Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches

 Introduction

Opening Passage: From The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton:

Following the example of the ancient priest who is said to have travelled thousands of miles caring naught for his provisions and attaining the state of sheer ecstasy under the pure beams of the moon, I left my broken house on the River Sumida in the August of the first year of Jyōkyō among the wails of the autumn wind.

Determined to fall
A weather-exposed skeleton
I cannot help the sore wind
Blowing through my heart.

After ten autumns
In Edo, my mind
Points back to it
As my native place. (p. 51)

From The Narrow Road to the Deep North:

Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind -- filled with a strong desire to wander. (p. 97)

Summary: What we today call 'haiku' arose out of the Japanese practice of writing linked verse. A major early form is the waka, or yamato-uta, whose basic unit consisted of two component parts written in moraic poetry (based on sound-length units, on in Japanese, or morae in English, which in Japanese largely, but not completely, correspond to syllables). One part had verses with five, seven, and five morae; the other consisted of two verses of seven morae. These began to be linked together, and the often aristocratic poets would play a game of cooperatively building linked verses of this kind, sometimes with various variations. The resulting poems eventually became known as renga. Eventually the form of this poetry settled; each one began with an opening section, called a hokku, which was five-seven-five, included a kireji, or 'cutting word', that created an emotional pause at a key point in the verse, and a kigo, or 'seasonal word', which directly or indirectly suggested the time of year. Such poetic constraints make the hokku quite challenging to write, so they were usually done by the most experienced poet, which (perhaps inevitably) led to people writing hokku on their own as well as part of linked verse. The idea eventually developed that the best hokku was one in which something is said by saying something else, and this comes to its first full culimination with Matsuo Bashō, who recognized the poem as having a surface about the world that expresses a mental and emotional deep, so that in the poem the world and the self are not separate. In Bashō's day, this was still called hokku, but, of course, it is what we call haiku today. Bashō's extant haiku are found across several different works, including anthologies of poems with his students, but perhaps the summit of his work is found in his travel sketches.

Travel in seventeenth century Japan was not a trivial matter, and thus each of the travel sketches (The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, A Visit to Kashima Shrine, The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, A Visit to Sarashina Village, and, the most successful of them, The Narrow Road to the Deep North) can be interpreted as an ascetic practice of both poetry and popular Zen Buddhism, an undergoing of hardship to throw off attachment to the world, to clear the mind, and to purify the spirit. You could, of course, just read it as poetic reflections on, and reactions to, picturesque and sublime scenes, and this would not be wrong. But the travel sketches, like Bashō's hokku, are not just their surface, but also exist at the same time in the world and the spirit, saying something in the latter by saying something in the former. Throughout the sketches we find Bashō coming face to face again and again with the ravages of time and change, the impermanence of all things.

Each sketch is also, and for the same reason, an exploration in purifying oneself of attachments. The early ones, unsurprisingly, are rougher than the later ones, just as in your own self-improvement your early forays are rougher than your later ones. In The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the form of the sketch begins to approach perfection, flexibly and easily shifting from prose to poetry to prose, from spiritual reality to worldly image and back again. At the beginning of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, alone of the major journeys, we find Bashō going so far in unloading himself of detachments as to sell his house in Edo, and the sketch's form and presentation convey this detachment as well. Even in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Bashō returns home; our detachments from the world are, in this world, still imperfect, even if only by a very tiny thread. No longer clinging and craving is an ongoing process, that has to be improved again and again. Poetry, too, is an ongoing process that has to be improved again and again. Thus, it is perhaps fitting that the very end of The Narrow Road to the Deep North consists of Bashō setting off again, as he always will, until the final journey of detachment, which we usually call 'death':

...On September the sixth, however, I left for the Ise Shrine, through the fatigue of the long journey was still with me, for I wanted to see the dedication of a new shrine there. As I stepped into a boat, I wrote:

As firmly cemented clam-shells
Fall apart in autumn,
So I must take to the road again,
Farewell, my friends. (p. 142)

Favorite Passage: From The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel:

In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain vicotries over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another.  At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly. (p. 71)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

****

Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, Nobuyuki Yuasa, tr. Penguin Books (New York: 1966).

Dashed Off XIII

 Cultures allegorize themselves.

