6 1For this cause and because, as I said before, things holy in virtue of their essential goodness cannot but through their very nature have speech for us, though we pass them by in silence, I say no more about them. For neither do sun and moon need an interpreter, because their rising by day or night fills the whole world with light. Their shining is a proof that needs no further witness, established by the evidence of the eyes, an evidence clearer than the ears can give. 2But in my store there is one thing which seems especially to involve hardship and discomfort, and this I will tell you frankly without concealment; for though at the first encounter it seems on the surface painful to the imagination, practice makes it sweet and reflection shows it to be profitable. This thing is toil, the first and greatest of blessings, the enemy of ease, waging war to the death against pleasure. 3For in very truth, God has appointed toil as the beginning of all goodness and true worth to men, and without it you shall find that nothing excellent takes shape amongst mortal men. Toil is like light. Without light we cannot see, and neither the eye nor the colour is capable without the other of creating sight-perception; for before either, Nature created light to be a link between the two, a link which unites and connects the colour and the eye, while in the darkness each is powerless. And so the eye of the soul cannot grasp the practices of virtue, unless it take toil, like light, to co-operate with it. Toil stands midway between the mind and the excellence which the mind desires: with its right hand it draws to it the one, with its left the other, and of itself it creates that perfection of goodness, friendship and harmony between the two.