This text is reproduced solely for the limited academic use of students in Webster University MNGT 5590.

 

On the Heroic Mind

BY GIAMBATTISTA VICO

 

Translators’ Note: We have used as our principal text G. B. Vico: Opere, edited by Fausto Nicolini, vol. 7: Scritti vari e pagine sparse in Scrittori d’Italia, 174 (Bari, 1940), pp. 320, with the emendations included in the Appendix to vol. 8 in the same series, Scrittori d’ltalia, 183 (1941), pp.265-266: hereafter, Nicolini. A second text available to us for comparison was Giambattista Vico: Opere, edited by Francesco Sav. Pomodoro, vol. 1 (Naples, 1858), pp. 260269: hereafter, Pomodoro. Where, using this, we detected one or two additional typographical errors in Nicolini, or in a few cases preferred the reading in Pomodoro, this is indicated in the footnotes. We are indebted to Nicolini not merely for the above but for his translation into Italian of “De mente heroica” in Giambattista Vico: Opere, edited by Fausto Nicolini, in La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, vol. 43 (Milan-Naples, 1953), pp. 909-926.

 

On the Heroic Mind: An Oration

Given at the Royal Academy of Naples

October 20, 1732

To His Excellency, Count Aloys Thomas von Harrach, Viceroy of the Kingdom of Naples, a man most vigilant, virtuous and honorable, who instructed four noble, born sons in the illustrious arts of peace and war through the example of his ancestors and above all his own, this oration, which guides by precept the young, desirous of learning, to the acquisition of heroic wisdom, is dedicated by the Royal Academy of Naples in witness of its obedience and its gratitude for the many and great services he bestowed upon it.

My young listeners, you of such hopeful promise: for some considerable time now, this royal University has witnessed a lapse in that most profitable custom by which the academic year was annually inaugurated by a solemn oration delivered to you students with all due formality. And the appointed day having come round once more, our recently invested honorable Prefect of Studies, a man of very great learning in all fields and lavish in regard to the fullest possible provision of educational advantages for you, has seen fit to reinstate the old custom. As for myself—I who have carried out the duties of Professor of Eloquence in this very place for over thirty-three years and am almost wasted away by the rigors of intellectual work—I take it to be my task to bring before you a theme which is wholly new. That theme shall not be youthfully tricked out with lovelocks of apothegms and curled ringlets of speech; no, it must be replete to the fullest possible extent with the weight and gravity inherent in its own subject matter, with the greatest fruitfulness for yourselves. This theme by its own nature overflows with greatness, with splendor, with sublimity, and in speaking of it,

 

I’d rather, I,

Be like a whetstone, that an edge can put

On steel, though itself be dull and cannot cut . . .^[1]

 

Since you are roused by such promises and are ready to listen with attentive welcome to something which concerns your selves, I will, in the very first exordium of this oration, declare it to you.

Noble students, you are to bend your best efforts toward your studies, not surely with such an end in view as the gaining of riches, in which the low money-grubbing crowd would easily beat you out; nor for high office and influence, in which you would be far outdone by the military and by courtiers; and still less for that which leads philosophers on, namely, the love of learning itself, enthralled by which almost all of them pass their whole lives withdrawn from the public light in order to get the full enjoyment from the tranquil working of their minds and nothing else. Something far more exalted than this is expected of you. “Well, but what is it?” one of you may say, marveling; “Are you asking of us something surpassing the human condition itself?” I do indeed so reckon it; but although surpassing, yet befitting that nature of yours.

I repeat: it is expected of you that you exert yourselves in your studies in order to manifest the heroic mind you possess and to lay foundations of learning and wisdom for the blessedness of the human race; by this course of action, not only will riches and wealth, even while you disdain them, accrue to you, but also honor and power will come looking for you, though you care for none of these things. When I speak of your manifesting the heroic mind through studies, I am not choosing those words lightly. If heroes are those who, as poets say or as they invent, were wont to boast of their divine lineage from “all-judging Jove,” this much is certain: the human mind, independent of any fiction and fables, does have a divine origin which needs only schooling and breadth of knowledge to unfurl itself. So you see, I do ask of you things greatly surpassing the human: the near-divine nature of your minds—that is what I am challenging you to reveal.

