Itinerarium mentis in Deum

1. Blessed is the man whose help is from thee: he has disposed ascents in his heart, in the valley of tears, in the place which he has set. Since blessedness is nothing else than the fruition of the highest good, and the highest good is above us, no one can be made blessed unless he ascend above himself, not by a bodily ascent but by a cordial one. But we cannot be raised above ourselves except by a higher power raising us. For however much the inner steps are disposed, nothing is done unless the divine aid accompany. And the divine aid accompanies those who ask from the heart, humbly and devoutly; and this is to sigh to him in this valley of tears, which is done by fervent prayer. Prayer, then, is the mother and origin of the uplifting. Hence Dionysius, in the book on Mystical Theology, wishing to instruct us in mental transports, first premises prayer. Let us pray, then, and say to the Lord our God: Lead me, Lord, in thy way, and let me enter into thy truth; let my heart rejoice, that it may fear thy name.

2. Praying in this prayer, we are enlightened to know the steps of the divine ascent. For since, according to the state of our condition, the whole universe of things is a ladder for ascending to God, and among things some are a footprint, some an image, some corporeal, some spiritual, some temporal, some everlasting, and hence some outside us, some within us: to arrive at considering the first beginning, which is most spiritual and eternal and above us, we must pass through the footprint, which is corporeal and temporal and outside us — and this is to be led in the way of God; we must enter into our mind, which is the image of God, everlasting, spiritual, and within us — and this is to enter into the truth of God; we must pass over to the eternal, most spiritual, and above us, looking to the first beginning — and this is to rejoice in the knowledge of God and the reverence of his majesty.

3. This, then, is the way of three days in the wilderness; this is the threefold illumination of one day: the first as evening, the second as morning, the third as noon; this regards the threefold existence of things — in matter, in intelligence, and in the eternal art — according to which it was said: let it be made, he made, and it was made; this also regards the threefold substance in Christ, who is our ladder: namely corporeal, spiritual, and divine.

4. According to this threefold advance, our mind has three principal regards. One is to corporeal things outside, according to which it is called animality or sensuality; another within itself and to itself, according to which it is called spirit; the third above itself, according to which it is called mind. — From all of these it must dispose itself to ascend to God, to love him with the whole mind, the whole heart, and the whole soul, in which consists the perfect observance of the Law, and together with this, Christian wisdom.

5. But since each of the aforesaid modes is doubled — according as we may consider God as alpha and omega, or inasmuch as we may see God in each of the aforesaid modes as through a mirror and as in a mirror, or because one of these considerations must be mingled with the other joined to it, and must be considered in its purity — hence it is that these three principal steps must ascend to six, so that, just as God in six days perfected the whole world and rested on the seventh, so the lesser world may by six successive illuminating steps be most orderly led to the rest of contemplation. — In figure of this, the throne of Solomon was ascended by six steps; the Seraphim whom Isaiah saw had six wings; after six days the Lord called Moses from the midst of darkness, and after six days, as is said in Matthew, Christ led the disciples up the mountain and was transfigured before them.

6. According, then, to the six steps of ascent to God, there are six steps of the soul's powers, by which we ascend from the lowest to the highest, from outer things to inner things, from temporal things we ascend to eternal things: namely sense, imagination, reason, intellect, intelligence, and the apex of the mind or the spark of synderesis. These steps we have planted in us by nature, deformed by fault, reformed by grace; to be purged by justice, to be exercised by knowledge, to be perfected by wisdom.

7. For according to the first institution of nature, man was created fit for the quiet of contemplation, and therefore God placed him in a paradise of delights. But turning himself away from the true light to a changeable good, he himself was bent over by his own fault, and his whole race by original sin, which infected human nature in two ways: namely, ignorance infecting the mind and concupiscence the flesh; so that man, blinded and bent over, sits in darkness and does not see the light of heaven, unless grace with justice comes to his aid against concupiscence, and knowledge with wisdom against ignorance. All of which is done through Jesus Christ, who was made to us by God wisdom and justice and sanctification and redemption. Who, since he is the power of God and the wisdom of God, the incarnate Word full of grace and truth, made grace and truth: that is, he infused the grace of charity, which, since it is from a pure heart and a good conscience and an unfeigned faith, rectifies the whole soul according to its threefold regard aforesaid; he taught the knowledge of truth according to the threefold mode of theology — symbolic, proper, and mystical — so that through the symbolic we may rightly use sensible things, through the proper intelligible things, through the mystical we may be rapt to super-mental transports.

8. Whoever, then, wills to ascend to God must, shunning the fault that deforms nature, exercise the aforesaid natural powers toward the grace that reforms — and this by prayer; toward the justice that purifies — and this in conduct; toward the knowledge that enlightens — and this in meditation; toward the wisdom that perfects — and this in contemplation. Just as, then, no one comes to wisdom except through grace, justice, and knowledge, so one does not come to contemplation except through perspicuous meditation, holy conduct, and devout prayer. Just as, then, grace is the foundation of rectitude of will and of the perspicuous enlightening of reason, so first we must pray, then live holily, thirdly attend to the sights of truth, and in attending ascend step by step, until we come to the high mountain, where the God of gods is seen in Sion.

9. Since, then, it is first to ascend and then to descend on Jacob's ladder, let us place the first step of the ascent at the bottom, setting this whole sensible world before us as a mirror through which we may pass over to God, the highest maker, so that we may be true Hebrews passing from Egypt to the land promised to the Fathers, may also be Christians passing with Christ from this world to the Father, and may be lovers of wisdom, which calls and says: Pass over to me, all you who desire me, and be filled with my generations. For from the greatness of the beauty and of the creature the Creator of these things may be knowably seen.

10. But the highest power and wisdom and benevolence of the Creator shine forth in created things, according as the sense of the flesh announces this threefold to the inner sense. For the sense of the flesh either serves the intellect that inquires rationally, or believes faithfully, or contemplates intellectually. The contemplator considers the actual existence of things, the believer the habitual course of things, the reasoner the potential excellence of things.

11. In the first mode, the regard of the contemplator, considering things in themselves, sees in them weight, number, and measure: weight as to the place where they incline, number by which they are distinguished, and measure by which they are limited. And thereby it sees in them mode, species, and order, as well as substance, power, and operation. From these one can rise, as from a footprint, to understanding the immense power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator.

12. In the second mode, the regard of the believer, considering this world, attends to its origin, course, and end. For by faith we believe that the ages were fitted by the Word of life; by faith we believe that the times of the three laws — of nature, of Scripture, and of grace — succeed one another and have run most orderly; by faith we believe that the world is to be ended by the final judgment: noting in the first the power, in the second the providence, in the third the justice of the highest beginning.

13. In the third mode, the regard of the rational inquirer sees that some things only are, some are and live, some are, live, and discern; and the first are lesser, the second middle, the third better. — It sees again that some things are only corporeal, some partly corporeal and partly spiritual; whence it notes that some are merely spiritual, as better and worthier than both. — It sees nonetheless that some are changeable and corruptible, as earthly things, some changeable and incorruptible, as heavenly things; whence it notes that some are unchangeable and incorruptible, as super-heavenly things. From these visible things, then, it rises to consider the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as being, living, and understanding, merely spiritual and incorruptible and unchangeable.

14. But this consideration is expanded according to the sevenfold condition of creatures, which is a sevenfold testimony of the divine power, wisdom, and goodness, if one considers the origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fullness, operation, and order of all things. — For the origin of things according to creation, distinction, and adornment, as regards the works of the six days, preaches the divine power producing all things from nothing, the wisdom lucidly distinguishing all things, and the goodness lavishly adorning all things. — But the magnitude of things according to the mass of length, breadth, and depth; according to the excellence of power extending itself far, wide, and deep, as is plain in the diffusion of light; according to the efficacy of an intimate, continuous, and diffused operation, as is plain in the operation of fire, manifestly indicates the immensity of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the triune God, who exists uncircumscribed in all things by power, presence, and essence. — But the multitude of things according to general, special, and individual diversity in substance, in form or figure, and in efficacy, beyond all human estimation, manifestly insinuates and shows the immensity of the three aforesaid conditions in God. — But the beauty of things according to the variety of lights, figures, and colors in simple, mixed, and even composite bodies — as in heavenly bodies and minerals, as in stones and metals, plants and animals — evidently proclaims the three aforesaid. — But the fullness of things, according as matter is full of forms by seminal reasons, form is full of power by active potency, power is full of effects by efficiency, manifestly declares the same. — The manifold operation, according as it is natural, according as it is artificial, according as it is moral, by its most manifold variety shows the immensity of that power, art, and goodness, which is to all the cause of being, the reason of understanding, and the order of living. — But order according to the reason of duration, of situation, and of influence — namely through prior and posterior, higher and lower, nobler and baser — insinuates manifestly in the book of the creature the primacy, sublimity, and dignity of the first beginning as regards the infinity of power; but the order of the divine laws, precepts, and judgments in the book of Scripture, the immensity of wisdom; but the order of the divine sacraments, benefits, and retributions in the body of the Church, the immensity of goodness, so that this very order most evidently leads us to the first and highest, most powerful, most wise, and best.

15. Whoever, then, is not enlightened by so many splendors of created things is blind; whoever is not awakened by so many clamors is deaf; whoever does not praise God for all these effects is mute; whoever does not note the first beginning from so many signs is foolish. — Open, then, thine eyes, bring near thy spiritual ears, loose thy lips and apply thy heart, that in all creatures thou mayest see, hear, praise, love, and worship thy God, magnify and honor him, lest perchance the whole world rise up against thee. For on this account the world shall fight against the senseless, and contrariwise to the wise it shall be matter of glory, who according to the Prophet can say: Thou hast delighted me, Lord, in thy making, and I shall exult in the works of thy hands. How great are thy works, O Lord! Thou hast made all things in wisdom; the earth is filled with thy possession.

1. But since, regarding the mirror of sensible things, we may contemplate God not only through them as through footprints, but also in them, inasmuch as he is in them by essence, power, and presence — and to consider this is higher than the former — therefore this consideration holds the second place, as the second step of contemplation, by which we must be led to contemplate God in all the creatures that enter our mind through the bodily senses.

2. Note, then, that this world, called the macrocosm, enters our soul, called the lesser world, through the gates of the five senses, according to the apprehension, delight, and judgment of the sensible things themselves. — Which is plain thus: for in it some things are generating, some generated, some governing, both the former and the latter. The generating are the simple bodies, namely the heavenly bodies and the four elements. For from the elements, through the power of light reconciling the contrariety of the elements in mixed things, are generated and produced whatever is generated and produced by the operation of natural power. — The generated are bodies composed of elements, such as minerals, plants, animals, and human bodies. — Ruling these and those are the spiritual substances: either wholly conjoined, as are the souls of brutes; or conjoined but separably, as are rational spirits; or wholly separate, as are the heavenly spirits, whom the philosophers call Intelligences and we call Angels. To whom, according to the philosophers, belongs the moving of the heavenly bodies, and hence to them is attributed the administration of the universe, receiving from the first cause, namely God, the influx of power, which they pour back according to the work of governance, which regards the natural consistency of things. But according to the theologians, to the same is attributed the rule of the universe by the command of the highest God as regards the works of reparation, according to which they are called ministering spirits, sent for those who receive the inheritance of salvation.

3. Man, then, who is called the lesser world, has five senses as five gates, through which enters into his soul the knowledge of all things that are in the sensible world. For through sight enter the sublime and luminous bodies and other colored things; through touch, solid and terrestrial bodies; through the three intermediate senses enter intermediate things: through taste watery things, through hearing airy things, through smell vaporous things, which have something of a humid nature, something of an aerial, something of a fiery or hot nature, as is plain in smoke released from spices. Through these gates, then, enter both simple bodies and composite ones mixed from them. But since by sense we perceive not only these particular sensibles — light, sound, odor, savor, and the four primary qualities which touch apprehends — but also the common sensibles — number, magnitude, figure, rest, and motion; and everything that is moved is moved by another, and some move and rest of themselves, as animals do: while through these five senses we apprehend the motions of bodies, we are led to the knowledge of spiritual movers, as from effect to the knowledge of causes.

4. According to the three genera of things, then, this whole sensible world enters the human soul by apprehension. But these exterior sensibles are what first enter the soul through the gates of the five senses; they enter, I say, not through their substances but through their likenesses: first generated in the medium, and from the medium in the organ, and from the outer organ in the inner, and from this in the apprehensive power; and so the generation of the species in the medium, and from the medium in the organ, and the conversion of the apprehensive power upon it, make the apprehension of all that the soul apprehends from without.

5. Upon this apprehension, if it be of a fitting thing, delight follows. The sense delights in the object perceived through the abstracted likeness, either by reason of beauty, as in sight, or by reason of sweetness, as in smell and hearing, or by reason of wholesomeness, as in taste and touch, to speak appropriately. But all delight is by reason of proportionality. And since the species holds the reason of form, of power, and of operation — according as it has regard to the principle from which it flows, to the medium through which it passes, and to the end upon which it acts — therefore proportionality is attended either in the likeness, according as it holds the reason of species or form, and then it is called beauty, for beauty is nothing but numerical equality, or a certain arrangement of parts with sweetness of color; or proportionality is attended inasmuch as it holds the reason of potency or power, and then it is called sweetness, when the acting power does not disproportionately exceed the recipient — for sense is saddened in extremes and delighted in middles; or it is attended inasmuch as it holds the reason of efficacy and impression, which is then proportional when the agent, by impressing, fills the need of the patient — and this is to save and nourish it, which appears most in taste and touch. And so through delight, delightful exterior things enter the soul through likeness, according to the threefold reason of delighting.

6. After this apprehension and delight comes judgment, by which is judged not only whether this be white or black — for this belongs to the particular sense; not only whether it be wholesome or harmful — for this belongs to the inner sense; but also by which is judged, and reason given, why this delights; and in this act is inquired the reason of the delight perceived in sense from the object. This is when the reason of the beautiful, the sweet, and the wholesome is sought; and it is found that this is the proportion of equality. But the reason of equality is the same in great and small, is not extended by dimensions, nor succeeds or passes with passing things, nor is altered by motions. It abstracts, then, from place, time, and motion, and hence is unchangeable, uncircumscribable, interminable, and wholly spiritual. Judgment, then, is the action which makes the sensible species, received sensibly through the senses, enter by purifying and abstracting into the intellective power. And so this whole world has to enter the human soul through the gates of the senses, according to the three aforesaid operations.

7. But all these are footprints in which we can speculate our God. — For since the apprehended species is a likeness generated in the medium and then impressed upon the organ itself, and through that impression leads to its principle, namely to the object to be known, it manifestly insinuates that that eternal light generates from itself a co-equal, consubstantial, and co-eternal likeness or splendor; and that he who is the image of the invisible God and the splendor of glory and the figure of his substance — who is everywhere by his first generation, just as the object generates its likeness in the whole medium — is united by the grace of union, as the species to the bodily organ, to an individual of rational nature, to lead us back through that union to the Father as to the fontal principle and object. If, then, all knowable things have to generate a species of themselves, they manifestly proclaim that in them, as in mirrors, can be seen the eternal generation of the Word, Image, and Son eternally emanating from God the Father.

8. In the same way, the delighting species, as beautiful, sweet, and wholesome, insinuates that in that first species is the first beauty, sweetness, and wholesomeness, in which is the highest proportionality and equality to the generator; in which is power, not through a phantasm but through the truth of apprehension flowing in; in which is the impression that saves and suffices and expels every need of the apprehender. If, then, delight is the conjunction of the fitting with the fitting; and the likeness of God alone holds the reason of the supremely beautiful, sweet, and wholesome; and it is united according to truth and according to intimacy and according to a fullness filling every capacity: it can manifestly be seen that in God alone is fontal and true delight, and that from all delights we are led to seek it.

9. But in a more excellent and immediate way, judgment leads us to speculate the eternal truth more certainly. For if judgment must be made through a reason abstracting from place, time, and changeability — and hence from dimension, succession, and transmutation — through a reason unchangeable, uncircumscribable, and interminable; and nothing is wholly unchangeable, uncircumscribable, and interminable except what is eternal; and everything eternal is God or in God: if, then, all things which we judge more certainly, we judge through such a reason, it is plain that he himself is the reason of all things and the infallible rule and the light of truth, in which all things shine infallibly, indelibly, indubitably, irrefragably, not subject to judgment, unchangeably, unrestrainedly, interminably, indivisibly, and intellectually. And therefore those laws by which we judge with certainty of all sensibles coming into our consideration — since they are infallible and indubitable to the intellect of the apprehender, indelible from the memory of the recollector as ever present, irrefragable and not subject to judgment to the intellect of the judger, for, as Augustine says, no one judges of them, but through them — must be unchangeable and incorruptible as necessary, unrestrained as uncircumscribed, interminable as eternal, and hence indivisible as intellectual and incorporeal, not made but uncreated, existing eternally in the eternal art, from which, through which, and according to which all beautiful things are formed; and therefore they cannot be judged with certainty except through that which was not only the form producing all things, but also conserving and distinguishing all things, as the being holding form in all things and the directing rule, and through which our mind judges all that enters it through the senses.

10. But this speculation is expanded according to the consideration of the seven differences of numbers, by which as by seven steps one ascends to God, as Augustine shows in the book on True Religion and in the sixth book on Music, where he assigns the differences of numbers ascending step by step from these sensible things to the Maker of all, that in all God may be seen.

For he says that numbers are in bodies, and especially in sounds and voices, and these he calls sounding; numbers abstracted from these and received in our senses, and these he calls occurring; numbers proceeding from the soul into the body, as is plain in gestures and dances, and these he calls advancing; numbers in the delights of the senses from the conversion of attention upon the received species, and these he calls sensual; numbers retained in memory, and these he calls memorial; also the numbers by which we judge of all these, and these he calls judicial, which, as was said, are necessarily above the mind as infallible and not subject to judgment. But from these are impressed upon our minds the artificial numbers, which Augustine does not enumerate among those steps, since they are connected with the judicial; and from these flow the advancing numbers, from which are created the numerous forms of artifacts, so that from the highest through the middle an ordered descent is made to the lowest. To these also we ascend step by step from the sounding numbers, through the mediation of the occurring, sensual, and memorial.

Since, then, all things are beautiful and in some way delightful; and beauty and delight are not without proportion; and proportion is first in numbers: all things must be numerous; and hence number is the principal exemplar in the mind of the Maker, and in things the principal footprint leading to Wisdom. Which, since it is most evident to all and closest to God, leads to God most closely, as through seven differences, and makes him known in all corporeal and sensible things, while we apprehend numerous things, delight in numerous proportions, and judge irrefragably through the laws of numerous proportions.

11. From these first two steps, by which we are led to speculate God in footprints after the manner of two wings descending about the feet, we can gather that all the creatures of this sensible world lead the mind of the contemplator and wise man to the eternal God, for the reason that they are shadows, resonances, and pictures of that first beginning, most powerful, most wise, and best — of that eternal origin, light, and fullness — of that, I say, efficient, exemplifying, and ordering art; they are footprints, likenesses, and spectacles set before us to behold God, and divinely given signs; which, I say, are exemplars, or rather exampled things, set before minds still rude and sensible, that through the sensible things they see they may be transferred to the intelligible things they do not see, as through signs to the signed.

12. But such creatures of this sensible world signify the invisible things of God: partly because God is the origin, exemplar, and end of every creature, and every effect is a sign of its cause, and the exampled of the exemplar, and the way of the end to which it leads; partly from their own representation; partly from prophetic prefiguration; partly from angelic operation; partly from superadded institution. For every creature is by nature a certain effigy and likeness of that eternal wisdom, but especially that which in the book of Scripture was assumed through the spirit of prophecy for the prefiguration of spiritual things; more especially those creatures in whose likeness God willed to appear by angelic ministry; most especially that which he willed to institute for signifying, which holds the reason of a sign not only according to the common name, but also of a Sacrament.

13. From all of which is gathered that the invisible things of God are seen from the creature of the world, understood through the things that are made; so that those who will not note these things, and know, bless, and love God in them all, are inexcusable, while they will not be transferred from darkness to the admirable light of God. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has transferred us from darkness to his admirable light, when through these lights given from without to the mirror of our mind, in which divine things shine, we are disposed to re-enter.

1. But since the two aforesaid steps, leading us to God through his footprints, by which he shines in all creatures, have led us up to this: that we re-enter to ourselves, namely into our mind, in which the divine image shines; hence it is that now, in the third place, entering into ourselves and leaving the outer court as it were outside, in the holies — namely the fore part of the tabernacle — we must strive to see God through a mirror; where, after the manner of the candlestick, the light of truth shines in the face of our mind, in which shines the image of the most blessed Trinity.

Enter, then, to thyself and see, for thy mind loves itself most fervently; nor could it love itself unless it knew itself; nor could it know itself unless it remembered itself, for we grasp nothing by understanding that is not present to our memory; and from this thou notest that thy soul has a threefold power, not with the eye of flesh but with the eye of reason. Consider, then, the operations and habits of these three powers, and thou shalt be able to see God through thyself as through an image — which is to see through a mirror in an enigma.

2. But the operation of memory is the retention and representation not only of present, corporeal, and temporal things, but also of successive, simple, and everlasting things. — For memory retains the past by recollection, the present by reception, the future by prevision. — It retains also simple things, such as the principles of continuous and discrete quantities, as point, instant, and unity, without which it is impossible to remember or think the things begun through them. — It retains nonetheless the principles of the sciences and dignities as everlasting and everlastingly, for it can never so forget them, while it uses reason, as not, when heard, to approve them and assent to them, not as perceiving them anew, but as recognizing them as inborn and familiar; as is plain if there be proposed to someone: Of anything, affirmation or negation; or: Every whole is greater than its part; or any other first principle which cannot be gainsaid before the inner reason.

From the first, the actual retention of all temporal things — past, present, and future — it has the effigy of eternity, whose indivisible present extends to all times. — From the second, it appears that it is not only formed from without by phantasms, but also from above by receiving and having in itself simple forms, which cannot enter through the gates of the senses and the fantasies of sensibles. — From the third, it is had that it has an unchangeable light present to itself, in which it remembers unchangeable truths. — And so through the operations of memory it appears that the soul itself is the image of God, and a likeness so present to itself and having him present, that it actually grasps him and through potency is capable of him and can be a partaker.

3. But the operation of the intellective power is in the perception by the intellect of terms, propositions, and inferences. — The intellect grasps the significations of terms when it comprehends what each thing is through definition. But definition must be made through higher things, and those must be defined through higher things, until one comes to the highest and most general, which if unknown, lower things cannot be understood definitively. Unless, then, it be known what being through itself is, the definition of any special substance cannot be fully known. Nor can being through itself be known unless it be known with its conditions, which are: one, true, good. But since being can be thought as diminished and as complete, as imperfect and as perfect, as being in potency and as being in act, as being in a certain respect and as being simply, as being in part and as being totally, as being transient and as being abiding, as being through another and as being through itself, as being mixed with non-being and as being pure, as being dependent and as being absolute, as being posterior and as being prior, as being changeable and as being unchangeable, as being simple and as being composite: since privations and defects can in no way be known except through positions, our intellect does not come, as fully resolving the understanding of any created being, unless it be aided by the understanding of the purest, most actual, most complete, and most absolute being — which is being simply and eternal, in which are the reasons of all things in their purity. For how would the intellect know that this is a defective and incomplete being, if it had no cognition of being without any defect? And so of the other aforesaid conditions.

But the intellect is said truly to comprehend the understanding of propositions when it knows with certainty that they are true; and this knowing is knowing that it cannot be deceived in that comprehension. For it knows that that truth cannot be otherwise; it knows, then, that that truth is unchangeable. But since our mind itself is changeable, it cannot see that truth shining unchangeably except through some light radiating wholly unchangeably, which cannot be a changeable creature. It knows, then, in that light which enlightens every man coming into this world, which is the true light and the Word in the beginning with God.

But our intellect truly perceives the understanding of an inference when it sees that the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises; which it sees not only in necessary terms, but also in contingent ones, as: if a man runs, a man moves. But this necessary relation it perceives not only in things that are, but also in things that are not. For just as, man existing, it follows: if a man runs, a man moves; so also, man not existing. Such necessity of inference, then, does not come from the existence of the thing in matter, for it is contingent, nor from the existence of the thing in the soul, for then it would be a fiction, if it were not in reality: it comes, then, from exemplarity in the eternal art, according to which things have aptitude and relation to one another according to the representation of that eternal art. Hence, as Augustine says on True Religion, the light of everyone who truly reasons is kindled by that truth and strives to arrive at it. — From which it manifestly appears that our intellect is joined to the eternal truth itself, since except through it teaching, it can grasp nothing true with certainty. Thou canst, then, see through thyself the truth that teaches thee, if concupiscences and phantasms do not impede thee and interpose themselves as clouds between thee and the ray of truth.

4. But the operation of the elective power is attended in counsel, judgment, and desire. — Counsel is in inquiring what is better, this or that. But better is said only by approach to the best; and approach is according to greater assimilation: no one, then, knows whether this is better than that, unless he knows that it is more assimilated to the best. But no one knows that a thing is more assimilated to another, unless he knows that other; for I do not know that this man is like Peter, unless I know Peter: to everyone who counsels, then, the notion of the highest good is necessarily impressed.

But certain judgment of counselable things is through some law. But no one judges with certainty through a law unless he is certain that that law is right, and that he must not judge it; but our mind judges of itself: since, then, it cannot judge of the law by which it judges, that law is higher than our mind, and through it it judges, according as it is impressed upon it. But nothing is higher than the human mind except he alone who made it: in judging, then, our deliberative power reaches to the divine laws, if it resolves with full analysis.

But desire is principally of that which most moves it. And what most moves is most loved; and what is most loved is to be blessed; but to be blessed is not had except through the best and the ultimate end: the human desire, then, appetizes nothing except because it is the highest good, or because it is toward it, or because it has some effigy of it. So great is the force of the highest good, that nothing can be loved by a creature except through desire of it — which is then deceived and errs when it accepts the effigy and simulacrum for the truth.

See, then, how the soul is near to God, and how memory leads to eternity, understanding to truth, the elective power to the highest goodness, according to their operations.

5. But according to the order and origin and habit of these powers, it leads to the most blessed Trinity itself. — For from memory is born understanding as its offspring, for we then understand when the likeness which is in memory rebounds in the edge of the intellect, which is nothing else than the word; from memory and understanding is breathed love as the bond of both. These three — the generating mind, the word, and love — are in the soul as to memory, understanding, and will, which are consubstantial, co-equal, and co-eval, mutually indwelling one another by circumincession. If, then, God is a perfect spirit, he has memory, understanding, and will, and has also the begotten Word and the breathed Love, which are necessarily distinguished, since one is produced from the other, not essentially, not accidentally, therefore personally.

While, then, the mind considers itself, through itself as through a mirror it rises to speculate the blessed Trinity — of the Father, the Word, and Love — three co-eternal, co-equal, and consubstantial persons, so that each is in each of the others, yet one is not the other, but the three themselves are one God.

6. To this speculation, which the soul has of its threefold and one beginning through the trinity of its powers, by which it is the image of God, it is aided by the lights of the sciences, which perfect and inform it and represent the most blessed Trinity in a threefold way. — For all philosophy is either natural, or rational, or moral. The first treats of the cause of being, and therefore leads to the power of the Father; the second of the reason of understanding, and therefore leads to the wisdom of the Word; the third of the order of living, and therefore leads to the goodness of the Holy Spirit.

Again, the first is divided into metaphysics, mathematics, and physics. And the first is of the essences of things, the second of numbers and figures, the third of diffusing natures, powers, and operations. And therefore the first leads to the first beginning, the Father, the second to his image, the Son, the third to the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The second is divided into grammar, which makes powerful for expressing; logic, which makes perspicacious for arguing; rhetoric, which makes apt for persuading or moving. And this likewise insinuates the mystery of the most blessed Trinity itself.

The third is divided into monastic, domestic, and political [ethics]. And therefore the first insinuates the innascibility of the first beginning, the second the familiarity of the Son, the third the liberality of the Holy Spirit.

