An ornate woodcut headpiece featuring symmetrical scrolling acanthus leaves and floral motifs.

LUDWIG COMBACH,

STUDENT OF MEDICINE,

M. CHRISTOPHOR COMBA-

CH, Rector of the

Wetteran School, his dearest brothers

JOHANNES COMBACH

Decorative ornamental drop cap "C" with floral scrollwork.

Since there are four things toward which the human appetite is carried by nature above all others: riches, honor, pleasure, and knowledge, a certain divine quality seems to reside in each of them. For they would not move us unless there were in them some particle of the first goodness; which, as it is primarily desirable in itself, so things are not desirable unless they are so by participation in it. It is common to all those things that are said to be "one" by Aristotle, that they are not such unless they are referred to that which is "such" by itself and primarily, as is gathered from Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 4, text ch. 2. There is, indeed, one first good; the rest are so only insofar as they participate in this good. And there is one first desirable object: therefore, nothing else is desirable except insofar as it participates in the first desirable object. For the good and the desirable are the same, as is discussed at length elsewhere. Riches bear a certain likeness of divinity in this: because of their maximum quantity and abundance, they approach a sort of infinity. Each person seeks riches for himself so that he may not be in need; he is rich who is in need of nothing. God is therefore rich, for all things are within Him.