o put his thought and his
anxious care into the effort to make them as useful as possible to the
receiver. Wherefore I, wishing to be obedient to such a mandate,
intend to render this my BANQUET [Convito] as useful as possible in
each one of its parts. And because in this part it occurs to me to be
able to reason somewhat concerning the sweetness of Human Happiness, I
consider that there could not be a more useful discourse, especially
to those who know it not; for as the Philosopher says in the first
book of Ethics, and Tullius in that book Of the Ends of Good and Evil,
he shoots badly at the mark who sees it not. Even thus a man can but
ill advance towards this sweet joy who does not begin with a
perception of it. Wherefore, since it is our final rest for which we
live and labour as we can, most useful and most necessary it is to see
this mark in order to aim at it the bow of this our work. And it is
most essential to make it inviting to those who do not see the mark
when simply pointed out. Leaving alone, then, the opinion which
Epicurus the philosopher had concerning it, and that which Zeno
likewise had, I intend to come summarily to the true opinion of
Aristotle and of the other Peripatetics. As it is said above, of the
Divine Goodness sown and infused in us, from the original cause of our
production, there springs up a shoot, which the Greeks term "hormen,"
that is to say, the natural appetite of the soul.

And as it is with the blades of corn which, when they first shoot
forth, have in the beginning one similar appearance, being in the
grass-like stage, and then, by process of time, they become unlike, so
this Natural appetite, which springs from the Divine Grace, in the
beginning appears as it were not unlike that which comes nakedly from
Nature; but with it, even as the herbage born of various grains of
corn, it has the same appearance, as it were: and not only in the
blades of corn, but in men and in beasts there is the same similitude.
And it appears that every animal, as soon as it is born, both rational
and brute beast, loves itself, and fears and flies from those things
which are adverse to it, and hates them, then proceeding as has been
said. And there begins a difference between them in the progress of
this Natural appetite, for the one keeps to one road, and the other to
another; even as the Apostle says: "Many run to the goal, but there is
but one who reaches it." Even thus these Human appetites from t