292 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



instinct or tendency of all things towards the beautiful 

 and good. Love is that by virtue of which all things 

 are produced, which is in all things, and is the vigour 

 of all things ; by its guidance souls rise to contemplation, 

 by the power of flight it inspires, the difficulties of 

 nature are overcome, and men become united with 

 God. 1 To see God is to be seen by God ; to be heard 

 by divinity is to hear the voice of divinity ; to be 

 favoured by its grace is the same thing as offering 

 oneself to it. The divine potency that is wholly in 

 everything does not offer nor withdraw itself except 

 through the conversion of the other, its object, to it, or 

 aversion from it. 2 To love God is to be loved by God. 

 It is only through love, again, that we can approach the 

 inmost nature of God ; we cannot reason or even 

 think of the divine without detracting from it rather 

 than adding to its glory. 3 To think of God is to lirmt 

 Him, and, therefore, as we have seen, every concep- 

 tion of Him is inadequate : the deepest, the highest 

 [ knowledge of divine things is by way of negation, 

 never by affirmation. For the divine beauty and divine 

 goodness can never fall within our understanding (our 

 conceptual knowledge), but are ever beyond and beyond 

 in absolute incomprehensibility. No finite intelligence 

 ever perceives the substance of divinity, but always its 

 similitude, its image ; even the highest intelligences are, 

 in the language of the schools, not formally , but only 

 denominative fy t gods, or divine, divinity and the divine 

 beauty remaining one and exalted above all things. 4 

 Being itself eternal, unchangeable, the divine truth 

 reveals itself to the few to whom it is revealed nnpt 

 as in the physical sciences, which are acquired by the 



1 Op. Lat., ii. 2. 195. 2 Lag. 704. 10. 



3 Lag. 699. 3. 4 P. 742. 24 j cf. also 723. 28 and 724. 17. 





