Dialogues of Love - Dialoghi d'Amore

Written by Leo the Hebrew

1535

Italy

I. Love and desire

Filone. Knowing you, O Sofia, causes love and desire in me.

Sofia. Discordant, O Filone, seem to me the effects that my knowledge produces in you, but it is perhaps passion that makes you speak like this.

Filone. They are discordant in comparison to yours which are foreign to all correspondence.

Sofia. Rather, they are effects of the will which are contrary to each other, like loving and desiring.

Filone. Why opposites?

Sofia. Because the things that we consider good, that we have and possess, we love, but those that we lack we desire, so that what we love we begin by desiring, then once we we got what we wanted, love comes and desire is no more.

Filone. What makes you have this opinion?

Sofia. The example of the things we love and desire. Don't you see that health, when we don't have it, we desire it, but we won't say that we love it, and once we have it, we love it and don't desire it. Riches, inheritances, jewels, before we have them we desire them and do not love them, and once we have them we no longer desire them, but we love them.

Filone. Although we cannot love health and wealth when we lack them, since we do not have them, nevertheless we love to possess them.

Sofia. This is an improper way of saying that we love, because if we want to possess a thing we mean by that we desire this thing: love is in fact that of the very thing that we love, while desire is of the thing itself. 'to have or to acquire it. It therefore does not seem that loving and desiring can be found together.

Filone. Your arguments, O Sofia, prove better the subtlety of your mind than the truth of your opinion, because if what we desire we do not like, we would desire what we do not like and consequently what we abhorred and hated, by a contradiction which could not be greater.

Sofia. I do not make the mistake, O Filone, of saying of a thing that if I do not possess it I do not love it, and that if I have it I will love it and no longer desire it, but I do not therefore desire what I abhor nor what I love, because we have the thing we love and we lack the thing we desire. And what obvious example can we give than that of children? For he who does not have them cannot love them, but desires them, and he who has them does not desire them but loves them.

Filone. As you show with the example of the children, you should also remember it with the example of the husband. This one, before we have it we desire it and we love it at the same time, but once we have it, the desire comes to be lacking and sometimes also the love, even if in many it is missing. persists and even grows, which very often happens in both husbands and wives. Doesn’t this last example seem more likely to confirm my point than yours to refute it?

Sofia. Your words satisfy me in part, but not completely, especially if we follow your example which resembles the doubt we are discussing.

Filone. I'm going to talk to you in a more general way. You know that love belongs to things that are good, because the good thing that you want is in itself lovable. And just as there are three kinds of good, the useful, the delectable, and the honest, so there are three kinds of love: one is the delectable, the other is the useful, and the third is the 'honest. The last two, when we have them, we must love them for a time, either before possessing them or after. We don't like the delectable afterwards, because all the things which charm our material feelings, by their nature, when we possess them we abhor them more quickly than we love them. It is for this reason that you must grant me that we love such things before possessing them, and likewise when we desire them, but since after we have possessed them completely, the desire comes to be missed, most often also missing the love we have for them. Also you will grant me that love and desire can be found together.

Sofia. Your reasons (according to my judgment) have the force to prove your first words, but mine which are contrary to them are still not weak or devoid of truth. How is it possible that one truth can be contrary to another equally certain truth? Deliver me from this ambiguity which leaves me rather perplexed.

Filone. I come to ask you, O Sofia, for a remedy for my sorrows, and you ask me for a solution to your doubts. Perhaps you do it to keep me away from this type of relationship which does not suit you, or because the conceptions of my poor mind displease you just as much as the affects of my restless will.

Sofia. I must admit that sweet and pure intelligence has more of the strength in me to move me than does loving will. So I don't think I'm insulting you by valuing what is most valuable in you, because if you love me as you say, you must strive to appease my intellect rather than excite my appetite. Therefore leave aside everything else and dispel my doubts.

