Previously Unpublished Works, Fascicle 1

...an observer in uncertain things, a forewarner in doubts, a protector 1, a helper to the needy; who is able for you—now in dreams, now in signs, now in person when need requires—to cut away evils, to hasten good things, to lift up the lowly, to support those who waver 2, to clarify obscure things, to guide favorable circumstances, and to correct adversity." It would be a long task to relate what this man and other non-Christian original: "infideles" philosophers say about angels. Therefore, let these remarks suffice.

Concerning happiness, however, they have spoken extensively. I speak of true happiness: not of Epicurean pleasure, nor of riches, nor of honors, nor of money, nor of fame, nor of glory. Rather, I speak of that happiness of which Aristotle says: Men are blessed as angels are. This is the future happiness which magnificently exalts philosophy, as Empedocles says, and which is to be held in God and from God. This is what Avicenna clearly explains in the Roots of Moral Philosophy, and Al-Farabi and all others agree that it consists in the participation in divine goodness by knowing and loving it. For they prove and show this: our appetite, as Aristotle says, would go on infinitely unless it stopped at the highest good original: "summum bonum". The desire of the rational soul is enclosed within the immensity of this highest good. However, the appetite and desire for the highest good follow knowledge. For this reason, the soul must know and desire the highest good by which it may eventually be fulfilled, because a natural appetite will not be frustrated in reaching its end.

And so, not only Aristotle, nor Avicenna, nor others whose books are well known define the immortality of souls; but in the first book of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero works throughout to demonstrate the immortality of the soul in many beautiful ways. Similarly, in the book On Old Age, that same immortality is determined by Marcus Tullius Cicero's full name. And it is beautifully said 3 in the book On the Divine Nature Roger Bacon is quoting the "Asclepius," a Hermetic text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which was highly regarded as ancient wisdom by medieval scholars.: "God, the father or lord of all things, and he who alone is all things, willingly reveals himself to everyone. He does not reveal where 4 he is by location, nor what he is by quality, nor how great he is by quantity. Instead, he illuminates man by the intelligence of the mind alone. When the darkness of errors has been shaken off from the soul and the clarity of truth perceived, man mixes himself entirely with the sense of divine intelligence. Through his love for this, from that part of nature which..."

Footnotes at bottom of page
1 The manuscript reading "curator" was altered to "tutator" (protector).

2 The manuscript reads "mitancia," likely a misspelling of "nutantia" (wavering).

3 Asclepius, page 370, 1594 edition.

4 The manuscript reads "ut" (as) instead of "ubi" (where).