119. These ideas being fixed, we may observe that we have an incontestable proof that there is no intrinsic repugnance between identity and representation in two dogmas of the Catholic religion: the beatific vision and the divine intelligence. The dogma of the beatific vision teaches us that the human soul in the mansion of the blessed is intimately united to God, and sees him face to face in his very essence. No one ever said that this vision was made by the medium of an idea, but theologians, and among them St. Thomas, expressly teach the contrary. We have then identity united with representation, that is, the divine essence representing, or rather presenting, itself to the eyes of the human mind. The dogma of divine intelligence teaches that God is infinitely intelligent. God does not need to go out of himself, nor employ distinct ideas in order to understand; he sees himself in his essence. Here, too, identity is united with representation, and the intelligent being identified with the thing understood.(11) CHAPTER XII. IMMEDIATE INTELLIGIBILITY. 120. Neither active nor passive representation can be predicated of all things; we mean to say, that there are some beings which are not endowed with intellectual activity, and cannot be even passively the object of the acts of the intellect. As regards the power of active representation, which is at bottom only the faculty of intelligence, it is evident that many beings are destitute of it. There may be greater difficulty with regard to passive representation, or the fitness to be the immediate object of the intellect. 121. An object cannot be known immediately, that is, without the mediation of an idea, if it do not itself perform the functions of this idea, and unite itself to the intellect which is to know it. This alone takes from all material objects the character of being _immediately intelligible_: so that if a mind be imagined having no idea of the corporeal universe, it could know nothing of it, although for all eternity in the midst of it. Hence it follows that matter neither is, nor can be, intelligent or intelligible: the ideas which we have of it come from another source; without them we might be united to matter, and never know or even suspect its existence. 122. An opportunity is here presented of explaining an exceedingly curious doctrine of St. Thomas. This eminent metaphysician was of opinion that it required greater perfection to be immediately intelligible than to be intelligent; so that the human mind, although endowed with intelligence, does not possess intelligibility. In his _Summa Theologica_,[6] the holy Doctor asks if the soul knows itself by its essence, and answers that it does not, and thus defends his position: [6] P. 1^a, Q. 87^a, A. 1^o.