II. Heavenly music

Filone. Although there is no generation in the celestial bodies to renew them in turn, despite everything, perfect and reciprocal love is not lacking in them. The main cause which shows us their love is this friendship and perfect concordance which is perpetually found among them, because you know that all concordance comes from a true friendship or a true love. If you contemplated, O Sofia, the correspondence and concordance of these movements of the celestial bodies (from those which, first, move from east to west, and others which, conversely, go from west to east, the one with very rapid movement, the other with less rapidity; some slow and some others very slow; sometimes moving forward and sometimes moving back; directing towards the north, sometimes towards the south, sometimes towards the middle of the zodiac one of them, like the sun, never deviating from the straight path of the zodiac, never going towards the north nor towards; noon like the other planets); and if you did not know the number of celestial spheres for which the various movements are necessary: ​​measurements, shapes and positions, poles, epicycles, centers and eccentrics, one ascending, the other descending, one in the east from the sun, the other to the west, and many other things that it would take too long to list in our conversation, everywhere you would see such a wonderful correspondence and concord between diverse bodies and deformed movements united harmoniously, that you would remain stunned by the sagacity of the orderly. Is there any greater proof of true love and perfect dilection between beings than to see such sweet established conformity maintained in such diversity? Pythagoras said that, in their movement, the celestial bodies generated excellent voices which responded to each other in harmonious concordance, and he said of this celestial music that it was the reason for the sustenance of the entire universe in its weight, number and measure. He assigned to each sphere and each planet the timbre of the voice belonging to it, and he revealed the harmony resulting from the whole. He also says that the reason why this celestial music is neither perceived nor heard is its distance in the sky and its distance from us, or even that it is because of habituation that we do not hear it. Let us not hear, as happens to those who live near the sea and do not hear the crash of the waves due to habit, except when they come closer to it again. Love and friendship being therefore the reason for all concordance, and this being greater, firmer and more perfect in the celestial bodies than in all the lower bodies, it follows that there exists between them a plus greater and more perfect love and a more perfect friendship than in the lower bodies.

III. Pan and Syrinx

Filone. The poets represent the god Pan with two horns on his head raised towards the sky, a face of fire and a long beard which falls on his chest. He has in his hand a rod and a flute with seven pipes, on his back variously spotted skin, short, hard and rough limbs, goat's feet. It is said that Pan fought with Cupid, and having been defeated by him, he was condemned to be in love with Syrinx, a virgin nymph of Arcadia. The latter, fleeing Pan who was pursuing her, was stopped in her course by the river Ladon. She asked the other nymphs for help and was changed into reeds, in other words marsh plants. Pan who was pursuing her, hearing the sound that the wind produced when striking these reeds, experienced such a sweet harmony that, both for the pleasure of the sound and out of love for the nymph, he took seven of these reeds and tied them together. together with wax and thus made the flute, a melodious musical instrument.

Sofia. I would like you to tell me if the poets mean some allegory by this.

Filone. Besides the historical significance of a sylvan from Arcadia who, in love, devoted himself to music and became the inventor of the flute with seven reeds joined by wax, there is no doubt that there is a another deep and allegorical meaning, that is to say that Pan, which in Greek means "all", is the universal nature ordering all things in the world. The two horns which he has on his forehead and which rise towards the heavens, are the two poles of the sky, the Arctic and the Antarctic. The spotted skin on its back is the eighth star-studded sphere. Its fiery face is the sun, with the other planets which are seven in all, just as there are seven organs in a face, that is, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and the mouth, all of which, as we said above, signify the seven planets. The hair and the long beard which falls on his chest are the rays of the sun and other planets or stars which are suspended in the lower world in order to create generations and mixtures. The short and rough limbs are the lower elements and bodies, full of coarseness and harshness compared to the celestial bodies, and among these limbs the feet are goats, because the feet of goats never walk straight, but go hopping. and crooked in a disorderly manner: such are the feet of the lower world, and its movements and transformations from one essence to another, transversely and without determinate order, all grossness and chaos from which the celestial bodies are exempt. This is the meaning of the figure of Pan.

Sofia. I like that: but tell me again the meaning of his love for Syrinx, which is more suitable for our purpose.

