one manuscript; the CSEL follows the others, and even earlier editors, in readings;
Book XII All eyes at the same time as another who is absent is being perceived in spirit as vividly as if it were with the eyes. We have in fact encountered people affected in this way, who were speaking both to actual bystanders, and also to others not there as ifthey were there too. But on coming to themselves again, some of them can relate what they have seen, others cannot—some people, after all, forget their dreams, others remember them.
When, however, the attention of the mind is totally turned aside and snatched away from the senses of the body, then you have what is more usually called ecstasy. Then whatever bodies may be there in front of the subject, even with his eyes wide open he simply does not see them at all, or of course hear any words spoken aloud. His attention is wholly taken up in gazing either at the images of bodies with the spiritual kind of vision, or with the intellectual kind at incorpo real realities that no bodily image can represent.
26. But when the soul22 is alienated through and through from the senses of the body, and the spiritual vision is engaged with the images of bodily realities, whether in dreams or in ecstasy, the things being seen may have no significance, and then they are simply the imaginings of the soul itself. Even when we are awake, after all, and in full possession of our wits, unaffected by any alienation from the senses, we still turn over in our thoughts the images ofmany bodies that are not present to the body's senses; the only difference is that then we are always in a fit state to distinguish these from the real bodies in front of our eyes.
Sometimes however they do have a significant meaning, whether they are being presented to people in their sleep, or to people who are awake and seeing bodies in front of them with their eyes at the same time as they perceive the images of absent bodies with the spirit, or when the soul is totally alienated from the senses of the body by what is called ecstasy. This is a strange and wonderful way indeed; but23 it can happen by the interaction of another spirit that the things this spirit knows are shown through images of this sort to the person it is inter acting with, whether they are being unfolded to his understanding, or just as things understood by another. If these things, you see, are being demonstrated, and yet are naturally such as cannot be demonstrated by a body, what else can we say but that they are being demonstrated by some spirit?
22. Here animus, which 1 have also been translating "spirit" and "mind." 23. Reading with the Maurists, sed commixtione alterius spiritusfieri potest, with the support of one manuscript; the CSEL follows the others, and even earlier editors, in readings; commixtione . . .: "This is a strange and wonderful way indeed, if it can happen. . . ."