1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission of Messrs. G.P. Putnam's Sons from
"The World's Orations," the translation having been copyrighted by
Messrs. Putnams.]

_While he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into
heaven_.--Luke xxiv., 51.

Beloved in Christ Jesus, the wise men of this world divide all created
things into two classes; one class they name substances, the other
accidents. The substances are those things that exist through themselves
without requiring anything else on which to rest, as the earth, water,
air, the heavens, animals, stones, plants, and similar things. The
accidents can not exist by themselves, but only by resting on something
else, as color, odor, taste, and other such things. But because our
knowledge is entirely through the senses, and we are able to know
anything only when its accidents fall upon our senses, we have,
therefore, knowledge of the accidents rather than of the substances. The
eyes are for colors, the ears for sounds, the nose for scents, the
tongue for flavors, the touch for heat and cold, for hard and soft. Each
sense has its own sphere of knowledge and brings what it has perceived
before the imagination, and this hands it over to the reason within,
which reads and illuminates the productions of the imagination, judges
them, and in this way comes to a knowledge of the substances. But the
reason has little light if it is separated from the body, for God has
joined soul and body together; and so by means of the senses knowledge
becomes definite and complete. For if the soul out of the body were
richer in knowledge, it would be in vain that it should be in the body.
God and nature have done nothing in vain, and therefore the soul's union
with the body ministers to its perfection.

The soul's knowledge, however, will not be complete so long as it lives
in this mortal body. It does not while here come to the fundamental
distinctions and causes of the substances, because it is obliged to know
the inner side of things through their externals. Therefore man is able
only imperfectly to know an incorporeal substance; how much less can he
know the uncreated infinite being of God? But if he can not know the
being of God, he will not be able to know many other infinite things
which are in Him. We ought therefore not to be surprized that there is
much in God which we can not understand, and that very many truths of
the faith we can not yet prove since we do not yet k