O insensate care of mortals, how defective are those syllogisms which make thee downward beat thy wings! One was going after the Laws, and one after the Aphorisms,[1] and one following the priesthood, and one to reign by force or by sophisms, and one to rob, and one to civic business; one, involved in pleasure of the flesh, was wearying himself, and one was giving himself to idleness, when I, loosed from all these things, with Beatrice, was thus gloriously received on high in Heaven. [1] The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, meaning here, the study of medicine. When each[1] had returned unto that point of the circle at which it was at first, it stayed, as a candle in a candlestick. And within that light which first had spoken to me I heard, as smiling it began, making itself more clear, “Even as I am resplendent with its radiance, so, looking into the Eternal Light, I apprehend whence thou drawest the occasion of thy thoughts. Thou art perplexed, and hast the wish that my speech be bolted again in language so open and so plain that it may be level to thy sense, where just now I said, 'where well one fattens,' and there where I said, 'the second has not been born;' and here is need that one distinguish well. [1] Each of the lights which had encircled. Beatrice and Dante. “The Providence which governs the world with that counsel, in which every created vision is vanquished ere it reach the depth, in order that the bride[1] of Him, who with loud cries espoused her with His blessed blood, might go toward her beloved, secure in herself and also more faithful to Him, ordained two princes in her favor, who on this side and that should be to her for guides. The one was all seraphic in ardor,[2] the other, through wisdom, was a splendor of cherubic light[3] on earth. Of the one I will speak, because both are spoken of in praising one, whichever be taken, for unto one end were their works. [1] The Church. [2] St. Francis of Assisi [3] St. Dominic.