ept some senseless blockhead,
who is so all the more the deeper is the degree of obscure folly in
which he is sunk; then he has little or no apprehension of pain; he
enjoys the actual present without fearing the future; he enjoys that
which is and that in which he finds himself, and has neither care nor
sorrow for what may be; and, in short, has no sense of that opposition
which is symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

CIC. From this we see that ignorance is the mother of sensual felicity
and beatitude, and this same is the garden of paradise of the animals;
as is made clear in the dialogues of the Kabala of the horse Pegasus;
and as says the wise Solomon, "Whoso increases knowledge increases
sorrow."

TANS. Hence it appears that heroic love is a torment, because it does
not enjoy the present, as does animal love, but is of the future and the
absent; and, on the contrary, it feels ambition, emulation, suspicion
and dread. One evening, after supper, a certain neighbour of ours said:
"Never was I more jolly than I am now." John Bruno, father of the
Nolano, answered him: "Never wert thou more foolish than now."

CIC. You would imply, then, that he who is sad is wise, and that other
who is more sad is wiser?

TANS. On the contrary, I mean that there is in these another species of
foolishness and a worse.

CIC. Who, then, is wise, if foolish is he who is content, and foolish he
who is sad?

TANS. He who is neither merry nor sad.

CIC. Who? He who sleeps? He who is without feeling--who is dead?

TANS. No; but he who is quick, both seeing and hearing, and who,
considering evil and good, estimating the one and the other as variable,
and consistent in motion, mutation, and vicissitude, in such wise that
the end of one opposite is the commencement of another, and the extreme
of the one is the beginning of the other; whose spirit is neither
depressed nor elated, but is moderate in inclinations and temperate in
desires; to him pleasure is not pleasure, having ever present the end of
it; equally, pain to him is not pain, because by the force of reasoning
he has present the end of that too. So the sage holds all mutable things
as things that are not, and affirms that they are no other than vanity
and nothingness, because time has to eternity the proportion of the
point to the line.

CIC. So that we can never hold the proposition of being contented or
discontented, without holding the proposition of our