Book One

Virgil

...it is agreed The text continues from the previous page's discussion of the two paths of life. that these two duties existed. This is approved among our own people with the firmest consensus of all. Indeed, to omit all others, does not Maro The Roman poet Virgil, whose full name was Publius Vergilius Maro. propose certain eternal rewards for those who have finished their lives? He puts forward those "who enriched life through the arts they discovered." A quote from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 6, line 663. He praises, therefore, those who through long investigation devised various disciplines and sciences, or added significant improvements to those things others had already devised. But so as not to leave the other kind of life unhonored, he follows up with right actions: "Here are the bands who suffered wounds fighting for their country; and the priests who remained chaste while life lasted; and the pious poets who spoke words worthy of Phoebus." Phoebus is another name for Apollo, the god of prophecy and poetry. Virgil here lists the heroes of the "active" life in the underworld.

As for what pertains to Christians, the matter is so clear it needs no proof. For both in the ancient writings of the Hebrews under the name of
Mary, Rachel. Martha, Leah.

Rachel, and in those teachings which flowed from Christ under the name of Mary, we see the contemplative life speculatio|From the Latin 'speculari' (to observe or scout). In this context, it refers to the 'contemplative life'—the intellectual or spiritual pursuit of truth. expressed. And again, in the former through Leah, and in the latter through Martha, we see the active life demonstrated. Both types of living, therefore, are so much our own that whether men excel in the one or the other, we follow their lives with much praise.

But since all things are best distinguished by their "end" The Greek concept of telos, or the ultimate goal/purpose of a thing., who does not see that just as in acting we set before ourselves what is right and just, so all investigation is referred to the truth? Indeed, this investigation, ascending through many steps in its own order, gradually emerges to gaze upon the very incorporeal? and divine essence of God. The OCR reads 'corpoream' (corporeal), but the context of ascending from matter suggests Landino likely wrote 'incorpoream' (incorporeal) or was referring to the 'body' of divine truth. For we see—though their number is small—some who are warned by certain shadows and images of those things which fall upon our senses. These men are inflamed with such an ardent love for celestial things that they leave behind all cares and business. Though they had previously perceived physical bodies through the senses and the likenesses of bodies through imagination, they thereafter perceive the nature of bodies by reason itself; then they perceive incorporeal but created spirits by the intellect; and finally, by the intelligence, they gaze upon that which is uncreated. This is an altogether marvelous progress, through which our soul—gradually withdrawing itself from the most humble prison of the body and raised toward higher things—ascends from the lowest dregs of matter to the very summit of divinity. Therefore, we shall truly conclude this whole topic if we say the office of contemplation is concerned with the truth, since by the truth itself the human mind is perfected and completed.

Doubt. Solution.

But you will say, perhaps: will this truth be found in just any kind of thing? It will indeed, but especially if we are occupied with the knowledge of God. For our investigation sets Him before itself as the ultimate finish line of its course, to which all human actions and thoughts are referred. When you have reached Him, there is nowhere further to go. For there we discover that final and ultimate—and also the "highest good"—which we all desire by nature’s guidance, but which few understand once the clouds of error and ignorance are removed. This is what not only Christians preach, but what the Aristotelians understood long before Christ was born, and the Platonists understood long before others.

For the divine Plato thinks that our souls—after they have fallen from the bosom of God into these lowest dregs, or rather were drawn down to adorn this lowest part of the world—remain for a rather long time from such an exalted and headlong fall...

† † Here: the highest good is in God, by the consensus of Plato, Aristotle, and the Christians.