 What is at issue is the connection and tension between the two metaphors. Supposedly complementary, assimilatio and mensura give no obvious answer to what provides the measure for the content and validity of our knowledge—is it the things known or our knowing minds? Nicholas never questioned that the varied things we discover in the natural universe and fashion ourselves in the social and cultural milieu exist independently of our minds (if not of God’s). But the question here is whether our knowledge is derived from what is independent of mind or is in whole or part the result of the linguistic and conceptual measures we learn, construct and employ in dealing with reality. If knowing is creative or productive, solely a matter of our “measuring,” it is easy to see how it is an image of God’s creating, but not how it is a likening to extra-mental things. If things outside measure and cause what we know, we can see why human knowledge is a likening to things, but not how it is an image of God’s creative mind. The two metaphors may well run counter to each other.