Christie's *The Clocks* as a reflection on detective fiction

What Malebranche gets right about causality is that there is something suggestive of the divine about it.

'Evidence' is said in many ways; it should not be assumed always to be used univocally.

The expressiveness of music is not based on a posited and hypothetical persona; but the expressiveness of music does let us posit a hypothetical persona. Likewise, it is this expressiveness that allows music to be used metaphorically, not vice versa.

Well disciplined imagination is a more powerful cognitive tool than generally recognized, and with some basic critical caution can often approach the level of proof.

the intellect & will as active unity, active truth, active goodness

Evil is the beginning of hell, and those who lack a doctrine of hell never have an adequate account of evil.

the suggestion of word by word under the driving impulse of intent

the world itself as the 'unconscious'

language as the handle for the blade of thought

It takes skill to grasp the naked blade.

Newman's notes of development & kinds of sameness considered in reconstruction
(1) Is the reconstruction of the same type as the reconstructed?
(2) Does the reconstruction respect the origination of the reconstructed?
(3) Are extrapolations and approximations derived from what is known of the reconstructed?
(4) Is there a reasoned path from what is known of the reconstructed to the elements of the reconstruction?
(5) Are there things in the reconstructed that suggest what is in the reconstruction?
(6) Is the reconstruction formed with the attempt to reconstruct the reconstructed?
(7) Does the reconstruction have the potential to play a similar role in mental life to that which was played by the reconstructed?

original-or-image as transcendental distinction

the interplay of ingenuity and plausibility in literature

bilocation // action at a distance

drama as exploration of limits

substances that are also systems

'World peace' is nto something that could be established by merely refraining from war, which always on its own leads to worse outbursts later, but by relations of mutual benefit.

"Those who struggle for the liberties of the human mind have first to believe in the dignity of the human mind and to trust in its natural energies." Jacques Maritain

life as formative of deontic structures

When we Christians are as we should be, our actions have the fourfold sense.

Faith thinks Being; it stands on sacred ground and hears the I AM.

All activity is experienced as an extension of actuality.

There are many different existential quantifiers, since each is defined relative to a particular system.

Being is only understood correctly when it is recognized in its most eminent form as Light and Love.

the sacrament of ordered ordering

confirmation : the unction of crucifixion :: unction : the unction of resurrection

matrimony as simultaneously moral, covenantal, and sacramental sign of cooperation of God and humanity

"There are as many different kinds of good books as there are different kinds of good writer." Lord David Cecil

consecration
(1) personal
(2) social
--- --- (a) without vow: Society of Apostolic Life
--- --- (b) with vow: Institute of Consecrated Life
--- --- --- --- (1) religious/regular
--- --- --- --- --- --- (a) order
--- --- --- --- --- --- (b) congregation
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- (1) clerical
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- (2) lay
--- --- --- --- (2) secular
--- --- --- --- --- --- (a) clerical
--- --- --- --- --- --- (b) lay

religious orders: canon regular, monastic, mendicant, clerks regular

The particular illustrates and expresses the universal, as the contingent does the necessary, as the temporal the eternal, as the prudent the obligatory. They do so both directly and figuratively by a sort of alleogry, and both in presupposition and by suggestion.

field as ens rationis, the mapping of physical quantities to each point in space and/or time

What can be considered formally can also be considered finally.

entitative possibility (intrinsic possibility): grounded in God with respect to divine essence
objective possibility: grounded in God with respect to divine intellect
causal (extrinsic) possibility: grounded in God with respect to divine will

Virtue expands rather than narrows our options.

physical propagation as a propagation of similitudes

the council of philosophical predecessors

Only through prudence and justice and liberty, equality, and fraternity be united.

Every inquiry considers what is consistent (one), what is evident (true), and what is excellent (good), from the point of view of the inquiry.

A puzzle-mystery can be expressed, as to structure, as an incoherent (and thus impossible) proposition, and its solution as a minimal modification of its terms that results in a coherent proposition.

'own' of property vs 'own' of responsibility

The dignity of philosophy reflects human dignity itself, which is why one should be wary of attempts to downgrade the former.

