If flames of fire should issue visibly through the windows of a house, and if any one should ask if there were fire within it, and if another should answer "Yes" to him, one would not well know how to judge which of those might be mocking the most.

Not otherwise would the question and the answer pass between me and that man who should ask me if love for my own language is in me, and if I should answer "Yes" to him, after the arguments propounded above.
But, nevertheless, it has to be proved that not only love, but the most perfect love for it exists in me, and again its adversaries must be blamed.

Whilst demonstrating this to him who will understand well, I will tell how I became the friend of it, and then how my friendship is confirmed.
I say that (as Tullius writes in his book on Friendship, not dissenting from the opinion of the Philosopher opened up in the eighth and in the ninth of the Ethics) Neighbourhood and Goodness are, naturally, the causes of the birth of Love: Benevolence, Study, and Custom are the causes of the growth of Love.

And there have been all these causes to produce and to strengthen the love which I bear to my Native Language, as I shall briefly demonstrate.

A thing is so much the nearer in proportion as it is most nearly allied to all the other things of its own kind; wherefore, of all men the son is nearest to the father, and of all the Arts, Medicine is nearest to the Doctor, and Music to the Musician, because they are more allied to them than the others.