The perfection of the mind is in its union with God through the knowledge of truth and the love of virtue

The Mind’s imperfection arises only from its dependence on the body, due to the disorder of its senses and passions.**

The slightest reflection is enough to recognize that the good of the mind must necessarily be something spiritual. Bodies are far inferior to the mind; they cannot act upon it by their own power, nor can they be joined to it directly; and, finally, they are not intelligible in themselves. Therefore, they cannot be its true good. Spiritual things, on the contrary, are by their very nature intelligible; they are capable of being united with the mind, and thus can be its good — provided they are superior to it. For something to be the good of the mind, it is not enough that it be spiritual like the mind itself; it must also stand above it, able to enlighten it, perfect it, and make it happy. Otherwise, it cannot improve or satisfy it, and therefore cannot truly be its good. Of all intelligible or spiritual beings, only God is superior to the mind in this way. It follows, then, that God alone is, and can be, our true good. We can become more perfect and more happy only by possessing Him.

Everyone agrees that the knowledge of truth and the love of virtue make the mind more perfect, while ignorance and moral disorder make it less so. Therefore, the knowledge of truth and the love of virtue can be nothing other than the union of the mind with God — a kind of possession of Him. And, conversely, ignorance and moral disorder can only mean separation from God, and the joining of the mind to something lower than itself — namely, the body — since only this union can make it imperfect and unhappy. Thus, to know truth, or to know things as they truly are, is to know God; and to love virtue, or to love things in proportion to their true worth, is to love God.

The mind stands, as it were, midway between God and bodies, between good and evil, between what enlightens it and what blinds it, what guides it and what disturbs it, what makes it perfect and happy and what makes it imperfect and miserable. Whenever the mind discovers a truth or sees things as they are in themselves, it sees them in the ideas of God — that is, through a clear and distinct vision of what is in God that represents them. As I have already said, the human mind does not contain within itself the perfections or ideas of all the beings it is capable of knowing; it is not the universal being. It cannot therefore see things distinct from itself by looking within itself. It does not gain knowledge or light by consulting itself, for it is not its own source of perfection or truth. It needs the infinite light of eternal truth to illuminate it. Hence, whenever the mind knows truth, it is united with God, and in a certain way knows and possesses Him.

Moreover, not only can we say that the mind which knows truth knows in some way the God in whom all truth is contained; we can also say that it knows things in the same manner as God knows them. For it understands their true relations, and God knows them likewise. It sees them through the perfections of God that represent them, and God knows them in exactly the same way. God does not rely on sensation or imagination; He sees within Himself, in the intelligible world He contains, the material and sensible world He has created. The same is true of a mind that knows truth: it does not know it through feeling or imagination. Sensations and mental images present only false relationships. Whoever discovers truth sees it only in the intelligible world to which the mind is united — the same realm in which God Himself sees it — for the material and sensible world is not intelligible on its own. Therefore, the mind sees all things clearly in the light of God, just as God does — though in a far more imperfect manner, and very differently from God. Thus, when the mind sees truth, it is not only united with God and possesses Him; it also sees Him in some measure, and in a sense sees truth as He sees it.

In the same way, when we love according to the rules of virtue, we love God. For when we love according to these rules, the impulse of love that God constantly places in our hearts to turn us toward Him is not diverted by our free will or turned into self‑love. The mind simply follows freely this inclination God has given it. Since God never produces any impulse that does not lead back to Himself — for He acts only for His own ends — it is clear that to love according to virtue is to love God.

Furthermore, this is not merely loving God; it is loving in the same way that God loves. God loves Himself above all else; He loves His works only insofar as they relate to His own perfections, and in proportion to that relationship. Ultimately, it is the same love by which God loves Himself and all that He has made. To love according to virtue is to love God alone, to see God in all things, and to love things in proportion to their participation in God’s goodness and perfections — which is to say, in proportion to their true worth. It is to love by the same impulse that moves God’s own love; for it is this same love, by which God loves Himself and all things in relation to Himself, that animates us when we love as we ought. In this way, we love as God loves.

