 Thus in effect the donna gentile is the perfection we desire. Through her we experience the divine goodness, by an outflowing, a discorrimento, which Dante glosses with a further reference to the Liber de Causis [3.7.2; LC 20.157] in terms of the hierarchical emanation of the divine goodness. In the quasi-continuous series of gradations that descends from angel to brute animal, there is no intervening grade between man and angel, so that some human beings are so noble as to be nothing less than angels [Aristotle, NE 7.1, 1145a]. Such is the donna gentile; she receives divine virtue just as the angels do [3.7.7]. She is a thing visibilmente miraculosa, ordained from eternity by God in testimonio de la fede for us [3.7.16–17; Foster (1965), 56], and God, by instilling his radiance in her love of philosophy, “assimilates” her form “to his likeness insofar as it is possible to be like Him” [3.14.3; cf. Thomas, SCG 1.91].