Secundum Quid

An edifying though on mystery...

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Le Réalisme de la Principe de Finalité  (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1932), 203.  (My translation)

"The works of God are more beautiful than we can put into words.  We cannot come to know them in the intimate depths, inasmuch as they are knowable and inasmuch as the Creator knows them.  Let us guard the sense of mystery, which gives us a sense for the grandeur of the Divine Intelligence, and let us admire the chiaroscuros that the Divine Intelligence has placed in all things—where there is a transition from one order to another, the highest degree of the inferior order attains in a way (secundum quid) to the lowest degree of the superior order, from which, of its nature (simpliciter), it nevertheless remains immensely distant.  Mystery is found precisely in the reconciliation of these technical terms of the scholastics—secundum quid (i.e. from a certain point of view) there is a conjunction; but simpliciter (purely and simply speaking) there is an immeasurable distance."