The General Epistle

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Preface to the Good-willed Reader:

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The natural, underlying drive of all intellectual beings is to act with perpetual motion, holding the desire of the soul as if it were the nourishment of the intellect. It is impossible to place a hindrance upon this, for in its unbridled rush toward progress and striving, it seeks to move wherever it is drawn by the prior inclination of the mind, except when it changes the objects toward which it is incessantly carried by its active passion.

For when the object changes, the mind itself does not accept being stopped, nor does it cease its violent, forward-thrusting movement. Instead, it rises from the same active power toward another desired thing, so that it may not remain idle in its longing.

This is because it possesses within itself, with complete illumination, the philosophy of intellectual things. It strives so far forward in contemplation that, as the song says, rivers cannot restrain its flame-lit, burning urge. Its withdrawal is nothing other than an intellectual death, and a darkness for the soul-filled nourishment.

For this reason, the Creator of nature gave a commandment to the Levites the tribe of priests in the Old Testament regarding the perpetual burning of fire upon the altar of burnt offerings. By this, He demanded that we—who have been caught by this fire—burn up this ever-burning desire, which is inherent in us, through a certain beautiful and maddening stretching forth toward the Source (which is the origin of longing), just as the natural magnetic encounter occurs with iron. Until, along with the purple-robed prophet David, from all...