By baptism Christ grasps us; by confirmation, Christ lends us His strength so that we might grasp Him.

confirmation as the sacrament of Christian freedom

I.
(1) definition of sign
--- --- (a) in itself
--- --- (b) parts of sign
(2) divisions of sign
--- --- (a) formal/instrumental
--- --- (b) natural/positive
(3) significant functions
--- --- (a) index/icon/symbol
--- --- (b) qualisign/sinsign/legisign
--- --- (c) rheme/dicent/delome
(4) semiotic causation
--- --- (a) per se: objective
--- --- (b) per accidens: suggestive
--- --- (c) signscape/occasion/communication
(5) signs as practical
--- --- (a) as action-guiding: incentive/motive/regulative
--- --- (b) as means to end: dispositive/provocative/template
II.
(1) definition of sacrament
(2) the sacramentesque
(3) covenantal sacraments
--- --- (a) from Election of Israel
--- --- (b) from Election of Christ
(4) Christ as cause of all sacraments
--- --- (a) old covenant sacraments as prefigurative
--- --- (b) new covenant sacraments as figurative
--- --- --- --- (1) directly (major)
--- --- --- --- (2) indirectly (minor)
--- --- (c) Christ as efficient, exemplar, and final cause of sacramentality
III.
(1) definition of grace
(2) divisions of grace
(3) old covenant and minor sacraments as dispositive
(4) major sacraments as perfective
(5) the economy of grace
--- --- (a) Church as means of grace
--- --- (b) seven sacraments as whole

Philosophy is often done without showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted.

Everyone accepts things as existing or obligatory that nonetheless they do not understand or clearly comprehend; believing otherwise is delusional.

the postmedieval period as the hypertrophy of the state

The state's primary purpose is to serve civil society, and thus to lead, guide, and counsel the willing citizen. Its compulsive power exists to protect the willing citizen.

the principle of original peace as a principle of international law (peace and not hostility is the default)

Symbolism is a never-ending fountain of philosophy.

All human beings take morality to exemplify broader principles and symbolize a broader context than itself.

True learning is a kind of asceticism, and requires occasional leavening with the beautiful, the comic, and the sublime.

It is in the family that children learn how to live as citizens in a civil society; over and over one sees that in school they only learn how to be subjects of the offices that hold the powers of lordship and compulsion.

The important thing to understand about everything is that it is also in a way something else.

ritual as the outer imagination

"It is part of the power of a poem to generate meanings from what may originally be meaningless." Nemerov

Civilizations themselves are philosophical units.

As digestion involves mixing one's juices with food, so learning involves mixing one's thought and imagination with doctrine, i.e., what is learned; and as nutrients must be absorbed and distributed, so the elements of what one learns have to be drawn out and allowed to diffuse and percolate through the mind.

the external world as doctrinal; it is always already teaching us

moral, jural, and sacral agency from another

Chance is a relation between distinct ends.

Antonio Rosmini, The Philosophy of Right III: Universal Social Right

IId: Rights of the Individual (Other Modifications of Rights)

Up to this point we have been considering individual right, which concerns jural persons as such. 'Individual right' in this sense also applies to to societies; people can have duties to societies, so societies can be jural persons with rights, and as such have individual rights. However, people do not merely acquire rights as individuals. They also acquire rights through membership in societies. This is distinct from the ways in which individual rights might be modified by entering into association. It is also distinct from the rights of societies with respect to other societies as peers (e.g., those pertaining to relationships between states), which intersocial right is just individual right applied to societies. Rather, membership in a society gives one a new jural status with new rights that arise from the nature of the society itself; this is the subject of social right. Rosmini suggests that while individual right is more important for the philosophy of right overall (because it is the foundation for everything else), people often find social right more practically interesting and emotionally engaging.

We create links between ourselves and things; these are ultimately a matter of proprietà. We also create links with other human persons; some of these, necessarily only partial, are also a matter of proprietà, in which other people are means to our ends, but we also form personal bonds with them, relating ourselves to them not as end to means but as end to end. Through these personal bonds we form societies, which arise when there are two or more wills knowingly and intentionally working together toward the same thing so as to have something in common. There are many different kinds of society, and each one has a different set of potential implications for rights. Societies scale differently, being more suitable for two or a few or many; they differ according to how knowing and deliberate they are; they differ according to the degree of involvement of the members; and they differ according to what is shared in common. However, all societies do have certain very general features that are given a distinctive or modified form in each particular society; right relevant to this is what is meant by universal social right. Universal social right involves three principal parts:

(1) Seignorial right, that is, right that is relevant to lordship or dominion. Seignory is not society, but many societies are structured internally by their relation to dominion, and therefore it plays a role when it comes to rights in society. "Seignory is simply a right to the labour of a person who retains all his dignity" (p. 53). It is not a right of personal superiority (which depends on relation to justice), nor is it a right of government (which is for the service of society), although historically it has often been confused with both.