7. But all these sciences have certain and infallible rules as lights and rays descending from the eternal law into our mind. And therefore our mind, irradiated and suffused with so many splendors, unless it be blind, can be led through itself to contemplate that eternal light. But the irradiation and consideration of this light suspends the wise in wonder, and contrariwise the unwise, who do not believe so as to understand, it leads to perturbation, that the prophetic word may be fulfilled: Thou enlightening wonderfully from the eternal mountains, all the foolish of heart were troubled.

1. But since we may contemplate the first beginning not only passing through ourselves, but also in ourselves — and this is greater than the former — therefore this mode of considering holds the fourth step of contemplation. Yet it seems wondrous, since it has been shown that God is so near to our minds, that it belongs to so few to speculate the first beginning in themselves. But the reason is at hand: for the human mind, distracted by cares, does not enter to itself through memory; clouded by phantasms, does not return to itself through understanding; allured by concupiscences, in no way returns to itself through desire of inner sweetness and spiritual joy. Hence, lying wholly in these sensibles, it cannot re-enter to itself as to the image of God.

2. And since, where one has fallen, one must lie there, unless someone lend a hand to raise him, our soul could not be perfectly raised from these sensibles to the beholding of itself and of the eternal Truth in itself, unless the Truth, assuming human form in Christ, became to it a ladder repairing the former ladder, which had been broken in Adam.

Therefore, however illuminated one be by the light of nature and of acquired knowledge, one cannot enter into oneself, to delight in oneself in the Lord, except through Christ, who says: I am the door. By me if anyone enter, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture. But to this door we do not approach unless we believe, hope, and love in him. It is necessary, then, if we wish to re-enter to the fruition of the Truth as to paradise, that we enter through faith, hope, and charity of the mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ, who is as the tree of life in the midst of paradise.

3. The image of our mind must, then, be clothed upon with the three theological virtues, by which the soul is purified, illuminated, and perfected; and so the image is reformed and made conformed to the supernal Jerusalem and a part of the Church militant, which is the offspring, according to the Apostle, of the heavenly Jerusalem. For he says: That Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother. — The soul, then, believing, hoping, and loving Jesus Christ, who is the Word incarnate, uncreated, and inspired — namely the way, the truth, and the life — while through faith it believes in Christ as in the uncreated Word, which is the Word and splendor of the Father, recovers spiritual hearing and sight: hearing to receive the words of Christ, sight to consider the splendors of that light. But while through hope it sighs to receive the inspired Word, through desire and affect it recovers spiritual smell. But while through charity it embraces the incarnate Word, to receive delight from him and to pass over into him through ecstatic love, it recovers taste and touch. With these senses recovered, while it sees and hears its spouse, smells, tastes, and embraces him, it can sing as the bride the Song of songs, which was made for the exercise of contemplation according to this fourth step, which no one grasps unless he receives — for it lies more in affective experience than in rational consideration. For in this step, with the inner senses repaired to sense the supremely beautiful, to hear the supremely harmonious, to smell the supremely fragrant, to taste the supremely sweet, to apprehend the supremely delightful, the soul is disposed to mental transports: namely through devotion, wonder, and exultation, according to those three exclamations which occur in the Song of songs. Of which the first occurs through abundance of devotion, through which the soul becomes as a little rod of smoke from the spices of myrrh and frankincense; the second through excellence of wonder, through which the soul becomes as the dawn, the moon, and the sun, according to the process of the illuminations suspending the soul to wonder at the spouse beheld; the third through superabundance of exultation, through which the soul becomes abounding in the delights of sweetest delight, leaning wholly upon its beloved.

4. With these attained, our spirit becomes hierarchic for ascending on high according to conformity to that supernal Jerusalem, into which no one enters unless first through grace it descend into the heart, as John saw in his Apocalypse. But it descends into the heart when, through the reformation of the image, through the theological virtues, and through the delights of the spiritual senses and the suspensions of transports, our spirit becomes hierarchic: namely purged, illuminated, and perfected. — So also it is marked with the steps of the nine orders, when there is disposed in order within it annunciation, dictation, leading, ordering, strengthening, commanding, reception, revelation, anointing, which correspond step by step to the nine orders of Angels, so that the first three of the aforesaid steps regard nature in the human mind, the next three industry, and the last three grace. With these had, the soul, entering into itself, enters into the supernal Jerusalem, where, considering the orders of Angels, it sees in them God, who, dwelling in them, works all their operations. Whence Bernard says to Eugene that God in the Seraphim loves as charity, in the Cherubim knows as truth, in the Thrones sits as equity, in the Dominations rules as majesty, in the Principalities governs as beginning, in the Powers protects as salvation, in the Virtues works as power, in the Archangels reveals as light, in the Angels assists as piety. From all of which God is seen, all in all, through the contemplation of him in minds, in which he dwells through the gifts of most abundant charity.

5. But to this step of speculation, the consideration of sacred Scripture, divinely sent, gives special and principal aid, as philosophy did to the former. For sacred Scripture is principally of the works of reparation. Whence it treats principally of faith, hope, and charity, through which virtues the soul has to be reformed, and most specially of charity. Of which the Apostle says that it is the end of the precept, according as it is from a pure heart and a good conscience and an unfeigned faith. It is the fullness of the Law, as he says. And our Savior asserts that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on its two precepts, namely the love of God and of neighbor; which two are intimated in the one spouse of the Church, Jesus Christ, who is at once neighbor and God, at once brother and lord, at once king and friend, at once the uncreated and incarnate Word, our former and reformer, as alpha and omega; who is also the highest hierarch, purging and illuminating and perfecting the bride, namely the whole Church and every holy soul.

6. Of this hierarch, then, and of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the whole of sacred Scripture, through which we are taught to be purged, illuminated, and perfected: and this according to the threefold law handed down in it — of nature, of Scripture, and of grace; or rather according to its three principal parts — the Mosaic law purging, the prophetic revelation enlightening, and the evangelical teaching perfecting; or most of all according to its threefold spiritual understanding: tropological, which purges to honesty of life; allegorical, which enlightens to clarity of understanding; anagogical, which perfects through mental transports and most sweet perceptions of wisdom, according to the three aforesaid theological virtues and the reformed spiritual senses and the three aforesaid transports and the hierarchic acts of mind, by which our mind returns to inner things, to speculate God there in the splendors of the Saints, and in them as in chambers to sleep in peace and rest, the Spouse adjuring that she not be awakened until it please Him.

7. But from these two middle steps, by which we enter to contemplate God within us as in mirrors of created images — and this as after the manner of wings spread for flying, which held the middle place — we can understand that we are led to the divine through the naturally inborn powers of the rational soul itself, as to their operations, habits, and scientific habits, as appears from the third step. — We are led also through the reformed powers of the soul itself, and this by gratuitous virtues, spiritual senses, and mental transports, as is plain from the fourth. We are led nonetheless through hierarchic operations — of purgation, illumination, and perfection of human minds — through hierarchic revelations of the sacred Scriptures given to us through Angels, according to that of the Apostle, that the Law was given through Angels in the hand of the Mediator. And at last we are led through hierarchies and hierarchic orders, which have to be disposed in our mind after the likeness of the supernal Jerusalem.

8. With all these intellectual lights our mind, being filled, is inhabited by divine Wisdom as the house of God, made daughter of God, bride, and friend; made member of Christ the head, sister, and co-heir; made nonetheless temple of the Holy Spirit, founded through faith, raised through hope, and dedicated to God through holiness of mind and body. All of which the most sincere charity of Christ does, which is diffused in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us, without which Spirit we cannot know the secrets of God. For as what is of man no one can know except the spirit of man which is in him, so what is of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. — In charity, then, let us be rooted and founded, that we may comprehend with all the Saints what is the length of eternity, what the breadth of liberality, what the height of majesty, and what the depth of judging wisdom.

1. But since we may contemplate God not only outside us and within us, but also above us — outside through the footprint, within through the image, and above through the light which is signed upon our mind, which is the light of eternal Truth, since our mind itself is formed immediately by the Truth itself — those exercised in the first mode have already entered the court before the tabernacle; those in the second have entered the holies; those in the third enter with the high priest into the holy of holies, where above the ark are the Cherubim of glory overshadowing the propitiatory; through which we understand two modes or steps of contemplating the invisible and eternal things of God, of which one turns on the essentials of God, the other on the properties of the persons.

2. The first mode first and principally fixes its gaze on being itself, saying that he who is is the first name of God. The second mode fixes its gaze on the good itself, saying that this is the first name of God. The first regards above all the Old Testament, which chiefly preaches the unity of the divine essence; whence it was said to Moses: I am who am; the second the New, which determines the plurality of persons, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Hence our master Christ, wishing to raise the young man who had kept the Law to evangelical perfection, attributed the name of goodness to God principally and precisely. No one, he says, is good but God alone. Damascene, then, following Moses, says that he who is is the first name of God; Dionysius, following Christ, says that the good is the first name of God.

3. Wishing, then, to contemplate the invisible things of God as regards the unity of essence, let one first fix his gaze on being itself and see that being itself is so most certain in itself that it cannot be thought not to be — for the purest being occurs only in full flight from non-being, as does nothing in full flight from being. For just as utterly nothing has nothing of being nor of its conditions, so contrariwise being itself has nothing of non-being, neither in act nor in potency, neither according to the truth of the thing nor according to our estimation. But since non-being is the privation of being, it does not fall in the intellect except through being; but being does not fall through another, for everything that is understood is understood either as non-being, or as being in potency, or as being in act. If, then, non-being cannot be understood except through being, and being in potency except through being in act; and being names the pure act itself of being: being, then, is what first falls in the intellect, and that being is what is pure act. But this is not particular being, which is constricted being, for it is mixed with potency, nor analogous being, for it has least of act, since it least is. It remains, then, that that being is the divine being.

