present, or future; but consider thyself to be outside the world and
alone with God, as if thy soul were already separated from the body,
and had no longer any interest in peace or war, or the state of the
world. Leave thy body, and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light.... Let
nothing come between thee and God.... The soul in contemplation views
the world from afar off, just as, when we proceed to God by the way of
abstraction, we deny Him, first all bodily and sensible attributes,
then intelligible qualities, and, lastly, that _being_ (_esse_) which
keeps Him among created things. This, according to Dionysius, is the
best mode of union with God."

Bonaventura resembles Albertus in reverting more decidedly than the
Victorines to the Dionysian tradition. He expatiates on the passivity
and nakedness of the soul which is necessary in order to enter into
the Divine darkness, and elaborates with tiresome pedantry his
arbitrary schemes of faculties and stages. However, he gains something
by his knowledge of Aristotle, which he uses to correct the
Neoplatonic doctrine of God as abstract Unity. "God is 'ideo
omnimodum,'" he says finely, "quia summe unum." He is "totum intra
omnia et totum extra"--a succinct statement that God is both immanent
and transcendent. His proof of the Trinity is original and profound.
It is the nature of the Good to impart itself, and so the highest Good
must be "summe diffusivum sui," which can only be in hypostatic union.

The last great scholastic mystic is Gerson, who lived from 1363 to
1429. He attempts to reduce Mysticism to an exact science, tabulating
and classifying all the teaching of his predecessors. A very brief
summary of his system is here given.

Gerson distinguishes symbolical, natural, and mystical theology,