De docta ignorantia

Since it is the concordant wisdom of the wise that through these visibles and the magnitude, beauty and order of things we are led into stupor of the divine art and excellence, and we have touched some admirable artifices of the science of God, however briefly in the creation of the universe let us subjoin few things admiringly concerning the situation and order of the elements. God, however, used arithmetic, geometry and music at once and astronomy in the creation of the world, which arts we also use, while we investigate the proportions of things and elements and motions. For through arithmetic he co-united them; through geometry he figured, that from this consequently firmness and stability and mobility according to their conditions; through music he so proportioned that there be not more earth in earth than water in water, and air in air, and fire in fire, that no element be wholly resoluble into another, from which it comes about that the world machine cannot perish, and although part of one can be resolved into another, yet never can the whole air, which is mixed with water, be converted into water on account of the circumstant air impeding this, that there ever be mixture of elements. Whence God acted that parts of elements be mutually resolved, and when it be with delay, something be generated from the concord of elements to the generable itself, lasting as long as the concord of elements lasts, which broken, the generated is broken and dissolved.

In admirable order, therefore, the elements are constituted through God, who created all things in number, weight, and measure; number pertains to arithmetic, weight to music, measure to geometry; for gravity is sustained with levity constraining, for heavy earth as it were in the middle is suspended from fire, levity, however, leans on gravity, as fire on earth. And while this eternal wisdom ordered, it used inexpressible proportion, that it foreknew how much any element ought to precede another, weighing the elements so that by as much as water is lighter than earth, by so much air is lighter than water and fire than air, that at once weight concur with magnitude, and the continent occupy greater place than the content. And with such habitude it connected them to one another, that one be necessarily in another. Where earth is as it were a certain animal, as Plato says, having stones instead of bones, streams instead of veins, trees instead of hairs, and there are animals which are nourished within those hairs of earth, as little worms among hairs of animals. And to fire earth holds itself as it were as world to God; for fire has many likenesses of God in order to earth, whose potency has no end, working all things in earth, penetrating, illuminating and distinguishing and forming through the medium of air and water, that nothing as it were of all things which are generated from earth be except another and another operation of fire, that the forms of things be from diversity of refulgence of fire. Fire itself, however, is immersed in things, without which neither is it, nor are terrestrial things. God, however, is only absolute, whence as it were absolute consuming fire and absolute clarity. God is light, in whom are no darknesses, he is called by the ancients, whose as it were fieriness and clarity all things which are strive according to posse to participate, as in all stars we behold, where this such clarity is found materially contracted; which discretive and penetrative clarity is as it were immaterially contracted in the life of the living with intellective life.

Who would not admire this maker, who with such art indeed used even in spheres and stars and regions of stars? Without all precision with diversity of all things be the concordance of all, in one world prepondering magnitudes of stars, situation and motion and so ordering distances of stars that unless any region were so as it is, neither could it itself be nor be in such situation and order, nor could the universe itself be; giving to all stars different clarity, influence, figure and color and heat, which accompanies clarity influentially, and so proportionably constituting proportion of parts to one another, that in anything whatever be motion of parts to the whole, downward to the mean in heavy things and upward from the mean in light, and about the mean, as we perceive the orbicular motion of stars.

In these so admirable things, so various and diverse, through learned ignorance we experience according to the premises that we can know no reason of any works of God, but only admire, since great is the Lord, whose magnitude has no end, who since he is absolute maximality, as he is author and knower of all his works, so also end, that in him be all things and outside him nothing, who is beginning, mean and end of all things, center and circumference of universals, that in all things he alone be sought, since without him all things are nothing, with whom alone possessed all things are possessed, since he is all things; through whom all things are known, since truth of all things; who also wills that we be led into admiration from the world machine so marvelous, which yet to us hidden by so much more by how much more we admire, since he alone is, who wills to be sought with all heart and diligence and inhabits the inaccessible light itself, which is sought through all things, alone can open to those knocking and give to those asking. And none of all created things have power to open to one knocking and to show themselves what they be, since without him they are nothing, who is in all things. But indeed in learned ignorance to one inquiring from them what they be or how or to what, they answer: From ourselves nothing nor from ourselves can we answer to you other than nothing, we do not even have science of ourselves, but he alone, through whose understanding we are that which he in us wills, commands and knows. Many indeed are all things; he is, who speaks in all things, who alone made us knows what we are, how and to what. If you desire to know anything concerning us, this indeed seek in our reason and cause, not in us; there you will find all things, while you seek one. And neither can you find yourself except in him. Make therefore, says our ignorance, that you find yourself in him; and since all things are in him, he can lack nothing to you. This, however, is not ours, that we approach the inaccessible, but his who gave us a face turned to him, with highest desire of seeking, which while we do, he is most loving, will not desert, but with himself shown to us, when his glory appears, will satiate eternally, who be blessed forever. Amen.