in the starry heavens, and in the mechanism and roundness of the earth, marvelling at such harmony and beauty, to pursue investigations with the understanding, making a ladder by these second causes to reach the first cause of causes; and they recognised that there was one only beginning without beginning of all things. But that which made them wonder most and raise their thoughts, was to see the frame of man so well-ordered, so perfect and so beautiful, that they came to call him a world in little; and so it is true that in all the works made by God's steward, Nature, nothing is of such excellence, nor reveals more the greatness and wisdom of its Maker. For in the form and frame of man is summed up and enclosed the beauty which is distributed in all the other parts of it; and hence it arises that this beauty, when recognised, is loved, and as all beauty displays itself most and is most resplendent in the face, as soon as a beautiful face is seen, it summons and draws the will to love it. 'Hence it follows that as the faces of women so much excel in beauty those of men, it is they who are the more loved, served and courted by us, as the object in which dwells the beauty that is naturally more pleasing to our sight. But our Maker and Creator, seeing that it is the proper nature of our soul to be for ever in perpetual motion and desire, for it cannot find rest save in God, as in its proper centre, willed, so that it might not rush with loosened rein to desire things empty and doomed to perish, and this without taking from it the liberty of free-will, to set over its three powers an alert sentinel, who should warn it against the dangers that opposed it and the enemies that persecuted it; this was reason, which corrects and curbs our inordinate desires. And seeing likewise that human beauty must needs draw after it our passions and inclinations, while it did not seem good to Him to take away from us this desire, at least He wished to temper it and correct it, ordaining the holy yoke of matrimony, beneath which most of the natural joys and pleasures of love are lawful and fitting for man and woman. By these two remedies imposed by the divine hand comes to be tempered the excess there can be in the natural love which you, Lenio, blame, which love is of itself so good that if it were lacking in us, the world and we would end. In this very love of which I am speaking are summed up all the virtues, for love is moderation, since the lover, according to the chaste wish of the beloved object, tempers his own; it is fortitude, for the lover can endure any adversity for the love of the one who loves him; it is justice, for with it he serves her who loves well, reason itself forcing him to it; it is prudence, for love is adorned with all wisdom. But I ask you, oh Lenio, you who have said that love is the cause of the ruin of empires, of the destruction of cities, of the deaths of friends, of sacrileges committed, the deviser of treasons, the transgressor of