agitated"—which would not, 1 think, be a more acceptable translation.
490 The Literal Meaning of Genesis dancing39 before dinner, that if any youngsters wanted to play about in that way after dinner, none of them would be forbidden.
So then this fellow, having called for silence in an interval between dances and surrounded by a laughing crowd, jokingly foretold that during the very night which was coming on, in that very wood nearby, a man was going to be slain by a lion, and that with the dawning of the day the crowd was going to pour out to gape at the corpse, leaving the place of that festival quite deserted. And so it happened, though to everyone present it was evident enough from all his gestures that he said this as ajoke and part of the game, his mind being in no way disturbed or alienated. He himself was more astonished than anybody, since he knew better than anybody else in what spirit and tone of voice he had spoken.
48. How, we ask, do these visions come to a person's spirit? Are they formed there to begin with, or are they introduced already formed and then perceived by a kind ofjoint action, with angels showing human beings their own thoughts in this way, and the likenesses of bodily things which they preform in their own spirit through their knowledge of future events? They indeed can also see our thoughts, not of course with eyes, because it is not with the body but with the spirit that they see them. This though is the difference, that they know our thoughts even if we do not want them to, while we cannot know theirs unless they are shown to us. This in my opinion is because they have it in their power to conceal their thoughts by spiritual means, just as we, by putting things in the way, can hide our bodies from being seen by other people's eyes.
And then, what is it that happens in our spirit, so that sometimes we observe only significant images, but do not know whether they signify anything? Some times they are perceived to signify something but we are left in ignorance of what it is, while at yet other times the human soul is vouchsafed something like a full demonstration and both sees them in spirit and sees with the mind what they signify. To know the answers to these questions is extremely difficult, and if we should already happen to know them, to analyze and explain them would be a task unimaginably laborious.
Summing up about the spiritual element in us. the locus ofspiritual vision
23, 49. The one thing certain, which I think it is enough to insist on for the time being, is that there is a kind of spiritual element in us where the likenesses of bodily things are formed. This can be when we make contact with a body through a sense of the body, and its likeness is straightaway formed in the spirit and stored away in the memory. Or it can be when we think about absent bodies already known to us, so that a kind of actual spiritual seeing is formed out of
39. A rather free rendering of agitatisque fanaticis, "and the fanatics having been agitated"—which would not, 1 think, be a more acceptable translation.
Book XII 491 them, as they were already there in the spirit even before we started thinking about them. Or it can be when we look at likenesses of bodies which we do not know but still do not doubt their existence; so we picture them not as they really are but as it happens to occur to us. Or it can be when we think ad lib or by guess work about other things that either do not exist or are not known to do so by us. Or it can be when, coming from heaven knows where, various forms of bodily likenesses churn around in our thoughts without our wanting them to in the least.
Or else it is when we are about to engage in some bodily activity, and we arrange in our thoughts the things that will be involved in it, and in fact run over everything first in our thoughts. Again in the action itself, when we are either saying or doing something, for us to be able to perform all the bodily movements involved, their likenesses have to precede them inwardly in the spirit—not even the shortest syllable, after all, could be uttered in its proper place, unless it had been foreseen and provided for.
Again it happens when sleepers see dreams that signify either something or nothing or when the inner sensory channels are disturbed by bodily ill health, and in consequence the spirit so mixes up the images of bodies with real bodies that they can scarcely be told apart, or indeed not at all, and they either signify something or spring up without any significance in them whatsoever. lt happens when some disease or bodily pain gets so much worse that it quite blocks off the internal routes through which the soul's attention was striving to reach out and sense things through the flesh; and so with the spirit being whisked away much more deeply than in sleep, the images of bodily things spring up in it or are shown to it, whether they signify anything or appear without any signification.
It happens, without any cause arising from the body, when the soul is lifted up to see such bodily likenesses by some spirit picking it up and snatching it away, and it mixes them up with the bodily realities seen by its simultaneous use of the senses. lt happens when the soul is so caught up by some spirit that it is alienated from every sense of the body and is turned away from there to have its attention gripped by the spiritual vision of likenesses of bodies, in which case I do not know whether any can be seen that have no significance at all.
The hierarchical order of the three kinds of vision
24, 50. So then, this spiritual nature, on which it is not bodies but the like nesses of bodies that are impressed, has visions of a kind inferior to that enjoyed by the light of the mind and the understanding. This is what both assesses these inferior ones and perceives things which as well as not being bodies have no forms or shapes similar to bodies, such as the mind itselfand every good disposi tion of the soul, as well as their opposites, its vices, which are very properly blamed and condemned in human beings. In what other way, after all, is the understanding observed but by understanding? So too charity, joy, peace,
492 The Literal Meaning of Genesis long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, restraint (Gal 5:22-23) and the rest, by which one draws near to God, and God himself,/rom whom are all things, through whom all things, in whom all things (Rom 1 1 :36).
5 1 . Accordingly, it is indeed in one and the same soul that visions are brought about; ones perceived through the body, like this bodily heaven and earth and whatever in them can be known, to the extent that they can be; ones like bodies that are seen by the spirit, about which we have already said so much; and ones that are understood by the mind, which are neither bodies nor the likenesses of bodies. But they have, of course, their proper order, and one kind ranks higher than another. Thus spiritual vision outclasses the bodily kind, and in turn the intellectual outclasses the spiritual.
There can, after all, be no bodily vision without the spiritual, seeing that the moment contact is made with a body by a sense of the body, some such thing is also produced in the spirit, not to be exactly what the body is, but to be like it; and if this were not produced, neither would there be that sensation by which extra neous things present are sensed. lt is not the body, you see, that senses, but the soul through the body, using it as a kind ofmessenger in order to form in itselfthe message being brought in from outside. And so no bodily vision can occur unless spiritual vision also occurs simultaneously; but they are not told apart except when the sense is withdrawn from the bodily object, and what was being seen through the body is now still to be found in the spirit. Spiritual vision, on the other hand, can occur without the bodily kind, when the likenesses of absent bodies appear in the spirit, and when many pictures are fabricated in it as it chooses, or shown to it quite apart from its choice.
Again, spiritual vision is in need of the intellectual kind in order to have a judgment or assessment made of it, while the intellectual is in no need of this inferior spiritual kind.40 And thus bodily vision is subordinate to spiritual, while each of them is subordinate to the intellectual kind. When therefore we read, Spiritualpeoplejudge all things, while they themselves arejudged by nobody ( 1 Cor 2:15), it is not referring to the spirit which is distinguished from the mind as where it says, / will pray with the spirit, l will pray also with the mind (1 Cor
14: 1 5); but we should rather take its meaning from where it says, But be renewed in the spirit of your minds (Eph 4:23). We have already explained above,41 you will remember, that the mind too is also in another context called "spirit," and it is in accordance with this that spiritual people judge all things. Accordingly I do not consider it either absurd or inconsistent to treat spiritual vision as a kind of
40. 1t is here that Saint Augustine's Platonic epistemology, to give it a rather grand name, differs most radically from that of Saint Thomas's and Aristotle's: for they insisted that the intellect (the human intellect, that is) requires the phantasms or images in what Augustine is calling the spirit as the material for it to work on, and so come to an understanding of the world. 41. 7,18 in this volume.