Just as in art faults are known, and their knowledge is rightly approved when the one who knows discerns the presence and the privation of virtue, as to affirm and to deny, and to be and not to be; nevertheless to be deprived of virtue and to fall away into vice is damnable. And to define intemperance and to speak its word pertains to the art of morals; but to be intemperate pertains to that which is blamed by that art. Just as to know and to define what a solecism is pertains to the art of speaking; but to commit it is a fault which is censured by the same art. It is a word, therefore, that we now wish to discern and to introduce—knowledge with love. And so, when the mind knows and loves itself, its word is joined to it by love.
And since it loves the knowledge and knows the love, both the word is in the love and the love in the word, and both are in the one loving and speaking. But all knowledge according to species is like the thing which it knows. For there is another knowledge according to privation, by which we speak when we disapprove; and this disapproval of privation praises the species, and therefore is approved. The mind, therefore, has some likeness of the known species, whether when it is pleased with it or when its privation displeases. Wherefore, in so far as we know God, we are like Him, but not like to equality, since we do not know Him as much as He knows Himself.
And just as, when through the bodily sense we learn bodies, there comes to be in our mind some likeness of them, which is the phantasy of the memory (for it is not the bodies themselves that are in the mind when we think of them, but their likenesses; and so, when we approve those in place of these, we err; for error is the approval of the one for the other;
yet the imagination of a body in the mind is better than that species of body, in so far as the former is in a better nature, that is, in a living substance such as the mind is), so, when we know God, although we become better than we were before we knew Him—and most of all when the same knowledge, being also pleasing and worthily loved, is a word, and that knowledge becomes some likeness of God—yet it is inferior, because it is in an inferior nature; for the mind is a creature, but God is the Creator. From which it is gathered that, when the mind itself knows and approves itself, that same knowledge is its word in such a way as to be altogether on a par with it and equal and identical, since the knowledge is neither of an inferior essence, as of a body, nor of a superior, as of God.
And since knowledge has a likeness to that thing which it knows—that is, of which it is the knowledge—this knowledge has a perfect and equal likeness, whereby the mind itself which knows is known. And therefore it is both image and word, because it is expressed from that mind when, by being known, it is made equal to it, and that which is begotten is equal to that which begets. What then? Will not love be an image, not a word, not begotten? For why does the mind beget its knowledge when it knows itself, and not beget its love when it loves itself? For if it is the cause of its notion because it is knowable, it is also the cause of its love because it is lovable. Why, then, it has not begotten both, is difficult to say.
For this question is wont to move even concerning that supreme Trinity itself, the most omnipotent Creator God, to whose image man was made, and it moves those men whom the truth of God invites to the faith through human discourse: why the Holy Spirit too is not believed or understood to be begotten of God the Father, so that He also may be called Son. This we now in some way endeavor to trace in the human mind, so that from the inferior image, in which our own nature, as though questioned, more familiarly answers us, we may direct the more practiced gaze of the mind from the illumined creature to the unchangeable light—if only truth itself shall persuade, that just as no Christian doubts the Word of God to be the Son, so charity is the Holy Spirit.
Let us therefore return to that image which is a creature—that is, to the rational mind—to be more diligently questioned and considered concerning this matter, wherein the knowledge of certain things existing temporally, which was not before, and the love of certain things which were not loved before, more distinctly discloses to us what we should say; because for our very discourse, which is to be directed temporally, that reality is easier to explain which is comprised within an order of times. First, then, let it be manifest that it can come to pass that something be knowable—that is, that can be known—and yet not be known; but that it cannot come to pass that what was not knowable be known. Whence it is clearly to be held that every thing whatsoever that we know engenders in us the knowledge of itself;
for knowledge is brought forth by both, by the knower and the known. And so the mind, when it knows itself, is alone the parent of its own knowledge; for it is itself both the known and the knower. But it was knowable to itself even before it knew itself, yet the knowledge of itself was not in it while it did not know itself. Therefore, in that it knows itself, it begets a knowledge of itself equal to itself, since it does not know itself as less than it is, nor is the knowledge of it of another essence—not only because the mind itself knows, but also because it knows itself, as we said above. What then must be said of love—why, when it loves itself, does it not seem also to have begotten its very love of itself?
For it was lovable to itself even before it loved itself, because it could love itself, just as it was knowable to itself even before it knew itself, because it could know itself. For if it were not knowable to itself, it could never have known itself; so, if it were not lovable to itself, it could never have loved itself. Why, then, is it not said, by loving itself, to have begotten its love, just as, by knowing itself, it begot its knowledge? Is it because by this it is manifestly shown to be the principle of love, whence love proceeds? For it proceeds from the mind itself, which is lovable to itself before it loves itself, and thus is the principle of its love by which it loves itself.
But for this reason it is not rightly said to be begotten by it, as is the knowledge of itself by which it knows itself: because knowledge is already what has been found, which is called brought forth or discovered, and this is often preceded by inquiry that is to come to rest in that end. For inquiry is the appetite of finding, which means the same if you say of discovering. But the things that are discovered are as it were brought forth, whence they are like offspring. Where, save in the very knowledge? For there they are as it were expressed and formed. For although the things which we find by seeking already existed, yet the knowledge itself did not exist, which we reckon as an offspring being born. Furthermore, that appetite which is in seeking proceeds from the seeker and in a certain way depends on him, nor does it rest in the end toward which it is directed unless that which is sought, being found, be joined to the seeker.
This appetite—that is, inquiry—although it does not seem to be the love by which that which is known is loved (for this is still being done in order that it may be known), is nevertheless something of the same kind. For it can already be called will, since everyone who seeks wishes to find; and if that is sought which pertains to knowledge, everyone who seeks wishes to know. And if he wishes it ardently and instantly, he is said to study, which is wont to be said especially in the pursuing and attaining of any doctrines whatsoever. A certain appetite, therefore, precedes the mind's bringing forth, by which, through seeking and finding that which we wish to know, the offspring itself, the knowledge, is born; and on this account that appetite by which the knowledge is conceived and brought forth cannot rightly be called its birth and offspring.
And this same appetite, by which one longs for the thing to be known, becomes love of the thing known while it holds and embraces the pleasing offspring—that is, the knowledge—and joins it to the begetter. And there is a certain image of the Trinity: the mind itself, and its knowledge, which is its offspring and its word about itself, and love as a third; and these three are one, and one substance. Nor is the offspring less while the mind knows itself as much as it is, nor is the love less while the mind loves itself as much as it knows and as much as it is.