[101] Justly and rightly then shall we say that in the invisible soul the invisible God has His earthly dwelling-place.
And that the house may have both strength and loveliness, let its foundations be laid in natural excellence and good teaching, and let us rear upon them virtues and noble actions, and let its external ornaments be the reception of the learning of the schools.
[102] The first of these, natural excellence, brings quickness of apprehension, perseverance and memory. From teaching are borrowed readiness to learn and concentration. They are like the roots of the tree that will bring forth good fruit, and without them the mind cannot be brought to its fullness.
[103] Virtues and the good actions that follow them provide the stability and firmness that make the structure secure, so that all that purposes to banish or sever or draw away the soul from good is powerless against such steadfastness and strength.
[104] From the study of the introductory learning of the schools come the ornaments of the soul, which are attached to it as to a house.
For as stuccoes, paintings, and tablets and arrangements of precious stones and the like, with which men adorn pavements as well as walls, contribute nothing to the strength of the building, but only serve to give pleasure to the inmates,
[105] so the knowledge of the schools adorns the whole house of the soul. Grammar or literature makes research into poetry and pursues the study of the doings of old time. Geometry gives us the sense of equality produced by proportion. It also heals by the means of fine music all that is harsh and inharmonious or discordant in the soul, under the influence of rhythm, metre, and melody. Rhetoric seeks out and weighs the materials for shrewd treatment in all the subjects which it handles, and welds them to the language that befits them. Sometimes it raises us to a pitch of strong emotion, at other times the tension is relaxed in a sense of pleasure. With all this it gives fluency and facility in using our tongues and organs of speech.