“Aquinas . . . build[s] upon Augustine’s idea of thought as a ‘higher kind of life.’ Intellection, then, is not an indifferent speculation; it is rather a beautiful ratio which is instantiated between things and the mind which leaves neither things nor the mind unchanged. This means that one must think of knowing-a-thing as an act of generosity, or salvific compensation for the exclusivity and discreteness of things. . . . In intellection, the Soul mediates things: ‘The Soul is in a manner all things’ as Aristotle declared in the De Anima. It is a corrective or remedy, according to Aquinas in De Veritate, for the isolation of substantive beings.” — Catherine Pickstock, in Milbank and Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas.

This description of what happens when we know captures the sense one has, on good days, that the human mind is not finally condemned to be a prisoner inside itself, a ghost forever trapped inside its machine, but is meant to break down the barriers, and imitate God by, like God, uniting itself in love with all Being. I couldn’t possibly prove that this view is true; I don’t know if the best thinkers who ever lived could prove it to be true (or false, for that matter). But doesn’t it reflect an experience we all sometimes have? And doesn’t that point to a possibility — one that we should cherish and further investigate — of the universe not as a stark object opposed to human subjects, but as a place intended by its fashioner specifically to be loved, by us as well as by himself?