Chapter 9.—The Same Argument is Continued.

14. For the soul loving its own power, slips onwards from the whole which is common, to a part, which belongs especially to itself. And that apostatizing pride, which is called “the beginning of sin,”758    Ecclus. x. 15 whereas it might have been most excellently governed by the laws of God, if it had followed Him as its ruler in the universal creature, by seeking something more than the whole, and struggling to govern this by a law of its own, is thrust on, since nothing is more than the whole, into caring for a part; and thus by lusting after something more, is made less; whence also covetousness is called “the root of all evil.”759    1 Tim. vi. 10 And it administers that whole, wherein it strives to do something of its own against the laws by which the whole is governed, by its own body, which it possesses only in part; and so being delighted by corporeal forms and motions, because it has not the things themselves within itself, and because it is wrapped up in their images, which it has fixed in the memory, and is foully polluted by fornication of the phantasy, while it refers all its functions to those ends, for which it curiously seeks corporeal and temporal things through the senses of the body, either it affects with swelling arrogance to be more excellent than other souls that are given up to the corporeal senses, or it is plunged into a foul whirlpool of carnal pleasure.

CAPUT IX.

14. Sequitur de eodem argumento. Potestatem quippe suam diligens anima, a communi universo ad privatam partem prolabitur: et apostatica illa superbia, quod initium peccati dicitur (Eccli. X, 15), cum in universitate creaturae Deum rectorem secuta, legibus ejus optime gubernari potuisset, plus aliquid 1006 universo appetens, atque id sua lege gubernare molita, quia nihil est amplius universitate, in curam partilem truditur, et sic aliquid amplius concupiscendo minuitur; unde et avaritia dicitur radix omnium malorum (I Tim. VI, 10): totumque illud ubi aliquid proprium contra leges, quibus universitas administratur, agere nititur, per corpus proprium gerit, quod partiliter possidet; atque ita formis et motibus corporalibus delectata, quia intus ea secum non habet, cum eorum imaginibus, quas memoriae fixit, involvitur, et phantastica fornicatione turpiter inquinatur, omnia officia sua ad eos fines referens, quibus curiose corporalia ac temporalia per corporis sensus quaerit, aut tumido fastu aliis animis corporeis sensibus deditis esse affectat excelsior, aut coenoso gurgite carnalis voluptatis immergitur.