“Hero” is defined by philosophers as one who seeks ever the sublime. Sublimity is, according to these same philosophers the following, of the utmost greatness and worth: first, above nature, God Himself; next, within nature, this whole frame of marvels spread out before us, in which nothing exceeds man in greatness and nothing is of more worth than man’s well-being, to which single goal each and every single hero presses on, in singleness of heart. By the report of just such good deeds spread far and wide amongst humankind—that voice crying abroad through all nations and peoples which Cicero elegantly calls by the name of “glory”—the hero generates for himself an immortal name. Therefore from the very start you must direct yolk studies toward Almighty God; and next, for the sake of His glory Who commands us to care for the whole human race, toward the well-being of all mankind. To it then, my young auditors, born in your turn for the greatest and best! Heroic in mind, turn your heart and will, brimming over with God, to the pursuit of your studies, and then, purged and purified of all earthly desires, put to the test, by the giant strides you will make, that divine truth: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

For the mind, which takes pleasure in the divine, the infinite, the eternal, cannot not tackle the sublime, not attempt the monumental, not accomplish the outstanding. This is in no way a rash point of view: witness men of piety (I think of Cardinal Caesar Baronius and many others) who, when they turned their minds to scholarship, burned the midnight oil to such good purpose, a certain divine grace aiding, that they produced works one may marvel at, for their solidity as much as for their originality and learning.

While with heroic mind you are making your bow to wisdom on this first threshold, survey with swelling hearts the scene exhibited here before your eyes. Seated on your right, these reverend senior members of the university, marked out by their titles and insignia of honor, represent that public education which His Imperial Majesty Charles VI of Austria, King of the Spains, has provided in this place for your instruction. Just as in the school of courage he has prepared for himself in field and battle line military leaders of utmost valor for the protection of the Holy Roman Empire and its appanages, so too in the school of wisdom may he produce the like from among you in this sheltered spot to bless those same dominions. To this he invites you, both by the numerous privileges in law accorded you, and by the outstanding honors bestowed principally on your^[2] account upon the official ranks here before you—you the co-equal hope of the common-wealth, the second especial preoccupation of our supreme ruler. His imperial administrator, His Excellency Count Aloys Thomas von Harrach, who with supreme courage and wisdom auspiciously presides as Viceroy over this Kingdom of Naples, so zealously fosters this our seat of learning, and befriends it so generously that in the space of three years (before this it would have taken a century) he has nominated to the Emperor no less than five professors from this assembly for investiture as royal bishops. Consider, and again I say consider, what models of learning they must be. Each and every one of them has stored up in his memory by the Command of each over his own discipline the principal writers in every field of learning, in all periods of history and all the literate cultures of mankind, so as to have them ready to hand for your benefit. Furthermore, where they see this to be needful and profitable, they present them to you with explanations, corrections, and commentary of their own. Each one had to pass the test of giving a formal lecture to the members of his own faculty which had to be prepared within very narrow limits of time, and only after that examination were they elected to this their present rank of professor. What honor, what reverence you ought to pay them, you can realize by this fact: look at the Ministers of State, so many and so noble, seated on their left. By occupying that exalted station they acknowledge that they have to thank this university for the wisdom by virtue of which they have been called to the highest honors in the state. Let such all-sufficing proofs of achievement here before you conjure up a largesse of spirit in yourselves. Show forth that loveliest mark of magnanimity: the being docile in the best sense, biddable, grateful to these truly erudite professors of yours as they chasten you, instruct you, set you to rights. Their desire is that your estate be a shining ornament to this city of ours, resplendent not only in Italy but, one may say, throughout Europe. From patriotism, there they devote themselves to you so that they may initiate you into every form of learning, the general or encyclopedic, the esoteric or achromatic. This in very truth is the promise contained in the phrase, “a university education.”

