University of California Berkeley 
 
\ 
 
 j 
 
THE HUMANIST'S LIBRARY 
 Edited by Lewis Einstein 
 
 VII 
 
 A PLATONICK DISCOURSE 
 UPON LOVE 
 
PLATONICK DISCOURSE 
 UPON LOVE 
 
 BY 
 PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA 
 
 11 * 
 
 Edited by 
 EDMUND G. GARDNER 
 
 or THE 
 
 (UNIVERSITY 
 
 Boston 
 The Merrymount Press 
 

 Copyright, 1914, by D. B. Updike 
 
A TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 The First Book 3 
 
 The Second Book 21 
 
 The Sonnet 5* 
 
 The Third Book 63 
 
 Notes to Introduction 79 
 
 Bibliographical Note 83 
 
 . 
 
 O 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 * * 
 * 
 
 Being in a dark wood, and travelling along a 
 hard and rough path, I rested from my labour, 
 and slept. In my slumber I had this vision. Me- 
 thought that I ascended a very high mountain, 
 from which was seen almost all the world, and 
 above this mountain there was another even 
 higher, from which things yet more distant were 
 beheld. On the first mountain stood a most beau- 
 teous Lady, and before her there was a fire so 
 great that it gave warmth to all the world; on the 
 other mountain, which was higher, stood two La- 
 dies, and between them there was a most fair 
 fountain, to which I was wont to go oftentimes to 
 drink. Wherefore, wishing to go thither to drink, 
 as was my usage, it behoved me to pass in front 
 of the first Lady, and, as I passed, I saw a Squire 
 kneeling before her, to whom the Lady was say- 
 ing these words: 'Thou knowest me by my face 
 and by my bearing right well, that I am Love.' 
 And he answered her: ' My Lady, it is very sooth/ 
 And the Lady said to him: 'Now hearken to me, 
 and listen well to what I would tell thee. I have 
 sent to the world two messengers of mine, to wit, 
 Solomon and Ovidius Naso; the one led me into 
 the world with music and song, and the other 
 
 ix 
 
Intro- wrought the art wherewith I should be brought. 
 
 dudlion From then until now I have sent no messenger, 
 but those that have spoken of me have done so 
 either for their own desire of knowledge or be- 
 cause they were heated by this fire. I have chosen 
 thee for my third messenger, and this has been 
 done with reason; for as the first was divine in 
 his sweetness, and the second was a most perfedl 
 poet, so art thou a philosopher full of wisdom; 
 and because thou art not a slave of Love, but 
 a friend, I command thee not, but I pray thee to 
 renew my memory in the world, and to tell of 
 my nature and secret conditions, upon which the 
 other speakers have not touched.' Having heard 
 this, that noble Squire answered the Lady, and 
 said: 'My Lady, what you pray of me shall be 
 done, but, because the world is full of divers fash- 
 ions, tell me the fashion that you would have me 
 adopt in my speech/ And the Lady made reply: 
 ' I will tell thee one condition of mine, which is 
 that I can verily give the desire of speaking, but 
 cannot give the wisdom and the fashion; but hie 
 thee to those Ladies on the mountain, who are 
 the two Philosophies, Moral and Natural, and they 
 will teach thee the fashion of speaking/" 
 
 Thus, quaintly enough, opens the fourteenth 
 century commentary erroneously and unac- 
 countably attributed to the great Augustinian 
 schoolman, Egidio Colonna 1 on the famous 
 canzone of Guido Cavalcanti, "Donna mi prega 
 x 
 
perch' io voglio dire." A century and a half Intro- 
 later, this poem seemed to the young Lorenzo dudlion 
 de' Medici "a very wonderful canzone in which 
 this gracious poet subtly described every quality , 
 virtue, and accident of love;" but to us to-day 
 it is a somewhat dreary composition, without a 
 touch of the mystical enthusiasm which gives lyr- 
 ical impetus to the " AI cor gentil ripara sempre 
 amore " of Cavalcanti's lesser namesake and elder 
 contemporary, Guido Guinizelli of Bologna. And 
 the exposition itself but emphasises the dull- 
 ness of the stanzas. Guido Cavalcanti opened the 
 series of discussions on the philosophy of love, 
 which were to exercise such a fascination over 
 the minds of the men and women of the Renais- 
 sance; but the canzone and the commentary 
 with which we have now to deal are on a higher 
 plane. For between Cavalcanti and Girolamo 
 Benivieni, between the pseudo-Egidio and Pico 
 della Mirandola, had come the revival of Plato- 
 nism and Neo-Platonism in Italy. 
 
 Neither Guido Cavalcanti nor his commentator^ 
 makes any mention of Plato or his dodlrines. Yet, ; 
 not many years before the canzone was writ- 
 ten, Albertus Magnus had declared that Plato 
 and Aristotle alike were necessary to the perfecfl 
 philosopher: "Non perficitur homo in philoso- 
 phia nisi ex scientia duarum philosophiarum Aris- 
 totelis et Platonis." 2 Dante cites Plato somewhat 
 frequently, but he knew nothing of him at first 
 
 xi 
 
Intro- hand, save in the Latin translation of the "Ti- 
 dudlion maeus " by Chalcidius. For the poet of the "Divina 
 Commedia," Aristotle alone is still "il maestro di 
 color che sanno;" 3 but Petrarch already, in a re- 
 markable anticipation of the following century, 
 has deposed the Stagirite in favour of his mas- 
 ter, and enthroned Plato in the place of philo- 
 sophical supremacy. 4 
 
 There came to the Council of Ferrara in 1438 
 a venerable Greek, named Georgius Gemistus, 
 who seems to have been already more than 
 eighty years old. He had held high office under 
 the Emperors of the East, and had come to Italy 
 ostensibly to work for the reunion of the Eastern 
 and Western Churches; but in reality he cared 
 for none of these things. While men like Bessa- 
 rion looked to the salvation of Greece by means 
 of reunion with the Church of Rome, Gemistus 
 probably said in his heart: "A plague o' both 
 your Churches." An ardent Neo-Platonist, a stu- 
 dent of Zoroaster and other philosophers of old, 
 he dreamed of the restoration of ancient Greece 
 and her liberation from her Turkish assailants by 
 a renovation of the antique virtues of the Greeks 
 themselves; from the "Republic" of Plato and 
 the old constitution of Lacedaemon, he had con- 
 ceived the idea of a new State to be founded upon 
 a new religion, which was to be a combination of 
 Platonic philosophy with the classical mythology 
 of Greece. When, in the following year, he ac- 
 xii 
 
companied the council to Florence, he seemed to Intfo- 
 the Florentines a true reincarnation of the Greek ducftion 
 spirit of the past. At the instigation of Cosimo de' 
 Medici, he wrote a treatise contrasting the rival ! ^ 
 systems of Plato and Aristotle, naturally giving 
 the preference to the former, but did not war: 
 for the conclusion of the prolonged literary con- 
 troversy which this aroused among the Greek v 
 scholars in Italy. He returned to Greece to share 
 the lot of his countrymen, and at Mistra, the site 
 of the ancient Sparta, he gathered a little band of 
 followers round him, and established his reli- 
 gion, with ceremonial rites, prayers, and hymns. 
 He did not live to see the final downfall of the 
 Greek Empire, but died, in extreme old age, some 
 time before Mohammed II stormed Constantino- 
 ple. The story need not be retold here of how, in 
 1465, when Sigismondo Malatesta was command- 
 ing the Venetian forces in the Morea, he besieged j 
 and captured Mistra, and brought thence the ashes ; 
 of Gemistus to Rimini, where they were placed ' 
 in a tomb outside Leon Battista Alberti's newly 
 built church of San Francesco: the shrine of a 
 saint of Humanism. 
 
 In the meanwhile, the seeds that Gemistus had 
 sown in Florence had borne fruit in the mind of 
 Cosimo de' Medici. He had conceived the idea of 
 making Florence the centre of Platonic philoso- 
 phy, and of creating a Platonic Academy on the 
 model of that which had existed in Athens. He 
 
 xiii 
 
Intro- found the instrument he needed in the person of 
 dudlion Marsilio Ficino, the son of a physician of Figline 
 in the Valdarno, whom he bade abandon his fa- 
 ther's profession, and look to healing men's minds 
 rather than their bodies. In 1463, he commissioned 
 him to produce a complete Latin translation of 
 Plato's dialogues, giving him a farm near the Me- 
 dicean villa at Careggi and a house in Florence 
 itself, that he might be enabled to work in ease 
 and comfort. The translation took about fourteen 
 years and was finished in 1477; but when Cosimo 
 lay on his deathbed, in 1464, it was sufficiently 
 advanced for Marsilio to comfort his last hours 
 with the reading of his version of the "Philebus." 
 "Even till the last day," wrote Marsilio to Lo- 
 renzo de' Medici, "when he departed from this 
 world of shadows to go to light, he devoted him- 
 self to the acquisition of knowledge. For, when 
 we had read together Plato's book on the origin 
 of the Universe and the Supreme Good, he, as 
 you who were present well know, soon after 
 quitted this life, as though now in very deed to 
 possess the fullness of that Good which he had 
 tasted during our conversation." 5 
 
 One of Marsilio's earlier works, perhaps the only 
 one still read except by specialists, is his exposition 
 ofPlato's"Symposium,"entitIed"SoprarAmore." 
 Written first in Latin, it was translated by the 
 author himself into Italian. It purports to be an 
 account of a banquet celebrated, apparently 
 xiv 
 
about 1470, in the villa of Careggi, at the desire Intro- 
 of Lorenzo de' Medici, to renew the custom of ducftion 
 the Platonists of old, who thus commemorated 
 the anniversary of the birth and death of Plato, 
 which were supposed to fall on November 7. The 
 guests are nine in number, because nine is the 
 number of the Muses: Antonio degli Agli, Maestro 
 Ficino (the author's father), Cristoforo Landini, 
 Bernardo Nuti,Tommaso Benci, Giovanni Caval- 
 canti, Cristoforo and Carlo Marsuppini (the sons 
 of the more famous Carlo Marsuppini, who had 
 been secretary of the Republic in earlier days), 
 and Marsilio Ficino himself. After the tables are 
 cleared, the "Symposium" is read, and certain of 
 the guests in turn take the parts of the speakers in 
 the dialogue and interpret them. A religious note 
 is struck at the outset. " The supreme Love of the 
 Divine Providence," writes Marsilio, "to recall us 
 to the right way [of love] which we had lost, in- 
 spired of old in Greece a most chaste woman 
 named Diotima, a priestess; who, finding the phi- 
 losopher Socrates especially consecrated to love, 
 revealed to him what this ardent desire was, and 
 how we can fall thereby into the greatest evil, 
 and how we can ascend thereby to the Supreme 
 Good. . . . May the Holy Spirit of Divine Love, 
 who inspired Diotima, illumine our minds, and in- 
 flame our wills, in such fashion that we may love 
 Him in all His beautiful works, and then love His 
 works in Him, and so come to rejoice infinitely in 
 
 xv 
 
Intro- His infinite Beauty." 6 Marsilio reads into the dis- 
 dudlion courses of the "Symposium" the mystical doc- 
 trine of beauty as a splendour reflected from the 
 Divine Countenance and spiritual love as the 
 turning of the creature to God. 
 
