fortune
rather than themselves.

This seems to me as absurd as if a man, because he does not believe that
he will be able to feed his body with good food to all eternity, should
desire to satiate himself with poisonous and deadly drugs; or as if,
because he sees that the mind is not eternal or immortal, he should
therefore prefer to be mad and to live without reason--absurdities so
great that they scarcely deserve to be repeated.

Blessedness consists in love towards God, which arises from the third
kind of knowledge, and this love, therefore, must be related to the mind
in so far as it acts. Blessedness, therefore, is virtue itself. Again,
the more the mind delights in this divine love or blessedness, the more
it understands, that is to say, the greater is the power it has over its
emotions and the less it suffers from emotions which are evil.
Therefore, it is because the mind delights in this divine love or
blessedness that it possesses the power of restraining the lusts; and
because the power of man to restrain the emotions is in the intellect
alone, no one, therefore, delights in blessedness because he has
restrained his emotions, but, on the contrary, the power of restraining
his lusts springs from blessedness itself.

I have finished everything I wished to explain concerning the power of
the mind over the emotions and concerning its liberty. From what has
been said we see what is the strength of the wise man, and how much he
surpasses the ignorant who is driven forward by lust alone. For the
ignorant man is not only agitated by external causes in many ways, and
never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it were,
both of God and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer ceases
also to be. On the other hand, the wise man, in so far as he is
considered as such, is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but, being
conscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and of
things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true peace of soul.

If the way which, as I have shown, leads hither seem very difficult, it
can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult since it is so
seldom discovered; for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be
discovered without great labor, how could it be possible that it should
be neglected almost by everybody? But all noble things are as difficult
as they are rare.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] Everything which we desire and do, of which we are the cause in so