It is absolutely clear that from these your preceptors you are to master all the branches of knowledge. Crippled and tottering—such is the education of those who throw all their weight into the study of just one particular and specialized discipline. The various disciplines are of the same nature as the virtues. Socrates used to maintain in his teachings that the virtues and the disciplines were one and the same, and totally denied that any one of them was ever genuine unless all the others were present also. So? A look of trouble on your faces? By what I have just said have I dashed your spirits? If so, you are doing a grave injustice to the divine wellsprings of your minds. Do not breed within you any indolent wishes about learning dropping down from heaven into your bosoms while you slumber. Stir yourselves up with a productive desire for wisdom. By your unceasing and undaunted labors, make trial of what you can do, put to the test how much you are capable of. Ply your gifts and energies in all possible directions. Stir your minds up, enkindle the divinity that fills you. If you take this course of action (poets come to it by nature, as it happens) you too will engender God-inspired marvels of your own, and surprise yourselves in the doing of it. What I am saying is weighty and clearly confirmed by Italian literati who in a forceful phrase, pertinent to our present subject of discussion, call a university a Sapientia.

Sapientia . . . Wisdom . . . Plato defines it as purge, curative, completion of the inner man. The man within, however, consists of both mind and soul, each part depraved through and through by original sin; the mind, created for truth, seething with errors and false opinions, the soul, born for virtue, racked by vices and pernicious desires. For this very reason, your university education has the following purpose and it is right that you should keep it fully in view: you have come together here, ailing as you are in mind and soul, for the treatment, the healing, the perfecting of your better nature. I do not want any idle scoffer making silly faces behind his hand at what I am saying. In confirmation of this I can adduce all those learned authors who, by a term consciously transposed from bodies to minds, call universities by the name of “public gymnasia” Hospitals as such were unknown to the ancients, and just as the powers of the body were reinvigorated, strengthened, and multiplied by gymnastics carried on in the public baths, so too today the powers of the mind in universities. Once you have thought this over, you will perceive the immense benefit arising from your studies, namely, that you pay close attention to your university work in order that you may resolve not just to appear learned but truly to be so, because you will wish to be healed, restored, made perfect by wisdom. In all other gifts stemming from nature or good fortune, men are content with the semblance of their desires. Only in this one regard, namely, health, all cannot help desiring the very thing itself.

Once you have this goal in view—it is the true goal of wisdom—there follows a demand those other far lesser things such as wealth and public renown must fall away from your minds. Even if you lay up riches and accumulate honors, you will not cease to push on—on and on—as you grow in learning All dishonesty will be far removed from your minds, all puffery and play-acting, since your desire is set on true erudition, not on the mere semblance of it. Untouched by any feeling of’ jealousy toward others, you in your turn will be unaffected by any jealousy directed at yourselves, that feeling which consumes and tortures those avid of gain, ambitious of high place What in their case is envy will amongst you turn into honorable rivalry. Since this goal we spoke of is a blessing open to everyone, beyond envy as are all divine things because they are infinite, you will yearn for your own dmoioqeiÒthta ^[3]—that “image and likeness of god” in mind and equally in soul, immune from any contagion of the flesh.

To proceed: those who are content with an inadequate stock of learning make such accusations as “inappropriate” or “off the mark” against the whole system of teaching in this university, where not only do individuals teach different things (or if they teach the same things, they do so by different proofs and different methods) but also they seem to teach in flat contradiction to one another. It is an awkward system, we admit; the best and most desirable plan should be uniform through-out. But such an apparently good method is nullified by three noble requirements essential to education new discoveries, new truths revealed, new efforts better focused. Consequently, our method, which they find fault with, proves to be the best and this for the three related advantages, by no means negligible ones, it brings with it:

First, no one of you will have to swear an oath of fealty to any professor, as happens so often in the sectarianisms of the schools.