 The harmonising of Platonism and Christianity 
 o was the chief aim of Marsilio's life. He had him- 
 self been troubled with doubts and difficulties, 
 and had found in Platonic philosophy the solu- 
 tion of the problem. "There are some," he writes 
 to Giovanni Cavalcanti, "who wonder why we 
 follow Plato with such observance, he who seems 
 to have dealt only with paradoxes and won- 
 ders. But they should consider that it is only the 
 divine incorruptible things that exist in reality; 
 bodily things only seem to exist, they are subjecft 
 to corruption and change, and are no more than 
 images or shadows of the real. While the other 
 philosophers, almost all, by devoting themselves 
 to the study of material things, dreamed therein 
 images of truth, our Plato, intent upon divine 
 things, alone or chief of all, kept watch. I hold, 
 then, that we should follow Plato as a theologian 
 rather than the other philosophers, even as we 
 should commit ourselves to vigilant pilots rather 
 than to those that sleep." 7 
 
 But, from the standpoint of literature, the most 
 interesting production of the school of Marsilio 
 Ficino is the little book of Pico and Benivieni. 
 It was in 1479, when Marsilio had completed his 
 xvi 
 
Plato and was about to apply himself to the in- Intro- 
 terpretation of Plotinus, that Giovanni Pico della idudtion 
 Mirandola, then seventeen years old, came to j 
 Florence. At a social gathering, held perhaps in 
 the Medicean palace, he fell into discussion with 
 a Florentine citizen, ten years older than himself, 
 Girolamo di Paolo Benivieni, and formed with 
 him one of the most famous friendships in the 
 annals of literature. 8 
 
 Born in 1463, Giovanni Pico was the youngest 
 son of a powerful Lombard feudatory of the Em- 
 pire, Gian Francesco Pico, Count of Mirandola 
 and Concordia; his mother, Giulia Boiardo, was 
 an aunt of the poet count of Scandiano, Matteo 
 Maria Boiardo. His elder brother, Galeotto, who 
 ruled the fiefs of the family, and who was mar- 
 ried to a princess of the house of Este, was a fierce 
 soldier, whom Savonarola in vain exhorted to 
 repentance, and who excited the wonder of his 
 contemporaries by defying a papal excommu- 
 nication for sixteen years until his death. Gio- 
 vanni Pico's extraordinary beauty and romantic 
 character won him the hearts of Lorenzo de' 
 Medici and the intellectual society of Florence; 
 and his strange and varied learning aroused the 
 greatest admiration among all. To Poliziano he 
 was "omnium docftrinarum lux;" to Machiavelli, 
 "uomo quasiche divino;" while Savonarola de- 
 scribes him as "inter perrara naturae miracula 
 perspicacitate ingenii et dodlrinae sublimitate 
 
 xvii 
 
Intro- olim connumerandus." 9 Nevertheless, his erudi- 
 ducflion tion was little more than a medley of scholasti- 
 cism, Neo-Platonic philosophy, and occult sci- 
 ence, which he had failed to digest. A convidlion 
 abode with him that his life would be short. "It 
 is a happy thing," he writes in a sonnet, "when 
 Heaven is friendly to us, to die young; to com- 
 plete one day then, is better than to -wait until 
 the evening." Loved by many women as well as 
 by men, Pico wrote five bookl_QLerQJJciyerse in 
 Latin elegiacs, which he^ afterwards, destroyed, 
 and sonnets in the vernacular, a certain number 
 of which have come down to us, and show him 
 to have been but a mediocre poet. After his chal- 
 lenge to the world at Rome in 1486, to dispute 
 his nine hundred conclusions, thirteen of which 
 were declared heretical, or at least "male so- 
 nantes," he finally (after many adventures and a 
 brief imprisonment) retired to the villa of Quer- 
 ceto, near Fiesole. There he composed his " Hep- 
 taplus," a wild and fantastic book on the seven- 
 fold meaning of the six days of creation (dedi- 
 cated to Lorenzo de' Medici), and another, "De 
 Ente et Uno," addressed to Poliziano, in which he 
 attempted to reconcile Aristotle and Plato, and 
 to harmonise the transcendence and the imma- 
 nence of God, but only succeeded, it has been 
 said, in reducing the Deity to a mere abstrac- 
 \ tion. 10 His favourite maxim was: "There is no 
 philosophy that leads us away from the truths of 
 xviii 
 
mysteries ; " and his dream was to form a synthesis Intro- 
 of all knowledge, and reconcile it with Christian- dudlion 
 ity.He planned a vast series of treatises," Adver- 
 sus hostes Ecclesiae," but only completed the 
 twelve books of disputations " In Astrologiam," 
 a work that roused the orthodox enthusiasm of 
 Savonarola. 
 
 The elder partner in this great friendship was 
 a man of a spiritually less adventurous type. 
 Girolamo Benivieni was born in 1453, the son of 
 a notary of Florence. An elder brother, Antonio, 
 gained renown as a physician ; a younger, Domen- 
 ico, devoted himself to the study of philosophy, 
 held a chair in the university of Pisa at the age 
 of nineteen, and became a canon of San Lorenzo. 
 But Girolamo himself was prevented by perpet- ^ 
 ual ill-health from adopting any profession, and, 
 rather than remain a burden upon his father, he 
 seems to have sought the favour of princes as 
 a court poet of Giulio Cesare da Varano, the 
 lord of Camerino, and of Lorenzo de' Medici re- 
 luctantly, we may surmise, as he was afflicfted 
 with a melancholy humour and tempted to sui- 
 cide, not one to be at home in the atmosphere 
 of a Court. Celibate throughout a long life, Girola- 
 mo's inclinations all tended towards religion, and ' 
 the blameless poems that he wrote seemed to 
 him, later in life, pernicious and wanton. He had 
 already published his "Buccolica," a series of 
 eclogues in terza rima, depidling current events 
 
 xix 
 
Intro- under the pastoral disguise; he had composed 
 ducftion narrative poems in ottava rima, and love son- 
 nets and canzoni in imitation of the poets of the 
 "dolce stil nuovo," of Dante, and of Petrarch 
 which he was afterwards to rewrite and interpret 
 from the ascetic standpoint. But it is to his col- 
 laboration with Pico that he owes what has sur- 
 vived of his literary fame. 
 
 The " Canzone dello Amore secondo la mente 
 e opinione de' Platonic! " is described by Beni- 
 vieni himself as an attempt to sum up in a few 
 verses what Marsilio Ficino had described at 
 length in his commentary upon the "Sympo- 
 sium" of Plato. It had been written some time 
 before it appeared, in 1487, accompanied by the 
 commentary which is Pico's only important work 
 in the vernacular, the result, doubtless, of the 
 discussions that the two had held together on a 
 topic so dear to both their hearts. Benivieni was 
 not a great poet, and the canzone (which, in the 
 Italian, is modelled upon the structure of Pe- 
 trarch's 'T vo pensando e nel penser m' assale "), in 
 spite of its noble and elevated didlion, is scarcely 
 a masterpiece. But, rehandling the theme of 
 Guido Cavalcanti's poem as to the nature, source, 
 and effedls of love, in the language of the Neo- 
 Platonism of the writer's own day, it is a most 
 characteristic literary fruit of the movement that, 
 in the field of painting, produced both the Venus 
 and the prophetic Madonna of Botticelli. 
 xx 
 
The adlual commentary is the least part of Intro- 
 Pico's discourse, and occupies only the third book, ducftion 
 In the first book he gives his own general philo- j V 
 sophical scheme of God and the world, a rather 
 confused medley of Neo-Platonism and other 
 theories. Beneath God, and created immediately 
 by Him, between the intelligible and sensible 
 worlds, is " a creature of incorporeal and intel- 
 lectual nature, as perfect as it is possible for a 
 created thing to be," which is the first created 
 mind. "This first created mind is called by Plato, 
 as also by the ancient philosophers, Mercurius 
 Trismegistus and Zoroaster, now Son of God, now 
 Mind, now Wisdom, now Divine Reason; which 
 some again interpret, Word. But we must take/ 
 diligent heed not to believe that this is He whoj 
 by our theologians is called the Son of God ; for, 
 by the Son of God, we understand one same 
 essence with the Father, equal to Him in all things, 
 creator in fine and not creature; but what Plato- ( 
 nists call the Son of God should rather be com- 
 pared to the first and most noble Angel produced 
 by God." 11 As Mr. Rigg points out, this is a con- 
 fusion of the dodlrine of Plotinus, concerning the 
 first emanation from the Godhead, with various 
 other mystical theories but I hardly think we 
 need suppose that Pico had abandoned the or-/ 
 thodox position. 12 The Neo-PIatonists of the Re- 
 naissance seem to have been content to hold the 
 Christian and the philosophical doctrine of the 
 
 xxi 
 
Intro- Word side by side. It may be noticed that there 
 dudlion is a somewhat analogous inconsistency in Dante's 
 "Convivio," whereby the lady of the poet's 
 worship seems at times a symbol of the second 
 Person of the Blessed Trinity (though under a 
 purely impersonal aspedl), and at others a mere 
 abstraction of Wisdom in an idealized human 
 being. This confusion, such as it is, is avoided in 
 the mystical system of an earlier writer of the 
 Quattrocento, San Lorenzo Giustinian, by identi- 
 fying the Wisdom, of which philosophy is the 
 "amoroso uso," with the theological conception 
 of Christ as the Wisdom of the Father. I3 
 
 In the second book we have the essence of the 
 whole discourse. It gives us the clearest and most 
 systematical exposition of that mystical creed of 
 love and beauty, already formulated by Marsilio 
 Ficino, which appealed so alluringly to many of 
 the finest minds of the Renaissance, and was, a 
 little later, to find more rapturous expression on 
 the lips of Bembo in the " Cortegiano" of Baldas- 
 sare Castiglione."We should call beauty," wrote 
 Marsilio, "a certain lively and spiritual grace, the 
 which by the divine ray is first infused into 
 the Angels, then into the souls of men, and after 
 this, so far and in as much as it may be commu- 
 nicated, into corporeal figures and words, and 
 mundane material. And this grace, by means of 
 reason and sight and hearing, moveth and de- 
 lighteth our mind, and in the delight doth ravish, 
 xxii 
 
and in ravishing doth kindle with ardent love/' 14 Intro- 
 The more perfect human lovers, says Pico, "are ducftion 
 those that, remembering a more perfect Beauty 
 that their souls saw of old, before they were fet- 
 tered to the body, are kindled with an incredi- 
 ble desire of rebeholding that Beauty; and to 
 the end that they may obtain this purpose, they 
 Jthems^ the 
 
 body, in such fashion that the soul returnetK to 
 her pristine dignity, becometh entirely mistress 
 of the body, and is no longer subject to it in any 
 wise. And then is the soul in that love which is 
 the image of celestial love, and this atone is the 
 k^mfl" lr>yg> ffpat. fran hft fift|lftd pp.rfort When a 
 man has reached this stage of love, he can go on 
 increasing from perfection to perfection, until at 
 last he cometh to such a grade of perfectedness 
 that, uniting his soul entirely with the under- 
 standing, he is changed from man to Angel; and 
 all inflamed with that angelical love, utterly 
 purged from all the dross and stains of the earthly 
 body, he is transformed into a spiritual flame 
 by the power of love, and, flying up even to the 
 intelligible heaven, he reposeth blissfully in the 
 arms of the Primal Father." IS 
 
 It may, perhaps, be said that this is magnifi- 
 cent, but not practical religion. So Pico and Beni- 
 vieni seem to have found, when they heard a 
 simpler creed from the lips^of^Savonftfo^ Pl n j 
 who was one of those who stood by the deathbed 
 
 xxiii 
 
Intro- of Lorenzo de' Medici, confided to his nephew 
 dudtion his intention of giving all his substance to the 
 poor, and, arming himself with the crucifix, walk- 
 ing barefoot through the world, to speak of 
 Christ in every town and village. This, however, 
 was not to be. He had been told that he would 
 die in the time that the lilies flowered, and he 
 passed away, comforted in his last moments 
 by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, in November, 
 1494, as the golden lilies on the royal standard 
 of France were being borne in triumph through 
 the Porta San Frediano. Benivieni cast his Plato 
 * aside, and became the poet of the Piagnoni. He 
 revived Jacopone's docftrine that madness for 
 Christ's sake is true wisdom, and wrote the laude 
 that Savonarola's adherents sang in their pro- 
 cessions through Florence. He came to regard 
 his Platonic canzone as written " in another style 
 than that of the book of life," and tried to coun- 
 teract it by another, a "Canzone dello Amore 
 celeste e divino secondo la verita cristiana e della 
 fede cattolica," which soon fell into oblivion. 16 
 In spite of his friendly relations with the younger 
 branch of the Medici, he still kept the ideals of 
 Savonarola, not only in his heart, but on his 
 tongue though they never carried him so far as 
 even passive resistance to the government. The 
 old poet's voice was heard for the last time in 
 November, 1^30, two months after the surrender 
 of Florence to the imperial army and the final 
 xxiv 
 
downfall of the Republic, when he addressed Intro- 
 a letter to Pope Clement, affirming his unshaken dudlion 
 belief that Fra Girolamo was a true prophet. 
 Twelve years later, in 1542, being nearly ninety ~ n 
 years old, he died, and was buried with his be- 
 loved Pico in San Marco. 
 
