And Dionysius has the doctrine, so dear to Catherine, that “the Source of Good is indeed present to all, but all are not,” by their intention, “present to It; yet, by our aptitude for Divine union, we all,” in a sense, “are present to It.” “It shines, on Its own part, equally upon all things capable of participation in It.”[74] Already Plotinus had finely said: “The One is not far away from any one, and yet is liable to be far away from one and all, since, present though It be, It is” efficaciously “present only to such as are capable of receiving It, and are so disposed as to adapt themselves to It and, as it were, to seize and touch It by their likeness to It, … when, in a word, the soul is in the state in which it was when it came from It.”[75] We have again in Dionysius the combination, so characteristic of Catherine, of a tender respect for the substance of human nature, as good and ever respected by God, and of a keen sense of the pathetic weakness of man’s sense-clogged spirit here below. “Providence, as befits its goodness, provides for each being suitably: for to destroy nature is not a function of Providence.” “All those who cavil at the Divine Justice, unconsciously commit a manifest injustice. For they say that immortality ought to be in mortals, and perfection in the imperfect … and perfect power in the weak, and that the temporal should be eternal … in a word, they assign the properties of one thing to another.”[76] 2. _Symbols of God’s action._ (1) As to the symbols of God’s action, we have first the Chain or Rope, Catherine’s “fune,” that “rope of His pure Love,” of which “an end was thrown to her from heaven.”[77] This symbol was no doubt suggested by Dionysius: “Let us then elevate our very selves by our prayers to the higher ascent of the Divine … rays; as though a luminous chain (rope, σειρά) were suspended from the celestial heights and reached down hither, and we, by ever stretching out to it up and up … were thus carried upwards.”[78] And this passage again goes back to Proclus, who describes the “chain (rope) of love” as “having its entirely simple and hidden highest point fixed amongst the very first ranks of the Gods”; its middle effluence “amongst the Gods higher than the (sensible) world”; and its third, lowest, part, as “divided multiformly throughout the (sensible) world.” “The divine Love implants one common bond (chain) and one indissoluble friendship in and between each soul (that participates in its power), and between all and the Beautiful Itself.”[79] And this simile of a chain from heaven, which in Dionysius is luminous, and in Catherine and Proclus is loving, goes back, across Plato (_Theaetetus_ 153_c_ and _Republic_, X, 61_b_, 99_c_) to Homer, where it again is luminous (golden). For, in the _Iliad_, viii, 17-20, Zeus says to the Gods in Olympus, “So as to see all things, do you, O Gods and Goddesses all, hang a golden chain from heaven, and do you all