Page:TheCloudOfUnknowing 201810.djvu/20

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CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

qualities of Humility and Charity. He who has these, has all. Humility, in accordance with the doctrine of Richard of St Victor, he identifies with self-knowledge; the terrible vision of the soul as it is, which induces first self-abasement and then self-purification—the beginning of all spiritual growth, and the necessary antecedent of all knowledge of God. "Therefore swink and sweat in all that thou canst and mayst, for to get thee a true knowing and a feeling of thyself as thou art; and then I trow that soon after that, thou shalt have a true knowing and a feeling of God as He is."

As all man’s feeling and thought of himself and his relation to God is comprehended in Humility, so all his feeling and thought of God in Himself is comprehended in Charity; the self-giving love of Divine Perfection "in Himself and for Himself" which Hilton calls "the sovereign and the essential joy." Together these two virtues should embrace the sum of his re-