It is therefore evident that the knowledge of truth and the ordered love of virtue constitute our entire perfection; for they are the natural results of our union with God, and bring us as close to possessing Him as is possible in this life. Ignorance and moral disorder, on the other hand, are the source of all our imperfection — and these, too, follow from the union of our mind with our body, as I have shown in several places. Whenever we follow the impressions of our senses, our imagination, and our passions, we never truly know the truth or love what is truly good.

These truths are clear. Yet human beings, all of whom ardently desire the perfection of their nature, do little to strengthen their union with God, while working constantly to reinforce and extend their attachment to sensible things. It is important to explain the cause of this strange disorder.

The possession of what is good naturally produces two effects: it makes the possessor more perfect, and at the same time more happy. Yet this does not always happen. Admittedly, it is impossible for the mind to possess a true good without becoming more perfect; but it is possible to possess it without immediately feeling happier. Those who know the truth best and love the most worthy goods are always more perfect than those who live in ignorance and disorder — but they are not always more happy. The same applies to evil: it ought to make us both imperfect and unhappy at once; and while it always makes us more imperfect, it does not always make us more miserable, or at least not in proportion to the degree of imperfection it brings. Virtue is often difficult and bitter, while vice appears easy and pleasant. The righteous find true happiness chiefly through faith and hope, while the wicked enjoy immediate pleasure and delight. This is not how things ought to be, but it is how they are. Sin has brought about this disorder, as I explained in the previous chapter; and it is this disorder that is the chief cause not only of all the confusion in our hearts, but also of the blindness and ignorance of our minds.

It is this disorder that convinces our imagination that bodies can be the good of the mind. For pleasure, as I have said many times, is the sensible sign or mark of what is good. And of all the pleasures we experience in this life, the most vivid and immediate are those we believe we receive through our bodies. With little reflection, we therefore conclude that bodies can be, and indeed are, our true good. It is very difficult to fight against natural instinct or to resist the evidence of our feelings — so difficult, in fact, that we rarely even try. We do not consider the disorder caused by sin; we do not stop to think that bodies can act upon the mind only as occasional causes, that the mind cannot directly or independently possess anything physical, and that it can be united to any object only through knowledge and love. We forget that only God stands above the mind, able to reward or punish it through feelings of pleasure or pain, to enlighten it and move it — in short, only God can truly act upon it. These truths, though clear to an attentive mind, are not as powerful to convince us as the deceptive experience of our senses.

When we regard something as part of ourselves, or feel ourselves part of it, we judge that being united to it is good for us. We love it, and our love grows stronger the more significant this thing seems to be in relation to the whole we form with it. There are two kinds of proof that persuade us something belongs to us: the instinct of feeling, and the clear light of reason.

It is through the instinct of feeling that I am convinced my soul is joined to my body, or that my body is part of my being. I have no rational proof of this; I do not know it through the light of reason, but through the pain or pleasure I feel when objects affect me. If my hand is pricked, I suffer — therefore my hand is part of me. If my clothes are torn, I feel nothing — therefore they are not part of me. Cutting my hair causes no pain, but pulling it out does. This confuses philosophers, who cannot give a clear answer. But their confusion itself proves that even the wisest judge what belongs to them by instinct rather than by reason. If they judged by clear and rational insight, they would quickly recognize that mind and body are entirely distinct kinds of being; that the mind cannot unite itself to the body on its own; and that it is only through our union with God that the soul feels pain when the body is injured, as I have explained elsewhere. It is therefore only through the instinct of feeling that we regard our body and all sensible things connected to it as part of ourselves — that is, as part of what thinks and feels within us. For reason cannot confirm what is not true, and clear insight reveals only what is real.

But with intelligible things, the opposite is true. It is through the light of reason that we recognize our relationship to them. By a clear mental vision, we discover that we are united to God in a far closer and more essential way than we are to our bodies; that without God we are nothing; that without Him we can do nothing, know nothing, will nothing, and feel nothing; that He is our all, or that we form with Him a single whole — if such a thing can be said — in which we are but an infinitely small part. The light of reason shows us countless reasons to love God alone and to despise bodies as unworthy of our affection. Yet we do not naturally feel our union with God. We are not convinced by instinct that God is our all, except through the grace of Jesus Christ, which produces this feeling in some people to help them overcome the contrary impulse that ties them to the body. For God, as the author of nature, draws minds to love Him through knowledge and understanding, not through instinctive feeling. It appears that only since sin did He, as the author of grace, add instinct and a foretaste of delight to the light of truth — because our understanding is now greatly weakened, no longer able to draw us toward God on its own, while the opposing force of pleasure and instinct constantly weakens and renders it ineffective.

