SOURCE: Gardner, Edmund G. “The Science of Love.” In Dante and the Mystics, pp. 298-323. Reprint. 1913. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968.

In the following essay, originally published in 1913, Gardner examines mystical symbolism and concepts in the Paradiso in the context of medieval Catholic theological writings.

I

“Man,” writes Aquinas, “has three kinds of knowledge of divine things. The first of these is according as man, by the natural light of reason, ascends through creatures into the knowledge of God; the second is in so far as the divine truth, exceeding human understanding, descends to us by way of revelation, not however as though demonstrated to our sight, but as set forth in words to be believed; the third is according as the human mind is elevated to the perfect intuition of the things that are revealed.”¹

We have something analogous to these three kinds of knowledge of divine...