MAR. Let us go on and see what the rest means.
CES. Say, if you have seen and considered it, what is the meaning of
this fire in the form of a heart with four wings, two of which have eyes
and the whole is girt with luminous rays and has round about it this
question: Nitimur incassum?
MAR. I remember well, that it signifies the state of the mind, heart and
spirit and eyes of the enthusiast, but read the sonnet!
44.
[F]Splendour divine, to which this mind aspires,
The intellect alone cannot unveil.
The heart, which those high thoughts would animate,
Makes not itself their lord; nor spirit, which
Should cease from pleasure for a space,
Can ever from those heights withdraw.
The eyes which should be closed at night in sleep,
Awake remain, open, and full of tears.
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. 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. 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."
[G] For, in this (degree), God cannot be tasted, felt, seen, because
he is more ourselves than ourselves, is not distinct from
us.--("Spiritual Torrents.")
CES. Well. But tell me in what manner will this fellow tranquillize the
senses, assuage the woes of the spirit, compensate the heart and give
its just debts to the mind, so that with this aspiration of his he come
not to say: "Nitimur incassum"?
MAR. He will be present in the body in such wise that the best part of
himself will be absent from it, and will join himself by an indissoluble
sacrament to divine things, in such a way that he will not feel either
love or hatred of things mortal. Considering himself as master, and that
he ought not to be servant and slave to his body, which he would regard
only as the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue
which smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands, stocks which
fix his feet, veil which hides his view. Let him not be servant,
captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid and blind, for the body which
he himself abandons cannot tyrannize over him, so that thus, the spirit
in a certain degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter
is subject to the divinity and to nature. Thus will he become strong
against fortune, magnanimous towards injuries, intrepid towards poverty,
disease and persecution.
CES. Well is the heroic enthusiast instructed!