9. But how shall we train this interior vision? At the moment of
its (first) awakening, it cannot contemplate beauties too dazzling.
Your soul must then first be accustomed to contemplate the noblest
occupations of man, and then the beautiful deeds, not indeed those
performed by artists, but those (good deeds) done by virtuous men.
Later contemplate the souls of those who perform these beautiful
actions. Nevertheless, how will you discover the beauty which their
excellent soul possesses? Withdraw within yourself, and examine
yourself. If you do not yet therein discover beauty, do as the artist,
who cuts off, polishes, purifies until he has adorned his statue
with all the marks of beauty. Remove from your soul, therefore, all
that is superfluous, straighten out all that is crooked, purify and
illuminate what is obscure, and do not cease perfecting your statue
until the divine resplendence of virtue shines forth upon your sight,
until you see temperance in its holy purity seated in your breast.
When you shall have acquired this perfection; when you will see it in
yourself; when you will purely dwell within yourself; when you will
cease to meet within yourself any obstacle to unity; when nothing
foreign will any more, by its admixture, alter the simplicity of your
interior essence; when within your whole being you will be a veritable
light, immeasurable in size, uncircumscribed by any figure within
narrow boundaries, unincreasable because reaching out to infinity,
and entirely incommensurable because it transcends all measure and
quantity; when you shall have become such, then, having become sight
itself, you may have confidence in yourself, for you will no longer
need any guide. Then must you observe carefully, for it is only by the
eye that then will open itself within you that you will be able to
perceive supreme Beauty. But if you try to fix on it an eye soiled by
vice, an eye that is impure, or weak, so as not to be able to support
the splendor of so brilliant an object, that eye will see nothing, not
even if it were shown a sight easy to grasp. The organ of vision will
first have to be rendered analogous and similar to the object it is to
contemplate. Never would the eye have seen the sun unless first it had
assumed its form; likewise, the soul could never see beauty, unless she
herself first became beautiful. To obtain the view of the beautiful,
and of the divinity, every man must begin by rendering himself
beautiful and divine.