mercy and
+unto death, by means of various instruments or contrary principles,
+showing itself the same whether cold or hot. But this, it seems to me,
+requires longer and special consideration.
+
+CIC. Some other time. Read the lines:
+
+39.
+
+    Limp snake, that writhest in the snow,
+    Twisting and turning here and there
+    To find some ease from the tormenting cold,
+    If the congealing ice could know thy pain,
+    Or had the sense to feel thy smart,
+    And thou couldst find a voice for thy complaint,
+    I do believe thy argument would make it pitiful.
+    I with eternal fire am scourged, am burnt, and bitten,
+    And in the iciness of my divinity find no deliverance,
+    No pity does she feel, nor can she know, alas!
+    The rigorous ardour of my flames.
+
+40.
+
+    Serpent, thou fain wouldst flee, but canst not;
+    Try for thy hiding-place, it is no more;
+    Recall thy strength, 'tis spent;
+    Wait for the sun, behind thick fog he hides;
+    Cry mercy of the hind, he fears thy tooth.
+    Fortune invoke, she hears thee not, the jade!
+    Nor flight, nor place, nor star, nor man, nor fate
+    Can bring to thee deliverance from death.
+    Thou dost become congealed. Melting am I.
+    I like thy rigours, thee my ardour pleases;
+    Help have I none for thee, and thou hast none for me.
+    Clear is our evil fate--all hope resign.
+
+CIC. Let us go, and by the way we will seek to untie this knot--if
+possible.
+
+TANS. So be it.
+
+
+PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. LONDON AND EDINBURGH THE APOLOGY
+OF THE NOLAN
+
+
+TO THE MOST VIRTUOUS AND LOVELY LADIES.
+
+    O lovely, graceful nymphs of England!
+    Not in repugnance nor in scorn
+    Our spirit holds you,
+    Nor would our pen abase you
+    More than it must--to call you feminine!
+    Exemption I am sure you would not claim,
+    Being subject to the common influence;
+    Shining on earth as do the stars in heaven.
+    Your sov'reign beauty, ladies, our austerity
+    Cannot depreciate, nor would do so,
+    For we have not in view a superhuman kind,
+    Such poison,[H] therefore, far from you be set,
+    For here we see the one, the great Diana,
+    Who is to you as sun amongst the stars.
+    Wit, words, learning and art,
+    And whatsoe'er is mine of scribbling faculty,
+    I humbly place before you.
+
+[H] Arsenico.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli
+Eroici Furori), by Giordano Bruno
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