ome by the heat and light, it becomes
in substance luminous--all light--so that it is penetrated within the
affection and conception. This is not immediately, at the beginning of
generation, when the soul comes forth fresh from the intoxication of
Lethe, and drenched with the waves of forgetfulness and confusion, so
that the spirit comes into captivity to the body, and is put into the
condition of growth; but little by little, it goes on digesting, so as
to become fitted for the action of the sensitive faculty, until,
through the rational and discursive faculty, it comes to a purer
intellectual one, so that it can present itself to the mind, without
feeling itself befogged by the exhalations of that humour, which,
through the exercise of contemplation, has been saved from putrefaction
in the stomach and is duly digested. In this state, the present
enthusiast shows himself to have remained thirty years, during which
time he had not reached that purity of conception which would make him a
suitable habitation for the wandering species, which offering themselves
to all, equally, knock, ever at the door of the intelligence. At last,
Love, who in various ways and at different times had assaulted him as it
were in vain--as the light and heat of the sun are said to be useless to
those who are in the opaque depths and bowels of the earth--having
located itself in those sacred lights, that is having shown forth the
Divine Beauty through two intelligible species the which bound his
intellect through the reasoning of Truth and warmed his affections
through the reasoning of Goodness; while the material and sensitive
desires became superseded, which aforetime used, as it were, to triumph,
remaining intact, notwithstanding the excellence of the soul. Because
those lights which made present the illuminating, acting intellect and
sun of intelligence found easy ingress through his eyes; that of Truth
(the intellect of Truth?) through the door of the intellectual faculty;
that of Goodness (intellect of Goodness?) through the door of the
appetitive faculty, to the heart, that is, the substance of the general
affection. This was that double ray, which came as from the hand of an
irate warrior, who showed himself, now, as ready and as bold, as
aforetime he had appeared weak and negligent.[I]

Then, when he first felt warmed and illuminated in his conception, was
that victorious point and moment of which it is said: Vicit instans.

[I] H