the soul upon itself as opposed to external things"; the
second is "a certain wrapping together of the powers of the soul whereby
it is freed from error and from external occupation"; and the third is
"the union of the soul with things superior to it." Similarly, he speaks
in different terms of the _direct_ motion of the soul as compared with
that of the Angels. For he says that the _direct_ motion of an Angel is
"according as he proceeds to the care of the things subject to him";
while the _direct_ motion of the soul is made to consist in two things:
first of all "that it proceeds to those things which are around it";
secondly, that "from external things it is uplifted to simple
contemplation." And lastly, he explains the _oblique_ motion differently
in each case. For he makes the _oblique_ motion of the Angels consist in
this that, "while providing for those that have less than themselves,
they remain in the same attitude towards God"; but the _oblique_ motion
of the soul he explains as meaning that "the soul is illumined by Divine
knowledge rationally and diffusely."

Consequently it does not appear that the operations of contemplation are
fittingly distinguished according to the aforesaid species of motion.

But while man's intellect is generally the same with that of the
Angels, the intellectual powers of the latter are far higher
than in man. It was therefore necessary to assign the aforesaid
motions to human souls and to the Angels in different fashion in
proportion as their intellectual powers are not uniform. For the
Angelic intellect has uniform knowledge in two respects:
firstly, because the Angels do not acquire intelligible truth
from the variety of compound things; and secondly, because they
do not understand intelligible truth discursively, but by simple
intuition. Whereas the intellect of the human soul, on the
contrary, acquires intelligible truth from the things of sense,
and understands it by the discursive action of the reason.

Hence S. Denis assigns to the Angels circular motion in that
they uniformly and unceasingly, without beginning or end, gaze
upon God; just as circular motion, which has neither beginning
nor end, is uniformly maintained round the same central point.
But in the case of the human soul, its twofold lack of
uniformity must be removed before it can attain to the
above-mentioned uniformity. For there mus