(2) Governmental right, that is right relevant to the organization and administration of society, particularly in terms of how rights are ordered and related to each other within it. While different from seignory, historically seignory has sometimes functioned as a title for right to govern, and modern states in general are structured by seignory (they rule people as subjects), essentially because they just took over feudal functions that were entirely a matter of seignory and (unlike in the feudal case) started exercising them on the scale of the whole society. (Doing this without careful distinction is arguably a reason why modern states have a tendency to despotism.) The natural right of government for any society belongs to all of its members together; each member has a share in the proprietà of the whole society and its benefits, and thus have a number of rights with respect to it, e.g., a right of inspection, i.e., the right to know how the governance of the society is going, and a right of proposal, i.e., the right to propose improvements that are taken seriously and implemented if found to be certainly beneficial. In any case, the right of government is alienable, and a society can have the whole body of its members keep and exercise the right to govern, or can reserve the right to govern while giving responsibility for this or that to particular members, or can reserve the right to govern while paying someone from outside of the society to serve administrative functions, or (as very often happens) can alienate the right to govern to someone by investing the power of government in them. Every governmental, i.e., administrative, office is an alienable right that carries further rights that are relevant to the function of the office.

(3) Communal right, which deals with rights in common among the members of society. One of the relevant rights is the right of association; people have a right to moral and just association:"The right to freedom of association is founded in human nature" (p. 123). Because of this their associations, if not harmful to society, should be recognized as long as the broader society can know how the association was formed: "Every society, having the right to exist, has equally the right to be recognised" (p. 123). The right to freedom of association and the right to social recognition combine to create a third right, the right to social proprietà, which is effectively the right to exercise individual right as a society: "Every just society has of its nature the right to possess, unless it renounces it" (p. 125). Whether and when members have a right to leave the society depends on the nature and decisions of the society, but members can only be excluded from a society for failing in their duties with respect to it.

All of this, of course, is quite general, but that's inevitable, and its generality does not reduce its importance, since these points are the essential ones around which the many different kinds of society will ring their variations: "...the special Right of any society whatsoever will be found only by applying the principles of universal Right to the constitutive facts of the society" (p. 133). These facts, and thus the relevant titles for rights, are as variable as societies themselves, and have to be ascertained by looking at the particular society in question.

However, there are three societies of extraordinary importance, whose existence affects every other society, and which play significant roles in the fulfillment of human life: family, Church, and civil society. Thus Rosmini will look at each of these in turn.

to be continued

*****

Antonio Rosmini, The Philosophy of Right, Volume 3: Universal Social Right, Cleary & Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham, UK: 1995).

'Tis Lethe's Gloom, but Not Its Quiet

 Absence
by Thomas Campbell

'Tis not the loss of love’s assurance,
It is not doubting what thou art,
But 'tis the too, too long endurance
Of absence, that afflicts my heart. 

The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish,
When each is lonely doomed to weep,
Are fruits on desert isles that perish,
Or riches buried in the deep. 

What though, untouched by jealous madness,
Our bosom’s peace may fall to wreck;
The undoubting heart, that breaks with sadness,
Is but more slowly doomed to break. 

Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
'Tis Lethe’s gloom, but not its quiet,--
The pain without the peace of death!

Two Poem Drafts

 Wisdom

The Muses do not sing for fools,
nor angels swim in shallow pools;
their inspiration, broad of sweep,
is only found in heavens deep,
and only to the nearly wise
is given grace as great as skies.
But wisdom, quiet, still, and small,
in but a point encircles all,
has held since history began
the courses of each future plan,
and like a light on whisp of cloud
can humble Muses fair and proud.

Delirious

Sun's sure heat,
bright needle
pinning me,
makes me dream,
delirious,
of a chill torture.
Summer, leave me,
grant me peace!

