law of the angelic life in the world beyond the stars. There is the
element of fire in the material world; the sun is the fire of heaven;
and in the super-celestial world there is the fire of [46] the
seraphic intelligence. "But behold how they differ! The
elementary fire burns, the heavenly fire vivifies, the super-
celestial fire loves." In this way, every natural object, every
combination of natural forces, every accident in the lives of men,
is filled with higher meanings. Omens, prophecies, supernatural
coincidences, accompany Pico himself all through life. There are
oracles in every tree and mountain-top, and a significance in
every accidental combination of the events of life.

This constant tendency to symbolism and imagery gives Pico's
work a figured style, by which it has some real resemblance to
Plato's, and he differs from other mystical writers of his time by
a genuine desire to know his authorities at first hand. He reads
Plato in Greek, Moses in Hebrew, and by this his work really
belongs to the higher culture. Above all, we have a constant
sense in reading him, that his thoughts, however little their
positive value may be, are connected with springs beneath them
of deep and passionate emotion; and when he explains the grades
or steps by which the soul passes from the love of a physical
object to the love of unseen beauty, and unfolds the analogies
between this process and other movements upward of human
thought, there is a glow and vehemence in his words which
remind one of the manner in which his own brief existence
flamed itself away.

I said that the Renaissance of the fifteenth [47] century was, in
many things, great rather by what it designed or aspired to do,