 This theme of Platonic love inspired several 
 writers in Italian in the early sixteenth cen- 
 tury to tread in the footsteps of Ficino and Pico. 
 Works like the "Libro di Natura d'Amore" of 
 Ariosto's friend and correspondent, Mario Equi- 
 cola, or the "Dialogo della infinita d'Amore" of 
 the Spanish-Roman courtesan, Tullia d' Aragona, 
 have little interest or spiritual significance; but 
 a higher note is struck in the"Dialoghi di Amore" 
 of Leone Abarbanel, known as Leone Ebreo, a 
 Jewish physician of Portuguese descent whose 
 family had settled in Naples. Recent research has 
 shown that Leone died in 1^42, the same year as 
 Benivieni, but these " Dialoghi," discourses upon 
 love between Philoneand Sophia, appear to have 
 been written in the first or second decade of the 
 Cinquecento. I7 The originality of the book lies in 
 the author's standpoint. Whereas the other think- 
 ers of this school are concerned in harmonising 
 Plato with Christianity, Leone Abarbanel strives Q / 
 to show that Platonism is in accordance with 
 Judaism, and thus to do for his co-religionists 
 what Ficino and Pico had done for theirs. 
 
 But it is in the glorious prose poetry of the clos- 
 
 XXV 
 
Intro- ing pages of the " Cortegiano" that this mystical 
 
 dudlion religion of Love and Beauty was to find its last 
 
 and most perfedt utterance. Let us end, then, with 
 
 the prayer that Castiglione puts upon the lips of 
 
 Bembo: 
 
 "What mortal tongue then, O most holy Love, 
 can worthily praise thee? . . . Vouchsafe, Lord, to 
 hearken to our prayers. Infuse Thyself into our 
 hearts, and, with the splendour of Thy most holy 
 fire, illumine our darkness, and, like a trusted 
 guide in this blind labyrinth, show us the true 
 way. Do Thou correct the falseness of the senses, 
 and, after long wandering in vanity, grant unto 
 us the true and sound joy. Make us to smell those 
 spiritual odours that vivify the virtues of the un- 
 derstanding, and to hear the heavenly harmony 
 with such ineffable melody, that no discord of 
 passion may any more have place within us. Do 
 Thou inebriate us at that inexhaustible fountain 
 of contentation that always doth delight and 
 never doth satiate, and that giveth a taste of true 
 beatitude to all that drink of its living and limpid 
 waters. With the rays of Thy light, purge Thou 
 our eyes from misty ignorance, that they may 
 no more prize mere mortal beauty, and that they 
 may know that the things that, at the first, they 
 thought themselves to see, are not, and those that 
 they saw not, are in very sooth. Accept, Lord, 
 our souls that are offered unto Thee in sacrifice. 
 Burn them in the living flame that consumeth all 
 xxvi 
 
gross filthiness, in order that, utterly separated Intro- 
 from the body, they may be united by an ever- dudlion 
 lasting and most sweet bond to the Divine Beauty. 
 And may we, alienated from ourselves, be trans- 
 formed like true lovers into the beloved; and, be- 
 ing uplifted from the earth, may we be admitted 
 to the banquet of the Angels, where, fed with 
 ambrosia and immortal nedlar, we may at last 
 die a most blissful and life-giving death even as 
 once did those Fathers of the olden time, whose 
 souls, with most ardent virtue of contemplation, 
 Thou didst ravish from the body, and didst join 
 them with God." 
 
 We can claim for Stanley's "Pico" a place, albeit j 
 a humble one, by the side of Hoby's version of the 
 "Courtier," published a century earlier. Thomas 
 Stanley, is better known by his charming lyrics 
 and his excellent translations from Anacreon. The 
 " Platonick Discourse" was published in 16^1, when , 
 he was twenty-seven years old, together with a 
 reissue of his "Poems," his "Anacreon," and va- 
 rious other translations from his hand. It was re- 
 printed in the second volume of his " History of 
 Philosophy," published in 1656, and in subsequent 
 editions of that rather ponderous work; but has 
 not hitherto been reissued separately. His render- 
 ing of Benivieni's canzone (which he quaintly 
 calls a " sonnet," and of which he reduces the 
 metrical arrangement to rhyming couplets) has 
 some poetical fire, and his translation of Pico's 
 
 xxvii 
 
Intro- commentary, which is considerably abridged, 
 
 ducftion has at least the merits of a noble English style and 
 
 greater clarity than the original. It is one of the 
 
 latest, but not the less delightful and typical, fruits 
 
 of the Italian Renaissance in English literature. 
 
 Edmund G. Gardner 
 
 December 8, 1913 
 
A PLATONICK DISCOURSE 
 
 UPON LOVE 
 
 Written in Italian by 
 
 JOHN PICUS MIRANDULA 
 
 In Explication of a Sonnet by 
 
 Hieronimo Benivieni 
 
 A 
 
 [Printed in the Year \6s\~\ 
 
i 
 
 THE FIRST BOOK 
 I 
 
 T is a Principle of the Platonists, That every 
 created thing hath a threefold being: Causal, 
 Formal, Participated. In the Sun there is no heat, 
 that being but an elementary quality, not of:Ge* ; > t 
 lestial nature: yet is the Sun the cause and'Foyn- > , , 
 tain of all heat. Fire is hot by nature, and its prop'6f 
 form : Wood is not hot of itself, yet is capable 
 of receiving that quality by Fire. Thus hath heat 
 its Causal being in the Sun, its Formal in the 
 Fire, its Participated in the Fuel. The most noble 
 and perfecft of these is the Causal : and therefore 
 Platonists assert, That all excellencies are in God 
 after this manner of being : That in God is noth- 
 ing, but from him all things; That Intelledt is not 
 in him, but that he is the original spring of every/ 
 Intelledt. Such is Plotinus's meaning, when he af- 
 firms, " God neither understands nor knows ; " that 
 is to say, after a formal way. As Dionysius Areo- 
 pagita, "God is neither an Intellectual nor Intelli- 
 gent nature, but unspeakably exalted above all 
 Intellect and Knowledge." 
 
The First II 
 
 Book 1 latonists distinguish Creatures into three de- 
 
 grees. The first comprehends the corporeal and 
 visible, as Heaven, Elements, and all compounded 
 of them: The last the invisible, incorporeal, abso- 
 lutely free from bodies which properly are called 
 Intellectual (by Divines, Angelical) Natures. Be- 
 ', ;' \ ; twixt these is a middle nature, which though 
 , .-,..; incorporeal, invisible, immortal,yet moveth bod- 
 ifeis, as being obliged to that office; called, the ra- 
 tional soul; inferiour to Angels, superiour to Bodies; 
 subject to those, regent of these: above which is 
 God himself; author and principle of every Crea- 
 ture, in whom Divinity hath a causal being ; from 
 whom proceeding to Angels it hath a formal be- 
 ing, and thence is derived into the rational soul 
 by participation of their lustre: below which no 
 nature can assume the title of divine. 
 

 Ill The First 
 
 1 hat the first of these three Natures cannot be Book 
 multiplyed, who is but one, the principle and 
 cause of all other Divinity, is evidently proved by 
 Platonists, Peripateticks, and our Divines. About 
 the second, (viz.) the Angelick and Intellectual, 
 Platonists disagree. Some (as Proclus, Hermias, 
 Syrianus, and many others) betwixt God and the 
 rational Soul place a great number of creatures ; 
 part of these they call Noera, voepa, Intelligible; 
 part Intellectual : which terms Plato sometimes 
 confoundeth; as in his "Phaedo." Plotinus, Por- 
 phyrius, and generally, the most refined Plato-, 
 nists, betwixt God and the Soul of the World as- 
 signe onely one creature which they call the Son 
 of God, because immediately produced by him. I ' 
 The first opinion complies most with Dionysius l 
 Areopagita,and Christian Divines, who assert the 
 number of Angels to be in a manner infinite. The 
 second is the more Philosophick, best suiting 
 with Aristotle and Plato; whose sense we onely 
 purpose to expresse; and therefore will decline 
 the first path (though that only be the right) to 
 pursue the latter. 
 
The First IV 
 
 Book We therefore according to the opinion of Ploti- 
 nus confirmed not onely by the best Platonists, 
 but even by Aristotle and all the Arabians, espe- 
 cially Avicenna, affirm,. That God from eternity 
 T produced a creature of incorporeal and intellec- 
 [ tual nature, as perfect as is possible for a created 
 being, beyond which he produced nothing; for of 
 the most perfect cause the effecft must be most 
 perfect: and the most perfect can be but one; for 
 of two or more it is not possible but one should be 
 more or lesse perfect than the rest, otherwise they 
 would not be two, but the same. This reason for 
 our opinion I rather choose than that which Avi- 
 cen alledges, founded upon this principle, That 
 from one cause, as one, can proceed but one ef- 
 fect. We conclude, therefore, that no creature but 
 this first minde proceeds immediately from God : 
 for of all other effects issuing from this minde, 
 and all other second causes, God is onely the medi- 
 ate efficient. This by Plato, Hermes, and Zoroas- 
 ter is called the Daughter of God, the Minde, Wis- 
 dom, Divine Reason, by some interpreted the 
 Word: not meaning (with our Divines) the Son of 
 God, he not being a creature, but one essence co- 
 equal with the Creator. 
 
V The First 
 
 All understanding agents have in themselves Book 
 the form of that which they design to effect : as 
 an Architect hath in his minde a figure of the 
 building he undertakes, which as his pattern he 
 exactly strives to imitate: This Platonists call the! 
 Idea or Exemplar, believing it more perfect, than \ 
 that which is made after it: and this manner of ' 
 Being, Ideal or Intelligible, the other Material an< 
 Sensible: So that when a Man builds a house, the] 
 affirm there are two, one intellectual in the Work- 
 man's minde; the other sensible, which he makes 
 in Stone, Wood, or the like; expressing in that 
 matter the form he hath conceived: to this Dante 
 alludes 
 
 " None any work can frame 
 Unlesse himself become the same." 
 
 Hereupon they say, though God produced onely 
 one creature, yet he produced all, because in it 
 he produced the Ideas and forms of all, and that 
 in their most perfect being, that is the Ideal, for 
 which reason they call this Minde, the Intelligible 
 World. 
 
The First VI 
 
 Book After the pattern of that Minde they affirm this 
 sensible World was made, and the exemplar be- 
 ing the most perfecfl of all created things, it must 
 follow that this image thereof be as perfecfl as 
 its nature will bear. And since animate things are 
 more perfecft than the inanimate; and of those 
 the rational than the irrational, we must grant, 
 this World hath a soul perfecft above all others. 
 This is the first rational soul, which, though in- 
 corporeal and immaterial, is destin'd to the func- 
 tion of governing and moving corporeal Nature: 
 not free from the body as that minde whence 
 from Eternity it was deriv'd, as was the Minde 
 from God. Hence Platonists argue the World is 
 eternal; its soul being such, and not capable of 
 being without a body, that also must be from 
 Eternity; as likewise the motion of the Heavens, 
 because the Soul cannot be without moving. 
 
