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P R O OE M I U M.
or their qualities with the Physicists. Sometimes with the Physicians it attends to how one must heal human beings; soon after, with the Soldiers, how one must destroy them.) It is through the Moral Philosophy of Christians that present tranquility of the soul and future happiness for eternity are acquired. But [the human Mind] does not wish for it in the same way, before it is discovered, nor tend to it in the same way, after if it is known. It neglects it as a thing utterly foreign and unpleasant. Surely from this fact, if other sources had not made me aware, with the greatest possible mortification, of our meagreness, impotence, corruption, I would have drawn clear and indisputable evidence of it. But that glowing chorus of the heavenly bodies also set for me another matter to consider. I observed that, however thickly the sky had been strewn with stars, by so many lights the shadows still were not removed from the earth. The light, scattered among a thousand stars, did not suffice to drive the night away. Collected into one Sun, however, it would have brought out brightest day. As I had thoughts like that, I noticed a comparable state of affairs in my Mind. Had not so many Stars, the renowned Philosophers, sent their rays into my intellect by that time? Yet none so far had sufficed to enlighten my mind. None had cast light into the very thick shadows of my ignorance. None, finally, had driven the filthy blackness of the vices out from the hidden depths of the cave. No further, therefore, could I delude myself about the murkiness of my Mind. My thoughts turned to a Sun who, having collected in himself light without ray,