4

Marvelous then is the blindness of the intellect which does not consider

that which is its primary object and without which it can know nothing. But

just as the eye intent upon the various differences of the colors does not

see the light by which it sees the other things and, if it sees it, does

not notice it, so the mind's eye, intent upon particular and universal

beings, does not notice Being itself, which is beyond all genera, though

that comes first before the mind and through it all other things. Wherefore

it seems very true that just as the bat's eye behaves in the light, so the

eye of the mind behaves before the most obvious things of nature. Because

accustomed to the shadows of beings and the phantasms of the sensible

world, when it looks upon the light of the highest Being, it seems to see

nothing, not understanding that darkness itself is the fullest illumination

of the mind [Ps., 138, 11], just as when the eye sees pure light it seems

to itself to be seeing nothing.