[F]Splendour divine, to which this mind aspires, The intellect alone cannot unveil. The heart, which those high thoughts would animate, Makes not itself their lord; nor spirit, which Should cease from pleasure for a space, Can ever from those heights withdraw. The eyes which should be closed at night in sleep, Awake remain, open, and full of tears. Ah me, my lights! where are the zeal and art With which to tranquillize the afflicted sense? Tell me my soul; what time and in what place Shall I thy deep transcendent woe assuage? And thou my heart, what solace can I bring As compensation to thy heavy pain? When, oh unquiet and perturbed mind, Wilt thou the soul for debt and dole receive With heart, with spirit and the sorrowing eyes? [F] Let no one suppose that we may attain to this true light and perfect knowledge by hearsay, or by reading and study, nor yet by high skill and great learning.--("Theologia Germanica.") The mind which aspires to the divine splendour flees from the society of the crowd and retires from the multitude of subjects, as much as from the community of studies, opinions and sentences; seeing that the peril of contracting vices and illusions is greater, according to the number of persons with whom one is allied. In the public shows, said the moral philosopher, by means of pleasure, vices are more easily engendered. If one aspires to the supreme splendour, let him retire as much as he can, from union and support, into himself (Di sorte che non sia simile a molti, per che son molti; e non sia nemico di molti per che son dissimili), so that he be not like unto many, because they are many; and be not adverse to many, because they are dissimilar; if it be possible, let him retain the one and the other; otherwise he will incline to that which seems to him best. Let him associate either with those whom he can make better or with those through whom he may be made better, through brightness which he may impart to those or that he may receive from them. Let him be content with one ideal rather than with the inept multitude. Nor will he hold that he has gained little, when he has become such an one who is wise unto himself, remembering what Democritus says: Unus mihi pro populo est, et populus pro uno; and what Epicurus said to a companion of his studies, writing to him: "Haec tibi, non multis! Satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus." The mind, then, which aspires high, leaves, for the first thing, caring about the crowd, considering that that divine light despises striving and is only to be found where there is intelligence, and yet not every intelligence, but that which is amongst the few, the chief, the first among the first, the principal one. CES. How do you mean that the mind aspires high? For example, by looking at the stars? At the empyreal heaven above the ether?