and how the different degrees of mental elevation
produce different degrees of happiness in the Beatific Vision, we
must first examine in what consist the different degrees of enjoyment
in the creatures that now surround us. This will be as a mirror, in
which we can see faint, but true, reflections of the vast difference
there is between the highest and the lowest in heaven.

In order to receive pleasure from creatures, it is not enough to be
surrounded with them, or even to possess them: we must, moreover, be
endowed with organs, or faculties, through which we can receive and
appropriate to ourselves the pleasures which, according to their
nature, they can give. Thus, a grand concert, which pours the most
exquisite pleasures into your soul, gives none at all to a deaf man,
because he lacks the receiving organ, and hence the pleasure-giving
object is, in his regard, as if it had no existence.

But this is not all. Not only does our pleasure depend upon the
possession of receiving faculties, but the amount also, or degree, of
that pleasure, depends upon the development and perfection of the
same receiving organs and faculties. The more highly developed and
cultivated they are, the more intense, also, will be the satisfaction
and pleasure we shall receive from any given object; while persons of
inferior development will receive far less, although the object is
the same for all. Let us make this evident by an illustration.

Take the thousands of persons who have read some literary work, say,
for instance, the Iliad of Homer. They all had eyes, and all could
read; they all possessed the whole book as completely as if it had
been written for each one in particular; and, no doubt, they all
received pleasure from the perusal of that beautiful poem. But, did
they all receive the same amount of pleasure? They certainly did not.
Not even two individuals ever received the same degree of pleasure or
enjoyment from the perusal of that book. Each one received and
appropriated to himself his own pleasure--which was great in
proportion to the cultivation and elevation of his mind. Hence, while
a superior and highly cultivated mind is entranced at the beauty and
sublimity of some particular passage, an inferior one sees neither
meaning nor beauty in it, and, perhaps, even casts the book aside in
disgust.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations; but this one is
sufficient to show that the amount of pleasure we derive from the use