Let him associate either with those whom he can
make better or with those through whom he may be made better, through
brightness which he may impart to those or that he may receive from
them. Let him be content with one ideal rather than with the inept
multitude. Nor will he hold that he has gained little, when he has
become such an one who is wise unto himself, remembering what Democritus
says: Unus mihi pro populo est, et populus pro uno; and what Epicurus
said to a companion of his studies, writing to him: "Haec tibi, non
multis! Satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus."
The mind, then, which aspires high, leaves, for the first thing, caring
about the crowd, considering that that divine light despises striving
and is only to be found where there is intelligence, and yet not every
intelligence, but that which is amongst the few, the chief, the first
among the first, the principal one.
CES. How do you mean that the mind aspires high? For example, by looking
at the stars? At the empyreal heaven above the ether?
MAR. Certainly not! but by plunging into the depths of the mind, for
which there is no great need to open the eyes to the sky, to raise the
hands, to direct the steps to the temple, nor sing to the ears of
statues in order to be the better heard, but to come into the inner self
believing that, God is near, present and within, more fully than man
himself,[G] being soul of souls, life of lives, essence of essences: for
that which you see above or below, or round about, or however you please
to say it, of the stars, are bodies, are created things, similar to this
globe on which we are, and in which the divinity is present neither more
nor less than he is in this globe of ours or in ourselves.
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