inaccessible, where no creature, as such, can come near Him nor see
Him. The beauties of creation, as so many streams of tendency, meet at
the foot of His Throne, and there are lost. Their course is towards
Him, and is, so far as it goes, an indication of Him: but He is
infinitely, unspeakably above them. No intelligence created, or
creatable, can arrive by its own natural perception to see Him as He
is: for mind can only discern what is proportionate to itself: and God
is out of proportion with all the being of all possible creatures. It
is only by analogy that the word _being_, or any other word whatever
can be applied to Him. As Plato says, "the First Good is not Being,
but over and beyond Being in dignity and power." (_Rep_. 509, B.)

3. To see God face to face, which is called the beatific vision, is
not the natural destiny of man, nor of any possible creature. Such
happiness is not the happiness of man, nor of angel, but of God
Himself, and of any creature whom He may deign by an act of gratuitous
condescension to invite to sit as guest at His own royal table. That
God has so invited men and angels, revelation informs us. Scholastic
theology enlarges upon that revelation, but it is beyond philosophy.
Like the resurrection of the body, and much more even than that, the
Beatific Vision must be relegated to the realm of the Supernatural.

4. But even in the natural order _the object of perfect happiness_ is
God. The natural and supernatural have the same object, but differ in
the mode of attainment. By supernatural grace, bearing perfect fruit,
man sees God with the eyes of his soul, as we see the faces of our
friends on earth. In perfect happiness of the natural order, creatures
alone are directly apprehended, or seen, and from the creature is
gathered the excellence of the unseen God. The process is an ascent,
as described by Plato, from the individual to the universal, and from