rk or act
through us, but to consider the works of God and of Nature. This and
the other form our Beatitude and Supreme Happiness, which is the
sweetness of the before-mentioned seed, as now clearly appears. To
this often such seed does not attain, through being ill cultivated, or
through its tender growing shoots being perverted. In like manner it
is quite possible, by much correction and cultivation of him into whom
this seed does not fall primarily, to induce it by the process of
steady endeavour after goodness, so that it may attain to the power of
bearing this fruit. And it is, as it were, a method of grafting the
nature of another upon a different stock.

No man, therefore, can hold himself excused; for if from his natural
root the man does not produce sweet fruit, it is possible for him to
have it by the process of grafting; and in fact there would be as many
who should be grafted as those are who, sprung from a good root, allow
themselves to grow degenerate.

Of the two ways of goodness, one is more full of bliss than the other,
as is the Speculative, which is the use of our noblest part without
any alloy, and which, for the root, Love, as has been said, is
especially to be loved as the intellect. And in this life it is not
possible to have the use of this part perfectly, which is to see God,
who is the Supreme Being to be comprehended by the Mind, except
inasmuch as the intellect considers Him and beholds Him through His
effects, His Works. And that we may seek this Beatitude as the
supreme, and not the other, that is, that of the Active Life, the
Gospel of St. Mark teaches us, if we will look at it well.

Mark says that Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Mary
Salome went to find the Saviour in the Tomb, and they found Him not,
but they found a youth clothed in white, who said to them: "You seek
the Saviour, and I tell you that He is not here; and therefore be not
affrighted, but go and tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth
before you into Galilee; and there ye shall see Him, as He said unto
you." By these three women may be understood the three sects of the
Active Life, that is to say, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the
Peripatetics, who go to the Tomb, that is to say, to the present
World, which is the receptacle of corruptible things, and seek for the
Saviour, that is, Beatitude, and they find it not; but they find a
youth in white garments, who, according to the testimony of Matthew,