has seldom
found a harsher expression.

In the night of sense, the understanding and reason are not blind; but
in the second night, the night of faith, "all is darkness." "Faith is
midnight"; it is the deepest darkness that we have to pass; for in the
"third night, the night of memory and will," the dawn is at hand.
"Faith" he defines as "the assent of the soul to what we have
heard"--as a blind man would receive a statement about the colour of
an object. We must be totally blind, "for a partially blind man will
not commit himself wholly to his guide." Thus for St. Juan the whole
content of revelation is removed from the scope of the reason, and is
treated as something communicated from outside. We have, indeed,
travelled far from St. Clement's happy confidence in the guidance of
reason, and Eckhart's independence of tradition. The soul has three
faculties--intellect, memory, and will. The imagination (_fantasia_)
is a link between the sensitive and reasoning powers, and comes
between the intellect and memory.[298] Of these faculties, "faith (he
says) blinds the intellect, hope the memory, and love the will." He
adds, "to all that is not God"; but "God in this life is like night."
He blames those who think it enough to deny themselves "without
annihilating themselves," and those who "seek for satisfaction in
God." This last is "spiritual gluttony." "We ought to seek for
bitterness rather than sweetness in God," and "to choose what is most
disagreeable, whether proceeding from God or the world." "The way of
God consisteth not in ways of devotion or sweetness, though these may
be necessary to beginners, but in giving ourselves up to suffer." And
so we must fly from all "mystical phenomena" (supernatural
manifestations to the sight, hearing, and the other senses) "without
examining whether they be good or evil." "For bodily sensations bear
no proportion to spiritual things"; since the distance "between God
and the creature is infinite," "there is no essential likeness or
communion between them." Visions are at best "childish toys"; "the fly
that touches honey cannot fly," he says; and the probability is that
they come from the devil. For "neither the creatures, nor intellectual
perceptions, natural or supernatural, can bring us to God, there
being no proportion between them. Created things cannot serve as a
ladder; they are only a hindrance and a snare."

There is something heroic in this sombre interpretation of the max