4. Wondrous, then, is the blindness of the intellect, which does not consider that which it first sees and without which it can know nothing. But just as the eye intent on the various differences of colors does not see the light through which it sees the rest, and if it sees, does not note it, so the eye of our mind, intent on particular and universal beings, does not note being itself outside every genus, though it first occurs to the mind, and through it other things. Whence it most truly appears that as the eye of the bat holds itself to light, so holds itself the eye of our mind to the most manifest things of nature; for, accustomed to the darkness of beings and the phantasms of sensibles, when it beholds the very light of the highest being, it seems to itself to see nothing — not understanding that this darkness itself is the highest illumination of our mind, as, when the eye sees pure light, it seems to itself to see nothing.

5. See, then, being itself most pure, if thou canst, and it meets thee: that it cannot be thought as received from another; and hence it is necessarily thought as altogether first, which can be neither from nothing nor from anything. For what is through itself, if being itself is not through itself nor from itself? — It meets thee also as lacking all non-being, and hence as never beginning, never ending, but eternal. — It meets thee also as having in itself in no way except what is being itself, and hence as with nothing composite, but most simple. — It meets thee as having nothing of possibility, for everything possible in some way has something of non-being, and hence as supremely most actual. — It meets thee as having nothing of defectibility, and hence as most perfect. — It meets thee lastly as having nothing of diversity, and hence as supremely one.

Being, then, which is pure being and being simply and absolute being, is primary, eternal, most simple, most actual, most perfect, and supremely one being.

6. And these are so certain that the opposite of them cannot be thought by one understanding being itself, and one of them necessarily infers another. For because it is simply being, therefore it is simply first; because simply first, therefore it is not made by another, nor could it have derived its power by itself, therefore eternal. Again, because first and eternal, therefore not from others, therefore most simple. Again, because first, eternal, and most simple, therefore there is in it nothing of possibility mixed with act, and therefore most actual. Again, because first, eternal, most simple, most actual, therefore most perfect; to such nothing at all is lacking, nor can any addition be made. Because first, eternal, most simple, most actual, most perfect, therefore supremely one. For what is said through all manner of superabundance is said in respect of all. What is also said simply through superabundance cannot possibly belong except to one alone. Whence if God names the primary, eternal, most simple, most actual, most perfect being, it is impossible for him to be thought not to be, nor to be except one alone. Hear, then, O Israel, thy God is one God. — If thou seest this in the pure simplicity of mind, thou art in some way suffused with the illumination of eternal light.

7. But thou hast whence to be lifted into wonder. For being itself is first and last, is eternal and most present, is most simple and greatest, is most actual and most unchangeable, is most perfect and immense, is supremely one and yet all-embracing. — If thou wonderest at these with pure mind, thou art suffused with greater light, while thou seest further: that therefore it is last, because first. For because it is first, it works all things for itself; and therefore it must be the ultimate end, the beginning and consummation, alpha and omega. — Therefore most present, because eternal. For because eternal, it does not flow from another nor fail from itself nor run from one to another: therefore it has neither past nor future, but present being only. — Therefore greatest, because most simple. For because most simple in essence, therefore greatest in power, for power, the more united it is, the more infinite it is. — Therefore most unchangeable, because most actual. For because it is most actual, therefore it is pure act; and what is such acquires nothing new, loses nothing had, and hence cannot be changed. — Therefore immense, because most perfect. For because most perfect, nothing better, nobler, nor worthier can be thought beyond it, and hence nothing greater; and everything such is immense. — Therefore all-mannered, because supremely one. For what is supremely one is the universal principle of all multitude; and hence it is the universal cause of all things — efficient, exemplifying, and terminating — as the cause of being, the reason of understanding, and the order of living. It is, then, all-mannered not as the essence of all things, but as the super-excellent and most universal and most sufficient cause of all essences; whose power, because supremely united in essence, is therefore supremely most infinite and most manifold in efficacy.

8. Turning back again, let us say: since, then, the purest and absolute being, which is simply being, is primary and last, therefore it is the origin of all and the consummating end. — Since eternal and most present, therefore it spans and enters all durations, as at once existing their center and circumference. — Since most simple and greatest, therefore wholly within all and wholly without, and hence it is the intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. — Since most actual and most unchangeable, therefore abiding stable it gives motion to all things. — Since most perfect and immense, therefore it is within all, not included, without all, not excluded, above all, not elated, below all, not prostrate. — But since it is supremely one and all-mannered, therefore it is all in all, though all things are many and it is but one; and this because through the simplest unity, the most serene truth, and the most sincere goodness there is in it all powerfulness, all exemplarity, and all communicability; and hence from it and through it and in it are all things, and this because omnipotent, omniscient, and all-mannerly good — to see which perfectly is to be blessed, as was said to Moses: I will show thee all good.

1. After the consideration of the essentials, the eye of understanding must be raised to the beholding of the most blessed Trinity, that one Cherub may stand beside the other. But as of the vision of the essentials, being itself is the radical beginning and the name through which the rest become known, so of the contemplation of the emanations, the good itself is the principal foundation.

2. See, then, and attend: for the best, which simply is that than which nothing better can be thought — and what is such is so that it cannot rightly be thought not to be, for it is altogether better to be than not to be — is so that it cannot rightly be thought without being thought three and one. For good is said to be diffusive of itself; the highest good, then, is supremely diffusive of itself. But the highest diffusion cannot be unless it be actual and intrinsic, substantial and hypostatic, natural and voluntary, liberal and necessary, unfailing and perfect. Unless, then, in the highest good there were eternally actual and consubstantial production, and a hypostasis equally noble as the producer, by mode of generation and spiration — so that there be from the eternal principle one eternal who is eternally co-principiant with Him — so that there be the beloved and the co-beloved, the begotten and the breathed, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, it would in no way be the highest good, for it would not supremely diffuse itself. For diffusion in time into the creature is but central or punctual in respect of the immensity of the eternal goodness; whence a greater diffusion can be thought than it: namely that in which the diffuser communicates to another the whole substance and nature. It would not, then, be the highest good if in reality or in understanding it could lack that.

If, then, thou canst behold with the eye of mind the purity of goodness — which is the pure act of a principle loving charitably with free and due love and with the two commingled, which is the fullest diffusion by mode of nature and of will, which is diffusion by mode of the Word, in whom all things are said, and by mode of the Gift, in whom the other gifts are given — thou canst see that through the highest communicability of good the Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is necessary. In whom, on account of the highest goodness, there must be the highest communicability, and from the highest communicability the highest consubstantiality, and from the highest consubstantiality the highest configurability, and from these the highest co-equality, and hence the highest co-eternity, and from all the aforesaid the highest co-intimacy, by which one is in the other necessarily through the highest circumincession, and one works with the other through the all-mannered undivision of the substance and power and operation of the most blessed Trinity itself.

3. But when thou contemplatest these things, see that thou think not to comprehend the incomprehensible. For thou hast still in these six conditions to consider what vehemently draws the eye of our mind into the stupor of wonder. For there is the highest communicability with property of persons, the highest consubstantiality with plurality of hypostases, the highest configurability with discrete personality, the highest co-equality with order, the highest co-eternity with emanation, the highest co-intimacy with emission. Who at the sight of such marvels would not rise into wonder? — But all these we understand most certainly to be in the most blessed Trinity, if we lift our eyes to the super-excellent goodness. For if there is the highest communication and true diffusion, there is true origin and true distinction; and since the whole is communicated, not a part, therefore what is had is given, and the whole: therefore the emanant and the producer are distinguished by properties and are essentially one. Since, then, they are distinguished by properties, therefore they have personal properties and plurality of hypostases and emanation of origin and order not of posteriority but of origin, and emission not of local change but of free inspiration, by reason of the authority of the producer, which the sender has in respect of the sent. — But since they are substantially one, therefore there must be unity in essence and form and dignity and eternity and existence and uncircumscribability. — While, then, thou considerest these singly by themselves, thou hast whence to contemplate the truth; while thou conferrest these with one another, thou hast whence to be suspended in highest wonder: and therefore, that thy mind through wonder may ascend to wondrous contemplation, these must be considered together.

4. For the Cherubim also designate this, who looked upon one another. Nor is it void of mystery that they looked upon one another with faces turned to the propitiatory, that there be verified what the Lord says in John: This is eternal life, that they know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. For we must wonder not only at the essential and personal conditions of God in themselves, but also by comparison to the super-wondrous union of God and man in the unity of the person of Christ.

5. For if thou art a Cherub contemplating the essentials of God, and wonderest that at once the divine being is first and last, eternal and most present, most simple and greatest or uncircumscribed, wholly everywhere and nowhere comprehended, most actual and never moved, most perfect and having nothing superfluous nor diminished, and yet immense and infinite without end, supremely one and yet all-mannered, as having all things in itself — as all power, all truth, all good — look to the propitiatory and wonder that in it the first beginning is joined with the last, God with man formed on the sixth day, the eternal joined with temporal man, born of the Virgin in the fullness of time, the most simple with the supremely composite, the most actual with the supremely suffering and dead, the most perfect and immense with the lowly, the supremely one and all-mannered with the composite individual distinct from others: namely the man Jesus Christ.

