"Behold that same white Truth you were fain to contemplate. And know it
is built up of the divers contradictory truths, in the same fashion as
all colours go to make up white. The little children of Viterbo know
this, for having spun their tops striped with many colours on the flags
on the Great Market. But the doctors of Bologna never guessed the
reasons for this appearance. Now in every one of the devices was a
portion of the Truth, and all together make up the true and veritable
device."

"Alas! and alas!" replied the holy man, "how am I to read it? For my
eyes are dazzled."

And the voice answered:

"Very true, there is naught to be seen there but flashing fire. No Latin
letters, nor Arabic, nor Greek, no cabalistic signs, can ever express
this device; and no hand is there may trace it in characters of flame on
palace walls.

"Friend, never set your heart on reading what is not written. Only know
this, that whatsoever a man has thought or believed in his brief
lifetime is a parcel of this infinite Truth; and that, even as much dirt
and disorder enter into what we call the order of nature, that is the
clean and proper ordering of the universe, so the maxims of knaves and
fools, who make the mass of mankind, participate in some sort in that
general and universal Truth-which is absolute, everlasting and divine.
Which makes me sore afraid, by the by, it may very like not exist at
all."