In accordance with this, I will continue with that which just before I said to thee, that one should not strive so hard to prove that which is so very evident-namely, that there is nothing pure and unalloyed; and some have said that no mixed thing is a real entity, as alloyed gold is not real gold, manufactured wine is not real simple wine. Almost all things are made up of opposites, whence it comes that the success of our affections, through the mixture that is in things, can afford no pleasure without some bitterness; and more than this, I will say, that were it not for the bitter, there would be no sweet; seeing that it is through fatigue that we find pleasure in repose; separation is the cause of our pleasure in union; and, examining generally, we shall ever find that one opposite is the reason that the other opposite pleases and is desired.

Cic. Then there is no delight without the contrary?

Tans. Certainly not; as without the opposite there is no pain; as is shown by that golden Pythagorean poet when he says:

Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, nec

Respiciunt, claus? tenebris, e carcere c?co.

This, then, is what the mixture of things causes, and hence it is that no one is pleased with his own state, except some senseless blockhead, who is so all the more the deeper is the degree of obscure folly in which he is sunk; then he has little or no apprehension of pain; he enjoys the actual present without fearing the future; he enjoys that which is and that in which he finds himself, and has neither care nor sorrow for what may be; and, in short, has no sense of that opposition which is symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Cic. From this we see that ignorance is the mother of sensual felicity and beatitude, and this same is the garden of paradise of the animals; as is made clear in the dialogues of the Kabala of the horse Pegasus; and as says the wise Solomon, "Whoso increases knowledge increases sorrow."

Tans. Hence it appears that heroic love is a torment, because it does not enjoy the present, as does animal love, but is of the future and the absent; and, on the contrary, it feels ambition, emulation, suspicion and dread. One evening, after supper, a certain neighbour of ours said: "Never was I more jolly than I am now." John Bruno, father of the Nolano, answered him: "Never wert thou more foolish than now."

Cic. You would imply, then, that he who is sad is wise, and that other who is more sad is wiser?

Tans. On the contrary, I mean that there is in these another species of foolishness and a worse.

Cic. Who, then, is wise, if foolish is he who is content, and foolish he who is sad?

Tans. He who is neither merry nor sad.

Cic. Who? He who sleeps? He who is without feeling-who is dead?

Tans. No; but he who is quick, both seeing and hearing, and who, considering evil and good, estimating the one and the other as variable, and consistent in motion, mutation, and vicissitude, in such wise that the end of one opposite is the commencement of another, and the extreme of the one is the beginning of the other; whose spirit is neither depressed nor elated, but is moderate in inclinations and temperate in desires; to him pleasure is not pleasure, having ever present the end of it; equally, pain to him is not pain, because by the force of reasoning he has present the end of that too. So the sage holds all mutable things as things that are not, and affirms that they are no other than vanity and nothingness, because time has to eternity the proportion of the point to the line.

Cic. So that we can never hold the proposition of being contented or discontented, without holding the proposition of our own foolishness, which we thereby confess; therefore no one who reasons, and consequently no one who participates, can be wise; in short, all men are fools.

Tans. I do not intend to infer that; for I will hold of highest wisdom him who could really say at one time the opposite of what he says at another-never was I less gay than now; or, never was I less sad than at present.

Cic. How? Do you not make two contrary qualities where there are two opposite affections? Why, I say, do you take as two virtues, and not as one vice and one virtue, the being less gay and the being less sad?

Tans. Because both the contraries in excess-that is, in so far as they exceed-are vices, because they pass the line; and the same, in so far as they diminish, come to be virtues, because they are contained within limits.

Cic. How? The being less merry and the being less sad are not one virtue and one vice, but are two virtues?

Tans. On the contrary, I say they are one and the same virtue; because the vice is there where the opposite is; the opposite is chiefly there where the extreme is; the greatest opposite is the nearest to the extreme; the least or nothing is in the middle, where the opposites meet, and are one and identical; as between the coldest and hottest and the hotter and colder, in the middle point is that which you may call hot and cold, or neither hot nor cold, without contradiction. In that way whoso is least content and least joyful is in the degree of indifference, and finds himself in the habitation of temperance, where the virtue and condition of a strong soul exist, which bends not to the south wind nor to the north. This, then, to return to the point, is how this enthusiastic hero, who explains himself in the present part, is different from the other baser ones-not as virtue from vice, but as a vice which exists in a subject more divine or divinely, from a vice which exists in a subject more savage or savagely; so that the difference is according to the different subjects and modes, and not according to the form of vice.

Cic. I can very well conceive, from what you have said, the condition of that heroic enthusiast, who says, "My hopes are ice and my desires are glowing," because he is not in the temperance of mediocrity, but, in the excess of contradictions, his soul is discordant, he shivers in his frozen hopes and burns in his glowing desires; in his eagerness he is clamorous, and he is mute from fear; his heart burns in its affection for others, and for compassion of himself he sheds tears from his eyes; dying in the laughter of others, he is alive in his own lamentations; and like him who no longer belongs to himself, he loves others and hates himself; because matter, as say the physicists, with that measure with which it loves the absent form, hates the present one. And so in the octave finishes the war which the soul has within itself; and when he says in the sistina, but if I be winged, others change to stone and that which follows; he shows his passion for the warfare which he wages with external contradictions. I remember having read in Jamblichus, where he treats of the Egyptian mysteries, this sentence: "Impius animam dissidentem habet: unde nec secum ipse convenire potest, neque cum aliis."

Tans. Now listen to another sonnet, as sequel to what has been said: