And as the little stork that lifts its wing through will to fly, and dares not abandon the nest, and down it drops, so was I, with will to ask, kindled and quenched, coming even to the motion that he makes who proposes to speak. Nor, though our going was swift, did my sweet Father forbear, but he said, Discharge the bow of speech which up to the iron thou hast drawn.” Then I opened my mouth confidently, and began, “How can one become thin, where the need of nourishment is not felt?” “If thou hadst called to mind how Meleager was consumed by time consuming of a brand this would not be,” he said, “ so difficult to thee; and if thou hadst thought, how at your quivering your image quivers within the mirror, that which seems hard would seem easy to thee. But that thou mayst to thy pleasure be inwardly at ease, lo, here is Statius, and I call on him and pray that he be now the healer of thy wounds.” “If I explain to him the eternal view,” replied Statius, “where thou art present, let it excuse me that to thee I cannot snake denial.”[1] [1] Here and elsewhere Statius seems to represent allegorically human philosophy enlightened by Christian teaching, dealing with questions of knowledge, not of faith. Then he began, “If, son, thy mind regards and receives my words, they will be. for thee a light unto the ‘how,’ which thou askest.[1] The perfect blood which is never drunk by the thirsty veins, but remains like the food which thou removest from time table, takes in time heart virtue informative of all the human members; even as that blood does, which passes through the veins to become those members.[2] Digested yet again, it descends to the part whereof it is more becoming to be silent than to speak; and thence, afterwards, it drops upon another’s blood in the natural vessel. There one and the other meet together; the one ordained to be passive, and the other to be active because of the perfect place[3] wherefrom it is pressed out; and, conjoined with the former, the latter begins to operate, first by coagulating, and then by quickening that to which it gives consistency for its own material. The active virtue having become a soul, like that of a plant (in so far different that this is on the way, and that already arrived),[4] so worketh then, that now it moves and feels, as a sea-fungus doth; and then it proceeds to organize the powers of which it is the germ. Now, son, the virtue is displayed, now it is diffused, which issues from the heart of the begetter, where nature is intent on all the members.[5] But how from an animal it becomes a speaking being,[6] thou as yet seest not; this is such a point that once it made one wiser than thee to err, so that in his teaching he separated from the soul the potential intellect, because he saw no organ assumed by it.[7] Open thy heart unto the truth that is coming, and know that, so soon as in the foitus the articulation of the brain is perfect, the Primal Motor turns