Next, you will not get totally absorbed, as can happen in private institutions, by any single period of human knowledge, the study of which is so transient that it no sooner arises than collapses, no sooner comes to the full than it is already obsolete; whereas learned laboring, which produces immortal works, has its being in eternity.

Lastly—and this touches our discussion most nearly—you will fully realize what each discipline imparts to the others (for each has some good in it) and what all contribute to that sum total itself, wisdom in its entirety, toward the laying-hold of which, noble young men, I admonish and exhort you with all the insistence and seriousness I can muster.

For this reason above all, attend the lectures of professors in all disciplines, with that aim in view which we have already set down that their teachings may cure, heal, perfect all your faculties both of mind and soul. Thus metaphysics will free the intellect from the prison of the senses; logic will free the reasoning power from false opinions; ethics the will from corrupt desires. Rhetoric exists to ensure that the tongue does not betray nor fail the mind, nor the mind its theme; poetics to calm the uncontrolled turbulence of the imagination; geometry to hold in check innate errors; physics, in truth, to rouse you from the blank amazement with which nature and her marvels has transfixed you.

And still we are not at the greatest degree of good with which wisdom is dowered. With high expectation set before yourselves far more glorious things.

By the study of the languages which our Christian religion cultivates as her own, hold converse with the best-known nations of universal history: with the Hebrews in the most ancient tongue of all; with the Greeks, in the most elegant; with the Romans, in the most majestic. Seeing that languages are the natural vehicle, so to speak, of customs, through the Oriental languages which are necessary for the comprehension of the sacred tongue—Chaldean above all—let the Assyrians inspire you with magnificence in Babylon, greatest city of all; the Greeks with Attic elegance of life at Athens, the Romans with loftiness of spirit at Rome. Be present in mind, by your reading of histories, in the greatest empires which ever flourished on the face of the earth. In order to strengthen your prudence as citizens by examples, ponder the origins of peoples and races, how they grow, reach their highest point, fall away, and perish; how outrageous Fortune in her arrogance lords it over human affairs, and how, beyond Fortune, Wisdom maintains her steadfast and unshakable kingdom. But, by heaven, for a delight inexpressible, since most proper to man’s nature with its strong bent toward unity, read the poets! Observe their cast of characters, people firm all walks of life, in the ethical, the domestic, the political realm, sharply delineated according to the pure ideal type, and by that very fact most real. Compared with these ideal types, men in everyday life will seem rather to be the unreal characters, for where men are not consistent their lives do not cohere. So consider, with a certain godlike mind, human nature as portrayed in the fables of great poets: even in its wickedness it is most beautiful, because always self-consistent, always true to itself, harmonious in all its parts, even as the aberrant prodigies and malignant plagues^[4] of nature are perceived by Almighty God as good and beautiful in the eternal order of His Providence. Once you have read great poets and thrilled with delight, read now, to be caught up in an admiration every whit as great, the sublime orators, whose art is marvelous in its adaptation to our flawed human nature: appealing to the passions originating in the body, they twist men’s minds around, no matter how settled, into wishing the direct opposite. In this, moreover, Almighty God excels and He alone, but by His own vastly different ways of triumphant grace, Who draws the minds of men to Himself by heavenly delight, no matter how pinned down they are by earthly passions.

From these matters we may proceed to the sublime themes of nature. With geography as guide on that long march, make the circle of the whole range of lands and seas with the sun. Trace out, with astronomy’s observations, the swooping tracks of the comets, those sightless couriers of the air. Let cosmography set you down at that spot where “the final ramparts of the universe go up in flames.”^[5] Further yet, let metaphysics, outpassing nature, lead you forth into those blessed and infinite fields of eternity. Once there, insofar as this is permitted to our finite minds, behold among the divine Ideas those countless forms already created and those which could come to creation if (as is actually not the case) this world would endure forever.

