The fifth results from the disproportion of the means of our cognition
to the knowable; seeing that in order to contemplate Divine things, the
eyes must be opened by means of images, analogies and other reasonings
which by the Peripatetics are comprehended under the name of fancies
(fantasmi); or, by means of Being, to proceed to speculate about
Essence, by means of its effects and the knowledge of the cause; the
which means, are so far from ensuring the attainment of such an end,
that it is easier to believe that the highest and most profound
cognition of Divine things, is through negation and not through
affirmation, knowing that the Divine beauty and goodness is not that
which can or does fall within our conception, but that which is above
and beyond, incomprehensible; chiefly in that condition called by the
philosopher speculation of phantoms, and by the theologian, vision
through analogies, reflections and enigmas, because we see, not the true
effects and the true species of things, or the substance of ideas, but
the shadows, vestiges and simulacra of them, like those who are inside
the cave and have from their birth their shoulders turned away from the
entrance of the light, and their faces towards the end, where they do
not see that which is in reality, but the shadows of that which is found
substantially outside the cave. Therefore by the open vision which it
has lost, and knows it has lost, a spirit similar to or better than that
of Plato weeps, desiring exit from the cave, whence, not through
reflexion, but through immediate conversion he may see the light again.
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