is, Human
Nature, who shapes her material into so much beauty when she is not
impeded. And therefore the priest said well to the Emperor who laughed
and scoffed at the ugliness of his body: "The Lord, He is God: It is
He that hath made us, and not we ourselves;" and these are the words
of the Prophet in a verse of the Psalms, written neither more nor less
than according to the reply of the Priest.

And therefore let the wicked evil-born ones perceive that, if they put
their chief care in the adornment of their persons, it must be with
all modesty; for to do that is no other than to adorn the work of
another, that is, Nature, and to abandon their own proper work.

Returning, then, to the proposition, I say that our intellect, through
defect of the power through which it sees organic power, that is, the
imagination, is not able to ascend to certain things, because the
imagination cannot help it and has not the wherewithal, such as are
the substances apart from matter, which (if we can have any knowledge
of them) we cannot fully comprehend.

And the man is not to blame for this, because he was not the maker of
this defect; nay, Universal Nature did this, which is God, who wills
that in this life we be without this light. And because He was the
cause, it would be presumptuous to argue concerning it. So that if my
earnest thought transported me into a place where my imagination
failed my intellect, I was not to blame if I could not possibly
understand.

Again, a bound is set to our understanding in each operation thereof;
but not by us, but by Universal Nature; and therefore it is to be
known that the bounds of the understanding are wider in thought than
in speech, and wider in speech than in signs. Hence, if our thought,
not only that which fails in a perfect intellect, but also that which
in a perfect intellect attains its end, is the conqueror of speech, we
are not to blame, because we are not the makers of it. And therefore I
prove that I do truthfully excuse myself when I say: "Blame wit and
words, whose force Fails to tell all that I hear Love discourse;" for,
sufficiently clear ought to appear the good-will, which alone we
should regard in respect to merits that are human.

And thus is now explained the first principal part of this Song which
flows from my hand.

CHAPTER V.

Discourse on the first part of the Song has now made its meaning open
and clear, and it is needful to proceed to the second; for