Works of Dionysius

multitude—both external and its own—to its own unity. Through which it is finally joined to the One itself, when it has perfectly cast love, now divided into many goods, into the One Good, the principle and end of all goods. What, then, do disputes, doctrines, and meditations contribute to this? These are, in truth, as it were, certain mutual collisions of lights, made by the grace of the first Good, which finally kindle love for Him in the mind. Love immediately translates and unites. The divine voice shines forth from above in the mind thus kindled. Hence that of our Plato: "The divine cannot be taught by words like other things that are learned, but from long association with the thing itself and the conjunction of life, a light, as if sparked by fire, suddenly kindles itself in the soul and nourishes itself." Dionysius confirms this clearly through the words that follow. By those that "are," he names incorporeal substances. By those that "are not," or "non-beings," he means corporeal things and matter. He calls the extension of the soul the love fervent toward God, directed in a pure soul studious of truth.

Transcend not only sensible things, but also intelligible things, and as if neglecting intelligence, betake yourself with the love of the first Good alone to Him.

Dionysius

These things, indeed, I have spoken.

But you, friend Timothy, in your most intense study concerning mystical spectacles, leave behind senses and intellectual actions. And all sensible and intelligible things. And those that are, and those that are not. And so that you may be joined to Him who is above all essence and knowledge, strive toward Him, as much as your strength allows, as if vacant of knowledge. For only by a certain extension, freed both from yourself and from all things, will you fly up to the ray of the divine darkness, which is more sublime than essence, with all things removed and absolute from all.

Why divine things should not be divulged among the profane. And who the profane are. And how the One and the Good extend above being.

Marsilius.

As Plato writes twice

in his letters, so Dionysius here and often elsewhere forbids divulging the most secret mysteries of theology among the profane, lest because of a defect of judgment or an excess of pride they may receive false and vain opinions from them, or mock things worthy of veneration. He names those profane who are philosophers—with the exception of the Platonists—almost all of whom have thought nothing higher of God than that the highest God is a certain mind and primary essence. Nor is it a wonder that they could not grasp that invention of the Platonists: that the One and the Good is above all, the first being and intellect. And that it is more rightly named the principle of things. He judges those to be most profane whom even Plato judges—namely, the Epicureans and their like—who think nothing is anything except what they can grasp with their fist. And when they are compelled to describe God, they compose Him from certain corporeal and imaginable things and passions. That the One and the Good is above being, we have indicated together with Dionysius and the other Platonists in the previous pages, and we confirm it briefly here. We have already treated these matters more broadly in our theology and in the commentaries on Plotinus.

The formal reason for being and the reason for the One are different. For non-being is opposed to being; but multitude is opposed to the One. Therefore, just as multitude differs from nothing, so the One is different from being. We treat the firmness of this reason in the Parmenides. Also, it is not repugnant to the nature of being to include multitude within itself. But it is repugnant to the nature of the One. Therefore, one might say, they differ among themselves. But which is superior? In the first place, they cannot be equal. And perhaps a certain binary number might be made from these two joined together. And thus, above such a binary, unity would again have to be sought. Moreover, there would be two certain equal principles of things, and communion and order among things would cease. Therefore, they are not equal. Nor, again, is being superior to the One. Otherwise, being would not be a participant of the One. And it would thus be either a multitude wholly infinite, or nothing. The One, however, would turn out to be as an inferior participant of being itself. And having immediately lost its simplicity, it would similarly lose its pure