at
new desire am I deprived of the perfection to which the other might
lead me. Such an expansion as that is not the cause of imperfection,
but of new perfection. That expansion of riches, however, is properly
increased which is always one, so that no succession is seen therein,
and therefore no end and no perfection.

And if the adversary would say, that if the desire to know the first
principles of natural things is one thing, and the desire to know what
they are is another, so is the desire for a hundred marks one thing,
and the desire for a thousand marks is another, I reply that it is not
true; for the hundred is part of the thousand and is related to it, as
part of a line to the whole of the line along which one proceeds by
one impulse alone; and there is no succession there, nor completion of
motion in any part. But to know what the principles of natural things
are is not the same as to know what each one of them is; the one is
not part of the other, and they are related to each other as diverging
lines along which one does not proceed by one impulse, but the
completed movement of the one succeeds the completed movement of the
other. And thus it appears that, because of the desire for knowledge,
knowledge is not to be called imperfect in the same way as riches are
to be called imperfect, on account of the desire for them, as the
question put it; for in the desire for knowledge the desires terminate
successively with the attainment of their aims; and in the desire for
riches, NO; so that the question is solved.

Again, the adversary may calumniate, saying that, although many
desires are fulfilled in the acquisition of knowledge, the last is
never attained, which is the imperfection of that one desire, which
does not gain its end; and that will be both one and imperfect.

Again one here replies that it is not a truth which is brought forward
in opposition, that is, that the last desire is never attained; for
our natural desires, as is proved in the third treatise of this book,
are all tending to a certain end; and the desire for knowledge is
natural, so that this desire compasses a certain end, although but
few, since they walk in the wrong path, accomplish the day's journey.
And he who understands the Commentator in the third chapter, On the
Soul, learns this of him; and therefore Aristotle says, in the tenth
chapter of the Ethics, against Simonides the Poet, that man ought to
draw near to Divine things as much