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?

MAR. Certainly not! but by plunging into the depths of the mind, for
which there is no great need to open the eyes to the sky, to raise the
hands, to direct the steps to the temple, nor sing