The Literal Meaning of Genesis
likenesses of bodies which I saw and real bodies was lacking in that sureness with which we usually make this distinction when we ponder over such images with closed eyes or when we are placed in darkness. The attention of the soul may be carried as far as the sense organs when they are impaired; or within the brain itself, from which the attention normally goes out to external objects, it may for some special reason be directed elsewhere. In either case, the soul may sometimes know that it is not seeing bodies but the likenesses of bodies; or, when less instructed, it may judge even these likenesses to be bodies but realize that it perceives them not with the body but with the spirit. Yet the attention of the mind is such that it operates far differently in these circumstances than it does when functioning in the organs of the body. Hence, also, the blind know they are awake when with a sure insight they distinguish between imaginative representations of bodies and the bodies themselves which they cannot see.
CHAPTER 21
In spiritual vision different causes do not mean different kinds of objects.
44. But when in spite of the good health of the body and the normal functioning of the senses, the soul is carried off by some mysterious spiritual power to a vision that contains images of bodies, a difference in the manner of the experience does not argue a difference in the nature of the objects seen, since there is a difference even in those causes that have their origin in the body, and sometimes the causes are even quite contrary. In the case of those who are delirious but not asleep, it is rather in the head that the paths of sensation are disturbed. The result is that they see objects that are ordinarily seen only in dreams, when the attention is turned from the perceptions of waking hours and directed to visions of this sort. Hence, although the one case occurs outside of sleep and the other in sleep, stil] the