The Ascent of Mount CarmelChapter X. The divisions of the apprehensions and acts of the understanding

In order to describe specially the gain and the loss which the notions and apprehensions of the understanding occasion in the soul with respect to faith, the means of the divine union, it is necessary to distinguish here between all these apprehensions, natural and supernatural, so that the understanding may be directed with greater accuracy into the night and obscurity of faith. This I shall do with the utmost brevity possible.

2. There are two ways by which these notions and intelligent acts enter into the understanding; one is natural, the other supernatural. The first includes all the means by which the understanding receives knowledge, whether through the channel of the bodily senses, or by reflection. The second comprises all that is beyond the natural powers and capacity of the understanding. Some supernatural knowledge is corporeal, and some spiritual. The former is of two kinds; one of them enters the understanding through the exterior bodily senses; and the other through the interior bodily senses, comprehending all that the imagination may grasp, form, and conceive. The spiritual supernatural knowledge is also of two kinds; one distinct and special; the other confused, obscure, and general. The first kind comprises four particular apprehensions, communicated to the mind without the intervention of any one of the bodily senses. These are visions, revelations, locutions, and spiritual impressions. The second kind, which is obscure and general, has but one form, that of contemplation, which is the work of faith. The soul is to be led into this by directing it thereto through all the rest, beginning with the first and detaching it from them. ,