274 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



The transition from ordinary morality, the virtue 

 of the everyday life of human society, to the divine 

 aspiration of the c< heroic " soul, is to be found in the 



Solicitude, virtue of Solicitude, and the primary triad of Truth, 

 Prudence, and Wisdom. On the feet of Solicitude 

 (Diligence, Endurance) " are the winged sandals of the 

 divine impetus, through which she leaves beneath her 

 the vulgar good, and contemns the soft caresses of 

 pleasures, that, like insidious sirens, try to delay her in 

 the pursuit of the works she seeks/' On labour and 

 fatigue she nurses the generous mind, enables it not 

 only to subdue itself, but to attain the highest state- 

 that of not feeling fatigue, or pain, when fatigue or pain 

 must be undergone. In noble work fatigue is pleasure 

 and not fatigue to itself, but in other than in such work 

 or virtuous activity, it is not pleasure to itself, but 

 intolerable fatigue. " Be with me " Solicitude con- 

 cludes, " generous, heroic, anxious Fear, stimulate 

 me that I do not perish from the number of the 

 illustrious before I perish from that of the living. 

 Before torpor or death take from me my hands, grant 

 that the glory of my works may not be in their power 

 to take. Anxiety, grant that the roof be finished before 

 the rain come : that the windows be whole before 

 the winds of treacherous and unquiet winter blow. 

 Memory of a well-spent life, thou shalt make old age 

 and death destroy my soul before they disturb it. Fear 

 of losing the glory acquired in my life shall make 

 old age and death not bitter to me, but dear and 

 desirable." The end which this strenuous virtue seeks 

 is that of the intellectual triad placed in the highest part 



Truth; of the heavens by the gods, Truth, Prudence and 

 Wisdom, which in reality are one and the same. 1 



1 Vide Lag. pp. 457 ff. 



