e flesh be
obedient to the law of the spirit, the reason to its own law. Let them
not be confounded nor mixed. Enough that one neither mar nor prejudice
the law of the other, since it is not just that the sense outrage the
law of reason. And verily it is a shameful thing that one should
tyrannize over the other, particularly where the intellect is a pilgrim
and strange, and the sense is more domesticated and at home. I am forced
by you, my thoughts, to remain at home in charge of the house, while
others may wander wherever they will. This is a law of Nature, and
therefore a law of the author and originator of Nature. Sin on then, now
that all of you, seduced by the charm of the intellect, leave the other
part of me to the peril of death. How have you gotten this melancholy
and perverse humour, which breaks the certain and natural laws of the
true life, and which is in your own hands, for one, uncertain, and which
has no existence except in shadow, beyond the limits of fantastic
thought? Seems it to you a natural thing that they should live divinely
and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and
animals? It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt
itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you
follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is
present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of
others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that
which she at present offers to you, you stupidly despise?

Heaven the second gift denies,
To him who does the first despise.

With these and similar reasons the soul, taking part with the weakest,
seeks to recall the thoughts to the care of the body. And these,
although late, come and show themselves, but not in that form in which
they departed, but only to declare their rebellion, and force her to
follow. And the sorrowing one thus laments:

23.

Ah, dogs of Actaeon, ah, proud ingrates!
Whom to the abode of my divinity I sent;
Without hope do ye return to me;
And, coming to the mother's side, ye bring
Back unto me a too unhappy boon;
Ye mangle me, and will that I live not.
Leave me, life, that I may mount up to my sun,
A double streamlet, mad, without my fount!
When shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve?
When shall it be, that, taking myself hence,
And swiftly rising to the heights above,
Together with