To the Reader.

that only the good man is happy;
that the Great Refers to the nobility or those in high social standing have as many Tyrants
as they have vices; that Merchants are neither
happy nor powerful; and that Virtue, though
afflicted, is never miserable. It is
likewise here that, through a marvelous
chain of consequences and results,
Philosophy shows that those who do not wish
to be Gods become beasts; to this
end, she employs the fable of Circe In Homer’s Odyssey, the enchantress Circe transforms men into swine; Philosophy uses this to symbolize how surrendering to vice degrades human nature to an animal level. The
fourth Prose is but a proof of this
important proposition: that the Wicked
are happier in the punishment of their
crimes than in their impunity The idea that punishment is a "medicine" for the soul, and thus it is better for a criminal to be corrected than to escape justice. Near the end, after
a clear distinction between Fate and
Providence Philosophy distinguishes Providence (God’s eternal plan) from Fate (the execution of that plan in time and space), Wisdom marks the reasons
why God allows the Good to suffer along with the
Wicked. The last book proposes the
admirable accord of the foreknowledge of God with the
free occurrence of human actions,
the infallibility of which does not compromise our
freedom original: "franchise"; in this context, it refers to "free will" or the liberty of the human soul to choose its path in any way. There is no one who is not capable
of [understanding] the first three [books]; as for the following two,
it must be admitted that the connection between them is delicate,
and that to understand the discourse of
wisdom, one must be completely attentive. The
ordinary use of certain words cannot have
the same grace in English original: "François" (French). The translator is discussing the difficulty of moving the text from the original Latin into his native tongue as in
Latin,