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He had his astronomical theories; he expounded them in his "Descriptio Globi Intellectualis" and his Thema Coeli He was not altogether ignorant of what was going on in days when Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo were at work. But he did not know how to deal with it, and there were men in England, before and then, who understood much better than he the problems and the methods of astronomy.

His lectures, which were at first brilliant enough to attract numbers of men from other colleges, became gradually mere dry, ingenious skeletons, without life or feeling. It was possible to learn a great deal from him; it was not possible to catch from him any contagion of that amor intellectualis which had flamed at one moment so high within him.

And the attitude of this man can be best expressed perhaps by Spinoza's phrase, "the intellectual love of God," amor intellectualis Dei. The worshipper of the Logos has grasped and has harmonized all the manifestations of the Deity; he sees and honors all things in God; he comprehends the universe as the perfect manifestation of one good Being. Is this the highest point which man can reach?

His lectures, which were at first brilliant enough to attract numbers of men from other colleges, became gradually mere dry, ingenious skeletons, without life or feeling. It was possible to learn a great deal from him; it was not possible to catch from him any contagion of that amor intellectualis which had flamed at one moment so high within him.

* Per lumen gloriæ intelligitur qualitas creata, et habitus virtusque intellectualis supernaturalis, ac per se infusa intellectui, qua redditur proxime potens et habilis ad videndum Deum.... Ita D. Thomas, sicque ratione probatur: Ut virtutes infusæ requiruntur, ut eorum actus fiant connaturali modo, nempe a principio intrinseco et proportionato, ita etiam lumen ut fiat visio.

"The holy Mother, Teresa of Jesus, had these imaginary visions for many years, seeing our Lord continually present before her in great beauty, risen from the dead, with His wounds and the crown of thorns. Anton. a Sp. Sancto, Direct. Mystic. tr. iii. disp. 5, section I, n. 315: "Visio corporea est infima, visio imaginaria est media, visio intellectualis est suprema."

But they must be careful to love the right things to love truth, goodness, and beauty. They must not be encouraged to sentimentalise; they must be bidden to decide. The poor can be debauched as easily as the rich. Many are called, but few chosen. His main protest is against the rule of the ignorant, the democratic principle applied to the amor intellectualis Dei.

And is doing or knowing the right, acting or thinking, his ultimate end? If science does not produce love it is insufficient. Now all that science gives is the amor intellectualis of Spinoza, light without warmth, a resignation which is contemplative and grandiose, but inhuman, because it is scarcely transmissible and remains a privilege, one of the rarest of all.

But only the first two parts of the Instauratio Magna were developed: the encyclopaedia, or division of all sciences , a chart of the globus intellectualis, on which was depicted what each science had accomplished and what still remained for each to do; and the development of the new method.