If we compare ‘The Cloud’ with Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection or any other of the spiritual writings contemporary with that classic we shall be struck by the impersonal character of The Cloud. The Scale refers constantly to Jesus, the person, to whom everything returns in contemplation, and even a writer like St John of the Cross is really none the less personal in his approach to the source of faith and love. The Cloud does not often use the holy Name in spite of the great popularity of the devotion in those days; it is far more abstract and philosophical in tone. Struck by this difference we might be tempted to say that this latter was a natural, a metaphysician's, approach. A great deal of emphasis is laid on a quasi-metaphysical apprehension of Being as such, which might seem to depend on the personal exercise of the worshipper.