Whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life.
At last the best of artisans ordained that that creature to whom He had been able to give nothing proper to himself should have joint possession of whatever had been peculiar to each of the different kinds of being.
But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness.
God the Father, the supreme Architect, had already built this cosmic home we behold, the most sacred temple of His godhead, by the laws of His mysterious wisdom.
Spiritual beings, either from the beginning or soon thereafter, become what they are to be for ever and ever.
It was not the part of His kindly love that he who was to praise God's divine generosity in regard to others should be compelled to condemn it in regard to himself.
But in its final creation it was not the part of the Father's power to fail as though exhausted. It was not the part of His wisdom to waver in a needful matter through poverty of counsel.
For why should we not admire more the angels themselves and the blessed choirs of heaven?
Admittedly great though these reasons be, they are not the principal grounds, that is, those which may rightfully claim for themselves the privilege of the highest admiration.
If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth.
And if, happy in the lot of no created thing, he withdraws into the center of his own unity, his spirit, made one with God, in the solitary darkness of God, who is set above all things, shall surpass them all.
The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants.
