From the fact that we have no direct intuition of the Divine Being, some philosophers have concluded that all speculation on the relation of God to the world of our direct experience is necessarily barren and fruitless. This is a phase of agnosticism; and, like all error, it is the exaggeration of a truth: the truth being that while we may reach real knowledge about the Divine Nature and attributes by such speculation, we can do so only on condition that we are guided by analogies drawn from God’s creation, and remember that our concepts, as applied to God, are analogical (2). “We can know God only by analogy with contingent and finite beings, and consequently the realities and laws of the contingent and finite world must necessarily serve as our term of comparison. But, among finite realities, we see an essential subordination of the extrinsically possible to the intelligible, of this to the intrinsically possible, and of this again to the essential type which is presupposed by our thought. Therefore, _a pari_, we must consider the omnipotent will of God, which is the first and universal cause of all [contingent] existences, as under the direction of the Divine Omniscience, and this in turn as having for its object the Divine Essence and in it the essential types whose intrinsic possibility is grounded on the necessary imitability of the Divine Being. “When, therefore, in defence of his position, Descartes argues that ‘In God willing and knowing are one and the same; the reason why He knows anything is because He wills it, and for this reason only can it be true: _Ex hoc ipso quod Deus aliquid velit, ideo cognoscit, et ideo tantum talis res est vera_’—he is only confusing the issue. We might, indeed, retort the argument: ‘In God willing and knowing are one and the same; the reason why He wills anything is because He knows it, and for this reason only can it be good: _Ex hoc ipso quod aliquid cognoscit, ideo vult, et ideo tantum talis res est bona_,’ but both inferences are equally unwarranted. For, though willing and knowing are certainly one and the same _in God_, this one and the same thing is formally and for our minds neither will nor intellect, but a reality transcending will and intellect, a substance infinitely above any substances known to us: ὑπερούσια, _supersubstantia_, as the Fathers of the Church and the Doctors of the Schools call it. But of this transcendent substance we have no intuitive knowledge. We must therefore either abandon all attempts to find out anything about it, or else apprehend it and designate it after the analogy of what we know from direct experience about created life and mind. And as in creatures will is not identical with intellect, nor either of these with the nature of the being that possesses them;