X. 131). Abandoning alike the many worlds of Dionysius and the crude

dualism of popular religion, Richard taught that three spheres are open to human contemplation: _sensibilia_, _intelligibilia_, and _intellectibilia_—a series closely analogous to the three worlds of Plotinus. He said that three kinds of contemplation on man’s part corresponded with these worlds. These are _mentis dilatatio_, a widening of the soul’s vision, which yet remains within the natural order: _mentis sublevatio_, an uplifting of the illuminated mind to the apprehension of “things above itself” (or, as Neoplatonists would say, intelligibles); and finally _mentis alienatio_ or ecstasy, in which the soul gazes on Truth in its naked simplicity. Then “elevated above itself and rapt in ecstasy, it beholds things in the Divine Light at which all human reason succumbs.” This divine light is the _lumen gloriæ_, the radiance of the spiritual or intelligible world, which transforms the soul and makes it capable of beholding God; a conception which became a commonplace of mediæval theology, was adopted by nearly all the mystics, and plays an important part in the _Paradiso_. “Lume è lassù, che visibile face lo Creatore a quella creatura che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace” (xxx. 100). Ruysbroeck—a student of Dionysius and of Richard—says of it in _The Twelve Béguines_: “From the Face of the Father there shines a clear light on those souls whose thought is bare and stripped of images, uplifted above the senses and above similitudes, beyond and without reason, in high purity of spirit. This Light is not God, but it is the mediator between the seeing thought and God.” These passages and many like them can be shown to derive directly through St. Augustine from the Enneads. Thus Plotinus says: “Light is visible by Light. The _Nous_ sees itself, and this light, shining on the soul, enlightens it and makes it a member of the spiritual world” (V. 3. 8). Augustine, apparently referring to this passage among others, says: “Often and in many places does Plotinus declare, expounding the meaning of Plato, that what they believe to be the Soul of the World has its bliss from the same source as ours, namely, a Light which it is not, but by which it was created, and from whose spiritual illumination it shines spiritually” (_De Civ. Dei._ X. 2). And, of his own ecstatic experience, “I entered and beheld with the mysterious eye of my soul the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul, above my intelligence.... He who knows the truth knows that Light, and he who knows that Light knows Eternity” (_Conf._