Make your way in this fashion through all three worlds, of things human, things natural, things eternal, and by learning and scholarship cultivate the godhead, so to speak, inherent in your minds. For in truth these sublime cogitations assuredly enjoin a hope that you will fashion for yourselves souls so lofty and upstanding that you will hold as infinitely beneath you all delights of the senses, all riches and wealth, positions of power and honor, and spurn them all.

Concerning the choice of authors,^[6] the wise administrators of this royal Academy have amply provided for your welfare in their program. According to that maxim of Quintilian’s: “When it comes to teaching, the best authors ought to be singled out,” you may, by attending the lectures dealing with these, succeed in acquiring the whole body of knowledge. I cite as example, in theology, the sacred books of the Old and New Testament, of which the Catholic Church offers the authoritative and correct interpretation. Her unbroken tradition, going back all the way to the time of the Apostles, has with solemn fidelity preserved that text in enduring archives of ecclesiastical history. Turning to jurisprudence: the Corpus juris of Justinian, most trustworthy witness of Roman antiquities, storehouse of Latin eloquence, most carefully stocked and preserved, the inviolable treasury of human laws. In medicine: Hippocrates above all, who earned the undying praise: “Never deceiving, by none deceived.” In philosophy: Aristotle for the main, and where he is found wanting, other philosophers of outstanding reputation. And in the rest of the disciplines, other authors of equally distinguished rank.

To further your reading of these authors, the most exalted in all recorded history, the eminently learned professors here will instruct you by their commentaries, pointing out with their finger, as it were, the reasons why those authors excelled, each in his own branch of learning. This type of commentary will beguile you, from the beginning of your studies, into thumbing and poring over the best authors day and night. Further, it will stimulate you to shape in your minds more perfectly that Idea to which in all fields of knowledge men of genius are conformed. Hence, from being examples for you to follow, they will become exemplifications of that Idea. Thus, in going back to their original archetypes, you could very well rival these men of genius and even outstrip them. In this way and in this alone are the arts and sciences refined, increased, brought to completion. And there is no excuse for those who wear out their entire scholarly careers in reading second-rate authors, not to mention those even worse—authors scarcely recommended to them in this university’s program of studies.

All the while that you are under instruction, concentrate solely on collating everything you learn so that the whole may hang together and all be in accord within any one discipline. For this task your guide will be the very nature of the human mind which rejoices in the highest degree in that which forms a unity, comes together, falls into its proper place; as witness the Latin, which seems to have derived scientia—that pregnant noun—from the same root that scitus comes from, meaning the same thing as “beautiful.” It follows that just as beauty is the due proportion of the members, first each to each and secondly as a whole, in any outstandingly lovely body, so knowledge should be considered as neither more nor less than the beauty of the human mind, and once men have been captivated by this, they assuredly do not heed bodily forms, how radiant . So far are they from being disturbed by such things!

Once that habit of comparison has been established, you will acquire the capacity to compare the sciences themselves each with each, which go to make up, as celestial members, the divine body, so to speak, of wisdom as a whole. According to Pythagoras, this is what human reason is: the bringing together and comparison of intellectual entities, a process which he either explained or obfuscated by using numbers as an example of it. In this way you will bring all of human reason to its perfection, after the likeness of a most pure and clear-shining light, its rays directed wherever you turn the mind’s eye, so that what they call “the universe of knowledge” and all its parts are seen to come together, answer one another, and stand as one, in any single thought you may be having, and, as it were, in any one point. And there you have it: the crowning exemplar of the man of unalloyed wisdom!