 8 
 
VII The First 
 
 1 he ancient Ethnick Theologians, who cast Po- Book 
 etical vails over the face of their mysteries, ex- 
 press these three natures by other names. " Cae- 
 lum" they call God himself; he produced the first 
 
 Mind, "Saturn:" Saturn the Soul of the World, 
 
 i/ 
 
 "Jupiter." "Caelum" implies priority and excel- 
 lence, as in the Firmament, the first Heaven. Sat- 
 urn signifies intellectual nature, wholly employ 'd 
 in contemplation; Jupiter acflive life, consisting ^ 
 in moving and governing all subordinate to it. 
 The properties of the two latter agree with their 
 Planets : Saturn makes Men Contemplative, Ju- 
 piter Imperious. The Speculative busied about 
 things above them; the Pracflick beneath them. 
 
The First VIII 
 
 Book Which three names are promiscuously used 
 
 upon these grounds : In God we understand first 
 his Excellence, which, as Cause, he hath above 
 o all his effedts; for this he is called "Coelus." Sec- 
 ondly the production of those effects, which 
 denotes conversion towards inferiours; in this re- 
 spedl he is sometimes called "Jupiter," but with 
 an addition, "Optimus," "Maximus." The first An- 
 gelick nature hath more names, as more diver- 
 sity. Every creature consists of Power and Adi: 
 the first, Plato in "Philebus" calls Infinite: the 
 second, Finite: all imperfections in the Minde 
 are by reason of the first; all perfections, from 
 the latter. Her operations are threefold. About 
 Superiours, the contemplation of God; about the 
 knowledge of her self; about Inferiours, the pro- 
 dudtion and care of this sensible World: these 
 three proceed from Adi. By Power she descends 
 to make inferiour things; but in either respedl is 
 firm within her self. In the two first, because con- 
 templative, she is called "Saturn:" in the third 
 "Jupiter," a name principally applied to her 
 power, as that part from whence is derived the 
 adl of production of things. For the same reason 
 is the Soul of the World, as she contemplates 
 her self or superiours, termed "Saturn;" as she is 
 employed in ordering worldly things, "Jupiter:" 
 and since the government of the World belongs 
 properly to her; the contemplation to the Minde; 
 10 
 
therefore is the one absolutely called "Jupiter," The First 
 the other "Saturn." Book 
 
 ii 
 
I 
 
 The First IX 
 
 Book 1 his World therefore (as all other creatures) 
 
 consisteth of a Soul and Body: the Body is all 
 that we behold, compounded of the four Ele- 
 ments. These have their causal being in the Hea- 
 vens (which consist not of them, as sublunary 
 things; for then it would follow that these infe- 
 riour parts were made before the celestial, the 
 Elements in themselves being simple, by con- 
 course causing such things as are compounded 
 of them): Their formal being from the Moon 
 down to the Earth: Their participate and imper- 
 fecfl under the Earth, evident in the Fire, Air, 
 and Water experience daily findes there; evinc'd 
 by natural Philosophers: to which the ancient 
 Theologians aenigmatically allude by their four 
 infernal Rivers, Acheron, Cocytus, Styx, and 
 Phlegeton. 
 
 We may divide the body of the World into 
 three parts: Celestial, Mundane, Infernal: The 
 ground why the Poets feign the Kingdom of Sat- 
 urn to be shar'd betwixt his three sons, Jupiter, 
 Neptune, and Pluto: implying onely the three- 
 fold variation of this corporeal World; which, 
 as long as it remains under Saturn, that is, in its 
 Ideal Intellectual being, is one and undivided; 
 and so more firm and potent: but falling into 
 the hands of his Sons, that is, chang'd to this 
 material Being, and by them divided into three 
 parts, according to the triple existence of bod- 
 12 
 
 i 
 
ies, is more infirm and lesse potent, degenerat- The First 
 ing from a spiritual to a corporeal estate. The Book 
 first part, the heavenly, they attribute to Ju- 
 piter; the last and lowest to Pluto; the middle 
 to Neptune. And because in this principality is 
 all generation and corruption, the Theologians 
 express it by the Ocean, ebbing or flowing con- 
 tinually : by Neptune understanding the Power 
 or Deity that presides over Generation. Yet we 
 must not imagine these to be different souls, dis- 
 tincflly informing these three parts: the World 
 her self being one, can have but one Soul ; which 
 as it animates the subterraneal parts, is called 
 Pluto; the sublunary, Neptune; the celestial, Ju- 
 piter. Thus Plato in " Philebus" averres "by Jove 
 is understood a regal soul," meaning the princi-j 
 pal part of the World which governs the other! 
 This opinion, though onely my own, I suppose is 
 more true than the expositions of the Grecians. 
 
The First X 
 
 Book 1M ext that of the World, Platonists assigne many 
 
 other rational souls. The eight principal are those 
 of the heavenly Spheres ; which according to their 
 opinion exceeded not that number; consisting of 
 the seven Planets, and the starry Orb. These are 
 the nine Muses of the Poets : Calliope (the uni- 
 versal soul of the World) is first: the other eight 
 are distributed to their several Spheres. 
 
 14 
 
XI The First 
 
 Plato asserts, that "the Author of the World Book 
 made the mundane, and all other rational souls, 
 in one Cup, and of the same Elements ; the uni- 
 versall soul being most perfedl, ours least \^ 
 whose parts we may observe by this division : 
 Man, the chain that ties the World together, is 
 placed in the midst: and as all mediums partici- 
 pate of their extreams, his parts correspond with 
 the whole World; thence called " Microcosmus." 
 In the World is first Corporeal Nature, eternal in 
 the Heavens; corruptible in the Elements, and 
 their compounds, as Stones, Mettals, &c. Then 
 Plants. The third degree is of Beasts. The fourth 
 Rational Souls. The fifth Angelical Mindes. Above 
 these is God, their origine. In Man are likewise 
 two bodies: one eternal, the Platonists' " Vehi- 
 culum caeleste," immediately inform'd by the 
 rational soul: The other corruptible, subject to 
 sight, consisting of the Elements: Then the vege- 
 tative faculty, by which generated and nourished. 
 The third part is sensitive and motive. The fourth 
 Rational; by the Latine Peripateticks believ'd 
 the last and most noble part of the Soul: yet 
 above that is the Intellectual and Angelick; the 
 most excellent part whereof, we call the Soul's 
 Union, immediately joyning it to God, in a man- 
 ner resembling him; as in the other Angels, 
 Beasts, and Plants. About these Platonists differ, 
 Proclus and Porphyrius onely allow the rational 
 
The First part to be Immortal; Zenocrates and Speusip- 
 Book pus the sensitive also; Numenius and Plotinus 
 the whole Soul. 
 
 16 
 
XII The First 
 
 Ideas have their causal being in God, their Book 
 formal in the first Minde, their participated in the 
 rational Soul. In God they are not, but produced 
 by him in the Angelick nature, through this com- 
 municated to the Soul, by whom illuminated, 
 when she reflects on her intellectual parts, she re- 
 ceives the true formes of things, Ideas. Thus dif- * 
 fer the souls of Men from the celestial: these in/ 
 their bodily functions recede not from the intel- \ 
 ledlual, at once contemplating and governing. 
 Bodies ascend to them, they descend not. Those 
 employ'd in corporeal office are deprived of con- ' 
 templation, borrowing science from sense; to this^ 
 wholly enclin'd; full of errours. Their onely means 
 of release from this bondage is the amatory life; 
 which by sensible beauties, exciting in the soul 
 a remembrance of the intellectual, raiseth her 
 from this terrene life to the eternal; by the flame 
 of love refined into an Angel. 
 

 THE SECOND BOOK 
 
THE SECOND BOOK 
 I 
 
 THE apprehensive faculties of the Soul are 
 employ 'd about truth, and falsehood; as- 
 senting to one, dissenting from the other. 
 The first is affirmation; the second, negation. The 
 desiderative converse in good and ill; inclining 
 to this, declining that. The first is Love: the sec- 
 ond Hate. Love is distinguish'd by its objedls ; if, 
 of riches, termed covetousness ; of honour, ambi-i 
 tion; of heavenly things, piety; of equals, friend- 1 
 ship: these we exclude, and admit no other sig- 
 nification, but "the desire to possesse what in it 
 self, or at least in our esteem is fair:" of a dif- 
 ferent nature from the love of God to his Crea- 
 tures, who comprehending all cannot desire or 
 want the beauty and perfections of another: and 
 from that of friends which must be reciprocal. 
 We, therefore, with Plato define it, "The desire 
 of Beauty." Desire is an inclination to real or ap- 
 parent good. As there are divers kinds of good, 
 so of desire. Love jsj^species of desire; Beauty 
 of good. Desire is Natural or Knowing. All crea- 
 tures have a particular perfection by participa- 
 tion of the divine goodness. This is their end, in- 
 cluding that degree of felicity whereof they are 
 capable; to which center they tend. This desire 
 we call Natural; a great testimony of divine Provi- 
 
 21 
 
 y 
 
The dence, by which they are unwittingly (as an ar- 
 Second row by the Archer) directed to their mark. With 
 Book this all Creatures desire God, as being the origi- 
 nal good imprinted and participated in every 
 particular. This is in every Nature, as more or 
 less capable, adressed to ends more or less noble; 
 yet is the ultimate end of all the same, to enjoy 
 God, as far as they may: thus as the Psalmist, 
 ,. "Every thing worships and praiseth God;" like 
 suppliants "turning and offering themselves up 
 to him," saith Theodore. 
 
 22 
 
II The 
 
 1 he other Species of Desire is employed onely Second 
 about things known, given by Nature that to Pk 
 every apprehensive faculty there might be a de- v 
 siderative; to embrace what it judgeth good, to 
 refuse what it esteemeth evil ; in its own nature 
 enclin'd to good. None ever desir'd to be miser- 
 able; but the apprehensive Vertue many times 
 mistaking Evil for Good, it oft falls out that the 
 desiderative (in its self blinde) desires Evil. This 
 in some sense may be said voluntary, for none } 
 can force it; in another sense, not voluntary, de- \ 
 ceiv'd by the judgement of its Companion. This 
 is Plato's meaning when he saith, "No man sins 
 willingly." 
 
The III 
 
 Second It is the Property of every desiderative Vertue, 
 Book t hat he who desires, possesseth in part the thing 
 he desires; in part not: for if he were wholly 
 deprived of its Possession, he would never de- 
 sire it: this is verified two wayes. First, nothing 
 is desired unless it be known; and to know a 
 thing, is in some sort to possess it. So Aristotle; 
 "The Soul is all, because it knows all:" And in 
 the Psalmist, God saith, "All things are mine, I 
 know them." Secondly, there is alwayes some 
 convenience and resemblance betwixt the de- 
 sirer, and desired: Every thing delights, and pre- 
 serves it self by that, which by natural affinity is 
 most conformable to it; by its contrary is griev'd, 
 ! and consum'd. Love is not betwixt things unlike ; 
 Repugnance of two opposite natures is natural 
 hate. Hate is a repugnance with knowledge. 
 j Hence it followeth, that the nature of the de- 
 ' sired, is in some manner in the desirer; other- 
 wise, there would be no similitude betwixt them: 
 / yet imperfedlly; else it were vain for it to seek 
 what it entirely possesseth. 
 
 24 
 
IV The 
 
 As desire generally follows knowledge, so sev- Second 
 eral knowing are annexed to several desiring 
 Powers. We distinguish the knowing into three 
 degrees: Sense, Reason, Intellect ; attended by 
 three desiderative Vertues: Appetite, Elecftion, 
 Will. Appetite is in Bruits; Elecftion in Men; 
 Will in Angels. The Sense knows onely corpcP 
 real things,^e Appetite onely desires such; the 
 Angelick Intellect is wholly intent on Contem- 
 plation of spiritual Conceptions; not inclining toy 
 Material Things, but when devested of Matter, 
 and spiritualiz'd, their Will is onely fed with in- 
 temporal spiritual Good. Rationall Nature is the 
 mean betwixt these Extreams; sometimes de- 
 scending to Sense, sometimes elevated to Intel- 
 lect; by its own Elecftion complying with the 
 desires of which she pleaseth. Thus it appears 
 that corporeal objects are desired, either by Sen- 
 sual Appetite, or Election of Reason inclining to 
 Sense: Incorporeal by Angelick Will, or the Elec- 
 tion of Reason elevated to Intellectual Height. 
 