Filone. It is also said that this universal nature, so great, powerful, excellent and wonderful, cannot exist without love. So she loved the pure and spotless virgin, in other words the stable and incorruptible order of things in this world, because nature loves the best and the most perfect. So this was what Pan pursued, and nature fled from him, the lower world being too unstable and excessively changeable, with its goat's feet. The flight of this virgin was interrupted by the river Ladon, that is to say the sky which continually runs like a river, and it is there that the pure temporary stability of the bodies generated from the lower world. Even if the sky does not escape a continual instability due to its continual local movement, this instability is ordered and permanent, virgin without corruption, and its deformities exist with an ordered and harmonious correspondence, following what we said above at about heavenly music and melody. It is in them that we recognize the pipes of the reeds of the river into which Syrinx was metamorphosed, and in these same reeds the breath of the spirit generates sweet sounds and harmony, because the intellectual spirit which moves the heavens is the cause even consonance and musical correspondence. Using these reeds Pan made the flute with seven of them, which signifies the congregation of the orders of the seven planets as well as their wonderful harmonic concordance. Also it is said that Pan carries the rod and the flute which he plays constantly, because nature continually uses the ordered mutation of the seven planets because of the permanent mutations of the lower world. Consider, O Sofia, that I have succinctly described the content of Pan's love for Syrinx.

IV. Pan and Syrinx

Sofia. What is the bow of Apollo?

Filone. I could tell you that it is the circumference of the solar body from which its rays escape like arrows, because arrows presuppose an arc. But to tell the truth, Apollo's arc is still something else that I will reveal to you when we talk about his loves. I could also tell you another older allegory, learned and learned, about the birth of Diana and Apollo.

Sofia. Tell it, please.

Filone. It makes known the role of their birth in the creation of the world, in accordance with most of the Mosaic Holy Scripture.

Sofia. In what way?

Filone. Moses writes that by creating the upper celestial world and the lower terrestrial world (the terrestrial world with all the elements was confused and made of a dark and obscure abyss) with the help of the divine spirit blowing on the waters of the In the abyss, God produced light, and with first night, then light, it was the first day. This is what the fable of Latona's birth means, which is the celestial substance that the loving Jupiter (supreme creator of all things) impregnated with brilliant bodies, mainly the sun and the moon. Juno (in other words the globe of the elements then in confusion) opposed it, the brilliant bodies could not penetrate it with their rays and were even rejected on all sides of the globe. On the other hand, the abyss of the waters (the serpent Python) prevented the sky from generating the light of the sun and the moon on the earth. Finally, on the island of Delos (an exposed part of the earth which at the beginning was not large, placed like an island on the waters) it is there that Diana and Apollo came to light for the first time, because thanks to the opening of the waters, the air there was not as thick. Also, in the holy creation it is said that after the beings created on the first day, night and day were created on the second day and the ethereal firmament was unfolded, which marked the division of air, of water and earth. Then, on the third day, the earth emerged, giving rise to plant production. On the fourth day, the appearance of the sun and the moon took place above the now discovered earth, and which is the figure of the birth of Latona on the island of Delos. In this fourth place the pregnancy of the first day is manifested, with deliverance on the fourth day of the six days of creation. It is said that Diana came out first and that she was the midwife who helped in the birth of Apollo, because in creation night preceded day and the lunar rays began to prepare the air to receive the solar rays. Apollo killed Python, in other words the abyss, because, with its rays, the sun dried up and gradually exposed the earth, while purifying the air and absorbing the water, and thus it consumed this humanity in disorder which survived the abyss over the entire extent of the globe and which prevented the creation of all animals, even if it did not prohibit the creation of plants which were more humid. This is how on the fifth day of creation, the day following the appearance of the luminaries, the flying and aquatic animals, that is to say the least perfect, were created, and on the sixth and last day of creation, was formed man, the most perfect of lower beings, while the sun and the sky had already arranged the elements and tempered their mixture in such a way that it was possible to make of this mixture a creature in which the spiritual mingled with the corporeal, the divine to the earthly, the eternal to the corruptible in an admirable composition.

Sofia. I really like this allegory and the conformity it has with the creation recounted in the Holy Mosaic Scripture, as well as this continuation of the work of the six days, one day after another, and one must sincerely admire that things so great and so deep can thus be hidden under the veil of the carnal loves of Jupiter.

V. Knowledge of the infinite

Filone. It is impossible for the finite to become infinite, just as it is impossible for the creature to be made creator, and we do not find the power for such a conquest in the souls of the blessed, but, although finite creatures, they they are in the power to mate and unite with the infinite beauty of God, and for this the knowledge they have of his immense beauty is useful to them, and it is love and inclination which direct them there.

Sofia. How can the infinite be known from the finite? And how can infinite beauty be imprinted on a finite mind?

