Wherefore as the friendship conceived through honest affection is true
and perfect and perpetual, so is that philosophy true and perfect
which is generated by upright desire for knowledge, without regard to
aught else, and by the goodness of the friendly soul; which is as much
as to say, by right appetite and right reason. And it is possible to
say here that as true friendship amongst men is, that each love each
entirely, so the true Philosopher loves each part of Wisdom, and
Wisdom each part of the Philosopher, so as to draw him wholly to
herself, and to allow no thought of his to stray away to other things.
Wherefore Wisdom herself says in the Proverbs of Solomon, "I love
those who love me." And as true friendship of the mind, considered in
itself alone, has for its subject the knowledge of good effects, and
for its form the desire for the same, even so Philosophy considered in
itself alone, apart from the Soul, has understanding for its subject,
and for its form an almost divine love to intellect.
And as the efficient cause of true friendship is Virtue, so the
efficient cause of Philosophy is Truth. And as the end of true
friendship is true affection, which proceeds from the intercourse
proper to Humanity, that is, according to the dictates of Reason, as
Aristotle seems to think in the ninth book of the Ethics, so the end
of Philosophy is that most excellent affection which suffers no
intermission or defect, that is, the true happiness which is acquired
by the contemplation of Truth.
And thus it is now possible to see who this my Lady is, in all her
causes and in her whole reason, and why she is called Philosophy; and
who is a true Philosopher, and who is one by accident.
But in some fervour or heat of mind the one and the other end of the
acts and of the passions are called by the word for the act itself or
the passion; as Virgil does in the second book of the Æneid, where he
calls Hector, "Oh, light" (which was the act) "and hope" (which is the
passion) "of the Trojans:" for he was neither the light nor the hope,
but he was the end whence came to them their light in council, and he
was the end in which was reposed their hope of safety; as Statius
writes in the fifth book of the Thebaid, when Hypsipyle says to
Archemorus, "Oh, consolation of things and of the lost country! oh,
honour of my servitude!" even as we say daily, showing the friend,
"See my friendship;" and the father says to the son, "My love;" and so
it is that, through long custom, the Sciences, in which most fervently
Philosophy finds the end to which she looks, are called by her name,
such as the Natural Science, the Moral Science, and the Metaphysical
Science, which last, because most necessarily she looks to her end in
that chiefly and most fervently, is called the First Philosophy.