How One Creature Moves Another: Angels

One angel can enlighten another, the superior angelmanifesting truths which it grasps perfectly to inferior angels whose grasp is less perfect. It agrees with the nature of intellectual creatures to move or effect others of their kind inthis fashion of one teaching and others being taught.

Thus, by affording enlightenment, one angel may move another angel’s intellect. But one angel cannot change another’s will. Only God can effect such a change.

An inferior angel cannot enlighten a superior angel anymore than a candle can bring illumination to the sun. Among human beings, who learn by degrees, because their knowing is bound up with material things, it can happen that one who knows much may be enlightened by one who knows little. This cannot be so among pure spirits who do not achieve knowledge ploddingly and piecemeal as human beings do.

The higher an angel is, the more it participates the divine goodness; consequently, the more it tends to impart its gifts to lesser angels. The superior angel tends to give all thatit knows to inferior angels, but these cannot perfectly receive all that is given. Hence the superior angels remain superior eventhough they impart all their knowledge. Somewhat similarly, the human teacher who does all he can to impart his own complete knowledge to his young pupils, remains superior in knowledge even after he has taught the lesson; for the pupils take in by a lesser capacity than that of the giver.