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7. But if that will which moves to and fro, hither and thither, the
eye that is to be informed, and unites it when formed, shall have
wholly converged to the inward phantasy, and shall have absolutely
turned the mind's eye from the presence of the bodies which lie around
the senses, and from the l very bodily senses themselves, and shall
have, wholly turned it to that image, which is perceived within; then
so exact a likeness of the bodily species expressed from the memory is
presented, that not even reason itself is permitted to discen whether
the body itself is seen without, or only something of the kind thought
of within. For men sometimes either allured or frightened by
over-much thinking of visible things, have even suddenly uttered words
accordingly, as if in real fact they were engaged in the very midst of
such actions or sufferings. And I remember some one telling me that
he was wont to perceive in thought, so distinct and as it were solid,
a form of a female body, as to be moved, as though it were a reality.
Such power has the soul over its own body, and such influence has it
in turning and changing the quality of its [corporeal] garment; just
as a man may be affected when clothed, to whom his clothing sticks.
It is the same kind of affection, too, with which we are beguiled
through imaginations in sleep. But it makes a very great difference,
whether the senses of the body are lulled to torpor, as in the case of
sleepers, or disturbed from their inward structure, as in the case of
madmen, or distracted in some other mode, as in that of diviners or
prophets; and so from one or other of these causes, the intention of
the mind is forced by a kind of necessity upon those images which occur
to it, either from memory, or by some other hidden force through
certain spiritual commixtures of a similarly spiritual substance: or
whether, as sometimes happens to people in health and awake, that the
will occupied by thought turns itself away from the senses, and so
informs the eye of the mind by various images of sensible things, as
though those sensible things themselves were actually perceived. But
these impressions of images not only take place when the will is
directed upon such things by desiring them, but also when, in order to
avoid and guard against them, the mind is carried away to look upon
these very thing so as to flee from them. And hence, not only
desire, but fear, causes both the bodily eye to be informed by the
sensible things themselves, and the mental eye (acies) by the images
of those sensible things.
Accordingly, the more vehement has been either fear or desire, the
more distinctly is the eye informed, whether in the case of him who
[sensuously] perceives by means of the body that which lies close to
him in place, or in the case of him who conceives from the image of the
body which is contained in the memory. What then a body in place is to
the bodily sense, that, the similitude of a body in memory is to the
eye of the mind; and what the vision of one who looks at a thing is to
that appearance of the body from which the sense is informed, that,
the vision of a concipient is to the image of the body established in
the memory, from which the eye of the mind is informed; and what the
intention of the will is towards a body seen and the vision to be
combined with it, in order that a certain unity of three things may
therein take place, although their nature is diverse, that, the same
intention of the will is towards combining the image of the body which
is in the memory, and the vision of the concipient, that is, the form
which the eye of the mind has taken in returning to the memory, in
order that here too a certain unity may take place of three things, not
now distinguished by diversity of nature, but of one and the same
substance; because this whole is within, and the whole is one mind.
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