De exsilio.
The World as Exile
The foreign land tests the soul, and for lovers of wisdom the whole world is exile because the sweetness of native soil never fully releases its hold.
Finally, there is the foreign land, which also tests a person on its own. For the whole world is exile for those who love wisdom, because, as someone says, 'I do not know by what sweetness of its native soil it draws all people and will not let them forget it.'1
Training the Heart to Let Go
The trained mind begins virtue by first setting aside visible, passing things so that it may eventually release them entirely.
It is a great beginning of virtue for the trained mind, once it is practiced, to learn first to set aside these visible and passing things, so that afterward it may even be able to let them go entirely.
Delicate, Strong, and Perfect
Spiritual maturity is measured by one's posture toward the world: the delicate soul loves its homeland, the strong soul makes every land home, and the perfect soul treats the whole world as exile—fixing, scattering, or extinguishing love accordingly.
That person is still delicate for whom his homeland is sweet; strong now is the one for whom every land is a homeland; but perfect is the one for whom the whole world is exile. The one fixed his love on the world; the one scattered it; the one extinguished it.
The Freedom of Long Exile
From lifelong exile the author knows the grief of leaving even a humble home, and the freedom with which the soul afterward looks down on marble gods and paneled roofs.
From boyhood I have been an exile, and I know with what grief the mind sometimes leaves the cramped plot of a poor hut, and with what freedom afterward it looks down on marble household gods and paneled roofs.
Read the original Latin
Postremo terra aliena posita est, quae et ipsa quoque hominem exercet. omnis mundus philosophantibus exsilium est, quia tamen, ut ait quidam: Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine cunctos Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui. magnum virtutis principium est, ut discat paulatim exercitatus animus visibilia haec et transitoria primum commutare, ut postmodum possit etiam derelinquere. delicatus ille est adhuc cui patria dulcis est; fortis autem iam, cui omne solum patria est; perfectus vero, cui mundus totus exsilium est. ille mundo amorem fixit, iste sparsit, hic exstinxit. ego a puero exsulavi, et scio quo maerore animus artum aliquando pauperis tugurii fundum deserat, qua libertate postea marmoreos lares et tecta laqueata despiciat.
Notes
- 1 ↩The quoted line is a classical tag (cf. a similar thought in Cicero, De Legibus); not a biblical quotation. Preserved as a literary quotation pending tx-08 resolution.
Didascalicon de Studio Legendi (On the Study of Reading) companion
Hugh said begin with small daily portions. Start tomorrow.
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