In conclusion, all classes of
men who are conspicuous by the tonsure or the sign of clerkship,
against whom books lifted up their voices in the fourth, fifth,
and sixth chapters, are bound to serve books with perpetual
veneration.
CHAPTER XV
OF THE ADVANTAGES OF THE LOVE OF BOOKS
It transcends the power of human intellect, however deeply it may
have drunk of the Pegasean fount, to develop fully the title of
the present chapter. Though one should speak with the tongue of
men and angels, though he should become a Mercury or Tully,
though he should grow sweet with the milky eloquence of Livy, yet
he will plead the stammering of Moses, or with Jeremiah will
confess that he is but a boy and cannot speak, or will imitate
Echo rebounding from the mountains. For we know that the love of
books is the same thing as the love of wisdom, as was proved in
the second chapter. Now this love is called by the Greek word
philosophy, the whole virtue of which no created intelligence can
comprehend; for she is believed to be the mother of all good
things: Wisdom vii. She as a heavenly dew extinguishes the heats
of fleshly vices, the intense activity of the mental forces
relaxing the vigour of the animal forces, and slothfulness being
wholly put to flight, which being gone all the bows of Cupid are
unstrung.
Hence Plato says in the Phaedo: The philosopher is manifest in
this, that he dissevers the soul from communion with the body.
Love, says Jerome, the knowledge of the scriptures, and thou wilt
not love the vices of the flesh.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85