Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.38

“If you would diligently behold with unsullied mind

 the laws of the God of thunder upon high,

look to the highest point of heaven above.

There, by a fair and equal compact,

do the stars keep their ancient peace.

The sun is hurried on by its whirl of fire,

but impedes not the moon's cool orb.

The Bear turns its rushing course

around the highest pole of the Universe,

and dips not in the western depths,

and though it sees the other constellations sink,

it never seeks to quench its flames in the ocean stream.

In just divisions of time does the evening star

foretell the coming of the late shadows,

and, as Lucifer, brings back again the warming light of day.

Thus does the interchanging bond of love

bring round their never-failing courses;

and strife is forever an exile from the starry realms.

This unity rules by fair limits the elements,

so that wet yields to dry, its opposite,

and it faithfully joins cold to heat.

Floating fire rises up on high,

and matter by its weight sinks down.

From these same causes in warm spring

the flowering season breathes its scents;

then the hot summer dries the grain;

then with its burden of fruits comes autumn again,

and winter's falling rain gives moisture.

This mingling of seasons nourishes and brings forth

all on earth that has the breath of life;

and again snatches them away and hides them,

whelming in death all that has arisen.

Meanwhile the Creator sits on high, rules all and guides,

king and Lord, fount and source of all,

Law itself and wise judge of justice.

He restrains all that stirs nature to motion,

holds it back, and makes firm all that would stray.

If He were not to recall them to their true paths,

 and set them again upon the circles of their courses,

they would be torn from their source and so would perish.

This is the common bond of love;

all seek thus to be restrained by the limit of the good.

In no other manner can they endure

if this bond of love be not turned round again,

and if the causes, which He has set, return not again.”

—from Book 4, Poem 6

In my younger days, when I still naively assumed that other people would get as excited as I did about learning something new and off the beaten path, I was once passionately explaining to one of my professors how life-changing it was for me to finally read Boethius’ Consolation with care. I could tell he was being patient with me, and that he would surely prefer to be doing something else, but I had him cornered, and in my elation I just didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t seeing what I was seeing.

“Boethius is sort of old and tired, isn’t he? It’s not like he’s on the cutting edge of scholarship. You might be better off studying something more contemporary, something that isn’t so derivative of outdated attitudes.”

I should have nodded and been on my way, but I stubbornly persisted. I suggested that the arguments were timeless, precisely because they spoke to a universal meaning and purpose in Nature we too often overlook. If we think it’s obsolete, could it be that we’ve forgotten something? Wasn’t there a great truth in recognizing that the whole of the world is ruled by love?

I had clearly gone too far, because I got the smirk and the roll of the eyes. “Well, I really can’t help you if you want to follow all that crude physics, and I hardly think anyone in their right mind would say that Boethius has anything to do with love.”

I have come to accept that these are not the most popular views, and yet I still believe there is something crucial to be learned from them. Yes, all the talk about the four elements, and the balance of hot and cold, of wet and dry, and the music of the spheres, may not fit our current scientific jargon. I can go deeper than the differences of symbolism and expression, however, and see a common Universe of causality, balance, and order.

And yes, while Boethius may not speak with the emotional intensity of a romantic poet, or with the social conscience of the flower generation, he does most certainly believe that love makes the world go around, as he again makes very clear in the poem above.

In that every aspect of Nature, to whatever degree of awareness or perfection, moves and act for the sake of the good, all creatures are driven by love, drawn toward their fulfillment as parts within the whole. They all work together, admittedly in often mysterious ways, but they are all charged with direction.

It is, in this sense, a love that binds all things together in a unity.

Nothing happens in vain. Each event balances itself out with every other event. Wherever there seems to be a diversion, that diversion itself becomes a means for a correction. Aristotle, or Boethius, or Aquinas understood this just as well as Kepler, or Newton, or Einstein.

I can speak of such a love not just in a metaphorical sense, since the reality of design necessitates the ultimate presence of mind and will. It may not be fashionable to say that the heavens make music, but the fact that they do not literally produce sounds does not mean that they do not reflect the most beautiful harmony. 

Written in 12/2015