, but rather according to the faculty of
them which know it. For to explicate it with a brief example: the sight
and the feeling do diversely discern the same roundness of a die. The
sight standing aloof beholdeth it altogether by his beams; but the
feeling united and joined to the orb, being moved about the compass of
it, comprehendeth the roundness by parts. Likewise sense, imagination,
reason and understanding do diversely behold a man. For sense looketh
upon his form as it is placed in matter or subject, the imagination
discerneth it alone without matter, reason passeth beyond this also and
considereth universally the species or kind which is in particulars. The
eye of the understanding is higher yet. For surpassing the compass of
the whole world it beholdeth with the clear eye of the mind that simple
form in itself.

In which that is chiefly to be considered, that the superior force of
comprehending embraceth the inferior; but the inferior can by no means
attain to the superior; for the sense hath no force out of matter,
neither doth the imagination conceive universal species, nor is reason
capable of the simple form, but the understanding, as it were looking
downward, having conceived that form, discerneth of all things which are
under it, but in that sort in which it apprehendeth that form which can
be known by none of the other. For it knoweth the universality of
reason, and the figure of imagination, and the materiality of sense,
neither using reason, nor imagination, nor senses, but as it were
formally beholding all things with that one twinkling of the mind.
Likewise reason, when it considereth any universality, comprehendeth
both imagination and sensible things without the use of either
imagination or senses. For she defineth the universality of her conceit
thus: Man is a reasonable, two-footed, living creature, which being an
universal knowledge, no man is ignorant that it is an imaginable and
sensible thing, which she considereth by a reasonable conceiving and not
by imagination or sense. Imagination also, although it began by the
senses of seeing and forming figures, yet when sense is absent it
beholdeth sensible things, not after a sensible, but after an imaginary
manner of knowledge. Seest thou now how all these in knowing do rather
use their own force and faculty than the force of those things which are
known? Nor undeservedly; for si