Care kindles and the peril backward draws.
Tell me, what power or what subterfuge
Can give me peace and bring me from this strife,
If one repels, the other draws me on.
The ascension goes on in the soul through the power and appulsion in
the wings, which are the intellect, or intellectual will upon which she
naturally depends and through which she fixes her gaze toward God, as to
the highest good, and primal truth, as to absolute goodness and beauty.
Thus everything has an impetus towards its beginning retrogressively,
and progressively towards its end and perfection, as Empedocles well
said, and from which sentence I think may be inferred that which the
Nolan said in this octave:
The sun must turn and reach his starting-point,
Each wandering light must go towards its source,
That which is earth to earth itself reverts,
The rivers from the sea to sea return,
And thither, whence desires have life and grow
Must they aspire as to revered divinity,
So every thought born of my lady fair
Comes back perforce to her, my goddess dear.
The intellectual power is never at rest, it is never satisfied with any
comprehended truth, but ever proceeds on and on towards that truth which
is not comprehended. So also the will which follows the apprehension, we
see that it is never satisfied with anything finite. In consequence of
this, the essence of the soul is always referred to the source of its
substance and entity.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41