In _The Kingdom of God’s Lovers_ Ruysbroeck pours forth a marvellous list of the attributes under which the illuminated intelligence now contemplates and worships That Which she can never comprehend; that “Simple One in whom all multitude and all that multiplies, finds its beginning and its end.” From this simple Being of the Godhead the illuminated reason abstracts those images and attributes with which it can deal, as the lower reason abstracts from the temporal flux the materials of our normal universe. Such a loving consideration of God under His attributes is the essence of meditation: and meditation is in fact the way in which the intellectual faculties can best contemplate Reality. But “because all things, when they are considered in their inwardness, have their beginning and their ending in the Infinite Being as in an Abyss,” here again the contemplative is soon led above himself and beyond himself, to a point at which intellect and ‘consideration’—_i.e._ formal thought—fail him; because “here we touch the Simple Nature of God.” When intellectual contemplation has brought the self to this point, it has done its work; for it has “excited in the soul an eager desire to lift itself up by contemplation into the simplicity of the Light, that thereby its avid desire of infinite fruition may be satisfied and fulfilled”;[61] _i.e._ it has performed the true office of meditation, induced a shifting of consciousness to higher levels. We observe that the emphasis, which in the First Degree of Contemplation fell wholly on feeling, in the Second Degree falls wholly upon knowledge. We are not, however, to suppose from this that emotion has been left behind. As the virtues and energies of the Active Life continue in the Contemplative Life, so the ‘burning love’ which distinguished the first stage of communion with the Transcendent, is throughout the source of that energy which presses the self on to deeper and closer correspondences with Reality. Its presence is presupposed in all that is said concerning the development of the spiritual consciousness. Nevertheless Ruysbroeck, though he cannot be accused of intellectualism, is led by his admiration for Victorine ideas to lay great stress upon the mental side of contemplation, as against those emotional reactions to the Transcendent which are emphasised—almost to excess—by so many of the saints. His aim was the lifting of the _whole man_ to Eternal levels: and the clarifying of the intelligence, the enhancement of the understanding, seemed to him a proper part of the deification of human nature, the bringing forth in the soul’s ground of that Son who is the Wisdom of God as well as the Pattern of Man. Though he moves amongst deep mysteries, and in regions beyond the span of ordinary minds, there is always apparent in him an effort towards lucidity of expression, sharp definition, plain speech. Sometimes he is wild and ecstatic, pouring forth his vision in a strange poetry which is at once uncouth and