Ah me, my lights! where are the zeal and art
With which to tranquillize the afflicted sense?
Tell me my soul; what time and in what place
Shall I thy deep transcendent woe assuage?
And thou my heart, what solace can I bring
As compensation to thy heavy pain?
When, oh unquiet and perturbed mind,
Wilt thou the soul for debt and dole receive
With heart, with spirit and the sorrowing eyes?
[F] Let no one suppose that we may attain to this true light and
perfect knowledge by hearsay, or by reading and study, nor yet by
high skill and great learning.--("Theologia Germanica.")
The mind which aspires to the divine splendour flees from the society of
the crowd and retires from the multitude of subjects, as much as from
the community of studies, opinions and sentences; seeing that the peril
of contracting vices and illusions is greater, according to the number
of persons with whom one is allied. In the public shows, said the moral
philosopher, by means of pleasure, vices are more easily engendered. If
one aspires to the supreme splendour, let him retire as much as he can,
from union and support, into himself (Di sorte che non sia simile a
molti, per che son molti; e non sia nemico di molti per che son
dissimili), so that he be not like unto many, because they are many; and
be not adverse to many, because they are dissimilar; if it be possible,
let him retain the one and the other; otherwise he will incline to that
which seems to him best.
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