We therefore understand through the light of reason that we are united to God and to the intelligible world He contains; and we feel through our senses that we are joined to our body, and through it to the material and sensible world God has created. But because our feelings are more vivid, more immediate, more frequent, and more lasting than our rational insights, it is no wonder that our senses stir us up and awaken our love for all that is sensible, while our understanding fades away without inspiring any real desire for truth.

It is true that many people believe God is their true good, love Him as their all, and earnestly wish to deepen and strengthen their union with Him. Yet very few clearly understand that to know truth is, by our natural powers, to be united with God; that to contemplate the true ideas of things is itself a kind of possession of God; and that these abstract insights into the universal and unchanging truths which govern all particular truths are the efforts of a mind that turns away from the body and attaches itself to God. Metaphysics, pure mathematics, and all the universal sciences that order and contain all particular sciences — just as universal being contains all particular beings — seem almost imaginary to most people, the good and the ungodly alike. This is why I hardly dare to say that the pursuit of these sciences is the purest and most perfect way in which the mind can naturally unite itself to God; and that it is through the vision of the intelligible world, which these studies contemplate, that God Himself knows and governs the sensible world — which bodies depend on for life, just as spirits depend on the intelligible realm.

Those who follow only the impressions of their senses and the movements of their passions cannot appreciate truth, because it does not flatter them. And even good people, who constantly resist their passions when these present false goods, do not always resist them when they obscure truth or make it seem worthless. For one can be virtuous without being especially enlightened. To be pleasing to God, it is not necessary to know exactly how our senses, imagination, and passions always distort the way things appear. After all, there is no evidence that Jesus Christ and the apostles intended to free us from many of the errors that Descartes later uncovered on this subject.

There is a great difference between faith and understanding, between the Gospel and philosophy. Even the simplest people can have faith, but very few are capable of pure insight into self‑evident truths. Faith presents God to the simple as the Creator of heaven and earth, and this is enough to move them to love and serve Him. Reason, by contrast, does not only consider God in His works; God was what He is before He became Creator. Reason seeks to contemplate Him in Himself, through the vast and infinite idea of a Being possessing all perfections. The Son of God, who is the Wisdom of the Father and eternal Truth, became man and made Himself visible to reach the minds of fleshly and ordinary people. He chose to teach them through the very things that had blinded them, to draw them to Himself and free them from attachment to sensible goods by means of those same things that had captivated them. As if dealing with those who are foolish, He used a kind of apparent folly to make them truly wise. This is why the most virtuous and faithful people do not always have the greatest understanding. They can know God through the law and love Him with the help of grace, without understanding Him in the way philosophers do, and without realizing that abstract knowledge of truth is itself a form of union with Him. It is therefore no surprise that so few people strive to strengthen their natural union with God through the knowledge of truth. To do so requires constant struggle against the impressions of the senses and passions — a struggle quite different from the kind familiar to even the most virtuous. For the best of people are not always convinced that the senses and passions deceive us in the way explained in the earlier books.

Only those feelings and thoughts in which the body takes part give rise directly to passions, because only disturbances in the fibers of the brain excite particular movements in the animal spirits. Hence, only feelings convince us vividly that we are connected to certain objects, and stir up love for them. But when we know truth, we do not feel our natural union with God; we may not even think of Him. For He exists and works within us in such a secret and imperceptible way that we are not aware of it. Our natural union with God therefore does not naturally awaken our love for Him. This is not the case with our union to sensible things. Every sensation confirms this connection: bodies make themselves known to us as soon as they act upon us, and their influence is never hidden. Our own body is even more present to us than our mind, and we regard it as the best part of ourselves. Thus, our union with our body, and through it with all sensible objects, arouses within us a powerful love that strengthens this bond and makes us dependent upon things infinitely inferior to ourselves.