 In this vein, it is not surprising that Dante speaks of the soul after death as enduring “perpetually in a nature that is more than human” [2.8.6], and asserts that to perceive God is not possible for our nature [3.15.10]. Aristotle, too, had argued that a life of pure contemplation is beyond our strictly human capacity—that we can live in this way only to the extent that we have in us “something divine” [NE 10.7, 1177b]. But for Dante, as for Thomas Aquinas, the modus essendi of the soul joined to the body differs from that of the soul in separation: though they are the same in nature, the separated soul understands, not by means of sensory images, but through species in which it participates by virtue of the divine light [cf. ST 1.89.1r]. In the temporal life, however, as Dante acknowledges, there are truths which we can apprehend only as if in a dream, “come sognando,” [Conv. 2.12.4; Nardi (1944), 81–90], and our desire for perfect understanding is necessarily limited. To desire what is beyond the capacity of our intellectual nature would be ethically and rationally incoherent, a desire for imperfection rather than perfection of understanding. Therefore, our love of wisdom is “proportioned in this life to the knowledge which we can have here, and does not go past that point except by an error which is outside the intention of nature” [3.15.8–10].