Antonio Rosmini, The Philosophy of Right IId: Rights of the Individual (Other Modifications of Rights)

 IIc: Rights of the Individual (Transmission of Acquired Rights)

In release-and-reoccupation and in contracts, acquired rights sometimes undergo modification in the process of transmission, due to the interaction or at least relation of the two parties involve. However, it is also possible for rights to undergo modification due to the acts of a single party. As Rosmini notes, since a right is itself a relationship (between the one with the right and the one with the duty corresponding to the right), this can occur in two ways, depending on which individual engages in the modifying act, either the person with the acquired right or the person with the relevant duty.

Someone who has a right can only do two things affecting his acquired right on his own. He can abandon the right or destroy his title ot it, or he can offer or promise it to someone else. The first is only a modification of a right in a very loose sense, and is not what Rosmini has in mind. The second obviously modifies the right, because to offer your acquired right is to make for the person to whom it is offered a right to accept the offer (which Rosmini thinks is, strictly speaking, a particular form of jural freedom with respect to that particular right). If they accept it, you have an ordinary transmission of right, but if they don't, you have, as we say, put the offer of that right on the table as something they freely could have accepted.

Far more extensive and significant are the modifications of rights that arise on the side of those who are obligated to respect those rights. Such an obligation is a negative one -- it's just the requirement not to injure -- so one might wonder how it could create a channel for modifying another person's right. Rosmini begins by distinguishing two kinds of freedom: innocuous freedom, through which we acquire rights, and jural freedom, through which we exercise them. Innocuous freedom can involve four kinds of actions:

(I.1) Acts with which we occupy anything that is free. These don't modify another person's rights; you just restrict the innocuous freedom of others, since now they have to work around your occupancy.

(I.2) Acts with which another's good are used, without causing any problem for the one with the right. These also don't modify another person's rights.

(I.3) Acts of beneficence without harm to the benefactor. These do create duties, but in general create moral duties of gratitude, not jural duties, the kinds of duties corresponding to rights.

(I.4) Acts of beneficence which cause some harm to the benefactor, thus in some way infringing on another's right, but which are undertaken out of necessity. These do create a modification of rights, but forming a jural obligation of recompense in the beneficiary; since the beneficiary has the jural duty of recompense, the benefactor has the right to the recompense.

In the case of jural freedom, there are two kinds of actions:

(II.1) Acts exercising one's own right. These can only modify another's rights with their consent, in ways that involve transmission of rights.

(II.2) Acts with which another's right is unknowingly disposed of. For instance, if you accidentally carry off something that belongs to someone else, you have a duty to restore it, and the person to whom it belongs has a right to have it returned.

There is, however, another kind of modification of rights that can occur due to the actions of a single person, namely, when someone engages in a kind of wrongdoing that violates the rights of others. Such a person is not acting out of either innocuous freedom or jural freedom, but are violating their own duties. These are modifications associated with punishment and penalty. These modifications open up functions of the already existing acquired rights associated with defense of the right. As Rosmini puts it, "Harmful acts, therefore, provide an occasion for an owner to exercise certain functions of his right over which he certainly possessed moral power prior to the injury, but which depended upon the injury for their actuation" (p. 424). These can sometimes lead to further modifications under different conditions, as the person engaging in the harm develops the secondary obligation to desist from harm, to make reparation and recompense for injury, and so forth, each of which draws out a secondary right, all of which are "activated functions of my right" (p. 424). There are two general such functions: defense and satisfaction. The first is concerned with what we are usually thinking of when we say that a right is inviolable or that a right should not be violated; the second with the fact that when you violate another's right, you owe them for it.