Filone. There is nothing strange in this, because the thing known remains and is imprinted on the one who knows according to its mode and its nature, and not according to the thing known. Admire how the entire hemisphere is seen by the eye and remains imprinted in the tiny pupil, not certainly according to the size and nature of the sky, but according to what the importance and virtue of the pupil are capable of: thus the infinite beauty is impressed on the finite minds of angels or the blessed, not according to the mode of its infinity, but according to the finite capacity of the mind which knows it. The eagle's eye is indeed endowed with sight, and the great and brilliant sun is directly transfigured there, not as it is by itself, but as the eagle's eye is capable of seeing it. receive. There is another knowledge of the immense divine beauty which is equivalent to this, and it is that which the supreme God has of his own beauty, and it is as if the sun with its brilliance (which is visible) saw himself, because it would be a perfect vision, given that there the operation of knowing would be equivalent to the thing known. There are therefore three visions of God, as for the sun: the lowest is that of the human intellect which sees in enigmate (9)the divine beauty of the corporeal universe which is the simulacrum of this beauty, just like the human eye which sees the brilliant body of the sun transfigured in water or impressed on any other diaphanous body, because it is not capable of see it directly. The second vision is that of the angelic intellect which sees the immense divine beauty directly, without equaling its object, but receiving it according to its finite capacity, just as the eagle's eye sees the bright sun. The third vision is that which the divine intellect has of its immense beauty, which is equivalent to its object, as if the brilliant sun saw itself.

VI. The myths of androgyny

Sofia. What conclusion do you intend to draw from this holy story of the creation of man?

Filone. You must realize that this holy story contradicts itself, which first says that God created Adam on the sixth day, male and female, and then says that God declared that it was not good for Adam to found alone and “let us make him a helper who faces him (11)", that is to say, let us create for him his wife, whom God made from one of Adam's sides while he slept. The woman was therefore not made from the beginning, as it was said. At the end again, in wanting to relate the posterity of Adam, it is said (as you have seen) that God created Adam in the likeness of God, male and female, and he called him Adam when they were created . It therefore seems that at the beginning of creation, they were immediately man and woman, and not subsequently by the extraction of a rib from its sides as has been said. Furthermore, in each of these texts, there appears an obvious contradiction of the text itself: it is said first that God created Adam in his image, male and female, and that he blessed them, et cetera . Adam is the name of the first male being, and woman was called Eve from her creation. Then, in creating Adam, and not Eve, God created him male only and not female and male, as it is said. And stranger still is what he says at the end: “These are the descendants of Adam: in the day that God created him, he created them male and female, and when they were created he called their name Adam. ". Note that it is said that God, in creating Adam, made him male and female and that he called them both by the name of Adam on the day they were created, without mentioning Eve, who is the name of Adam's wife. It has been said before that Adam being alone and without a wife, God created this one from the rib of his sides and called her Eve. Does it not seem to you that there are, O Sofia, great contradictions in the holy Mosaic texts?

Sofia. Great indeed, it seems to me, and we must not believe that Saint Moses contradicts himself so obviously here that he seems to do so voluntarily. We must therefore believe that he intends to suggest some occult mystery beneath this obvious contradiction.

Filone. And you are right: he actually wants us to feel that he is contradicting himself and to look for the determining cause.

Sofia. What can he mean?

Filone. Ordinary commentaries literally exhaust themselves in making this text agree, by saying that first we summarize the creation of the two together, and then by saying the thing in extenso , how the woman was made with the help of the flank of the man. But in truth this is not satisfactory, because from the beginning we introduce a contradiction for the whole, because it is not said that God first created Adam and Eve, but only Adam male and female (and this is how the end confirms it: "and he called them both by the name of Adam, the first day that he created them") without mentioning Eve in this whole, except then in the separation from coasts, so the contradiction remains with all its difficulties.

Sofia. So what do you mean by this opposition of words?

