Chapter XVI: Book VIII: , Book IX, 560d to 588a, and Book X up to 608b), so (4)

And our third, last question is whether our deepest this-life apprehensions and experiences give us any reason for holding that a certain equivalent for what is noblest in devoted suffering, heroic self-oblivion, patient persistence in lonely willing, will be present in the life of the Blessed. It would certainly be a gain could we discover such an equivalent, for a pure glut of happiness, an unbroken state of sheer enjoyment, can as little be made attractive to our most spiritual requirements, as the ideal of an action containing an element of, or equivalent for, devoted and fruitful effort and renunciation can lose its perennial fascination for what is most Christian within us.

(1) It is not difficult, I take it, to find such an element, which we cannot think away from any future condition of the soul without making that soul into God Himself. The ultimate cause of this element shall be considered, as Personality, in our next Chapter: here I can but indicate this element at work in our relations to our fellow-men and to God.--Already St. Thomas, throughout one current of his teaching, is full of the dignity of right individuality. “The Multitude and Diversity of natures in the Universe proceed directly from the intention of God, who brought them into being, in order to communicate His goodness to them, and to have It represented by them. And since It could not be sufficiently represented by one creature alone, He produced many and diverse ones, so that what is wanting to the one towards this office, should be supplied by the other.”[299] Hence the multiplication of the Angels, who differ specifically each from all the rest, adds more of nobility and perfection to the Universe, than does the multiplication of men, who differ only individually.[300] And Cardinal Nicolas of Coes writes, in 1457 A.D., “Every man is, as it were, a separate species, because of his perfectibility.”[301] As Prof. Josiah Royce tells us in 1901, “What is real, is not only a content of experience and the embodiment of a type; but an individual content of experience, and the unique embodiment of a type.”[302]

(2) Now in the future beatitude, where the full development of this uniqueness in personality cannot, as so often here, be stunted or misapplied, all this will evidently reach its zenith. But, if so, then it follows that, although one of the two greatest of the joys of those souls will be their love and understanding of each other,--this love and trust, given as it will be to the other souls, in their full, unique personality, will, of necessity, exceed the comprehension of the giving personalities. Hence there will still be an equivalent for that trust and venture, that creative faith in the love and devotion given by us to our fellows, and found by us in them, which are, here below, the noblest concomitants and conditions of the pain and the cost and the joy in every virile love and self-dedication.--There is then an element of truth in Lessing’s words of 1773: “The human soul is incapable of even one unmixed emotion,--one that, down to its minutest constituent, would be nothing but pleasurable or nothing but painful: let alone of a condition in which it would experience nothing but such unmixed emotions.”--For, as Prof. Troeltsch says finely in 1903, “Everything historical retains, in spite of all its relation to absolute values, something of irrationality,”--of impenetrableness to finite minds, “and of individuality. Indeed just this mixture is the special characteristic of the lot and dignity of man; nor is a Beyond for him conceivable in which it would altogether cease. Doubt and unrest can indeed give way to clear sight and certitude: yet this very clarity and assurance will, in each human soul, still bear a certain individual character,” fully comprehensible to the other souls by love land trust alone.[303]

(3) And this same element we find, of course, in a still greater degree,--although, as I shall argue later on, our experimental knowledge of God is greater than is our knowledge of our fellow-creatures,--in the relations between our love of God and our knowledge of Him. St. Thomas tells us most solidly: “Individual Being applies to God, in so far as it implies Incommunicableness.” Indeed, “_Person_ signifies the most perfect thing in nature,”--“the subsistence of an individual in a rational nature.” “And since the dignity of the divine nature exceeds every other dignity, this name of Person is applicable, in a supreme degree, to God.” And again: “God, as infinite, cannot be held infinitely by anything finite “; and hence “only in the sense in which comprehension is opposed to a seeking after Him, is God comprehended, _i.e._ possessed, by the Blessed.” And hence the texts: “I follow, if that I may apprehend, seeing that I also am apprehended” (Phil. iii, 12); “then shall I know even as I am known” (1 Cor. xiii, 12); and “we shall see Him as He is” (1 John iii, 2): all refer to such a possession of God. In the last text “the adverb ‘as’ only signifies ‘we shall see His essence’ and not ‘we shall have as perfect a mode of vision as God has a mode of being.’”[304]--Here again, then, we find that souls loving God in His Infinite Individuality, will necessarily love Him beyond their intellectual comprehension of Him; the element of devoted trust, of free self-donation to One fully known only through and in such an act, will thus remain to man for ever. St. John of the Cross proclaimed this great truth: “One of the greatest favours of God, bestowed transiently upon the soul in this life, is its ability to see so distinctly, and to feel so profoundly, that … it cannot comprehend Him at all. These souls are herein, in some degree, like to the souls in heaven, where they who know Him most perfectly perceive most clearly that He is infinitely incomprehensible; for those that have the less clear vision, do not perceive so distinctly as the others how greatly He transcends their vision.”[305] With this teaching, so consonant with Catherine’s experimental method, and her continuous trust in the persistence of the deepest relations of the soul to God, of the self-identical soul to the unchanging God, we can conclude this study of her Eschatology.