re felt, as
compared with the ordinary princes and tyrants, who adopt a greater
rigour wherever they see they have less hold.

CIC. Go on.

VI.

TANS. Here we see described the idea of a flying phoenix, towards which
is turned a boy who is burning in the midst of flames; and there is the
legend, "Fata obstant." But in order better to understand it, let us
read the tablet:

30.

Sole bird of the sun, thou wandering phoenix!
That measurest thy days as does the world
With lofty summits of Arabia Felix.
Thou art the same thou wast, but I what I was not:
I through the fire of love, unhappy die;
But thee the sun with his warm rays revives;
Thou burn'st in one, and I, in every place;
Eros my fire, while thine Apollo gives.
Predestined is the term of thy long life;
Short span is mine,
And menaced by a thousand ills.
Nor do I know how I have lived, nor how shall live,
Me does blind fate conduct;
But thou wilt come again, again behold thy light.

From the meaning of these lines, you will see that in the figure is
drawn the comparison between the fate of the phoenix and that of the
enthusiast; and the legend, "Fata obstant," does not signify that the
fates are adverse either to the boy, or to the phoenix, or to both; but
that the fatal decrees for each are not the same, but are diverse and
opposite. The phoenix is that which it was, because the same matter, by
means of the fire, renews itself, and becomes again the body of the
phoenix, and the same spirit and soul come to inhabit it. The enthusiast
is that which he was not, because the subject, which is a man, was first
of some other species, according to innumerable differentiations. So
that what the phoenix was, is known, and what it will be, is known; but
this subject cannot return, except through many and uncertain means, to
invest the same or a similar natural form. Then the phoenix, through the
sun's presence, changes death into life, and that other, by the
presence of love, transmutes life into death. The one kindles his fire
on the aromatic altar, the other finds it ever present with him and
carries it wherever he goes. The one again, has certain conditions of a
long life; but the other, through the infinite differences of time and
innumerable circumstances, has the mutable conditions of a short life.
The one kindles with certainty, the other with doubt as to whether he
will see the sun again.

CIC. W