The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK TWELVE 213 the senses of the body also and confusing the images with the objects of the senses; or when the soul is taken hold of by a spirit and is so completely removed from the bodily senses that it is engaged by nothing but the likenesses of bodies in spiritual vision—in which state I am inclined to doubt whether there can be a vision of something that has no meaning.
CHAPTER 24
Spiritual vision 1s more excellent than corporeal vision, intellectual more excellent than spiritual.
50. Hence this spiritual nature, in which are produced not bodies but the likenesses of bodies, enjoys visions of a kind inferior to those which the mind or intelligence! with its light beholds. For it is by this latter power that objects of a lower order are judged and those realities are beheld which are not bodies and have no forms similar to bodies: such as the mind itself and every good affection of the soul (to which are opposed its vices, which are rightly censured and condemned in men). How else can the intellect itself be seen except by intellection? In this way also we see charity, joy, peace, longanimity, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, continency,!°® and the rest, by which we draw near to God, and finally God Himself,!°'? from whom are all things, through whom are all things, and in whom are all things. 198
51. In one and the same soul, then, there are different visions: by means of the body it perceives objects such as the corporeal heaven and earth and everything that can be known in them in the degree that they are capable of being known; with the spirit it sees likenesses of bodies—a matter that I have already discussed at length;!°? and with the mind it understands those realities that are neither bodies nor the likenesses of bodies. But there is, of course, a hierarchy in these visions, one being superior to another. For spiritual vision is more excellent than corporeal, and intellectual vision more excellent than spiritual.
Corporeal vision cannot take place without spiritual, since at the very moment when we encounter a body by means of bodily sensation, there appears in the soul something not identical with the object perceived but resembling it. If this did not happen, there would be no sensation by which exterior objects are perceived.
For it is not the body that perceives, but the soul by means of the body;!!° and the soul uses the body as a sort of messenger in order to form within itself the object that is called to its attention from the outside world.!!! Hence corporeal vision cannot take place unless there is a concomitant spiritual vision; but no distinction is made between the two until the bodily sensation has passed and the object perceived by means of the body is found in the spirit. On the other hand, there can be spiritual vision without corporeal vision, namely, when the likenesses of absent bodies appear in the spirit, and when many such images are fashioned by the free activity of the soul or are presented to it in spite of itself. Moreover, spiritual vision needs intellectual vision if a judgment is to be made upon its contents, but intellectual vision does not need spiritual, which is of a lower orderA
And so corporeal vision is inferior to the spiritual, and both are inferior to the intellectual. When, therefore, we read, The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no man,'?* we should not take "spiritual" as pertaining to the spirit which is distinguished from the mind (as in the text, / will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind also),''* but we must understand it as deriving from that other sense, as in the following: But be renewed in the spirit of your mind.\'5 For I have already shown above!!® that the name "spirit" in another sense of the word is given also to the mind itself, to that power, namely, by which the spiritual man judges all things. Hence I believe that spiritual vision can be reasonably and naturally said to occupy a kind of middle ground between intellectual and corporeal vision. For I suppose that a thing which is not really a body, but like a body, can be appropriately said to be in the middle between that which is truly a body and that which is neither a body nor like a body.