Dante is not in agreement with Pragmatism, Hegelianism and the "new
Realist" theory--all which make truth elusive to the mind; but he is in
full accord with the teaching of the Catholic Church, which defends the
rights of reason holding, e.g., that "by the natural light of reason
God can be known with certainty, by means of created things" (Vatican
Council), and proclaiming that "all the saints in Heaven have seen and
do see the Divine Essence by direct intuition and face to face in such
wise that nothing created intervenes as an object of vision; ... that
the Divine Essence presents itself to their immediate gaze, unveiled,
clearly and openly; that in this vision they enjoy the Divine Essence,
and in virtue of this vision and this enjoyment they are truly blessed
and possess eternal life and eternal rest." (Benedict XII, Cath.
Encycl., VII, 171.)

It is interesting to see how Dante's Master, St. Thomas Aquinas,
demonstrates the proposition that the beatitude of man consists in the
vision of the Divine Essence. With his usual lucidity of thought he
writes: "The last and perfect happiness of man cannot be otherwise than
in the vision of the Divine Essence. In evidence of this statement two
points are to be considered: first, that man is not perfectly happy so
long as there remains anything for him to desire and seek; secondly,
that the perfection of every power is determined by the nature of its
object. Now the object of the intellect is the essence of a thing; hence
the intellect attains to perfection so far as it knows the Essence of
what is before it. And therefore, when a man knows an effect and knows
that it has a cause, there is in him an outstanding natural desire of
knowing the essence of the cause. If, therefore, a human intellect knows
the essence of a created effect without knowing aught of God beyond the
fact of His existence, the perfection of that intellect does not yet
adequately reach the First Cause, but the intellect has an outstanding
natural desire of searching into the said Cause; hence it is not yet
perfectly happy. For perfect happiness, therefore, it is necesary that
the intellect shall reach as far as the very essence of the First
Cause." (Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus I, 2 q., 3 a, 8.)

This masterly exposition is after all only the philosophical development
of what every Catholic child learns from one of the first questions of
the little Catechism: "Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, t