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| Chapter X
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Chapter
X.
What words indeed could possibly express the greatness of that loss in
falling away from the possession of real goodness? What consummate
power of thought would have to be employed! Who could produce even in
outline that which speech cannot tell, nor the mind grasp? On the one
hand, if a man has kept the eye of his heart so clear that he can in a
way behold the promise of our Lord’s Beatitudes realized, he will
condemn all human utterance as powerless to represent that which he has
apprehended. On the other hand, if a man from the atmosphere of
material indulgences has the weakness of passion spreading like a film
over the keen vision of his soul, all force of expression will be
wasted upon him; for it is all one whether you understate or whether
you magnify a miracle to those who have no power whatever of perceiving
it1396
| 1396 ἀναισθήτως
ἐχόντων;
Reg. Cod. | . Just as, in the case of the sunlight, on
one who has never from the day of his birth seen it, all efforts at
translating it into words are quite thrown away; you cannot make the
splendour of the ray shine1397
| 1397 αὐγάζειν; intrans. in N.T. | through his ears;
in like manner, to see the beauty of the true and intellectual light,
each man has need of eyes of his own; and he who by a gift of Divine
inspiration can see it retains his ecstasy unexpressed in the depths of
his consciousness; while he who sees it not cannot be made to know even
the greatness of his loss. How should he? This good escapes his
perception, and it cannot be represented to him; it is unspeakable, and
cannot be delineated. We have not learnt the peculiar language
expressive of this beauty. An example of what we want to say does not
exist in the world; a comparison for it would at least be very
difficult to find. Who compares the Sun to a little spark? or the vast
Deep to a drop? And that tiny drop and that diminutive spark bear the
same relation to the Deep and to the Sun, as any beautiful object of
man’s admiration does to that real beauty on the features of the
First Good, of which we catch the glimpse beyond any other good. What
words could be invented to show the greatness of this loss to him who
suffers it? Well does the great David seem to me to express the
impossibility of doing this. He has been lifted by the power of the
Spirit out of himself, and sees in a blessed state of ecstacy the
boundless and incomprehensible Beauty; he sees it as fully as a mortal
can see who has quitted his fleshly envelopments and entered, by the
mere power of thought, upon the contemplation of the spiritual and
intellectual world, and in his longing to speak a word worthy of the spectacle
he bursts forth with that cry, which all re-echo, “Every man a
liar1398
!” I take that to mean that any man who
entrusts to language the task of presenting the ineffable Light is
really and truly a liar; not because of any hatred on his part of the
truth, but because of the feebleness of his instrument for expressing
the thing thought of1399
| 1399 οὐχὶ τῷ
μίσει τῆς
ἀληθείας
ἀλλὰ τῇ
ἀσθενεί& 139·
τῆς
διηγήσεως, the reading of Codd. Vatican & Reg. | . The visible beauty
to be met with in this life of ours, showing glimpses of itself,
whether in inanimate objects or in animate organisms in a certain
choiceness of colour, can be adequately admired by our power of
aesthetic feeling. It can be illustrated and made known to others by
description; it can be seen drawn in the language as in a picture. Even
a perfect type1400
| 1400 οὐδέ τὸ
ἀρχέτυπον, κ.
τ. λ. | of such beauty does
not baffle our conception. But how can language illustrate when it
finds no media for its sketch, no colour, no contour1401
| 1401 These
are evidently the elements of beauty as then recognized by the
eye; it is still the Hellenic standard. | , no majestic size, no faultlessness of
feature; nor any other commonplace of art? The Beauty which is
invisible and formless, which is destitute of qualities and far removed
from everything which we recognize in bodies by the eye, can never be
made known by the traits which require nothing but the perceptions of
our senses in order to be grasped. Not that we are to despair of
winning this object of our love, though it does seem too high for our
comprehension. The more reason shows the greatness of this thing which
we are seeking, the higher we must lift our thoughts and excite them
with the greatness of that object; and we must fear to lose our share
in that transcendent Good. There is indeed no small amount of danger
lest, as we can base the apprehension of it on no knowable qualities,
we should slip away from it altogether because of its very height and
mystery. We deem it necessary therefore, owing to this weakness of the
thinking faculty, to lead it towards the Unseen by stages through the
cognizances of the senses. Our conception of the case is as
follows.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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