The other thing to defend the intellect from is curiosity. Filling it with harmful, vain and impertinent thoughts, we render it unable to apprehend that which most appertains to true mortification and perfection. For this reason you must be in every way be dead to every unnecessary investigation of even legitimate earthly topics.

Restrict your intellect whenever you can and grow fond of making fun of it. Whether great or small, the world’s latest novelties and developments should matter as little to you as if they never happened. Should they be offered to you, set yourself in opposition and drive them far away. In your desire to understand heavenly things be sober and humble, desiring to know nothing more than Christ crucified (see 1 Cor. 2.2; Gal. 6.14; 1 Cor. 1:23), his life and death and what he asks of you. Keep everything else far from you and you will do something very pleasing to God, who considers dear and beloved those who desire and seek from him those things that suffice to love his divine goodness and to do his will. Any other question or investigation is self-love, pride, and demonic deception.

Following these rules will enable you to avoid many snares. The astute serpent sees that in those who care for the spiritual life the will is stalwart and strong, so he tries to assault their intellect, mastering the former by mastering the latter. He is therefore accustomed to give them high, vivid and extravagant sentiments, which he grants as much as possible to acute persons of great ingenuity who are easily made proud. This way, occupied in delight and meditation of subjects where they falsely persuade themselves to enjoy God, they forget to purify the heart and to look to self-knowledge and true mortification. So ensnared by the snare of pride, they make an idol of their very intellect. From this it follows that, bit by bit, they unknowingly convince themselves no longer to need others’ advice or direction, as they are already accustomed in every eventuality to run to the idol of their own judgment.

Of this gravely dangerous delusion it is very difficult to cure oneself. Pride of the intellect is more dangerous than pride of the will: when the intellect perceives pride of the will, it can cure it easily, in a single day, by obeying whom one ought. But someone with a firm opinion that his understanding is better than that of others — how can he be healed, and by whom? How can he submit to others’ judgment when he does not consider it as good as his own? If the intellect is ill — this eye of the soul by which one ought to recognize and purify the wound of pride in the will — if it is blinded and filled with the same pride, who can cure it? And if light turns to darkness and its governance fails, what becomes of the rest?

For this reason you should set yourself early against such dangerous pride, before it seeps into your bone marrow. Blunt the sharpness of your intellect: be quick to submit your judgment to that of others; become mad with love for God and you will be wiser than Solomon.