Chapter LXVII
An Elucidation With Examples Concerning The Distinctions Between Intelligible Things [Showing] Which Use There Is In Each Of Them
Intellect 2) is a spiritual sense which is made a recipient of the visual power, as the pupil of the fleshly eyes into which perceptible light is poured.
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Intelligible sight is natural knowledge which by power has been mixed with the order of nature, and which is called natural light. A holy power is grace, the sun of distinction for those things, which hold a middle position between light and sight. Species 1) are those things which are intermediary and distinguished by light so as to become sight. The affections are as it were some dense entities, which, placed between light and sight, hinder the distinction of things. Purity is the clearness of the intelligible air, through the mediation 2) of which spiritual nature circulates in us. The reverse way: If the intellect is not of a sound nature, knowledge does not influence it. If the fleshly sense is harmed by some cause, sight is taken from it. If the intellect is sound, but there is no knowledge, the intellect cannot have any distinct influence upon spiritual things without it; just as an eye which is sound in all those things which are its own, 473 and yet, often its visual power is dull. So, if all these [spiritual] things are preserved in their proper state, but grace is not near, they remain, all of them, destitute of the service of their different functions; as it is also during nighttime, when all these things, because of the absence of the sun, remain without function, though they are true and perfect in themselves. I mean eye, sight and things, not those which are distinguishing or distinguished. This is what ha:s been said: In Thy light we see light 3). Now, even when grace, the intelligible sun, is near and inciting and flattering and working and exhortating, but there is no purity through which (as through the air purified from the density of the clouds and from the matter of darkness) the sunrays attain to us easily, so that we enjoy by their light a sight which is wholly spiritual - then sight is impeded in its discriminating power, nature looses its active force, the soul is hindered from perceiving the second sun which dawns over the world, because of the screen of the body in which the rays of truth are hidden so that they cannot reach us. Therefore, all that has been said Is strictly necessary. And because all these things are hardly to be found without defi-
I) ""'�!loo 2) lit. bosom 3) Ps. 36, 9
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ciency any one, not many are found who reach a partial completeness in spiritual knowledge. Such a deficiency has its origin in impotence of the intellect, or in neglect of the aim, 4 7 4 or in the unpreparedness of the will, or in lack of purity, or
in want of guides, or in the impediments of grace (for riches do not suit the fool, nor is a slave entitled to rule over many things) - or in the hindrances of time, place and mode.