_A._ That is true; _howbeit I would not fear at all the infirmities, if it were not for three things: One of these is heavy sorrow; another is death; the third is that I can not seek nor truly find what I desire just as thou madest me know_. Toothache hindered me from all learning, but yet it did not altogether snatch from me the remembrance of that which I formerly learned. Howbeit I suppose, if I should understand certainly that which I yearn to understand, sorrow would seem to me very little, or else naught, compared with faith. Yet I know many a pain is much sharper than toothache, albeit I never suffered any sharper. I learned that Cornelius Celsus taught _in his books_ that in every man wisdom is the highest good and sickness the greatest evil. The saying appeareth to me very true. Concerning the same thing the same Cornelius saith: 'Of two things we are what we are, to wit, of soul and of body. _The soul is spiritual, and the body earthy._ The best faculty of the soul is wisdom, and the worst affliction of the body is sickness.' Methinks moreover that this is not false. [Sidenote: 41.19--43.12] _R._ Have we not now shown clearly enough that wisdom is the highest good? Is it not also beyond a doubt that it is to every man the best of all the virtues? And is it not his best work to search after wisdom, and love it whenever he findeth it? But I would that we two might now search out who the lovers of this wisdom should be. _Dost thou not know that every man who loveth another very much liketh better to caress and kiss the other on the bare body than where the clothes come between? Now I understand that thou lovest wisdom very much, and wishest so much to know and feel it naked that thou wouldst not that any cloth were between; but it will seldom so openly reveal itself to any man. At those times when it will show any limb thus bare, it doth so to very few men; but I know not how thou canst receive it with gloved hands. Thou must also place the bare body against it, if thou wilt feel it._ But tell me now, if thou lovedst a certain beautiful woman very immoderately and above all other things, and if she _fled from thee_ and would reciprocate thy love on no other condition than that thou wouldst renounce every other love for hers alone, _wouldst thou then do as she wished_?