The V 
 
 Second o e auty in general is a " Harmony resulting from 
 several things proportionably concurring to con- 
 stitute a third;" Inrespecft of which temperament 
 and mixture of various Natures, agreeing in the 
 composition of one, every creature is Fair; and in 
 this sense no simple being is beautiful; not God 
 himself; this Beauty begins after him; arising 
 from contrariety, without which is no composi- 
 tion; it being the union of contraries, a friendly 
 enmity, a disagreeing concord ; whence Empedo- 
 cles makes discord and concord the principles of 
 all things; by the first, understanding the variety 
 of the Natures compounding; by the second, 
 their Union: adding, that in God onely there is 
 no Discord, he not being the Union of several 
 Natures, but a pure uncompounded Unity: In 
 these compositions the Union necessarily pre- 
 dominates over the contrariety; otherwise the 
 Fabrick would be dissolved. Thus in the Fidlions 
 of Poets, Venus loves Mars : this Beauty cannot 
 subsist without contrariety ; she curbs and mod- 
 erates him; this temperament allays the strife 
 betwixt these contraries. And in Astrology, Ve- 
 nus is plac'd next Mars, to check his destructive 
 influence; as Jupiter next Saturn, to abate his 
 . malignancy. If Mars were alwayes subjedt to 
 Venus (the contrariety of principles to their due 
 temper), nothing would ever be dissolved. 
 
 26 
 
VI The 
 
 1 his is Beauty in the largest sense, the^ame with Second 
 Harmony; whence God is said to have framed Book 
 the World with musical harmonious tempera- 
 ment. But Harmony properly implyes a melodi- 
 ous agreement of Voices; and Beauty in a restrict 
 acception relates to a proportionable concord in 
 visible things, as Harmony in audible. The de-, 
 sire of this Beauty is Love ; arising onely from 
 one knowing faculty, the Sight: and that gave 
 Plotinus (Ennead. 3, lib. j, 3) occasion to derive 
 epws, Love, from 5pa<ris, Sight. Here the Platonist 
 may object; If Love be onely of visible things, 
 how can it be applyed to Ideas, invisible na- 
 tures? We answer, Sight is twofold, corporeal, 
 and spiritual; the first is that of Sense, the other 
 the Intellectual faculty, by which we agree with 
 Angels; this Platonists call Sight, the corporeal 
 being onely an image of this. So Aristotle, " In- 
 tellect is that to the Soul which sight is to the 
 Body : " Hence is Minerva (Wisdom) by Homer 
 call'd yXau/cwTus, Bright-ey'd. With this sight) 
 Moses, S. Paul, and other Saints, beheld the face/ 
 of God: this Divines call Intellectual, intuitive) 
 cognition; the Beatifical vision, the Reward of 
 the Righteous. 
 
The VII 
 
 Second As Sight, so Beauty (its objecft) is twofold; (the 
 Book two Venus's celebrated by Plato and our Poet) : 
 Sensible, called Vulgar Venus; Intellectual in 
 Ideas (which are the objecft of the Intellecft as 
 colour of sight), nam'd Celestial Venus. Love also 
 is twofold, Vulgar and Celestiall; for as Plato 
 saith, "There must necessarily be as many Loves 
 as Venus's.' 1 
 
 28 
 
VIII The 
 
 Venus then is Beauty, whereof Love is gener- Second 
 ated : properly his Mother, because Beauty is the Book 
 cause of Love, not as productive principle of this 
 adt, to Love, but as its objedt : the Soul being the 
 efficient cause of it as of all his acfls ; Beauty the 
 material: For in Philosophy the efficient is assimi- 
 lated to the Father, the material to the Mother. 
 
The IX 
 
 Second (Celestial* Love is an Intellectual desire of Ideal 
 Book Beauty: Ideas (as we said before) are the Pat- 
 terns of things in God, as in their Fountain; in 
 the Angelick Minde, Essential; in the Soul by Par- 
 ticipation, which with the Substance partakes of 
 the Ideas and Beauty of the first Minde. Hence 
 it follows, that Love of Celestial Beauty in the 
 Soul, is not Celestial Love perfectly, but the 
 nearest Image of it. Its truest being is with the 
 desire of Ideal Beauty in the first Minde, which 
 God immediately adorns with Ideas. 
 
X The 
 
 Love (saith Plato) was begot on Penia, by Porus Second 
 (the son of Metis) in Jupiter's Orchard, being Book 
 drunk with Necflar, when the Gods met to cele- 
 brate Venus' birth. Nature in it self inform, when 
 it receives form from God is the Angelick 
 Minde; this form is Ideas, the first Beauty; which 
 in this descent from their divine Fountain, mix- 
 ing with a different nature, become imperfect. 
 The first Minde, by its opacousness eclipsing, 
 their lustre, desires that Beauty which they have 1 
 lost; this desire is Love; begot when Porus, the 
 affluence of Ideas, mixeth with Penia, the indi- 
 gence of that inform nature we termed Jupi- 
 ter, in whose Garden the Ideas are planted ; with 
 these the first Minde adorned, was by the An- 
 cients named Paradise; to which contemplative 
 life and eternal felicity Zoroaster inyiting us, 
 saith, "Seek, seek Paradise:" Our Divines trans- 
 fer it to the Coelum Empyraeum, the seat of the 
 happy Souls, whose blessedness consists in con- 
 templation and perfection of the Intellecft, ac- 
 cording to Plato. This Love "begot on Venus' 
 birthday," that is, when the Ideal Beauty , though 
 imperfectly, is infused into the Angelick Minde; 
 Venus yet as a childe, not grown to perfection. 
 All the Gods assembled at this Feast, that is 
 their Ideas (as by Saturn we understand both 
 the Planet and his Idea), an expression borrowed 
 from Parmenides. These Gods, then, are those 
 
The Ideas that precede Venus (she is the Beauty 
 
 Second and Grace resulting from their variety) : " Invited 
 
 Book to a banquet of Nedlar and Ambrosia;" those 
 
 whom God feasts with Necflar and Ambrosia 
 
 are eternal beings, the rest not. These Ideas of the 
 
 Angelick Minde are the first eternals ; Porus was 
 
 drunk with Necflar, this Ideal affluence fill'd with 
 
 Eternity; other Ideas were not admitted to the 
 
 Feast, not indued with Immortality. 
 
 Orpheus upon the same grounds saith, "Love 
 was born before all other Gods, in the bosome 
 of Chaos:" Because Nature full of indistindl im- 
 perfecfl forms (the Minde replenished with con- 
 fused Ideas) desires their perfection. 
 
 
XI The 
 
 I he Angelick Minde desires to make these Ideas Second 
 perfecfl; which can onely be done by means op- Book 
 posite to the causes of their imperfecftion, these 
 are Recession from their Principle and mixtion 
 with contrary Nature: their remedy, separation 
 from the unlike Nature, and return and conjunc- 
 tion (as far as possible) with God. Love, the de- 
 sire of this Beauty, excites the Minde to conver-, 
 sion and re-union with him. Every thing is more ^ 
 perfecft as nearer its Principle; This is the first 
 Circle. The Angelick Minde, proceeding from the 
 Union of God, by revolution of intrinsecal know-| 
 ledge returneth to him. Which with the Ancients 
 is Venus Adulta, grown to perfection. Every 
 Nature that may have this conversion, is a Cir- 
 cle; such alone are the Intellectual and Rational, 
 and therefore onely capable of felicity, the ob- 
 taining their first Principle, their ultimate end 
 and highest good. This is peculiar to Immortal 
 Substances, for the Material (as both Platonists 
 and Peripateticks grant) have not this reflection 
 upon themselves, or their Principle. These (the 
 Angelick Minde and Rational Soul) are the two 
 intelligible Circles; answerable to which in the 
 corporeal World are two more : the tenth Heaven 
 immoveable, image of the first Circle; the Ce- 
 lestial Bodies, that are moveable, image of the 
 second. The first Plato mentions not, as wholly 
 different and irrepresentable by corporeal Na- 
 
 33 
 
The ture: of the second in "Timaeus" he saith, that 
 Second "all the Circles of this visible Heaven" (by him 
 Book distinguished into the fixed Sphere, and seven 
 Planets) " represent as many Circles in the Ra- 
 tional Soul." 
 
 /" Some attribute the name of Circle to God ; by 
 the ancient Theologists called "Coelus;" being a 
 Sphere which comprehends all, as the outmost 
 Heaven includes the World. 
 Tn one respecft this agrees with God, in another 
 not: the property of beginning from a point and 
 , returning to it, is repugnant to him; who hath 
 no beginning, but is himself that indivisible point 
 from which all Circles begin, and to which they 
 return. And in this sense it is like wise inconsis- 
 tent with material things; they have a beginning, 
 but cannot return to it. 
 
 In many other properties it agrees with God; 
 He is the most perfedl of beings; this of figures: 
 j neither admit addition: the last Sphere is the 
 place of all Bodies, God of all Spirits: the Soul 
 (say Platonists) is not in the Body, but the Body 
 is in the Soul, the Soul in the Minde, the Minde 
 in God, the outmost Place; who is therefore named 
 by the Cabalists 
 
 34 
 
XII The 
 
 1 he three Graces are Handmaids to Venus : Second 
 Thalia, Euphrosyne, Aglaia; Viridity, Gladnesse, Book 
 Splendour; properties attending Ideal Beauty. 
 Thalia is the permanence of every thing in its en- 
 tire being; thus is Youth called green, Man being 
 then in his perfedl state; which decayes at his 
 years' encrease, into his last dissolution. Venus is 
 proportion, uniting all things ; Viridity, the dura- 
 tion of it. In the Ideal World where is the first 
 Venus, is also the first Viridity; for no Intelligible 
 Nature recedes from its being by growing old. It 
 communicates this property to sensible things as 
 far as they are capable of this Venus, that is, as 
 long as their due proportion continues. The two 
 other properties of Ideal Beauty are Illustration of 
 the Intellecft, Aglaia ; Repletion of the will with 
 desire and joy, Euphrosyne. 
 
 Of the Graces one is painted looking toward 
 us; the continuation of our being is no reflex acft. 
 The other two with their faces from us, seem- 
 ing to return; the operations of the Intellecfl and 
 Will are reflexive: " What comes from God to us, ^ 
 returns from us to God." 
 
The XIII 
 
 Second Venus is said to be born of the Sea; Matter 
 Book t he Inform Nature, whereof every Creature is 
 compounded, is represented by Water, contin- 
 ually flowing, easily receptible of any form. This 
 being first in the Angelick Minde, Angels are 
 many times exprest by Water, as in the Psalms, 
 "The Waters above the Heavens praise God con- 
 tinually;" so interpreted by Origen; and some 
 Platonists expound the Ocean (stil'd by Homer 
 Father of Gods and Men) this Angelick Minde, 
 Principle and Fountain of all other Creatures; 
 Gemistius, Neptune; as Commander of all Wa- 
 ters, of all Mindes Angelical and Humane. This is 
 that living Fountain, whereof he that drinketh 
 shall never thirst; These are the Waters whereon 
 (David saith) God hath founded the World. 
 
 36 
 
XIV The 
 
 lorus (the Affluence of Ideas proceeding from Second 
 God) is stiled by Plato the Son of Metis (Coun- Book 
 sell), in Imitation of the Scripture: whence our 
 Saviour by Dionysius Areopagita is termed the 
 Angel of Counsel, that is, the Messenger of God 
 the Father, so Avicen calls the first Cause con- 
 ciliative, the Minde not having Ideas from it self 
 but from God, by whose counsel she receiveth 
 Knowledge and Art to frame this visible World. 
 
