First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

itself (which any prudent person easily perceives) indicates any powerlessness of Divine forces.

Furthermore, since it must necessarily be added that the Creator is not thought to have created anything in vain, by searching we easily find Man, a small but most artfully fashioned work of Divine hands, placed in the middle of the most expansive world, to the end that all other things, with the glory of God as the proposed goal, might tend toward him as if toward their own center. To speak briefly: that he might use all things.

The objects of this use, as is evident from what has been said, vary. Thus, on one side, there are corporeal things, which man does not use without reason, as do the brutes and beasts, but by employing right reason. On the other side, incorporeal things offer themselves, for the enjoyment of which the exercise of reason seems most required.

Hence, the use of created things is twofold. Besides the Practical use, by which we apply all these created things to our needs, there is also a Theoretical use, where we contemplate various objects in different ways: either by the intervention of external senses or by the mind alone intent on speculations. And this variety of knowledge arises from the diverse nature of the objects. As for the general affections of Immaterial and Material things, they consist in this: that Material things are open to external senses and are accessed by them through contact, specifically seen by the eyes, heard by the ears, tasted by the tongue, affected by the smell of the nostrils, and perceived by touch, specifically so-called. Conversely, Immaterial things escape the external senses, the species of which are the Angel and the Soul. To these, as creatures, the uncreated Divine Being original: "Numen increatum" joined itself as it were, and, moved inwardly by immense goodness, granted to men the use and fruit of itself, just as it did for other things, in a twofold manner.

Wherefore, so that men may truly attain the intended end, specifically regarding the Theoretical use—which is most noble by reason of its order, and required before the Practical—it appears from the necessity of the means that men must be equipped with certain faculties of knowing, which are suited and proportionate to the objects.