All of these take on an interesting aspect when one turns to societies. Societies, insofar as they function as individuals, have individual rights, just as their members do. Civil society, for instance, has the same rights of occupation and so forth that we have been discussing; it is in this sense a jural person. As such, its rights have the latent functions of defense and satisfaction, and when those rights are violated, this modifies its rights so as to develop a right to defend itself and receive reparation and recompense for the violated rights. Rosmini is very insistent that considered as a jural person, civil society's individual rights work exactly the same, and are no more fundamental or important, than the individual rights of its members. (Anything else is despotism, although it has to be remembered that this is only when talking about individual rights, as things can get more complicated when we get to social right.) Thus if civil society injures the right of one of its members, the member will also have rights of defense and satisfaction with respect to it. If another individual could not do it to you, neither can civil society; for instance, Rosmini argues that civil society has no right to restrict trade in the sense of "competition through honest means" (p. 439), for precisely the same reason your neighbor doesn't. This is quite general:

Civil society may indeed restrict innocuous freedom by prior occupancy, but not by laws and force. This is a part of common right, and any other person can do the same. The only difference is that civil society, that is, its government, must do this for the common good; individuals as such can do it for their individual good, just as they can do it for the common good. (pp. 441-442)

Likewise, civil society has no right to defend or demand satisfaction for its own individual right that goes beyond that which you or I do; that is to say, it does have a right, but it is exactly the same right. If you or I cannot, in principle, defend or demand satisfaction for our rights in some way, then civil society cannot defend or demand satisfaction for its rights in that way. And just as you or I, civil society is restricted to what is reasonable and proportionate in light of its good and the relevant circumstances.

In any case, the right of defense has two components: "simple defence of rights under attack without harm to others" and "harm to others when defense of our rights is necessary" (p. 456). As every right is justified by its 'law', not its 'title', this must be justified by the relevant moral law, which is justice, and when anyone is defending their rights, they can only do so in a way appropriate to a minister of justice. Self-defense and civil punishment have the same ultimate justification and the same ultimate limits -- for instance, neither you nor civil society can ever deliberately harm an innocent person even in order to defend yourselves from harm, and both must be guided by what is necessary rather than what is convenient. If justice is the law for the right of defense, in fact, necessity is the title.

The right to satisfaction arises from the fact that when our rights are injured, this creates a debt, and thus a further duty of satisfying the debt. There are several ways this can be done; the natural way is to return what was taken, but where this is not fully possible, we have developed various kinds of compensation, both literal and symbolic.

All of this concerns individual right, but human beings are not mere individuals; we are members of societies. Likewise, while societies can be jural persons with individual right, this is not the only relation they have to right. To have a full understanding of the rights human beings can have, we will have to look not merely at individual right but also social right.

to be continued

******

Antonio Rosmini, The Philosophy of Right, Volume 2: Rights of the Individual, Cleary & Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham, UK: 1993).

The Right and Dignity of Celestial Mansion

The ascension of Christ is the cause of our salvation in a twofold way, in one way, on our part, and in another way, on his part. 

On our part, inasmuch as through the ascension of Christ our mind is moved unto him. Because through his ascension, as is said above, is given, in the first place, faith; in the second, hope; in the third, charity. Fourth, through it our reverence toward him is augmented, because we no longer value him as earthly man but as heavenly God, as the apostle says (2 Cor 5), If we have known Christ according to the flesh (i.e., as mortal), whereby we took him to be mere man (as the gloss interprets the words), but now we know him so no longer. 

And on his part, with respect to that which he, ascending, did for our salvation. And first, he prepared our way for ascending into heaven, according to which it is said (Jn 14), I go to prepare you a place; and (Mic 2), He shall ascend how opens the way before them. For since he is our head, it is appropriate that the members follow where the head goes, as is said (Jn 14), and where I am, you also are. And as a sign of this, he took to heaven the souls of the saints drawn out from hell, according to the Psalm, Ascending on high, he took captivity captive, because he took those who were captured by the Devil and drew them into heaven, as into a place foreign to human nature, captured in good captivity, through his victory acquired.

Second, because, just as the priest in the Old Testament entered the sanctuary to wait on God for the people, even so Christ enters into heaven to make interecession for us, as is said (Hb 7). For the very representation of his human nature, which he brought into heaven, is a sort of intercession for us, as, from that for which God exalted human nature in Christ, he may pity those for whom the son of God assumed human nature. 

Third, as, established in his heavenly seat as God and Lord, he might send divine gifts to men, as in Eph 4, He ascended above all the heavens that he might fill all, that is to say, with gifts (according to the gloss).

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 3.57.6, my rough translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation here. The title of this post comes from 3.57.6 ad 3, ius et dignitatem mansionis caelestis, the right and dignity of heavenly abode, which Christ's ascension has given us in perpetuity.]