 37 
 
The XV 
 
 Second Love according to Plato is "Youngest and Old- 
 Book est of the Gods;" They as all other things, have 
 a twofold Being, Ideal and Natural. The first God 
 in his natural being was Love, who dispenc'd 
 theirs to all the rest, the last in his Ideal. Love was 
 born in the Descent of the Ideas into the Angel- 
 ick Minde, which could not be perfect till they, 
 its essence, were made so, by Love's conversion 
 to God. The Angelick Minde owing its naturall 
 being to Love, the other Gods, who succeed this 
 Minde, necessarily are younger than he in their 
 natural Being, though they precede him in their 
 Ideal, as not born till these Ideas, though imper- 
 fedlly, were joyn'd to the informed Nature. 
 
 38 
 
XVI The 
 
 1 he Kingdom of Necessity is said to be before Second 
 that of Love:" Every Creature consists of two Book 
 Natures, Material, the imperfecft (which we here 
 understand by Necessity), and Formal, the occa- 
 sion of perfection. That whereof it most partakes 
 is said to be predominant, and the creature to 
 be subjedt to it. Hence is Necessity (Matter) sup- ! 
 pos'd to reign when the Ideas were imperfecft, and/ 
 all Imperfections to happen during that timel 
 all perfections after Love began his reign; for 
 when the Minde was by him converted to God, 
 that which before was imperfedt in her, was per- 
 fecfted. 
 
 39 
 
The XVII 
 
 Second Venus is said "to command Fate." The order and 
 Book concatenation of causes and effects in this sensi- 
 ble World, called Fate, depends on the order of 
 the Intelligible World, Providence. Hence Pla- 
 tonists place Providence (the ordering of Ideas) 
 in the first Minde, depending upon God its ulti- 
 mate end, to which it leads all other things. Thus 
 Venus being the order of those Ideas whereon 
 Fate, the World's order, depends, commands it. 
 Fate is divided into three parts, Clotho, Lache- 
 sis, and Atropos: That which is one in Provi- 
 dence, indivisible in Eternity, when it comes into 
 Time and Fate is divisible, into Past, Present, 
 and Future. Others apply Atropos to the fixed 
 Sphere, Clotho to the seven Planets, Lachesis to 
 sublunary things. 
 
 Temporal corporeal things onely are subjected 
 f to Fate; the Rational Soul being incorporeal 
 I predominates over it; but is subjected to Provi- 
 dence, to serve which is true Liberty. By whom 
 the Will (obeying its Laws) is led to the Acqui- 
 sition of her desired end. And as often as she en- 
 deavours to loose her self from this Servitude, of 
 Free she becomes a Servant and Slave to Fate, 
 of whom before she was the Mistress. To deviate 
 / from the Laws of Providence is to forsake Reason 
 to follow Sense and Irrational Appetite, which 
 being corporeal are under Fate; he that serves 
 these is much more a servant than those he serves. 
 40 
 
A XVIII The 
 
 As from God Ideas descend into the Angelick Second 
 Minde, by which the Love of Intellectual Beauty Book 
 is begot in her, called " Di vine Love ;" so the same 
 Ideas descend from the Angelick Minde into 
 ,the rational Soul, so much the more imperfect in/} 
 her, as she^ wants of Angelicall Perfection: From 
 these springs Humane Love. Plato discourseth of 
 the first, Plotinus of the latter: who by the same 
 Argument whereby he proves Ideas not acci- 
 dental but substantiall in the Angelick Minde, 
 evinceth likewise the specifical Reasons, the Ideas 
 in the Soul, to be substantial, terming the Soul 
 " Venus," as having a specious splendid Love in 
 respecft of these specifical Reasons. 
 
The XIX 
 
 Second Vulgar Love is the Appetite of sensible Beauty, 
 Book through corporeal sight. The cause of this Beauty 
 is the visible Heaven by its moving Power. As our 
 motive faculty consists in Muscles and Nerves 
 (the Instruments of its Operation), so the motive 
 faculty of Heaven is fitted with a Body proper 
 for circular sempiternal motion; through which 
 Body the Soul (as a Painter with his Pencil) 
 changeth this inferiour matter into various forms. 
 Thus vulgar Venus (the beauty of material forms) 
 hath her causal being from the moving power of 
 the Heavens, her formal from colour, enlightened 
 by the visible Sun as Ideas by the invisible; her 
 participate in the Figure and just order of parts 
 communicated to sight by mediation of light and 
 colour, by whose interest onely it procures love. 
 
XX The 
 
 As when the Ideas descend into the Minde, there Second 
 ariseth a desire of enjoying that from whence ?ook 
 this Ideal Beauty comes; so when the species of 
 sensible Beauty flow into the Eye, there springs 
 a twofold Appetite of Union with that whence 
 this Beauty is deriv'd, one sensuall, the other ra- 
 tional ; the Principles of Bestial and Humane Love. 
 If we follow Sense, we judge the Body, wherein 
 we behold this Beauty, to be its Fountain ; whence 
 proceeds a desire of Coition, the most intimate 
 union with it. This is the Love of irrational Crea- 
 tures. But Reason knows that the Body is so 
 far from being its Original, that it is destructive 
 to it, and the more it is sever'd from the Body, 
 the more it enjoyes its own Nature and Dignity: 
 we must not fix with the species of Sense, in the^ 
 Body; but refine that species from all reliques of! 
 corporeal infecftion. 
 
 And because Man may be understood by the 
 Rational Soul, either considered apart, or in its 
 union to the Body; in the first sense, Humane j 
 Love is the Image of the Celestial ; in the second, j 
 Desire of sensible Beauty; this being by the Soul ; 
 abstracted from matter, and (as much as its na- 
 ture will allow) made intellectual. The greater 
 part of Men reach no higher than this; others 
 more perfedl, remembering that more perfecfl 
 Beauty which the Soul (before immerst in the 
 Body) beheld, are inflam'd with an incredible 
 
 43 
 
The desire of reviewing it, in pursuit whereof they 
 Second separate themselves as much as possible from the 
 Book Body, of which the Soul (returning to its first Dig- 
 nity) becomes absolute Mistress. This is the Image 
 of Celestial Love, by which Man ariseth from 
 one perfection to another, till his Soul (wholly 
 united to the Intellect) is made an Angel. Purged 
 from Material dross and transformed into spirit- 
 ual flame by this Divine Power, he mounts up to 
 the Intelligible Heaven, and happily rests in his 
 Father's bosome. 
 
 44 
 
r w - XXI -^ 
 
 ) Vulgar love is onely in Souls immerst in Matter, (Second 
 and overcome by it, or at least hindred by per-;Book 
 turbations and passions. Angelick Love is in the V 
 Intellect, eternal as it. Yet but inferr'd, the greater 
 part turning from the Intellect to sensible things';, 
 and corporeal cares. But so perfect are these ce- 
 lestial Souls, that they can discharge both Func- 
 tions, rule the Body, yet not be taken off from 
 Contemplation of Superiours: these the Poets sig- 
 nifie by Janus with two faces; one looking for- 
 ward upon Sensible things, the other on Intelli- 
 gible: lesse perfect Souls have but one face, and, 
 when they turn that to the Body, cannot see the ! 
 Intellect, being depri v'd of Contemplation ; when 
 to the Intellect, cannot see the Body, neglecting 
 the care thereof. Hence those souls that must for- 
 sake the Intellect to apply themselves to Cor- 
 poreal Government, are by Divine Providencd 
 confm'd to caduque, corruptible Bodies, loosec 
 from which, they may in a short time, if they\ 
 fail not themselves, return to their Intellectua 
 felicity. Other souls not hindred from Specula-*/ 
 tion are tyed to eternal incorruptible Bodies. 
 
 Celestial Souls then (design'd by Janus, as the 
 Principles of Time, motion intervening) behold 
 the Ideal Beauty in the Intellect to love it per- 
 petually; and inferiour sensible things, not to de- 
 sire their Beauty, but to communicate this other 
 to them. Our Souls before united to the Body are j y 
 
 45 
 
The / in like manner double fac'd, but are then as it 
 Second were cleft asunder, retaining but one ; which as 
 Book they turn to either objedt, Sensual or Intellec- 
 tual, is deprived of the other. 
 
 Thus is vulgar Love inconsistent with the Celes- 
 tial; and many ravish'd at the sight of Intellec- 
 tual Beauty, become blinde to sensible; imply 'd 
 by Callimachus, Hymn j in the Fable of Tyre- 
 sias, who viewing Pallas naked, lost his sight, yet 
 by her was made a Prophet; closing the eyes 
 of his Body, she open'd those of his Minde, by 
 which he beheld both the Present and Future. 
 The Ghost of Achilles, which inspired Homer 
 with all Intellectual Contemplations in Poetry, 
 deprived him of corporeal sight. 
 
 Though Celestial Love li veth eternally in the In- 
 tellecfl of every Soul, yet onely those few make 
 use of it, who declining the care of the Body, can 
 with S. Paul say, "Whether in the Body or out 
 of the Body they know not." To which state a 
 man sometimes arrives; but continues there but 
 a while, as we see in Extasies. 
 
XXII The 
 
 I hus in our Soul (naturally indifferent to sensi- Second 
 ble or intelligible Beauty) there may be three Book 
 Loves; one in the Intellect, Angelical; the sec- - 
 ond Humane; the third Sensual. The two latter" 
 are conversant about the same object, Corporeal 
 Beauty; the sensual fixeth its Intention wholly 
 in it; the humane separates it from Matter. The 
 greater part of Mankinde go no further than 
 these two; but they whose understandings are 
 purified by Philosophy, knowing sensible Beauty 
 to be but the Image of another more perfedl, 
 leave it, and desire to see the Celestial, of which 
 they have already a Taste in their Remem- 
 brance; if they persevere in this Mental Eleva- 
 tion, they finally obtain it; and recover that, 
 which though in them from the beginning, yet 
 they were not sensible of, being diverted by 
 other objects. 
 
 47 
 
THE SONNET 
 
THE SONNET 
 
 I 
 Love (whose hand guides my Heart's 
 
 stridl Reins, 
 
 Nor, though he govern it, disdains 
 To feed the Fire with pious care 
 Which first himself enkindled there) 
 Commands my backward Soul to tell 
 What Flames within her Bosome dwell ; 
 Fear would perswade her to decline 
 The charge of such a high designe; 
 But all her weak reludtance fails, 
 'Gainst greater Force no Force avails. 
 Love to advance her flight, wiy lend 
 Those wings by which he did descend 
 Into my Heart, where he to rest 
 For ever, long since built his Nest : 
 I what from thence he dictates write, 
 And draw him thus by his own Light. 
 
The 
 
 Sonnet Love, flowing from the sacred Spring 
 Of uncreated Good, I sing : 
 When born ; how Heaven he moves ; the Soul 
 Informs ; and doth the World controwl ; 
 How closely lurking in the heart, 
 With his sharp weapon's subtle art 
 From heavy earth he Man unties, 
 Enforcing him to reach the skies. 
 How kindled, how he flames, how burns ; 
 By what laws guided now he turns 
 To Heaven, now to the Earth descends, 
 Now rests 'twixt both, to neither bends. 
 Apollo, Thee I invocate, 
 Bowing beneath so great a weight. 
 Love, guide me through this dark designe, 
 And imp my shorter wings with thine. 
 
\A7 
 
 When from true Heav'n the sacred Sun Sonnet 
 
 Into th' Angelick Minde did run, 
 
 And with enliv'ned Leaves adorn, 
 
 Bestowing form on his first-born; 
 
 Enflamed by innate Desires, 
 
 She to her chiefest good aspires ; 
 
 By which reversion her rich Breast 
 
 With various Figures is imprest; 
 
 And by this love exalted, turns 
 
 Into the Sun for whom she burns. 
 
