Philosophy is a noble lady (_donna gentil_),[105] partaking of the divine
essence by a kind of eternal marriage, while with other intelligences she
is united in a less measure "as a mistress of whom no lover takes
complete joy."[106] The eyes of this lady are her demonstrations, and her
smile is her persuasion. "The eyes of wisdom are her demonstrations by
which truth is beheld most certainly; and her smile is her persuasions in
which the interior light of wisdom is shown under a certain veil, and in
these two is felt that highest pleasure of beatitude which is the
greatest good in paradise."[107] "It is to be known that the beholding
this lady was so largely ordained for us, not merely to look upon the
face which she shows us, but that we may desire to attain the things
which she keeps concealed. And as through her much thereof is seen by
reason, so by her we believe that every miracle may have its reason in a
higher intellect, and consequently may be. Whence our good faith has its
origin, whence comes the hope of those unseen things which we desire, and
through that the operation of charity, by the which three virtues we rise
to philosophize in that celestial Athens where the Stoics, Peripatetics,
and Epicureans through the art of eternal truth accordingly concur in one
will.
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