To what particular discipline above all others will you apply yourselves (for in order to be useful to your country you must pursue one in particular)? Your innate ability will teach you what that discipline is by the delight you feel in learning it as over against others. Nature, which Almighty God gives you as your guardian for this purpose, uses that yardstick so that you may recognize where^[7] your willing and ready Minerva waits. Although nature is the safest guide, I who now urge you on to the greatest and best do not consider that to be the most illuminating way. For often a man has capacities for the highest and best hidden within him and so deep asleep as to be almost completely or indeed completely unperceived by their possessor. Cimon the Athenian (you all know the story), a dull inert man, was desperately in love with a young girl; when she announced in jest—as if this would be an impossibility for him—that she would love him if he became an officer in the army, the man enlisted, and ended up a very famous general in the field. Socrates was born with a marked propensity for wrongdoing, but, once converted to the pursuit of wisdom by a divine impulse, he came to be known as the one who first called down philosophy from heaven, and earned the title “father of all philosophers.” Let us set recent examples alongside those of past ages, eminent men who in the doing of something discovered, through the discernment of others, astonishing capabilities hitherto unknown to themselves. Cardinal Jules Mazarin comes on the scene on his own account as a courtier of private means, a soldier in the ranks and a legal practitioner. However, on one occasion after another there arose matters of state which were assigned to him wholly unexpectedly by persons of the highest degree, and he became an extremely able statesman, privy to the secret counsels of Louis XIV, King of France, and dying only after a long term of power—a very rare instance of great good fortune. Francesco Guicciardini practiced law in the Roman courts, until the popes of his time, against any desire or wishes of his, made him governor over a number of cities in the papal jurisdiction. When Charles VIII in the French wars throw all Italy into turmoil, Guicciardini on the orders of the papacy negotiated a number of very crucial affairs arising out of the war. And this was the reason why he turned his energies to chronicling the Italy of his time, becoming easily the greatest of all historians writing in the Italian language. In view of all this, let the eyes of your mind rove widely, exercise your talents full circle, pry out your veiled and hidden capacities, that you may recognize your unknown and perhaps superior talents.

After you have traversed the whole circle of knowledge, you must pursue whatever discipline you have chosen with a more exalted spirit even than that shown by learned men themselves. (Let me set out my general meaning with a few examples.) Do not practice medicine merely in order to work successful cures; nor jurisprudence in order to offer sage legal opinion; nor theology simply in order to watch over correct doctrine in sacred matters. Rather, following the precedent given you in lectures and readings, you must employ in your homework the same grandeur of spirit, the same sublime mastery. And so this kind of reading and listening to those undying works of the chief authors will build up in you a nature accustomed to excellence, which will of its own accord lead you on to employ those very authors as ever-present judges in your private studies. Put this question over and over again to your innermost selves: Supposing you are in medicine (I am going back to the examples already given)—“What if I Hippocrates himself were to hear what I am thinking and writing” if in law—“What if Cujas heard this?” In theology— “What if Melchior Cano heard it?” For whoever sets up as his critics authors who have lasted throughout the ages cannot but produce works which will also be admired by subsequent generations. By these giant strides which you take along the main road to wisdom, you will easily make such progress that not one single one of you will say, “I wander along the byroads of the Muses,”^[8] and you will bring to completion challenging tasks attempted but not carried through by men of great capabilities and learning, or else you will undertake things never yet attempted. You doctors (I am going to wind up my theme by using my previous examples) must lay down further aphorisms, using medical reports and case histories collected from every quarter—a distinction which up till now was vested for two thousand years and more in Hippocrates alone. You lawyers must embrace the whole of jurisprudence, working through inferences in case law, by rulings upon legal terms, in which branch of learning Aemilius Papinian was considered past master, and Jacques Cujas rose to preeminence above all others in an age teeming with learned interpreters of the law. (I might mention that on this task as a whole Antoine Favre made a beginning in his Jurisprudentia papiniannaea, a man great not only in regard to his age but also in his knowledge of the law; he did not, however, live to complete it, whether discouraged by the difficulty as he went along, or surprised by death, who knows.) You theologians must establish a system of moral philosophy based on Christian doctrine—Cardinal Sforza Pallavincino put his hand to it in a courageous attempt, Pascal published his Pensees so full of insight but fragmentary, Malebranche failed in the very attempt. Read the great Verulam’s De augmentis scientiarum—a book worth its weight in gold and, apart from a few passages, ever to be looked up to and borne in mind—and ponder how much of the world of learning does remain to be set to rights, filled in, disclosed.

