14. How then do we speak of Him? Because we can assert something about
Him, though we cannot express Him by speech. We could not know Him, nor
grasp Him by thought. How then do we speak of Him, if we cannot grasp
Him? Because though He does escape our knowledge, He does not escape us
completely. We grasp Him enough to assert something about Him without
expressing Him himself, to say what He is not, without saying what He
is; that is why in speaking of Him we use terms that are suitable to
designate only lower things. Besides we can embrace Him without being
capable of expressing Him, like men who, transported by a divine
enthusiasm, feel that they contain something superior without being
able to account for it. They speak of what agitates them, and they thus
have some feeling of Him who moves them, though they differ therefrom.
Such is our relation with Him; when we rise to Him by using our pure
intelligence, we feel that He is the foundation of our intelligence,
the principle that furnishes "being" and other things of the kind; we
feel that He is better, greater, and more elevated than we, because He
is superior to reason, to intelligence, and to the senses, because He
gives these things without being what they are.