You have sometimes seen from a hill-side a valley, over the undulating floor of which there has been laid out a heavy mantle of mist. The spires of the churches rise above it—you seem to catch the glistening of a roof or of a vane—here and there a higher house, a little eminence, or some tree-tops, are seen, islanded in the white vapour, but the lower and connecting objects, the linking lines of the roads, the plan and foundation of the whole, are completely hidden. Hugo felt that, with all our culture, yea, with Aristotle to boot, revealed truth was seen by us somewhat thus imperfectly. No doubt certain great facts and truths stand out clear and prominent, but there is a great deal at their basis, connecting them, attached to them, which is impervious to our ordinary faculties. We are, in fact, so lamentably far from knowing all about them. Is there not some power of vision to be attained which may pierce these clouds, lay bare to us these relationships, nay, even more, be to us like the faculty conferred by Asmodeus, and render the very roofs transparent, so that from topstone to foundation, within and without, we may gaze our fill? And if to realize this wholly be too much for sinful creatures, yet may not the wise and good approach such vision, and attain as the meed of their faith, even here, a superhuman elevation, and in a glance at least at the Heavenly Truth unveiled, escape the trammels of the finite? Such probably was the spirit of the question which possessed, with a ceaseless importunity, the minds of men, ambitious alike to define with the schoolman and to gaze with the seer. Hugo answers that the eye of Contemplation—closed by sin, but opened more or less by grace—furnishes the power thus desiderated.[61] But at this, his highest point, he grasps a shadow instead of the substance. Something within the mind is mistaken for a manifestation from without. A mental creation is substituted for that Divine Existence which his rapture seems to reveal. He asserts, however, that this Eye beholds what the eye of sense and the eye of reason cannot see, what is both within us and above us—God. Within us, he cries, is both _what_ we must flee and _whither_ we must flee. The highest and the inmost are, so far, identical.[62] Thus do the pure in heart see God. In such moments the soul is transported beyond sense and reason, to a state similar to that enjoyed by angelic natures. The contemplative life is prefigured by the ark in the deluge. Without are waves, and the dove can find no rest. As the holy ship narrowed toward the summit, so doth this life of seclusion ascend from the manifold and changeful to the Divine Immutable Unity.