Whatever you do, do not be taken in unawares by that opinion, springing either from envy or cowardice, which says that for this most blessed century of ours everything that could ever have been achieved in the world of learning has already reached its conclusion, its culmination, and perfection, so that nothing remains therein to be desired. It is a false opinion, stemming from scholars with petty minds. For this world is still young. To go back no further than the last seven centuries, four of which were overrun by barbarism, how many new inventions there have been, how many new sciences and arts discovered! The mariner’s compass, ships propelled by sail alone, the telescope, the barometer of Torricelli, Boyle’s air plump, the circulation of the blood, the microscope, the alembic of the Arabs, Arabic numerals, indefinite classes of magnitudes, gunpowder, cannon, cupolas in churches, movable type, rag paper, clockwork—each one a striking achievement and all of them unknown to antiquity. Hence there have come novelties in ships and navigation (and thereby a new world discovered and geography how marvelously expanded), new observations in astronomy, new methods of timekeeping, new cosmographical systems, innovations in mechanics, physics, medicine, a new anatomy, new chemical remedies (which Galen so greatly desired), a new method of geometry (and arithmetic markedly speeded up), new arts of war, a new architecture, such an availability of books that they are as common as dirt now, such abundance of them that they grow wearisome. How is it that the nature of human genius is so suddenly exhausted that we must give up hope of any other equally goodly inventions?

Do not be discouraged, noble hearers: countless possibilities still remain, perhaps even greater and more excellent than those we have just enumerated. In the teeming bosom of nature and the busy marketplace of the arts, great things are there, laid out for all to see, destined for the good of humanity and overlooked until now simply because the heroic mind had not turned its attention that way. Great Alexander when he came to Egypt took in with one magnificent glance the isthmus dividing the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, where the Nile runs into the Mediterranean and Africa and Asia meet. He thought it a worthy site where a city might be founded bearing his name, Alexandria, which straightway became the most frequented merchant city of Africa and Asia and Europe, of the entire Mediterranean Sea, of the Ocean and the Indies. The sublime Galileo first observed the planet Venus “distinct with its duplicate horn”^[9] and discovered marvels in cosmology. The towering Descartes observed the trajectory of a stone thrown from a sling, and thought up a new physics. Christopher Columbus felt a wind from the Western Ocean blowing in his face, and in the light of Aristotle’s hypothesis that winds arise from land masses, he guessed at other lands beyond the high seas and discovered the New World. The great Grotius paid serious attention to that one remark of Livy’s: “Peace and war have each their own laws,” and produced admirable volumes entitled De jure belli et pacis which, with certain passages excised, deserve to be called “peerless.” With such shining instances, examples so distinguished, before you, apply yourselves, young men born to great and good things, to your studies, with heroic mind and coequal greatness of soul. Cultivate knowledge as a whole. Celebrate the near-divine nature of your minds. Take fire from the god who fills you. Attend your lectures, read, study long hours, with lofty spirit. Undergo Herculean trials, which, once passed, vindicate with perfect justice your divine descent from true Jove, Him the greatest and best. Prove yourselves to be heroes by enriching the human race with further giant benefits. Riches and wealth, honor and power in this your country will with little trouble follow upon these noblest of services rendered to the human race. And even if these rewards fail to materialize, you are not going to be deterred. Like Seneca you will receive them with equanimity, that is to say, without exaltation, should they come; and, without dejection, if they take their leave, you will ascribe their loss to Fortune’s witless frenzy. And you will be satisfied with this divine and imperishable reward: that Almighty God Who as I said at the beginning enjoins upon us solicitude for the whole of humankind has chosen some of you^[10] in particular for the revelation of His glory upon this earth.

TRANSLATED BY ELIZABETH SEWELL AND ANTHONY C. SIRIGNANO