because the work of the workman is so much the more pleasing, the more it represents of the goodness of the heart whence it issues, the Divine Goodness which imprints the world was content to proceed by all Its paths to lift you up again; nor between the last night and the first day has there been or will there be so lofty and so magnificent a procedure either by one or by the other; for God was more liberal in giving Himself to make man sufficient to lift himself up again, than if only of Himself He had pardoned him. And all the other modes were scanty in respect to justice, if the Son of God had not humbled himself to become incarnate. [1] Without the intervention of a second cause. [2] That is, of the heavens, new as compared with the First Cause. [3] That is, with immediate creation, with immortality, with free will, with likeness to God, and the love of God for it. [4] Adam. [5] “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.”—Psalm xxv. 10. Truth may be here interpreted, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, as justice. “Now to fill completely every desire of thine, I return to a certain place to clear it up, in order that thou mayest see there even, as I do. Thou sayest, 'I see the water, I see the fire, the air; and the earth, and all their mixtures come to corruption, and endure short while, and yet these things were created;' so that, if what I have said has been true, they ought to be secure against corruption. The Angels, brother, and the sincere[1] country in which thou art, may be called created, even as they are, in their entire being; but the elements which thou hast named, and those things which are made of them, are informed by a created power.[2] The matter of which they consist was created; the informing power in these stars which go round about them was created. The ray and the motion of the holy lights draw out from its potential elements[3] the soul of every brute and of the plants; but the Supreme Benignity inspires your life without intermediary, and enamors it of Itself so that ever after it desires It. And hence[4] thou canst argue further your resurrection, if thou refleetest bow the human flesh was made when the first parents were both made.” [1] Sincere is here used in the sense of incorruptible, or perhaps unspoiled,—the quality of the Heavens as contrasted with the Earth. [2] The elements axe informed, that is, receive their specific being not immediately from Goa, but mediately through the informing Intelligences. [3] Literally, “from the potentiate mingling,” that is, from the matter endowed with the potentiality of becoming informed by the vegetative and the sensitive soul. [4] From the principle that what proceeds immediately from Goa is immortal. CANTO VIII. Ascent to the Heaven of Venus.—Spirits of Lovers, Source of the order and the varieties in mortal things.