sometimes through vanity or
through pride are made less beautiful or less agreeable, as in the
last treatise it was possible to perceive. And therefore I say that,
in order to shun this, one looks at that Lady, Philosophy, there where
she is the example of Humility, namely, in that part of herself which
is called Moral Philosophy. And I subjoin that by gazing at her (I
say, at Wisdom) in that part, every vicious man will become upright
and good. And therefore I say she has "a spirit to create Good
thoughts, and crush the vices." She turns gently back him who has gone
astray from the right course.

Finally, in highest praise of Wisdom, I say of her that she is the
Mother of every good Principle, saying that she is "God's thought,"
who began the World, and especially the movement of the Heaven by
which all things are generated, and wherein each movement has its
origin, that is to say, that the Divine Thought is Wisdom. She was,
when God made the World; whence it follows that she could make it, and
therefore Solomon said in the Book of Proverbs, in the person of
Wisdom: "When He prepared the Heavens, I was there: when He set a
compass upon the face of the depth; when He established the clouds
above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep; when He gave to
the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment;
when He appointed the foundations of the Earth: then I was by Him, as
one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always
before Him." O, ye Men, worse than dead, who fly from the friendship
of Wisdom, open your eyes, and see that before you were she was the
Lover of you, preparing and ordaining the process of your being! Since
you were made she came that she might guide you, came to you in your
own likeness; and, if all of you cannot come into her presence, honour
her in her friends, and follow their counsels, as of them who announce
to you the will of this eternal Empress! Close not your ears to
Solomon, who tells you "the path of the Just is as a shining Light,
which goeth forth and increaseth even to the day of salvation." Follow
after them, behold their works, which ought to be to you as a beacon
of light for guidance in the path of this most brief life.

And here we may close the Commentary on the true meaning of the
present Song. The last stanza, which is intended for a refrain, can be
explained easily enough by the Literal exposition, except inasmuch as
it says that I