Asclepius

such as the cultivation of land, pastures, building, port navigation, and the alternate exchange of loans, which is the strongest bond of humanity. And the part of the world that is water and earth, which part keeps the art and discipline of knowing the world, and preserves it by use, without which God did not wish the world to be perfect. The majesty of God follows what is pleasing, and completes the effect by will. Nor is it credible that what pleased God will displease him, since he knew both that it would be and that it would please him. But, O Asclepius, observe how you hasten with the desire of a swift mind to hear how man can have or cultivate those things that are in him. Hear then, O Asclepius: the love of God alone, along with those things that are in the body, is the one frequenting of the rites. No other animal senses these, neither the communal nor the wild animals, by which man alone—in adorations and praises of men, in obsequies, and in the heaven and celestial things—is delighted. Deservedly, the chorus of the Muses is sent down from the highest x? divinity into the assembly of men, so that the earthly world might not seem more uncultivated if it lacked the sweetness of melodies, but rather that it might be celebrated by the songs and praises of musical men, and that the sweetness of harmony would not be lacking on earth. Except for those very few who are gifted with a pure mind, they have been allotted the task of a more venerable and to-be-admired care, whose keenness, from the confusion of their dual nature, has settled into interior intelligence amidst the mass of the body, placed in charge of the elements and these lower things of theirs. Therefore, man is an animal, not indeed immortal because he is mortal in part, but perhaps apt from that which is composed, because he seems to be right reason for mortality in all things, since he was made from both, where he could not have been from one material substance.