Filone. This means that Adam, that is to say the first man whom God created on the sixth day of creation, as a human servant (12)contained in him male and female without division, so it is said that "God created Adam in the image of God, male and female he created them." Once he calls him in the singular (Adam, a man), another time he calls him in the plural ("male and female he created them"), in order to show that being a suppositum, he contained both the male and female. This is why the ancient Hebrew commentaries in the Chaldean language say and comment thus: “Adam was created in two persons, on one side male, on the other female”. And this is what is said in the last text, that God created Adam male and female, that their name was Adam, that the only Adam contained them both, that first a suppositum made of both was called Adam , for the woman was never called Eve until she was separated from Adam, her male. And this is where Plato and the Greeks borrowed this ancient androgyne, half male and half female. God then said, “It is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helper who is in front of him.” This means that it did not seem right for Adam to be male and female in one body, with shoulders together and faces facing each other, and that it would be preferable for the woman to be separated and to come face to face with him. , opposite, in order to be able to become his help. Tests were made with him: land animals were brought to him, to see if he could be satisfied with the company of one of the female animals. Adam gave a name to each of the animals according to their nature, but found none that could suit him as a helper and companion. Therefore God put her to sleep and took one of her sides (which in Hebrew is equivalent to "rib", but here and elsewhere it means "side"), that is to say the side or the female person who was behind Adam's back and whom God separated from Adam. So he filled with flesh the void left by this separation, and from this side he made the separated woman who, once separated, was called Eve, but not before, because she was then on the side and part of Adam. Once made, God presented her to Adam who had awakened from his sleep, and who said: “This time this is she who is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she will be called woman, because she was taken from man (13). » And he continued with these words: “Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will cleave to his wife, and they will be one flesh”; which means that having been divided from the same individual, man and woman will reunite again through marriage and coitus in the same carnal and individual source. This is where Plato (14)took the division of the androgyne into two separate halves, male and female, as well as the birth of love which is the inclination remaining in each of the two halves to join with its remainder and form a single flesh. Between one and the other you will find this difference that Moses places the division in view of the better because he says: “It is not good that man should be alone; let us make him a helper in front of him"), and after the division he recounts the first sin of Adam and Eve which was to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which led to each of them the appropriate punishment. But Plato for his part says that man sinned at the beginning when he formed the union of male and female, and it was in the punishment of sin that he was separated into two halves (as you have heard).

Sofia. I like to see that Plato drank water from the holy fountain. But where does this divergence come from which makes him place the cutting of man because of the sin which precedes it, while holy history places the cutting with a view to the good and salvation of man and that sin comes After ?

Filone. The difference is not as great as it seems, if you consider the thing carefully, and in this respect Plato is rather a herald than a contradictor of holy history.

Sofia. In what way?

Filone. Sin is in fact what cuts man and causes division in him, just as righteousness makes him one and preserves his unity. We can also say with truth that it is being divided that leads man to sin, for when he is one, he has no inclination to sin or to deviate from his unity, so that sin and division being in man practically the same thing (or two inseparable and convertible), we can say that from division comes sin (as Holy Scripture says) and from sin division (as Plato says ).

VII. Supreme Wisdom (15)

Sofia. There remains nothing else for me to ask you, except that you tell me which of these theological paths is the one that best satisfies your mind.

Filone. Although I am a faithful follower of Moses in theological wisdom, I embrace this second path, because it is truly Mosaic theology, and it was the one followed by Plato, he who had a greater knowledge of this ancient wisdom than Aristotle had it. Indeed, Aristotle, whose sight for abstract things was somewhat shorter, not having known like Plato the demonstration of our ancient theologians, denied that which, hidden, could not be seen, and arrived at supreme wisdom, the first beauty, about which his satisfied intellect, without seeing further, affirmed that it was the first incorporeal principle of all things. Plato, on the other hand, having received teaching from the ancients in Egypt, was able to conceive further, even if he did not succeed in seeing the hidden principle of supreme sapience or first beauty and made it the second principle of the universe , dependent on the supreme God, first principle of all things. And although Plato had been for many years the master of Aristotle, yet in these divine matters, Plato (as a disciple of our elders) learned from better masters than Aristotle did from him, because the disciple of the disciple cannot rise to the height of the master's disciple. Adding that in Aristotle (even if he was particularly subtle) I believe that in matters of abstraction his mind could not rise as high as that of Plato, and that he did not want to believe like the others with the master what the own strength of his mind did not demonstrate to him.

Sofia. I will therefore link your doctrine to that of Plato: I will understand what I can, and for the rest I will trust you, as someone who sees better and further than me. But I would like you to show me where Moses and the holy prophets were able to express this platonic truth.