 This flame, rais'd by the Light that shin'd 
 
 From Heav'n into th' Angelick Minde, 
 
 Is eldest Love's religious Ray, 
 
 By Wealth and Want begot that Day, 
 
 When Heav'n brought forth the Queen, 
 
 whose Hand 
 The Cyprian Scepter doth Command. 
 
The IV 
 
 Sonnet 1 his born in amorous Cypris' armes, 
 The Sun of her bright Beauty warmes. 
 From this our first desire accrues, 
 Which, in new fetters caught, pursues 
 The honourable path that guides 
 Where our eternal good resides. 
 By this the fire, through whose fair beams 
 Life from above to Mankinde streams, 
 Is kindled in our hearts, which glow 
 Dying, yet glowing greater grow; 
 By this th' immortal Fountain flows, 
 Which all Heaven forms below, bestowes; 
 By this descends that shower of light 
 Which upwards doth our minds invite; 
 By this th' Eternal Sun inspires 
 And Souls with sacred lustre fires. 
 
V The 
 
 As God doth to the Minde dispence Sonnet 
 
 Its Being, Life, Intelligence, 
 
 So doth the Minde the Soul acquaint 
 
 How t' understand, to move, to paint; 
 
 She thus prepar'd, the Sun that shines 
 
 In the Eternal Breast designes, 
 
 And here what she includes diffuses, 
 
 Exciting every thing that uses 
 
 Motion and sense (beneath her state) 
 
 To live, to know, to operate. 
 
 Inferiour Venus hence took Birth; 
 
 Who shines in Heav'n, but lives on Earth, 
 
 And o'er the World her shadow spreads : 
 
 The elder in the Sun's Glasse reads 
 
 Her Face, through the confused skreen 
 
 Of a dark Shade obscurely seen; 
 
 She Lustre from the Sun receives, 
 
 And to the other Lustre gives; 
 
 Celestial Love on this depends, 
 
 The younger, vulgar Love attends. 
 
The VI 
 
 Sonnet rorm'd by th' eternal Look of God, 
 From the Sun's most sublime abode, 
 The Soul descends into Man's Heart, 
 Imprinting there with wondrous Art 
 What Worth she borrowed of Her Starre, 
 And brought in her Celestial Carre; 
 As well as humane Matter yields, 
 She thus her curious Mansion builds; 
 Yet all those frames from the divine 
 Impression differently decline: 
 The Sun, who 's figur'd here, his Beams 
 Into another's Bosome streams; 
 In whose agreeing Soul he stayes, 
 And guilds it with his virtuous Rayes: 
 The Heart in which Affection's bred, 
 Is thus by pleasing Errour fed. 
 
VII The 
 
 1 he Heart where pleasing Errour raigns, Sonnet 
 This objedl as her Childe maintains, 
 By the fair Light that in her shines 
 (A rare Celestial Gift) refines ; 
 And by degrees at last doth bring 
 To her first splendours sacred Spring: 
 From this divine Look, one Sun passes 
 Through three refulgent Burning-glasses, 
 Kindling all Beauty, which the Spirit, 
 The Body, and the Minde inherit. 
 These rich spoyles, by th' eye first caught, 
 Are to the Soul's next Handmaid brought, 
 Who there resides : She to the Breast 
 Sends them; reform'd', but not exprest: 
 The Heart, from Matter Beauty takes, 
 Of many one Conception makes; 
 And what were meant by Nature's Laws, 
 Distindl, She in one Picfture draws. 
 
 
 57 
 
The VIII 
 
 Sonnet I he Heart by Love allur'd to see 
 
 Within her self her Progenie; 
 This, like the Sun's reflected Rayes 
 Upon the Water's face, survayes; 
 Yet some divine, though clouded Light 
 Seems here to twinckle, and invite 
 The pious Soul, a Beauty more 
 Sublime and Perfedt to adore; 
 Who sees no longer his dim shade 
 Upon the Earth's vast Globe display 'd, 
 But certain Lustre, of the True 
 Sun's truest Image, now in view. 
 The Soul thus entring in the Minde, 
 There such uncertainty doth finde, 
 That she to clearer Light applies 
 Her Armes, and near the first Sun flies: 
 She by his splendour beautious grows, 
 By loving whom all Beauty flows 
 Upon the Minde, Soul, World, and All 
 Included in this spacious Ball. 
 
IX The 
 
 Dut hold! Love stops the forward Course Sonnet 
 That me beyond my scope would force. 
 Great Power! if any Soul appears 
 Who not alone the blossomes wears, 
 But of the rich Fruit is possest, 
 Lend him thy Light, deny the rest. 
 
THE THIRD BOOK 
 
THE THIRD BOOK 
 
 TO treat of both Loves belongs to different 
 sciences ; Vulgar Love to Natural or Moral 
 Philosophy; Divine, to Theology or Meta- 
 physicks. Solomon discourseth excellently of the 
 first in "Ecclesiastes," as a Natural. Philosopher, 
 in his "Proverbs," as a Moral: of the Second in his 
 "Canticles," esteemed the most divine of all the 
 Songs in Scripture. 
 
 

 The r^ STANZA I 
 
 Third 1 he chief order established by divine Wisdom in 
 Book created things is, that every inferiour Nature be 
 immediately governed by the superiour; whom 
 whilst it obeys, it is guarded from all ill, and led 
 without any obstruction to its determinate feli- 
 city; but if through too much affedtion to its own 
 liberty, and desire to prefer the licentious life 
 jbefore the profitable, it rebel from the superiour 
 Mature, it falls into a double inconvenience. First, 
 like a ship given over by the Pilot, it lights some- 
 times on one Rock, sometimes on another, without 
 hope of reaching the Port. Secondly, it loseth the 
 command it had over the Natures subjected to 
 it, as it hath deprived its superiour of his. Irrational 
 Nature is ruled by another, unfit for its Imperfec- 
 tion to rule any! God by his ineffable Excellence 
 provides for every thing, himself needs not the 
 providence of any other: betwixt the two ex- 
 treams, God and Bruits, are Angels and Rational 
 Souls, governing others, and governed by others.' 
 The first Hierarchy of Angels, immediately illu- 
 minated by God, enlighten the next under them; 
 the last (by Platonists termed Daemons, by the 
 Hebrews D-)im as Guardians of Men) are set over 
 us as we over Irrationals. So Psalm 8. Whilst the 
 Angels continued subject to the Divine Power, 
 they retained their Authority over other Crea- 
 tures; but when Lucifer and his Companions, 
 through inordinate love of their own Excellence, 
 64 
 
aspir'd to be equal with God, and to be con- The 
 served, as he, by their own strength, they fell Third 
 from Glory to extream Misery; and when they Book 
 lost the Priviledge they had over others, seeing us 
 freed from their Empire, enviously every hour in- 
 sidiate our good. The same order is in the lesser 
 World, our Soul: the inferiour faculties are di- 
 recfted by the superiour, whom following they 
 erre not. The imaginative corrects the mistakes of 
 outward sense: Reason is illuminated by the In- 
 tellecft, nor do we at any time miscarry, but when 
 the Imaginative will not give credit to Reason, 
 or Reason confident of it self, resists the IntellecfL 
 In the desiderati ve the Appetite is governed by the 
 Rational, the Rational by the Intel ledlual, which 
 our Poet implyes, saying, 
 
 " Love whose hand guides my heart's strict reins." 
 
 The cognoscitive powers are seated in the Head, 
 the desiderative in the Heart. In every well or^ 
 der'd Soul the Appetite is govern'd by Intellec- 
 tual Love; imply ed by the Metaphore of Reines 
 borrowed from Plato in his "Phaedrus." 
 
 "Love to advance my flight, will lend 
 The wings by which he did descend 
 Into my heart" 
 
 When any superiour vertue is said to descend, ] 
 we imply not that it leaves its own height to l 
 come down to us, but draws us up to it self: its 
 
The descending to us, is our ascending to it: other- 
 Third |wise such conjunction would be the imperfec- 
 Book tion of the vertue, not the perfection of him who 
 receives it. 
 
 66 
 
STANZA II The 
 
 "Love, flowing from the sacred Spring Third 
 
 Of uncreated Good * " Book 
 
 From the Fountain of divine goodness into our 
 souls in which that influx is terminated. 
 
 "When born,-" 
 
 The order, participation, conversion of Ideas; see 
 lib. 2, secft. 18. 
 
 "how Heaven he moves; the Soul 
 
 Informs; and doth the World controwl." 
 Of these three properties Love is not the^effi-^ 
 cient: God produceth the Ideas in the Angelick 
 Minde; the Minde illustrates the Soul with Ideal \ 
 Beauty; Heaven is moved by its proper Soul: 
 But without Love these principles do not oper- 
 ate: He is cause of the Minde's conversion to God, 
 and of the Soul's to the Minde; without which the 
 Ideas would not descend into the one, nor the spe- 
 cifick reasons into the other: the Soul not illumi- 
 nated by these, could not elicite this sensible form 
 out of matter by the motion of Heaven. 
 
 67 
 
The STANZA III 
 
 Third When the first emanation from God (the plenty 
 Book O f Ideas) descended into the Angelick Minde, she, 
 desiring their perfection, reverts to God, obtain- 
 ing of him what she covets ; which the more fully 
 she possesseth, the more fervently she loves. This 
 desire (Celestial Love), born of the obscure 
 Minde and Ideas, is explained in this stanza. 
 
 " true Heaven" 
 
 God, who includes all created beings, as Heaven 
 all sensible (lib. 2, sect. n). Onely Spiritual things 
 according to Platonists are true and real, the rest 
 but shadows and images of these. 
 
 "the sacred Sun " 
 The light of Ideas streaming from God. 
 
 " enliven'd Leaves" 
 
 The Metaphore of Leaves relates to the Orchard 
 of Jupiter, where these Ideas were planted (lib. 2, 
 sect. 10): "Enliven'd" as having in themselves 
 the principle of their operation, Intellection, the 
 noblest life, as the Psalmist, "Give me under- 
 standing and I shall live." So the Cabalists to the 
 second Sephirah, which is Wisdom, attribute the 
 name of Life. 
 
 " adorn, bestowing form " 
 To adorn denotes no more than accidentall per- 
 fection, but Ideas are the Substance of the Minde, 
 68 
 
and therefore he adds "bestowing form;" which The 
 though they come to her from without, she re- Third 
 ceives not as accidents, but as her first intrin- Book 
 secal acfl: which our Author implies, terming her 
 desires innate. 
 
 "And by this Love exalted, turns 
 
 Into the Sun for whom she burns." 
 Love transforms the lover into the thing loved. ^ 
 
 "^Wealth and Want-" 
 Porus and Penia (lib. 2, sedt. 10). 
 
 69 
 
The STANZA IV 
 
 Third 1 he properties of Celestial Love are in this 
 Book stanza discovered. 
 
 " in new fetters caught" 
 The Soul being opprest by the Body, her desire 
 of Intel ledtual Beauty sleeps; but, awakened by 
 Love, is by the sensible Beauty of the Body led 
 at last to their Fountain, God. 
 
 "which glow 
 
 Dying, yet glowing greater grow." 
 Motion and Operation are the signes of life, their 
 privation of death; in him who applyes himself 
 to the intellectual part, the rational and the sen- 
 ' sitive fail; by the Rational he is Man; by the In- 
 ;| 4 telledlual communicates with Angels: As Man 
 | he dyes, reviv'd an Angel. Thus the Heart dyes 
 ' in the flames of Intellectual Love, yet consumes 
 X V^ not, but by this death "grows greater," receives 
 a new and more sublime life. See in Plato the 
 
 Fables of Alcestes and Orpheus. 
 
