De venis mesaraicis obstructis ipsarumque ita affectarum curatione Theses sive Pronunciata LX

(my Thomas) the knowledge of letters is useful while it passes into action and accommodates itself to the best things, not to words. I confess it, most adorned teacher: but, if it will not be troublesome, I shall proceed further (for I willingly converse about these things) and I will ask you, What is Love? You will respond perhaps with Aristotle: phílēsin en tô antiphílēsin loving in the form of reciprocal love, and you will prove that by the example of storks, which carry their elderly parents on their shoulders to pasture and nourish them; whence they are called pelasgikoì nómoi Pelasgic laws, known not so much to individuals as they are imitable. From these I gather that it is necessary for humans to be phílō thēríō kaì orníthō en mimtâs imitators of friendly beasts and birds, and that that is the bond of true love: tòs ōphelēkótas autô phelên to love those who have benefited one. Revolving these things individually for a long time and much kat’ análysin by analysis in my mind (I have done this more often and do it now), I have perceived that I owe very much to you, from whose companionship, as if from some most abundant spring, I have drawn the best disciplines. For such has always been your humanity, that you are accustomed to communicate even the innermost secrets of your práxeōs practice to me. It was so far from the case that you would imitate the men of our century (not to say the doctors of our region), the autékasas self-sufficient ones, who wish to live for themselves, not for their friends, not for their colleagues; and, which is the greatest vice in doctors just as in princes, they have no regard for posterity. Nay, they know nothing, and having some rare scrap of experience, they embrace it (even if it is rotten) like Stymphalian birds with apples, or a dragon with treasure. But, to set these aside, since phílēsis love is in reality antiphílēsis reciprocal love, and we ought, in the manner of fields, to respond to the farmer’s labors with an abundant yield of grain, behold this little gift for you. Not the kind that heroes are accustomed to offer to princes, but we dedicate our little night-work on obstructed mesaraic veins to your name as if it were a first vintage. Alas; do not, I pray, despise such and so great a thing because it is small, for that is not your custom. Whatever is small is greatest; for nature is greatest in the smallest things: kaì tò mégisou en elachísō and the greatest thing in the least, or all mortals would perish today. I seem to speak in enigmas, but they are philosophical and true; if indeed the ant demonstrates the first, and the soul the second. Have you not remembered the Rhodians—