TANS. It happens then that individual souls come to be influenced
differently as to their habits and inclinations, according to the
diverse degrees of ascension and descension, and come to display various
kinds and orders of enthusiasms, of loves, and of senses, not only in
the scale of Nature according to the orders of diverse lives which the
soul takes up in different bodies, as is expressly declared by the
Pythagoreans, Saduchimi and others, and by implication, Plato, and those
who dive more profoundly into it, but still more in the scale of human
affections, which has as many degrees as the scale of Nature; for man,
in all his powers, displays every species of being.
CIC. Therefore from the affections one may know souls, whether they are
going up or down, or whether they are from above or from below, whether
they are going on towards becoming beasts or towards divine beings,
according to the specific being as the Pythagoreans understood it; or
according to the similitude of the affections only, as is commonly
believed, the human soul not being able, (so long as it is truly human)
to become soul of a brute, as Plotinus and other Platonists well said,
on account of the quality of its beginning.
TANS. Now to come to the proposition: From animal enthusiasm, this soul,
as described, is promoted to heroic enthusiasm, saying, "When shall it
be that I rise up to the height of the object, there to dwell in company
with my heart and with my fledglings[C] and his?" This same proposition
he continues when he says:
24.
Destiny, when, shall I that mountain mount,
Which, blissful to the high gates bringing, bring,
Where those rare beauties I shall counting, count,
When _he_ my pain with comfort comforting,
Who my disjointed members joined,
And leaves my dying powers not dead?
My spirit's rival more than rivalled is
If, far from sin, it unassailed may sail,
If thither tending, it may waiting, wait,
And up with that high object rising, rise,
And if my good alone, alone I take,
For which I sure remove of each defect effect,
And so at last may come to enjoy with joy,
As he who all foretells can tell.
[C] Pulcini.
O Destiny! O Fate! O divine immutable Providence! when shall it be that
I shall climb that mount--that is, that I may arrive at such altitude of
mind, as transporting me shall bring me into those outer and inner
courts where I may behold and count those rare beauties? When shall it
be, that he will effectually comfort my pain, loosening me from the
tightened bonds of those cares in which I find myself, he, who formed
and united my members, which before were disunited and disjoined: that
is Love; he who has joined together these corporeal parts, which were as
far divided as one opposite is divided from another; so that these
intellectual powers which, through his action he has extinguished,
should not be left quite dead, but be again re-animated and made to
aspire on high? When, I say, will he fully comfort me, and give my
powers free and speedy flight, by which means my substance may go and
nestle there, where, by my efforts, I may make amends and correct my
defects, and where (if I arrive) my spirit will be made effectual or
prevail over my rival, because there, no excess will oppose, no
opposition overcome, no error assail? Oh! if by force he may arrive
there, at that height which he is waiting to reach, he will remain on
high, at the elevation of his object, and he will take that good that
cannot be comprehended by any other than one, that is, by himself,
seeing that every other has it in the measure of his own capacity, and
this one alone has it in all its fulness. Then will happiness come to me
in that manner which he says, "who all foretells"; that is, at that
elevation in which the saying all and the doing all is the same thing;
in that manner that he says and does who all foretells, that is, who is
sufficient for all things and primary, and whose word and pre-ordaining
is the true doing and beginning. This is how, in the scale of things
superior and inferior, the affection of Love proceeds, as the intellect
or sentiment proceeds from these intelligible or knowable objects, to
those, or from those to these.
CIC. Thus the greater number of sages believe that Nature delights in
this changeful circulation which is seen in the whirling of her wheel.
=Fifth Dialogue.=