§ 6.

24. O supreme liberality¹ of God the Father and wonderful happiness² of man!
25. To him is given to be what he desires and what he wills.³
26. As soon as they are born, brutes bring with them “from their mother’s womb,”⁴ as Lucilius says, all that they are going to possess.
27. Superior spirits have been, either from the beginning or soon after, that which they are perpetually going to be throughout eternity.
28. The Father infused in man, at birth, every sort of seed and sprouts of every kind of life.⁵
29. These seeds will grow and bear their fruit in each man who will cultivate them.
30. If he cultivates his vegetable seeds, he will become a plant. If he cultivates his sensitive seeds, he will become brutish. If he cultivates his rational seeds, he will become a heavenly animal. If he cultivates his intellectual seeds, he will be an angel and a son of God.⁶
31. And if he is not contented with the fate of any creature, he will gather himself into the center of his own unity and, become one spirit with God, will join the solitary darkness⁷ of the Father, who is above all things, and will stand ahead of all things.

§ 7.

32. Who will not wonder at this chameleon?⁸
33. Or rather, who will admire any other being more?
34. Not without reasons, Asclepius the Athenian⁹ said that in the secret rites he [man] was symbolized by Proteus, because of his changing and metamorphous nature.¹⁰
35. Hence the metamorphoses celebrated among the Jews¹¹ and the Pythagoreans.¹²

§ 8.

36. Indeed, even the most secret Hebrew theology at one time transforms holy Enoch into an angel of divinity, whom they call metatron, and at other times it reshapes other men into other spirits.¹³
37. According to Pythagoreans, wicked men are deformed into brutes, and if you believe Empedocles, into plants as well.¹⁴
38. Imitating them, Mohammed often repeated that he who strays from divine law becomes a brute.
39. Indeed, it is not the bark which makes the plant, but dull and non-sentient nature; not the hide which makes a horse or other beast of burden, but a brutal and sensual soul; not the circular body which makes the heaven(s), but right reason; not the separation from the body which makes the angel, but spiritual intelligence.
40. If you see someone, a slave to his belly, crawling on the ground, it is not a man you see but a plant; if you see someone who, as though blinded by Calipso with empty imaginations, under a seductive spell, is enslaved by his senses, it a brute you see, not a man.
41. If you see a philosopher discerning things with right reason, worship him; he is a heavenly not an earthly animal.
42. If you see a pure contemplator, oblivious to his body, absorbed in the recesses of the mind, this is neither an earthly nor a heavenly animal: this is a superior spirit, clothed with human flesh.

§ 9.

43. Who, then, will not admire man?
44. Not undeservedly, in the Mosaic and Christian Scriptures he is called at times with the name of every flesh, at times of every creature, for he fashions, shapes and transforms¹⁵ his own look into that of every flesh, his own mind into that of every creature.¹⁶
45. Accordingly, Evantes the Persian, explaining Chaldaean theology, writes that no inner image belongs to man, but many exterior and derived ones.¹⁷
46. Hence that saying of the Chaldaens that man is animal by nature, diverse, multiform and inconstant.

§ 10.

47. Yet, what is the reason of all this?
48. It is in order for us to understand that, because we were born with the option to be what we want to be, we must take most care of this; lest people say of us that, being held in honor, we did not realize that we reduced ourselves to brutes and mindless beasts of burden.
49. Let us rather remember the saying of Asaph the prophet: “You are all gods and sons of the most high,”¹⁸ unless abusing the most indulgent liberality of the Father, we turn from beneficial to harmful the free choice he bestowed on us.
50. Let a holy ambition pervade our soul, so that, not satisfied with mediocre things, we strive for the loftiest and apply ourselves with all our strength to pursue them (because we can achieve them, if we want).
51. Let us spurn earthly things, disregard the celestial,¹⁹ and reject all that is of this world, in order to fly to the otherwordly court near the most eminent divinity.
52. There, as sacred mysteries reveal, Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones occupy the first places; let us emulate their dignity and glory, unwilling as we are to yield to them and unable to endure second place.
53. If so we wish, we will not be at all inferior to them.