And next to the man who has acquired self-taught virtue, and who has availed himself of the riches of nature, the third person who is made perfect is the meditator on and practiser of virtue, who receives as his especial reward the sight of God; for as he has had experience of all the things which can occur in human life, and as he has attained to a most intimate understanding of them, and has shrunk from no labour and from no danger which might enable him to track out and overtake that most desirable thing, truth, he has found in connection with human life and with the human race a great deal of darkness both by land and sea, and in the air, and in the atmosphere. For the atmosphere and the whole of heaven has presented to him the appearance of night, since every nature which is discernible by the outward senses is indefinite; and what is indefinite is akin to and closely resembling darkness.

Accordingly, he who had during the preceding periods of his life had the eyes of his soul closed, now began, though with difficulty, to open them for the continual labours which were before him, and to pierce through and dissipate the mist which had overshadowed him. For an incorporeal ray of light, purer than the atmosphere, suddenly beaming upon him, displayed to him the fact of the world appreciable only by the intellect being guided by a regular governor.

But that governor or guider, being surrounded on all sides by unalloyed light, was difficult to be perceived and difficult to be understood by conjecture, since the power of sight was obscured by the brilliancy of those beams. But nevertheless the sight, although a great violence of fire was poured upon it, held out against it out of an immense desire of seeing what was before it. "

And the Father pitied its sincere desire and eagerness to see, and gave it power, and did not grudge the acuteness of the sight thus directed a perception of himself, as far at least as a created and mortal nature could attain to such a thing, not indeed such a perception as should show him what God is, but merely such as should prove to him that he exists;

for even this, which is better than good, and more ancient than the unit, and more simple than one, cannot possibly be contemplated by any other being; because, in fact, it is not possible for God to be comprehended by any being but himself. But the fact that he does exist, though it is comprehensible from the mere name of existence, is nevertheless not understood by every one, or at all events not in the best way by every one; but some men have expressly and wholly denied that there is any deity at all; while others have doubted and hesitated, as if they were unable to affirm with certainty whether he has any existence or not. Others again, who have more through habit than from any exertion of their reason, received ideas about the existence of God from those who have brought them up, have seemed to be pious by a sort of felicity of conjecture, if they have stamped their piety with an impression of superstition.