Itinerarium mentis in Deum

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.