WHAT BENEFITS THE LOVE OF BOOKS CONFERS WHAT BENEFITS THE LOVE OF BOOKS CONFERS
T passeth human genius, howsoever deeply it has quaffed from the fount of Pegasus, perfectly to unfold the title of the present chapter. Yea, though one spoke with the tongues of men and of angels, were transformed into a Mercury or a Tully, or grew sweet with the milky eloquence of Livy, or discoursed with the charm of Demosthenes, yet will he allege the stammering of Moses, or with Jeremiah will confess that he is yet a child and knows not how to speak, or will imitate Echo repeating the sound in the lofty mountains. Now we proved in the Second Chapter that the love of books is in truth the love of wisdom. This love we name Philosophy, from a Greek word, and its virtue no created intelligence comprehends, for it is believed to be in truth the mother of all good things (the Seventh of Wisdom). Like a heavenly dew it extinguishes the heats of carnal vice, while the intense activity of the spiritual virtues weakens the strength of the natural virtues, and indolence is wholly driven out, and this driven out, every shaft of Cupid fails.
Hence Plato in his Phaedo says: In this a philosopher is known, if he severs the soul from its communion with the body differently from other men. Love the knowledge of the Scriptures, saith Jerome, and thou shalt not love the vices of the flesh. The god-like Xenocrates showed this in the constancy of his reason, whom the notable strumpet Phryne declared to be a statue and not a man, when she could not effeminate him by any of her allurements, as Valerius fully describes in the Third Chapter of his Fourth Book. Our own Origen showed this also, for, lest he should happen to be tempted by omnipotent woman, he chose a mean between both sexes, by mutilating himself. A fierce remedy, indeed, and one consistent neither with nature nor with virtue, whose office is not to make men insensible to their passion, but to slay those that spring from instinct with the sword of reason.
Moreover, as many as the love of books doth affect think little of the world, as Jerome saith in his Fifty-fourth letter against Vigilantius: It is not the business of the same man to be a judge of both money and writings. Hence also a certain writer has spoken thus in verse:
Unfit for handling volumes are hands with rusty stain,
Nor hearts by money hardened can place for books contain.
As there is none suffices both books and gold to test,
Thy school, O Epicurus, for books alone hath zest.
Gold-seekers and book-lovers together cannot thrive:
No single roof, believe me, to both can shelter give.
No man, therefore, can serve both books and Mammon.
The ugliness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, and he who loves to search through them will be induced to detest it utterly. The demon who takes his name from knowledge is led in triumph especially by the knowledge that comes from books; and through books his manifold tortuous deceits and his thousand perverse ways are laid open to readers, lest, transforming himself into an angel of light, he should deceive the innocent by his wiles. A reverence for divine things is revealed to us by books and the virtues by which it is fostered are openly declared, and our reward is set before us on the promise of undeceived and undeceiving truth. The image likest to our future blessedness is the contemplation of sacred letters, in which we behold now the Creator and now the creature, and draw water from the river of eternal joy. Faith is established by the power of letters, hope is strengthened by the consolation of books, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope. Charity is not puffed up but edified by a true knowledge of letters; nay, it is as clear as light that the Church itself is established on the sacred books. Books delight us when prosperity sweetly smiles; they stay to comfort us when cloudy fortune frowns. They lend strength to human compacts, and without them grave judgments may not be propounded.
The arts and sciences, whose advantages no mind is sufficient to tell, depend upon books. How highly must we reckon their marvellous power, since by means of them we view the boundaries of the world and of time, and, as in a mirror of eternity, behold the things that are not as those that are! In books we scale the mountains; we search the deep gulfs of the abysses; we behold the finny tribes which the common air can in no way contain alive. We distinguish the properties of streams and springs of different lands, and out of books we dig the various kinds of metals and of gems, and the ore of every mineral. We learn the virtues of plants and trees and shrubs, and view at will all the progeny of Neptune, of Ceres, and of Pluto. And if it delight us to visit the inhabitants of heaven, betaking ourselves to Taurus, Caucasus, or Olympus, we pass beyond the realms of Juno and measure out the sevenfold territory of the planets with curves and circles. At last we behold the lofty firmament on high, pictured in endless variety with signs and degrees and figures. There we look upon the Antarctic Pole, whose turning neither eye has seen or ear has heard, and behold with delectable joy the shining Milky Way, and the Zodiac pictured with celestial animals. Passing thence, we cross by means of books to the separate substances, that the intellect may salute its kindred intelligences and behold with the eye of the spirit the First Cause of all things, the Unmoved Mover of infinite power, and be filled with love without end. Lo! by the aid of books, we attain the reward of our final happiness while we are yet pilgrims. And what more? Assuredly, as we have learned from the teaching of Seneca, indolence without letters is death and the burial of the living man. And so, arguing from the opposite, we conclude that occupation with letters or books is the life of man.
Again, through books we give intimation both to friend and foe of what we could never so securely entrust to messengers; for there is granted an entrance for books even to the bedchamber of princes, where the voice of the living author would be repelled, as Tertullian saith in the beginning of his Apologeticus. Under guard, in prison and in chains, and wholly deprived of freedom of body, we make use of the embassies of books to our friends, and to them we commit the furthering of our cause and send them thither where entrance on our part would be the occasion of our death. By books we call to mind the past, we prophesy in some manner of the future, and by the remembrance of writing we strengthen the present, which ever flows and glides away. The felicitous studiousness and studious felicity of the mighty eunuch, described in the Eighth of Acts, whom the love of reading the prophets had inflamed so greatly that he ceased not from his reading by reason of his journey, caused him to forget the populous palace of Queen Candace, removed from his heart the care of the treasure over which he was placed, and made him neglect both his way and his chariot. The love of a book alone had wholly occupied this dwelling place of chastity, and soon by its guidance he won his way to an entrance through the door of faith. O glorious love of books, which through baptismal grace made the son of Gehenna and child of Tartarus a son of the Kingdom!
Let the impotent pen now cease to pursue the tenor of this infinite business, lest it may seem to attempt rashly what in the beginning we confessed was impossible for any one.