6. But if thou art the other Cherub contemplating the properties of the persons, and wonderest that communicability is with property, consubstantiality with plurality, configurability with personality, co-equality with order, co-eternity with production, co-intimacy with emission — for the Son was sent by the Father, and the Holy Spirit by both, who yet is ever with them and never departs from them — look on the propitiatory and wonder that in Christ stands personal union with trinity of substances and duality of natures; stands all-mannered agreement with plurality of wills; stands co-predication of God and man with plurality of properties; stands co-adoration with plurality of nobilities; stands co-exaltation above all with plurality of dignities; stands co-domination with plurality of powers.

7. But in this consideration is the perfection of the illumination of mind, while as on the sixth day it sees man made to the image of God. For if an image is an expressive likeness, while our mind contemplates in Christ the Son of God, who is the image of the invisible God by nature, our humanity so wondrously exalted, so ineffably united, seeing at once in one the first and the last, the highest and the lowest, the circumference and the center, alpha and omega, the caused and the cause, the Creator and the creature — namely the book written within and without — it has now arrived at a certain perfect thing, so that with God it arrives at the perfection of its illuminations in the sixth step as on the sixth day; nor does anything now remain except the day of rest, on which through mental transport the perspicacity of the human mind may rest from every work it has wrought.

1. With these six considerations, then, traversed as the six steps of the throne of the true Solomon, by which one arrives at peace, where the true peaceable rests in the peaceful mind as in the inner Jerusalem; as also the six wings of the Cherub, by which the mind of the true contemplative, full of the illustration of supernal wisdom, may be driven on high; as also the six first days, in which the mind has to be exercised, to arrive at last at the sabbath of rest; after our mind has beheld God outside itself through the footprints and in the footprints, within itself through the image and in the image, above itself through the likeness of the divine light shining above us and in that light itself, according as is possible according to the state of the way and the exercise of our mind; when at last in the sixth step it has arrived at this: to speculate in the first and highest beginning and in the mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ, those things whose like can in no way be found in creatures, and which exceed all perspicacity of the human intellect: it remains that in speculating these it transcend and pass over not only this sensible world, but also itself; in which passage Christ is the way and the door, Christ is the ladder and the vehicle, as the propitiatory placed above the ark of God and the sacrament hidden from ages.

2. But whoever looks to this propitiatory with full conversion of face, beholding him hung on the cross through faith, hope, and charity, devotion, wonder, exultation, esteem, praise, and jubilation, makes the passover — that is, the passage — with him, to pass through the rod of the cross the Red Sea, going from Egypt into the desert, where he may taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the tomb as outwardly dead, feeling yet, as far as is possible according to the state of the way, what was said on the cross to the thief cleaving to Christ: Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.

3. Which was also shown to blessed Francis, when in the transport of contemplation on the high mountain — where I pondered in mind the things here written — there appeared a Seraph of six wings fixed in the cross, as I and several others heard there from his companion, who was then with him; where he passed over into God through the transport of contemplation, and was set as the example of perfect contemplation, as before he had been of action, as another Jacob and Israel, that God through him might invite all truly spiritual men to this passage and transport of mind more by example than by word.

4. But in this passage, if it be perfect, all intellectual operations must be left behind, and the apex of the affect be wholly transferred and transformed into God. But this is the mystical and most secret, which no one knows except he who receives, nor receives except he who desires, nor desires except he whom the fire of the Holy Spirit inflames to the marrow, which Christ sent upon the earth. And therefore the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom is revealed through the Holy Spirit.

5. Since, then, to this nature can do nothing, industry can do little, little is to be given to inquiry and much to unction; little is to be given to the tongue and most to inner joy; little is to be given to word and writing and all to the gift of God, namely the Holy Spirit; little or nothing is to be given to the creature and all to the creative essence, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, saying with Dionysius to God the Trinity: Superessential Trinity and supergod and superbly good inspector of the Christians' theosophy, direct us to the super-unknown and super-lucent and most sublime summit of the mystical discourses, where the new and absolute and inconvertible mysteries of theology are hidden according to the super-lucent darkness of silently teaching silence in the most obscure, which is supermost manifest, supersplendent, and in which all shines, and super-filling invisible intellects with the splendors of the invisible superb goods. This to God. But to the friend to whom this is written, let it be said with the same: But thou, O friend, concerning the mystical visions, with thy journey strengthened, leave both the senses and the intellectual operations, and sensible and invisible things, and all non-being and being, and be restored unknowing, as far as possible, to the unity of him who is above all essence and knowledge. For, thyself and all things, by the immeasurable and absolute transport of the pure mind, leaving all and absolved from all, thou shalt ascend to the superessential ray of the divine darkness.

6. But if thou askest how these things come to be, ask grace, not doctrine; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not the study of reading; the spouse, not the master; God, not man; darkness, not clarity; not light, but the fire that wholly inflames and transfers into God with excessive unctions and most ardent affections. Which fire is God, and the furnace of this is in Jerusalem, and Christ kindled it in the fervor of his most ardent passion, which he alone truly perceives who says: My soul has chosen hanging, and my bones death. Whoever loves this death can see God, for it is undoubtedly true: No man shall see me and live. — Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness; let us impose silence on cares, concupiscences, and phantasms; let us pass with Christ crucified from this world to the Father, that, the Father shown to us, we may say with Philip: It suffices us; may hear with Paul: My grace suffices thee; may exult with David, saying: My flesh and my heart have failed, the God of my heart and my portion is God forever. Blessed be the Lord forever, and all the people shall say: So be it, so be it. Amen. Here ends the Journey of the Mind into God.

The doctrine of this golden little work has not rarely been understood by even learned men either imperfectly or altogether wrongly. For some have judged that certain of its propositions are not to be understood in the rigor of the words, but to be expounded or excused by a certain benign interpretation, as things said in a mystical book, not a scientifically theological one. Others, not a few, have abused certain modes of speech occurring therein to confirm their own false opinions. — Considering the sublimity of this little book and the brevity of its exposition, it is not to be wondered at that erroneous interpretations have slipped in, whether on the part of those little versed in the doctrine of the Seraphic Doctor, or of those not attending to the special character and the whole context of this writing. Yet by the wisest men of recent centuries this little book has rightly been celebrated as altogether singular in its kind, composed with wondrous art, and never to be praised enough. In reality it contains sound, most lofty, most salutary teachings expressed with careful choice of words; and the whole doctrine is altogether consonant with that which the Saint professes in his theological writings and expounds more diffusely. This can already be sufficiently established through the testimonies alleged by us in the notes; as to a few more difficult points we refer the reader to the Quaestio disputata reprinted above at p. 17 and first published, with other questions of authors of the Bonaventurian school, in the opusculum de Humanae Cognitionis ratione by us from the press of the College of St. Bonaventure in 1883, especially to the prefatory Dissertatio (ibid. pp. 1–47).

For the reader's convenience, however, it has seemed opportune to subjoin here certain brief observations, that an easier way may be prepared toward a right understanding of the more difficult passages.

1. As to the peculiar character of the opusculum we note that it is indeed rightly reckoned among the mystical works, yet without being on that account deprived of its own place among works pertaining to theological and even philosophical science. It is a mystical work, considering both the end intended by the author and the dispositions of soul which he requires in readers; which is manifestly clear from the Prologue and the beginning of the 4th chapter. For the author did not write with the intention of teaching, in the manner of the schools, a purely theoretical science, or of refuting errors, but of directly promoting devotion and the contemplation of divine things. For he says: “For those wishing to be free for magnifying, admiring, and even tasting God, I set forth the speculations below” (Prolog. n. 4). For the reader's disposition, it is said, the human intellect does not suffice, however acute and cultivated, not even with the addition of the principles which faith proposes to all Christians; but he must himself be a “man of desires,” must be aided beforehand by grace, humble, pious, compunct, devout, and given to contemplation; for, as is observed, “little or nothing is the mirror placed outwardly, unless the mirror of our mind shall have been wiped clean and polished.” Indeed, as if presaging future outcomes, the author warns in advance that, with that disposition for contemplation lacking and the eye of the mind ill-disposed, one must beware “lest perchance from the very speculation of the rays you fall into a deeper pit of darkness” (ibid. n. 4). There is required, therefore, for profiting well from this little book, that eye of contemplation of which, treating of the threefold eye, the Saint speaks above in Breviloq. p. II, c. 12 (cf. on the gift of contemplation, II Sent. d. 23, a. 2, q. 3, in corp. and ad 6).

Nevertheless the material part, so to speak, of this opusculum, which sets forth the very objects to be considered, is taken from the theological and philosophical disciplines; and it learnedly and profoundly exhibits certain recondite teachings of Christian philosophy concerning the manifold relation, of both the natural and the supernatural order, which created things have to the first cause, efficient, exemplary, and final. For all things caused by God in the natural and supernatural, real and ideal order are set forth as so many mirrors to the purged and illumined eye of the mind for contemplating the divine attributes and the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. While, then, ordinary books of meditations usefully exhibit for meditation the many mysteries of faith themselves, this work sets forth that hidden bond by which the order of creatures, natural and supernatural, is joined to the first principle, which, on Augustine's testimony, is of all things the “cause of being, the reason of understanding, and the order of living.” Thus it can come about that “according to the state of our condition the very universality of things is a ladder for ascending to God” (c. 1, n. 2).

