This is how,
then, one must begin to withdraw oneself from the multitude into
oneself. One ought to arrive at such a point to despise and not to
overestimate every labour, so that, the more the desires and the vices
contend with each other inwardly and the vicious enemies dispute
outwardly, so much the more should one breathe and rise, and with
spirit, if possible, surmount this steep hill. Here there is no need for
other arms and shield than the majesty of an unconquered soul and a
tolerant spirit, which maintains the quality and meaning of that life
which proceeds from science and is regulated by the art of considering
attentively things low and high, divine and human, in the which consists
that highest good, and in reference to this, a moral philosopher wrote
to Lucillus that one must not linger between Scylla and Charybdis,
penetrate the wilds of Candavia and the Apennines or lose oneself in the
sandy plains, because the road is as sure and as blythe as Nature
herself could make it. "It is not," says he, "gold and silver that makes
one like God, because these are not treasure to Him; nor vestments, for
God is naked; nor ostentation and fame, for He shows Himself to few, and
perhaps not one knows Him, and certainly many, and more than many, have
a bad opinion of Him. Not all the various conditions of things which we
usually admire, for not those things of which we desire to have copies,
make one rich, but the contempt for those things.
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