Miscellanies 6.11.90

Indeed, even at a drinking party we pledge one another with psalm-singing, charming our desire to rest and glorifying God for the bountiful gift of human enjoyments, the foods for the growth of body and of soul that are supplied everlastingly. But superfluous music must be spat out, the kind that enervates souls and throws them into variety, now mournful, now licentious and voluptuous, now frenzied and mad. The same account holds for astronomy. For, through its inquiry into the heavenly phenomena, the shape of the universe, the revolution of the heaven, and the motion of the stars, it brings the soul nearer to the creating power, and it teaches one to be quick to perceive the seasons of the year, the changes of the weather, and the risings of the stars; for navigation and agriculture too are full of the use it provides, just as architecture and building are of the use of geometry. This study also makes the soul as attentive as possible, sharp to discern the true and to refute the false, able to find correspondences and proportions, so as to track down the like in the unlike; and it leads us to discover length without breadth, surface without depth, and the point without parts, and transfers us from sensible things to intelligible ones.