it for a goodness that is great in others, and useful
to the World. And that second part begins when I say, firstly, "On her
fair frame Virtue Divine descends;" where it is to be known that the
Divine Goodness descends into all things, and otherwise they could not
exist; but, although this goodness springs from the First Cause, it is
received diversely, according to the more or less of virtue in the
recipients. Wherefore it is written in the book Of Causes: "The First
Goodness sends His good gifts forth upon things in one stream. Verily
each thing receives from this stream according to the manner of its
virtue and its being." And we can have a sensible, living example of
this in the Sun. We see the light of the Sun, which is one thing,
derived from one fountain, to be variously received by material
substances; as Albertus Magnus says in his book On the Intellect, that
certain bodies, through having mixed in themselves an excess of
transparent brightness, so soon as the Sun sees them they become so
bright that, by the multiplication of light within them, their aspect
is hardly discernible, and from themselves they render back to others
great splendour or brilliancy, such as is gold and any gem. Sure I am
that by being entirely transparent, not only do they receive the
light, but that they do not intercept it; nay, they pass it on, like
stained glass, coloured with their own colour, to other things. And
there are certain other bodies so overpowering in the purity of the
transparency that they become so radiant as to overpower the
adjustments of the eye, and you cannot look at them without fatigue of
sight; such as are the mirrors. Certain others are so free from
transparency, that but little light can they receive; as is the Earth.
Thus the Goodness of God is received in sundrywise by the sundry
substances, that is, in one way by the Angels, who are without
grossness of matter, as if transparent through their purity of form;
and otherwise by the human Soul, which although on one side it may be
free from matter, on another side it is impeded: even as the man who
is all in the water but his head, of whom one cannot say that he is
entirely in the water, or entirely out of it. Again otherwise it is
received by the animals, whose soul is wholly comprised in matter; but
I say that the soul of animals receives of the Goodness of God in
proportion as it is ennobled. Again otherwise is it received by the
minerals; and otherwise by