l Love, which fills my mind continually with new and
most exalted ideas of this Lady: even as the anxious pains which one
takes to acquire a friendship are wont to do; for, when desiring that
friendship, a man is wont to take anxious thought concerning it. This
is that study and that affection which usually precedes in men the
begetting of the friendship, when already on one side Love is born,
and desires and strives that it may be on the other; for, as is said
above, Philosophy is born when the Soul and Wisdom have become
friends, so that the one is loved by the other.

Neither is it again needful to discuss that first stanza in the
present explanation, which was reasoned out as the Proem in the
Literal exposition; since, from the first argument thereof, it is easy
enough to make out the meaning in this the second one.

We may proceed, then, to the second part, which begins the treatise,
and to that place where I say, "The Sun sees not in travel round the
Earth." Here it is to be known that as, when discoursing of a sensible
thing, one handles it suitably by means of an insensible thing, so of
an intelligible thing, one fitly argues by means of an unintelligible.
In the Literal sense one speaks of the Sun as a substantial and
sensible body; so now it is fit, by image of the Sun, to discourse of
the Spiritual and Unintelligible, that is, God.

There is no visible thing in all the world more worthy to serve as a
type of God than the Sun, which illuminates with visible light itself
first, and then all the celestial and elemental bodies. Thus, God
illuminates Himself first with intellectual light, and then the
celestial and other intelligible beings. The Sun vivifies all things
with his heat, and if anything is destroyed thereby, it is not by the
intention of the cause, but it is an accidental effect: thus God
vivifies all things in His Goodness, and, if any suffer evil, it is
not by the Divine intention, but the effect is accidental. For, if God
made the Angels good and evil, He did not make both by intention, but
He made the good only; there followed afterwards, beyond His
intention, the wickedness of the evil ones; but not so far beyond His
intention that God could not foreknow in Himself their wickedness; but
so great was the loving desire to produce the Spiritual creature that
the foreknowledge that some would come to a bad end neither could nor
should prevent God from continuing the production; as it would not be