2. Three distinctions are to be noted. — a. Threefold is the comparison and dependence of creatures to God: “either as to a creative principle, or as to a moving object, or as to an indwelling gift. In the first way every effect of His is compared to Him, in the second way every intellect, in the third way every spirit just and acceptable to God. For every effect, however little it has of being, has God as principle. Every intellect, however little it has of light, is by nature apt to grasp God through knowledge and love. Every just and holy spirit, however, has the gift of the Holy Spirit infused into itself” (Breviloq. p. II, c. 12). — With this distinction coheres another concerning the four degrees of that knowledge of God which can be had in the way. “For God is known in the vestige, known in the image, known also in the effect of grace, and known also through the intimate union of God and the soul; according to what the Apostle says [1 Cor. 6:17]: He who adheres to God is one spirit. And this is the most excellent knowledge, which Dionysius teaches, which indeed is in ecstatic love and lifts above the knowledge of faith according to the common state” (III Sent. d. 21, dub. 1). b. Threefold is the mode of the existence of things. “Things have being in three ways, namely in matter or proper nature, in created intelligence, and in the eternal art; according to which three Scripture says: God said: let it be; He made, and it was done” (Breviloq. p. II, c. 12; cf. there Prolog. § 3; I Sent. d. 36, a. 2, q. 2, in corp., and II Sent. d. 3, p. II, a. 2, q. 1, fundam. 6; Quaest. disp. de scientia Christi, q. 1, in corp.). c. In a threefold way the intellect can turn itself to consider the mirror of creatures, both exterior and interior; for “the sense of the flesh [and the same holds of the interior sense] either serves the intellect rationally investigating, or faithfully believing, or intellectually contemplating” (here c. 1, n. 10). Hence in a threefold way the intellect can pass from effects to causes, from creature to God, namely either by the sole force of the natural light and in the philosophical manner, or with the principles of faith added, or even with the gifts of the Holy Spirit illumining.

3. Concerning the mode by which the rationally investigating intellect passes over, especially from the interior image to God, another distinction is to be noted between the apprehending and the resolving intellect, and the resolving intellect as either semi-full or full; by which distinction is also understood the nature of explicit and implicit cognition, and in what sense it is true that a created being cannot be known by the fully resolving intellect unless it is aided by the understanding of the first being (c. 3, n. 3, and c. 5, n. 3, with the notes). — The holy Doctor says therefore of this (I Sent. d. 28, dub. 1): “As to the apprehending intellect, nothing can be understood without something which is to it the reason of understanding, as God apart from deity and man apart from humanity; yet an effect can be understood without the cause being understood, and the lower without the higher being understood, for one can apprehend man without understanding any of his superiors. And thus the Philosopher says that he who says one in a certain way says many, not simply, but in a certain way, because implicitly. — In another way it happens that something is understood apart from another by the resolving intellect; and this intellect considers those things which are essential to the thing, as a subject can be understood without its proper passion. And this can be in two ways: either by a fully and perfectly resolving intellect, or by a deficient and semi-fully resolving intellect. By a semi-fully resolving intellect something can be understood to be, without the first being being understood. By a perfectly resolving intellect, however, nothing can be understood without the first being being understood.” Cf. II Sent. d. 1, p. II, dub. 2, where it is taught that being, with goodness abstracted, “can be understood by the apprehending intellect and by the semi-fully resolving intellect; but by the intellect fully comparing to causes it cannot be understood without that [first being] being understood.”

4. Although “every creature leads to God more than to anything else” (I Sent. d. 3, p. I, q. 2), yet, since actual cognition begins from sense and progresses from the exterior to the interior, from the more imperfect to the more perfect, to the intellect still rude scarcely any other way of rationally investigating God lies open than by ascending from the sensible world or the vestige of God. Hence it is said: “Let us place the first degree of the ascent at the bottom, setting this whole sensible world before us as a mirror through which we may pass over to God, the highest Maker” (c. 1, n. 9). Moreover the shadows and vestiges of creatures are “set before minds still rude and sensible, that through the sensible things which they see they may be carried over to the intelligible things which they do not see, as through signs to the things signified” (c. 2, n. 11). — Yet the author lingers little in describing the particular things of the sensible world (c. 1), but passes at once (c. 2) from the material (real) world to the ideal world, or to that being, not physical but metaphysical, which the world has in the human mind. For the apprehending intellect naturally and necessarily surpasses the concrete order of existence of particular and contingent things, whose species it conceives in itself by abstracting and purifying, and thus lifts things above the material order as it were and clothes them with a certain vesture of the spiritual order, that is, with certain ideal properties, namely universality, immutability, eternity, and necessity, which by no means befit the real order itself of material things. Moreover that ideal order has its supreme root and ultimate foundation in God and leads to Him. “Understood truths are founded in something eternal. They are founded in the first Truth itself as in the universal cause containing all truth” (St. Thomas, S. c. Gent. II, c. 81). “The immovable rules (of the intellect) are rooted in the eternal light and lead into it” (St. Bonaventure, Hexaëm., collatio 2). “Hence the intellect itself, considering the conditions of being according to the relation of cause to caused, transfers itself from the effect to the causes and passes over to the eternal reasons” (ibid., coll. 5). This transit can take place by arguing and resolving on the part of the rationally investigating intellect; more perfectly, however, it takes place on the part of the same intellect illumined and intellectually contemplating. — This ideal order, obscure and almost unknown to the common intellect, is set forth by St. Bonaventure, with St. Augustine as guide, with especial care in chaps. 2, 3, 5, 6, that the contemplative eye may pass over to the contemplation of divine things. Supposing that threefold being of the same thing, such a transit is not difficultly understood; yet it is to be well attended to that one is the nature and way by which the intellect passes from the real order to the ideal, and another that by which it ascends from this to the divine order (cf. on this the cited Dissertatio, pp. 22–25).

5. In common the ancient Scholastics with St. Thomas (de Verit. q. 22. a. 2. ad 1.) taught “that all knowing things know God implicitly in whatever is known” (cfr. the cited Dissert. pp. 17–18); and according to this implicit and confused cognition, of whatever sort, they assert that the existence of God can be said to be naturally known (St. Thomas, S. I. q. 2. a. 1. ad 1.). “The movement of our intellect, therefore, while it understands, while it reasons, begins from an implicit cognition of God and terminates in an explicit cognition of God”; so the celebrated Fr. Lepidi O.P. (periodical Divus Thomas 1881, n. 11 ff.).

6. Between the human mind and God, insofar as He is the supreme “cause of being, reason of understanding, and order of living,” there is no intermediate creature; this does not prevent creatures from being a disposing medium, as it were leading by the hand to the cognition of God, as St. Bonaventure well explains in I. Sent. d. 3. p. I. q. 3. ad 4. and II. Sent. d. 3. p. II. a. 2. q. 2. ad 6. — Although, therefore, the human intellect in the state of the way in no way knows God immediately, but only in the mirror of creatures, it is still rightly said to be joined to God in itself, near to God, or reaching to God, as occurs everywhere here in chs. 2 and 3 and in Augustine teaching that intelligible nature is connected not only to intelligible but also to immutable things (I. Retract. c. 8. n. 2.). The Seraphic Doctor warns, however (Quaest. disp. de scientia Christi, q. 4. ad 19.): “Few are they who in this way know that they attain those reasons; indeed, what is more, few are they who wish to believe this, because it seems difficult to an intellect not yet elevated to the contemplation of eternal things, that it should have God thus present and near, although Paul says (Acts 17:27) that He is not far from each one of us.”

7. Likewise the common opinion teaches as certain the general, active, and immediate concurrence of God for all actions whatsoever of creatures; whence “created light cannot complete its operation without some cooperation of the uncreated light, by which every man coming into this world is enlightened” (St. Bonaventure, II. Sent. d. 28. a. 2. q. 3. in corp.). For “in this God works continually in the mind, that He causes the natural light in it and directs it to seeing; and thus the mind does not proceed into its operation without the operation of the first cause” (St. Thomas, Opusc. 63, or on the book of Boethius de Trin. q. 1. a. 1. ad 6.). This immediate cooperation of the first light is called by Augustine and the Scholastics a certain irradiation or illumination of minds, which apart from the created intellect is in its own way a certain supreme principle by which it is known; or, as St. Bonaventure says, it is itself the moving reason, leading into another, or regulating; and in this sense “after the manner of a candelabrum the light of truth shines upon the face of our mind” (ch. 3. n. 1.); yet the first light is not a principle which is (directly) known, or an object terminating, giving rest, and drawing into itself. The whole of q. 1. among the Qq. disput. de scientia Christi treats of this, which is further explained by Matthew of Aquasparta (de Hum. Cognitionis ratione, pp. 87–108; cfr. ibid. the cited Dissert. pp. 26–44). Of the greatest moment is both this distinction between the principle by which (principium quo) and the principle which (principium quod) of cognition, or between the medium (reason) and the object of knowing, and the doctrine of all the Scholastics, that something can be a medium by which or reason of knowing without itself being the object of cognition, so that “it lies hidden as object of cognition, but stands open as reason of knowing” (so Matthew of Aquasparta, q. disp. 3. ad 4; cfr. ibid. ad 6. and St. Thomas, I. Sent. d. 3. q. 1. ad 5.). Especially from the neglect of this distinction and doctrine have arisen the false interpretations of the Itinerarium, of which we treat presently.

