Chapter 7.—We Conceive and Beget the Word Within, from the Things We Have Beheld in the Eternal Truth. The Word, Whether of the Creature or of the Creator, is Conceived by Love.

12. We behold, then, by the sight of the mind, in that eternal truth from which all things temporal are made, the form according to which we are, and according to which we do anything by true and right reason, either in ourselves, or in things corporeal; and we have the true knowledge of things, thence conceived, as it were as a word within us, and by speaking we beget it from within; nor by being born does it depart from us. And when we speak to others, we apply to the word, remaining within us, the ministry of the voice or of some bodily sign, that by some kind of sensible remembrance some similar thing may be wrought also in the mind of him that hears,—similar, I say, to that which does not depart from the mind of him that speaks. We do nothing, therefore, through the members of the body in our words and actions, by which the behavior of men is either approved or blamed, which we do not anticipate by a word uttered within ourselves. For no one willingly does anything, which he has not first said in his heart.

13. And this word is conceived by love, either of the creature or of the Creator, that is, either of changeable nature or of unchangeable truth.699    [The inward production of a thought in the finite essence of the human spirit which is expressed outwardly in a spoken word, is analogous to the eternal generation of the Eternal Wisdom in the infinite essence of God expressed in the Eternal Word. Both are alike, in that something spiritual issues from something spiritual, without division or diminution of substance. But a thought of the human mind is not an objective thing or substance; while the Eternal Word is.—W.G.T.S.]    [The distinction drawn here is between that low form of intelligence which exists in the brute, and that high form characteristic of man. In the Kantian nomenclature, the brute has understanding, but unenlightened by reason; either theoretical or practical. He has intelligence, but not as modified by the forms of space and time and the categories of quantity, quality, relation etc.; and still less as modified and exalted by the ideas of reason—namely, the mathematical ideas, and the moral ideas of God, freedom, and immortality. The animal has no rational intelligence. He has mere understanding without reason.—W.G.T.S.]

CAPUT VII.

12. Verbum intus ex rebus in aeterna veritate conspectis concipimus et gignimus. Verbum amore concipitur sive creaturae sive Creatoris. In illa igitur aeterna veritate, ex qua temporalia facta sunt omnia, formam secundum quam sumus, et secundum quam vel in nobis vel in corporibus vera et recta ratione aliquid operamur, visu mentis aspicimus: atque inde conceptam rerum veracem notitiam, tanquam verbum apud nos habemus, et dicendo intus gignimus; nec a nobis nascendo discedit. Cum autem ad alios loquimur, verbo intus manenti ministerium vocis adhibemus, aut alicujus signi corporalis, ut per quamdam commemorationem sensibilem tale aliquid fiat etiam in animo audientis, quale de loquentis animo non recedit. Nihil itaque agimus per membra corporis in factis dictisque nostris, quibus vel approbantur vel improbantur mores hominum, quod non verbo apud nos intus edito praevenimus. Nemo enim volens aliquid facit, quod non in corde suo prius dixerit.

13. Quod verbum amore concipitur, sive creaturae, sive Creatoris, id est, aut naturae mutabilis, aut incommutabilis veritatis.