themselves, according as they are perverse and
antagonistic, or really kind and gracious, become the gates which lead
towards heaven or towards hell. In this way he is kept in hope of future
and uncertain mercy, but actually in a state of present and certain
torment, and although he sees his folly quite clearly, nevertheless he
does not care to correct himself in it, or even to feel displeased with
it, but rather does he feel satisfied with it, as he shows when he says:

Never let me of Love complain,
For Love alone can ease my pain.

Here is shown another species of enthusiasm born from the light of
reason, which excites fear and suppresses the aforesaid reason in order
not to commit any action which might vex or irritate the thing loved.
He says, then, that hope rests in the future, without anything being
promised or denied; therefore, he is silent and asks nothing, for fear
of offending purity (_l'onestade_). He does not venture to explain
himself and make a proposition, lest he be rejected with repugnance or
accepted with reserve; for he thinks the evil that there might be in the
one would be over-balanced by the good in the other. He shows himself,
then, ready to suffer for ever his own torment, rather than to open the
door to an opportunity through which the thing loved might be perturbed
and saddened.

CIC. Herein he proves that his love is truly heroic; because he proposes
to himself as the chief aim, not corporeal beauty, but rather the grace
of the spirit, and the inclination of the affections in which, rather
than in the beauty of the body, that love that has in it the divine, is
eternal.

TANS. Thou knowest that, as the Platonic ideas are divided into three
species, of which one tends to the contemplative or speculative life,
one to active morality, and the third to the idle and voluptuous, so are
there three species of love, of which one raises itself from the
contemplation of bodily form to the consideration of the spiritual and
divine; the other only continues in the delight of seeing and
conversing; the third from seeing proceeds to precipitate into the
concupiscence of touch. Of these three modes others are composed,
according as the first may be coupled with the second or the third, or
as all the three modes may combine together, of which one and all may be
divided into others, according to the affections of the enthusiast, as
these tend more towards the spiritual object, or more towards th