8. With these things supposed, the genuine sense of certain modes of speaking taken from Augustine can stand open, and at the same time the falsity of certain interpretations which imposed a twofold error on the Seraphic Doctor. For first it was said that he agrees with the ontologism of Malebranche, as if he taught that intellectual truths are known formally in the eternal reasons. Yet by his own irrefragable testimonies it has already been so often demonstrated that he admits for this life not even a “slight” degree of immediate cognition of God, neither in the highest contemplation (at least ordinarily), nor any passage to the eternal reasons except that by which the intellect “transfers itself from effect to causes.” “Whence if any authorities are found to say that God in the present life is seen and discerned by man, they are not to be understood as that He is seen in His essence, but that He is known in some inferior effect” (II. Sent. d. 23. a. 2. q. 3. in corp.). Even the Angels by natural cognition could not know God except “through effects. For God is known through visible effects and through spiritual substances and through the influence of light connatural to the knowing power, which is a certain likeness of God, not abstracted but infused, inferior to God because in an inferior nature, as Augustine says” (IX. de Trin. c. 11. n. 46). So in II. Sent. d. 3. p. II. a. 2. q. 2. ad 1. See more in I. Sent. d. 3. p. I. q. 1. scholion and the cited Dissert. pp. 7–12. — It seems strange that the genuine doctrine of St. Bonaventure could have been doubted on account of certain ill-understood formulas of this Itinerarium, since in the same most clearly (chs. 1, 2, 3) he teaches nothing but the ascent from creatures to God; and when he employs the words to see God, he explains himself by adding other words, as: “we must strive to see God through the mirror” (ch. 3. n. 1.) and “you will be able to see God through yourself as through an image, which is to see through a mirror in an enigma” (ibid.).

9. Another error was imposed on our author through a false interpretation of chapter 5, as if he taught both that the first known of the apprehending intellect is the divine being, and that he confused common being with divine being. This perverse interpretation is utterly alien to the mind of the Holy Doctor and is manifestly excluded by the irrefragable heads of doctrine which he constantly and everywhere asserts. For he teaches in peremptory words that the divine being in itself can be known immediately neither before nor after the first sin; that it is perceived only in the mirror of creatures and through the order which effects have to their cause (I. Sent. d. 3. p. I. q. 1–2; II. Sent. d. 23. a. 2. q. 3. and everywhere); likewise, that actual understanding begins from sense, so that it progresses from imperfect and confused intellection to a more perfect and explicit one (cfr. II. Sent. d. 39. a. 1. q. 2. and scholion, n. II, d. 25. p. II. q. 6; I. Sent. d. 8. p. II. dub. 1; II. Sent. d. 1. p. II. a. 1. q. 2. ad 2; III. Sent. d. 37. dub. 1.). Finally, he so often affirms that the divine being is not in a genus but above every genus, nor univocal but only analogous with all concepts of the mind, even the transcendental ones.

Moreover, from this Itinerarium itself and from chapter 5 itself the genuine sense of the author sufficiently appears. — For first he most clearly teaches the order and degrees of cognition and contemplation by which we ascend from creatures to a perfect, as far as is lawful, cognition of God (ch. 1. n. 2.). For he places the first degree at the bottom, beginning from the sensible world, as we noted above (n. 1.); namely “that we may arrive at God, we must pass through the vestige” (ch. 1. n. 2. and 5.). — The higher degrees explained by him thereafter, however, presuppose the preceding ones.

Secondly, concerning the concept of His being the author has already spoken in the third grade (c. 3. n. 3.) according to the apprehending and the resolving intellect (see above n. 3.); where it is said that “our intellect does not come, as fully resolving, to the understanding of any created being, unless it is aided by the understanding of the first being,” etc. Not therefore except by ascending from caused things and by resolving, indeed by resolving not semi-fully but fully, does the intellect conceive the most pure and most absolute being.

This supposed, also in c. 5. n. 3. he distinguishes a threefold being, namely in things (outside us) “particular being, which is constricted being, because it is mixed with potency”; in the intellect (within us) “analogous being, which has least of act, because it least is”; finally, being above us. But with the first two briefly noted, he is wholly engaged in the contemplation of that being which is “above us” and is not reached except by the contemplative eye. Lest therefore the reader stray from the genuine sense of this chapter, the things said in ch. 3 and the connection of the fifth grade with the third must be kept in mind. —

Thirdly, the contemplation of this fifth grade is founded on the axiom of Avicenna commonly received by the Scholastics, that “being (esse) is what first falls into the intellect.” This sentence is understood properly of that common being, conceived by the first act of the intellect, which can in no way be manifested to us through anything better known than it. This being, however, insofar as it is conceived by the apprehending intellect, “is not anything determinate, neither in act nor in potency, neither present nor future, neither man nor horse and the like, but being, which is superior to all these; and I say that that quiddity is being in the intellect… although it is not being in act, because neither is this of its understanding” (Matth. ab Aquasparta, in cit. Opusc. de Hum. Cognitionis ratione, pag. 120; or in the quaest. disp.: Utrum ad cognitionem rei requiratur ipsius rei existentia etc., ad 1; cfr. ad 5. 6. 7. et corp., where there are also other things pertinent to the matter). S. Thom. (S. I. II. q. 94. a. 2. corp.) says: “That which first falls into apprehension is being, whose understanding is included in all things, whatever one apprehends; and therefore the first indemonstrable principle is that it is not at once to affirm and to deny, which is founded upon the notion of being and non-being, and upon this principle all others are founded” (cfr. idem de Potentia q. 9. a. 7. ad 15. et in fine; S. I. q. 11. a. 2. ad 4.).

This analogous being, first known by the apprehending intellect, is nothing but the faintest shadow of the divine being, from which by reason of reality it is distant by the whole heaven and to which it is as it were opposed; nevertheless by reason of its greatest universality, primacy, and simplicity it is apt to become for the contemplative eye a mirror for contemplating divine things. Richardus a Med. also observes (I. Sent. d. III. p. I. a. 3. q. 3.): “When we understand being in common, not descending to created or uncreated being, we understand God with a most general understanding, insofar as we understand something common to Him and to any creature, not with a univocal but with an analogous community. And this natural knowledge of God is prior to the [proper] knowledge of God through the vestige; because the latter presupposes in the intellect the knowledge of something else, but the former does not. Whence according to Avicenna… the being common to all things can in no way be manifested to us through anything better known than it. In another way God is known by us in general, insofar as we know that there is some uncreated being, the efficient and final cause of any created being; and this knowledge we have of God by nature first through the vestige.” — All these things can be confirmed by testimonies of our author, of which it helps to transcribe one notable one, in which he speaks of the most general genus and the most special species and thus concludes: “And hence it is that genus in one respect is assimilated to God more than species, in another conversely. For God, because He is most noble, at the summit of all nobility, has at once in Himself every perfection, so that He Himself is most simple and wholly incorruptible, and is also perfect and constituted in all manner of actuality. But the creature, as far as it can, is assimilated to God semi-fully; and as regards the notion of simplicity and incorruptibility the more universal is more assimilated, as regards the notion of actuality the less universal is more assimilated” (II. Sent. d. 18. a. 1. q. 3. in corp. near the end). With still greater force this holds of the transcendental universals, of which the first and most general is being.

Fourthly, the very words of the author in ch. 5. sufficiently show that he well distinguishes from the divine being, which is pure act, those other two. For he says: “But this is not particular being [really existing outside us], which is constricted being, because it is mixed with potency; nor analogous being [in the intellect within us], because it has least of act, because it least is.” Concerning analogous or most common being, which is as it were the lowest among all things to which being belongs, the author here speaks only insofar as it gives occasion for contemplating being itself (above us). Whence he admonishes: “Let him who wills to contemplate the invisible things of God as regards the unity of essence fix his gaze upon being itself and see,” etc. (n. 3.). Likewise: “See therefore being itself most pure, if thou canst, and it meets thee,” etc. (n. 5.). These words concerning “being itself” are manifestly not understood of that first act of the apprehending intellect, which is exercised naturally and necessarily, and whose object is that most tenuous being, which is not the first and pure being, but rather its distant shadow. But the reflecting and resolving intellect, and especially the contemplative eye, can easily notice that being itself through itself, which is first on the part of the thing as principle of being and of knowing, is something above us and before us, in which all created being and even that most common being of the first universal is rooted, and into which all things lead the resolving intellect. In this sense also S. Thomas (S. I. q. 3. a. 5, sed contra) proclaims: “Nothing is prior to God, neither in reality nor in intellect.” Which is manifestly said not on the part of the human intellect, which in its blindness first apprehends in itself the shadow of truth rather than truth itself, but on the part of the thing or of the higher intellect, which sees well that being itself precedes its own shadow. — In this sense are to be taken those words which were to many a stone of stumbling: “Being therefore is what first falls into the intellect; and that being is what is pure act” (n. 3.). The genuine sense therefore is this: being itself is not in particular things except by participation and in a constricted and imperfect mode, nor is it apprehended by the human intellect in its first act in its purity and distinctness, but only most imperfectly in that shadow of the most common being; yet the same is known distinctly by the contemplative eye as that being than which truly “nothing is prior, neither in reality nor in intellect.” But because the apprehending intellect on account of its blindness “does not see” that most pure being, “nor notices,” indeed “it seems to itself to see nothing” (as is inculcated, ibid. n. 4.), the holy Doctor with wonderful acumen unfolds from the very concept of being through itself, according to the reflecting and resolving intellect, the principal divine attributes.

In his whole Itinerarium moreover the Seraphic [Doctor] rests upon the doctrine of S. Augustine; for understanding whose depth he at the same time furnishes as it were the best key. Whoever therefore wishes to understand this sublime little work well, let him read or rather meditate the books of S. Augustine de Vera Religione, the sixth de Musica, and the second and third de Libero Arbitrio, or at least let him compare the passages cited by us in the notes.