Of Being and Unity 1492 By Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Of Being and Unity 1492 By Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Let us therefore fly from the world, which is confirmed in evil79; let us soar to the Father in whom are the peace that unifies, the true light, and the greatest happiness. But what will give us wings to soar?80 The love of the things that are above.81 What will take them from us? The lust for the things below, to follow which is to lose unity, truth, and goodness. 

For we are not one and integrated if we do not link together with a bond of virtue our senses, which incline to earth, and our reason, which tends to heavenly things; this is rather to have two principles ruling in us in turn, so that, while today we follow God by the law of the spirit, and tomorrow Baal by the law of the flesh, our inner realm is divided and as it were laid waste. And if our unity is purchased by the enslavement of a reason submitted to the rule of the law of the members, that will be a false unity, since thus we shall not be true. 

For we are called and appear to be men, that is, animate beings living by reason; and yet we will be brutes, having for law only sensual appetite. We will be performing a juggling trick to those who see us, and among whom we live. The image will not conform to its exemplar. For we are made in the likeness of God, and God is spirit82 but we are not yet spirits, to use St. Paul's words,83 but animals. If, on the contrary, by grace of truth, we do not fall beneath our model, we have only to move towards Him who is our model, through goodness, in order to be united with Him in the afterworld.

Since, finally, these three attributes: unity, truth, and goodness, are united to being by a bond which is eternal, it follows that, if we do not possess them, we no longer exist, even though we may seem to do so; and although others may believe we exist, we are in fact in a state of continuous death rather than of life.

Translated by Victor Michael Hamm, 1943