[The Banquet (Il Convito) by Dante Alighieri]@TWC D-Link bookThe Banquet (Il Convito) CHAPTER XV 6/7
Where it is to be known that the Morals are the beauty of the Soul, that is to say, the most excellent virtues, which sometimes through vanity or through pride are made less beautiful or less agreeable, as in the last treatise it was possible to perceive.
And therefore I say that, in order to shun this, one looks at that Lady, Philosophy, there where she is the example of Humility, namely, in that part of herself which is called Moral Philosophy.
And I subjoin that by gazing at her (I say, at Wisdom) in that part, every vicious man will become upright and good.
And therefore I say she has "a spirit to create Good thoughts, and crush the vices." She turns gently back him who has gone astray from the right course. Finally, in highest praise of Wisdom, I say of her that she is the Mother of every good Principle, saying that she is "God's thought," who began the World, and especially the movement of the Heaven by which all things are generated, and wherein each movement has its origin, that is to say, that the Divine Thought is Wisdom.
She was, when God made the World; whence it follows that she could make it, and therefore Solomon said in the Book of Proverbs, in the person of Wisdom: "When He prepared the Heavens, I was there: when He set a compass upon the face of the depth; when He established the clouds above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep; when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment; when He appointed the foundations of the Earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." O, ye Men, worse than dead, who fly from the friendship of Wisdom, open your eyes, and see that before you were she was the Lover of you, preparing and ordaining the process of your being! Since you were made she came that she might guide you, came to you in your own likeness; and, if all of you cannot come into her presence, honour her in her friends, and follow their counsels, as of them who announce to you the will of this eternal Empress! Close not your ears to Solomon, who tells you "the path of the Just is as a shining Light, which goeth forth and increaseth even to the day of salvation." Follow after them, behold their works, which ought to be to you as a beacon of light for guidance in the path of this most brief life. And here we may close the Commentary on the true meaning of the present Song.
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