A. I love them for friendship and for companionship, and above all others I love those who most help me to understand and to know reason and wisdom, most of all about God and about our souls; for I know that I can more easily seek after Him with their help than I can without.
R. How then if they do not wish to inquire after the One whom thou seekest?
A. I shall teach them so that they will.
R. But how then if thou canst not, and if they be so foolish as to love other things more than that which thou lovest, and say that they can not or will not?
A. I, nevertheless, will have them: they will be helpful to me in some things and I likewise to them.
R. But how then if they disturb thee, and if the infirmities of the body hinder thee?
A. That is true; howbeit I would not fear at all the infirmities, if it were not for three things: One of these is heavy sorrow; another is death; the third is that I can not seek nor truly find what I desire just as thou madest me know. Toothache hindered me from all learning, but yet it did not altogether snatch from me the remembrance of that which I formerly learned. Howbeit I suppose, if I should understand certainly that which I yearn to understand, sorrow would seem to me very little, or else naught, compared with faith. Yet I know many a pain is much sharper than toothache, albeit I never suffered any sharper. I learned that Cornelius Celsus taught in his books that in every man wisdom is the highest good and sickness the greatest evil. The saying appeareth to me very true. Concerning the same thing the same Cornelius saith: 'Of two things we are what we are, to wit, of soul and of body. The soul is spiritual, and the body earthy. The best faculty of the soul is wisdom, and the worst affliction of the body is sickness.' Methinks moreover that this is not false.
R. Have we not now shown clearly enough that wisdom is the highest good? Is it not also beyond a doubt that it is to every man the best of all the virtues? And is it not