Filone. The first words Moses wrote were these: "In principle God created heaven and earth," and the ancient Chaldean interpretation of which we have made "in principle" said: "in wisdom God created heaven and earth." Earth ". And since wisdom is called “principle” in Hebrew (as Solomon says), the principle is wisdom, and the word in can mean cum . Admire how, first of all, it appears to us that the world was created by wisdom and that wisdom was the first creative principle, but that the supreme God, with the help of his supreme wisdom, first beauty, created and beautified everything the created universe, so that the first words of the wise Moses indicated the three degrees of beauty: God, wisdom and world. And the very wise King Solomon, follower and disciple of the divine Moses, states in the first sentence of his Proverbs : “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, he established the heavens by his great intelligence; it is by his knowledge that the depths are opened and the clouds distill the dew (16). » Also, speaking of his doctrine, he said: “My son, do not take your eyes off my teachings: believe and keep the supreme reflections which will be the life of your soul”, and certainly nothing more could be written clear.

VIII. Unrequited love

Filone. Although love brings with it affliction and torment, anxiety and worry, and many other sorrows which it would take too long to enumerate, this is certainly not its aim, but rather its aim is the sweet dilection which is quite the opposite. Nevertheless you spoke the truth, not regarding all love, but only about mine towards you, namely that its end has never been neither pleasure nor dilection, but I see that on the contrary its beginning, its middle and its end are only pain, anguish and passion.

Sofia. How then can the rule be lacking in you? And how can your love be deprived of what everyone should achieve?

Filone. You can ask this of yourself and not of me. It is up to me to love you with all my soul. If you make love sterile and deprived of its due end, would you like me to find an excuse for you?

Sofia. It is yours that I want you to seek, because if your love is devoid of the end that you gave it, your love must not be a true love, or its end must not be a true ending.

Filone. The end of all love is pleasure; my love is a very living love and its end is to enjoy you with a fusional dilection, an end to which both the lover and love tend. Nevertheless, striving for an end does not mean obtaining it, all the more so when the effect of the achievement of this end must come with the help of the hand of another, like the dilection of the lover who is the end towards which his love tends but which will never happen if the reciprocal love of his beloved does not lead him there. So that what causes the end of my love in you to fail is that your love fails in its duty which is to be reciprocal. If in fact it is in the entire universe and in each of its parts that love took birth, in you alone it seems to me that it was never born.

Sofia. Perhaps it was not born because it was not sown well.

Filone. It was not sown well because the ground did not want to receive the perfect seed.

Sofia. So is it defective?

Filone. In that yes, truly.

Sofia. Everything that is defective is deformed: how then can you love what is deformed? If it is because your love seems beautiful to you, then it is neither just nor true as you say.

Filone. There is no thing so beautiful that does not have some fault, except the supreme beauty, and there is so much beauty in you that, even if it is accompanied by this fault which makes me unhappy, great beauty can much more to encourage me to love you than the small fault (rather pernicious towards me) to hate you.

Sofia. I don't really see what this beauty of mine can be that pushes you so hard to love me. You showed me that true beauty is wisdom and of this in me there is only what you offer me: in you is therefore true beauty and not in me, and it is me who should love you and not the other way around.

Filone. It is enough for me to tell you the reason why I love you, without trying to find out why you don't love me, because the only thing I know is that my love for you is such that it leaves you no part thanks to which you could love me.

Sofia. It's enough that you tell me how you can love me when I'm not beautiful, or that beauty must be something other than wisdom, or that you don't really love me.

Filone. It is true that I told you that the supreme beauty is divine wisdom. Now, this, in the constitution and grace of your person, in the angelic disposition of your soul, even if it presents some gap in application, shines in you with so much brilliance that in my mind your image has been made and esteemed divine and worshiped as such.

Sofia. I certainly didn't think that there was room in your mouth for adulation, nor that you would ever be tempted to use it towards me. To hear you say, I cannot be beautiful since there is no wisdom in me, and now you want to tell me that I am divine.

Filone. The economy of wisdom is the beauty that God distributed to intellectual souls when he created them, and he formed the soul that he made all the more beautiful as it was more suited to wisdom, wisdom of which yours has been richly endowed. The actual being of wisdom consists in erudition and in the practice of doctrines, and it is like artificial beauty above the natural. And you would like me to be so stupid as to stop loving a great natural beauty because it lacks some artifice and care? I'd rather love an unprimed natural beauty than a primed one that wouldn't be beautiful. As for what you call adulation, it is not adulation, because if in reality your beauty had not become divine in me, your love would never have detached my mind from everything, except you, as he did.