 ~ 
 
STANZA V The 
 
 1 his stanza is a description of sensible Beauty. Third 
 
 Book 
 "The elder in the Sun's glasse reads 
 
 Her face, through the confused skreen 
 
 Of a dark shade obscurely seen." 
 Sensible light is the adl and efficacy of corpo- 
 real, spiritual light of Intelligible Beauty. Ideas 
 in their descent into the inform Angelick Minde, 
 were as colours and figures in the Night. As he 
 who by Moonlight seeth some fair objedl, desires 
 to view and enjoy it more fully in the day; so 
 the Minde, weakly beholding in her self the Ideal 
 Beauty dim, and opacous (which our Author calls 
 "the skreen of a dark shade") by reason of the 
 Night of her imperfedlion, turns (like the Moon) 
 to the eternal Sun, to perfecft her Beauty by him; 
 to whom addressing her self, she becomes Intel- 
 ligible light; clearing the beauty of Celestial Ve- 
 nus, and rendring it visible to the eye of the first 
 Minde. 
 
 In sensible Beauty we consider first the objedl 
 in it self; the same at Midnight as at Noon : sec- 
 ondly the light, in a manner the Soul thereof: the 
 Author supposeth, that as the first part of sensi- 
 ble Beauty (corporeal forms) proceeds from the 
 first part of Intellectual Beauty (Ideal forms), so 
 sensible light flows from the intelligible descend- 
 ing upon Ideas. 
 
The STANZAS VI, VII, VIII 
 
 Third (^ orporeal Beauty imp lyes, first the material dis- 
 Book position of the Body, consisting of quantity in 
 the proportion and distance of parts, of quality 
 in figure and colour: secondly, a certain quality 
 which cannot be exprest by any term better than 
 Gracefulness, shining in all that is fair. This is 
 properly Venus, Beauty, which kindles the fire 
 of Love in Mankinde: they who affirm it results 
 from the disposition of the Body, the sight, fig- 
 ure, and colour of features, are easily confuted 
 } by experience. We see many persons exact, and 
 unaccusable in every part, destitute of this grace, 
 and comelinesse; others lesse perfect in those 
 particular conditions, excellently graceful and 
 comely; Thus Catullus, 
 
 " Many- think Quintia beautious ; fair and tall, 
 And strait she is, a part I grant her all, 
 But altogether beautious I deny; 
 For not one grace doth that large shape supply." 
 
 . He grants her Perfection of Quality, Figure, and 
 Quantity, yet not allows her handsome, as want- 
 ing this Grace. This then must by consequence be 
 ascribed to the Soul; which when perfect and lu- 
 cid, transfuseth even into the Body some Beams 
 of its Splendour. When Moses came from the di- 
 vine Vision in the Mount, his face did shine so 
 exceedingly, that the People could not behold it, 
 unlesse vail'd. Porphyrius relates, that when Plo- 
 72 
 
tinus his Soul was elevated by divine Contem- The 
 plation, an extraordinary brightness appear'd in Third 
 his looks; Plotinus himself averres, that there was Book 
 never any beautiful Person wicked, that this 
 Gracefulnesse in the Body is a certain signe of ( 
 Perfection in the Soul. Proverbs xvii. 24. "Wis- 
 dom shineth in the countenance of the Wise." 1 " 
 From Material Beauty we ascend tO't,he,.firfc,t 
 Fountain by six Degrees: the Soul thfough the 
 sight represents to her self the Beauty of some 
 particular Person, inclines to it, is pleased with it, 
 and while she rests here, is in the first, the most 
 imperfedl material degree. 2. She reforms by her 
 imagination the Image she hath received, making; 
 it more perfect as more spiritual ; and separating \ 
 it from Matter, brings it a little nearer Ideal Beauty ,j[ 
 3. By the light of the agent Intellect abstracting 
 this Form from all singularity, she considers the 
 universal Nature of Corporeal Beauty by it self: 
 this is the highest degree the Soul can reach 
 whilest she goes no further than Sense. 4. Reflect"-] 
 ing upon her own Operation, the knowledge! 
 of universal Beauty, and considering that every \ 
 thing founded in Matter is particular, she con- 
 cludes this universality proceeds not from the 
 outward Object, but her Intrinsecal Power: and 
 reasons thus: If in the dimme Glasse of Mate- 
 rial Phantasmes this Beauty is represented by 
 vertue of my Light, it follows that, beholding it 
 in the clear Mirrour of my substance devested 
 
 73 
 
The of those Clouds, it will appear more perspicuous : 
 Third thus turning into her self, she findes the Image 
 Book ' O f Ideal Beauty communicated to her by the 
 Intellect, the Objecfl of Celestiall Love. 5. She 
 ascends from this Idea in her self, to the place 
 where Celestial Venus is, in her proper form: 
 Who in fullness of her Beauty not being compre- 
 hensible, by any particular Intellect, she, as much 
 as in. her lies, endeavours to be united to the 
 first Minde, the chiefest of Creatures, and general 
 Habitation of Ideal Beauty. Obtaining this, she 
 terminates, and fixeth her journey; this is the 
 sixth and last degree. They are all imply'd in 
 the 6th, /th, and 8th Stanzas 
 
 " Form'd by th' eternal Look, &c." 
 
 Platonists affirm some Souls are of the nature of 
 Saturn, others of Jupiter or some other Planet; 
 meaning, one Soul hath more conformity in its 
 Nature with the Soul of the Heaven of Saturn, 
 than with that of Jupiter, and so on the contrary; 
 of which there can be no internal Cause, assigned ; 
 the external is God, who (as Plato in his "Ti- 
 maeus") "Soweth and scattereth Souls, some in 
 the Moon, others in other Planets and Stars, the 
 Instruments of Time." 
 
 Many imagine the Rational Soul descending 
 from her Star, in her " Vehiculum Coeleste," of 
 her self forms the Body, to which by that Me- 
 dium she is united. Our Author upon these 
 74 
 
grounds supposeth, that into the "Vehiculum" The 
 of the Soul, by her endued with Power to form Third 
 the Body, is infused from her Star a particular Book 
 formative vertue, distinct according to that Star; 
 thus the aspedt of one is Saturnine, of another 
 Jovial, &c. In their looks we reade the nature of 
 their Souls. 
 
 But because inferiour Matter is not ever obedi- 
 ent to the Stamp, the vertue of the Soul is not 
 alwayes equally exprest in the visible Effigies; 
 hence it happens that two of the same Nature 
 are unlike; the Matter whereof the one consists, 
 being lesse disposed to receive that Figure than 
 the other; what in that is compleat is in this im- 
 perfecl; ; our Author infers, that the figures of two 
 Bodies being formed by vertue of the same Star, 
 this Conformity begets Love. 
 
 "From the Sun's most sublime abode." 
 The Tropick of Cancer : by which Souls according 
 to Platonists descend, ascending by Capricorn. 
 Cancer is the House of the Moon, who predom- 
 inates over the vital Parts, Capricorn of Saturn 
 presiding over Contemplation. 
 
 "The Heart in which AfFedtion 's bred 
 
 Is thus by pleasing Errour fed/' 
 Frequently, if not alwayes, the Lover believes 
 that which he loves more beautious than it is; 
 he beholds it in the Image his Soul hath formed 
 
 75 
 
The of it, so much fairer as more separate from Mat- 
 Third ter, the Principle of Deformity; besides, the Soul 
 Book ^5 more indulgent in her Affection to this Spe- 
 cies, considering it is her own Childe produc'd in 
 her Imagination. 
 
 " one Sun passes 
 
 Through three refulgent Burning-glasses." 
 One Light flowing from God, beautifies the An- 
 gelick, the Rational Nature, and the Sensible 
 World. 
 
 " the Soul's next Handmaid " 
 The Imaginative. 
 
 "-to the Breast." 
 
 The Breast and Heart here taken for the Soul be- 
 cause her nearest Lodging; the Fountain of Life 
 and Heat. 
 
 " reform'd, but not exprest." 
 "Reform'd" by the Imagination from the de- 
 formity of Matter; yet not reduc'd to perfect 
 immateriality, without which true Beauty is not 
 " Exprest." 
 
 Finis 
 
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 
 
1 Cf. N. Mattioli, Studio critico sopra Egidio Ro- Notes to 
 mano Colonna (Rome, 1896) , pp. 19 j et seq. ; and, Intro- 
 
 in support of the traditional attribution to Egidio, dudlion 
 G.Boffito, Saggio di Bibliografia Egidiana (Flor- 
 ence, 1911), pp. ^7, 58. 
 
 2 Liber I Metaphysicorum, V, xv. 
 
 3 Inf. iv, 131. 
 
 4 Triumphus Famae, iii, 4-7. 
 
 5 Marsilii Ficini Opera (Basle, 1,576), I, p. 649. 
 
 6 Prefatory letters to Bernardo del Nero & An- 
 tonio Manetti: Marsilio Ficino sopra 1'Amore 
 overo Convito di Platone. 
 
 7 Opera, ed. cit., I, p. 628. 
 
 8 Cf.Caterina Re, GirolamoBenivieni Florentine, 
 pp. 7^-80. 
 
 9 De veritate Fidei in Dominicae Crucis trium- 
 phum, IV, iii. 
 
 10 Cf. }. M. Rigg, Pico della Mirandola, pp. xxiii, 
 xxiv. 
 
 11 Commento, i, secft. 4. 
 
 12 But cf. Mr. Rigg's interpretation of this passage, 
 op. cit., pp. xxv, xxvi. 
 
 13 Cf. especially his Fasciculus Amoris. 
 
 14 Sopra 1'Amore, p. 108. 
 
 15 Commento, ii, secft. 20. 
 
 16 Cf. Caterina Re, op. cit., pp. 208-211. 
 
 17 Cf. E. Solmi, Benedetto Spinoza e Leone Ebreo. 
 Studio su una fonte italiana dimenticata dello 
 Spinozismo. Modena, 1903. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 Marsilii Ficini Florentini Opera. Basle, 1,776. 
 
 Marsilio Ficino sopra 1'Amore overo Convito di 
 Platone. Florence, 1^44. 
 
 Joannis Pici, Mirandulae Concordiaeque comitis, 
 Opera quae extant omnia. Basle, 1601. 
 
 Opere di Girolamo Benivieni Florentine, con una 
 Canzonadello Amore celeste et divino,col Com- 
 mento dello III. S. Conte Giovanni Pico Miran- 
 dolano. Florence, 1^19; Venice, 1522; etc. 
 
 Commento di Hieronymo Benivieni sopra a piii 
 sue canzone et sonetti dello Amore e della Bel- 
 lezza divina. Florence, ijoo. 
 
 J. M. Rigg: Introducftion to Giovanni Pico della 
 Mirandola ; his Life by his nephew Giovanni Fran- 
 cesco Pico; etc. Translated from the Latin by Sir 
 Thomas More. London, 1890. 
 
 Vincenzo di Giovanni: Giovanni Pico della Mi- 
 randola nella storia del rinascimento e della filo- 
 sofia in Italia. Palermo, 1894. 
 
 F. Calori Cesis: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 
 detto La Fenice degli Ingegni, Mirandola, 1897. 
 
 Vittorio Rossi: II Quattrocento. Milan, 1900. 
 
 83 
 

 Biblio- Adolfo Gaspary: Storia della Letteratura Itali- 
 graphi- ana, volume secondo parte prima, trad, da Vitto- 
 cal rio Rossi. Turin, 1900. 
 
 Arnaldo della Torre: Storia dell' Accademia Pla- 
 tonica di Firenze. Florence, 1902. 
 
 Caterina Re: Girolamo Benivieni Fiorentino. 
 Citta di Castello, 1906. 
 
 Dialoghi di Amore composti per Leone medico. 
 Venice, 1541. 
 
 A Platonick Discourse upon Love, written in 
 Italian by John Picus Mirandula, in Explication 
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 The History of Philosophy, by Thomas Stan- 
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 Walter Raleigh: Introduction to The Book of the 
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