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in vain does Christ command us to seek, unless the treasures of celestial and terrestrial wisdom were given and deposited, hidden within us. From the contemplation and diligent knowledge of oneself arises immediately the true knowledge of God (for neither can exist exactly and absolutely without the other). And man can hunt for a good and great part of the knowledge of Him who is, from the consideration of himself, insofar as we are all bound to the knowledge of God, according to the grace of our given capacity. Dionysius says: We cannot know God from His own nature, but from the most orderly arrangement of all creatures produced by Him, as bearing before them certain images and likenesses of His own divine exemplars. If it be asked, what is the most difficult of all? One of the philosophers answers: To know oneself. For man is an abyss to himself which can never be searched out. For not only does the eye, looking at other things, not see itself; but our mind also, seeing the errors of others acutely, is slow to the knowledge of itself and its own. But he knows himself most who esteems himself as nothing. Augustine (book 10, Confessions) says:

Bernard, on the Song of Songs, sermon 35: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand. In what honor? He lived in Paradise, and his conversation was in the place of pleasure; he felt no molestation nor indigence, crowded by odoriferous apples, supported by flowers, crowned with glory and honor, and established over the works of the hands of the Creator. But he excelled more because of the sign of divine likeness, and his lot was society with the populace of Angels, and with all the militia of the celestial army. But he changed that glory into the likeness of a calf eating hay. Alas, a sad and tearful change; that man, the dweller of Paradise, the Lord of the Earth, the citizen of heaven, the housemate of the Lord of Hosts, the brother of the blessed spirits and the co-heir of celestial virtues, by a sudden conversion found himself, and because of his infirmity, lying in a stable, and because of his cattle-like likeness, needing hay, and because of his untamed ferocity, bound to a manger, as it is written: "Bind their jaws with bit and bridle," etc. See man previously clothed in four virtues; what was lacking to him, whom mercy guarded, truth taught, justice ruled, peace fostered.

Men go to admire the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the highest falls of the rivers, the circuit of the Ocean, and the circles of the stars, and they abandon themselves nor do they wonder. And elsewhere: Since it has been said that I should know myself, I cannot endure that I should keep myself unknown. A certain barbarian, being asked what he considered most admirable in this worldly scene, replied: Man, who clearly exceeds all apprehension of admiration. Favorinus used to say that nothing on earth is great except man, nothing in man except the mind. If you climb that far, you transcend heaven. If you despise the body and immediately take up heaven, you see yourself as a fly, and what is less than a fly? Is it not great and most admirable, in him