Opuscula psychologica, theologica, daemonologica
After the judgment of the thoughts, an exact discernment of how the thoughts happen to be, whether they are good or otherwise but imagination is the
to divide for us, by the established terms, the sesquitertian ratios into both the sesquioctave ratios and the leimmata, we would have stopped at thes
having split it, he bent each one into a circle, bringing them together middle to middle with each other like a chi, having joined 7 them both to them
left, or rather the one is an image of mind, the other of soul. And in the soul itself, the right is that which is turned toward the intelligible thin
regarding the explanation of the Platonic psychogony, this we now discharge for you as a kind of debt. For Plato's statement that the division of thes
and of exegesis. And there is a letter of mine placed among my books that has traced out and carefully examined the meaning in the sayings. But it is
a ruler drives a team of two then of the 14 horses, one of them is noble and good and of such stock, but the other is from opposite stock and is oppo
a body from one of the seeing things, such that it is able to be extended as far as the stars. But it was better, he says, than to say that the extern
through which it is not swept into material disorder, but is joined to the divine light, holds it in its own place and makes it unmixed with matter, l
of knowledge. For there is something intelligible, which you must understand with the flower of the intellect. And he says that the one in us is twofo
agrees, but among them the salty is more than the drinkable. They say, for example, that every soul is either divine or changing from intellect to min
to be deemed worthy of pardon in repenting. If the soul is a body according to some of the ancients, what is it that contains it? every body is three-
distinction. Two kinds of air according to Aristotle, the vaporous from the exhalation of water and the smoky from the extinguishing of fire. The latt
Plato. Pleasure is not a coming-to-be for coming-to-be is of things that are not, while pleasure is of things that are. And coming-to-be is swift and
is natural, while habit is acquired and taught. Providence is the care for existing things that comes from God. Epicurus says: the blessed and incorr
but such powers are simply and imperceptibly desired. What then? Do we have three souls? Solution: just as the soul, when united to the body, seems to
When this is dimmed they also are dimmed the soul flourishes when this 34 withers. Further, everything desires to preserve its own substrate. If the
actuality, as physicians, others in relation to something, others a double or one-and-a-half ratio. Potentiality is found in substance, as a man in th
concerning form, matter and cause, for example the matter of the celestial bodies is not the four elements, but a certain fifth, spherical one, as be
as knowledge (for knowledge is a transition from defined things to defined things for this reason it is also knowledge, as leading the mind to a stat
this, for indeed the flesh also moves downwards and is none of the elements. Aporia: but matter, that is the element, is not soul, but the form that c
definitions have as their beginning the most general things, as their end the most specific things. If, then, these are finite, so are the definitions
and it acts according to one part and another. It seems to act in these ways as being one. For if it is divided, it is necessary for the parts to be e
the rest, but this is about hot and soft, heavy and light, rare and dense, and many opposites. In humans, the cause of local motion is intellect, in i
is nourished {which} is twofold: either as Matter or as an instrument. And the instrument is twofold: either moving and being moved, like the innate h
is equal in distance to the zodiac signs. Light is not a body. for if it were a body, how would it be possible for it to have instantaneous movement,
we see the introduction of the forms of things seen entering the sight, but how do we see the interval of the air in between? Solution: It is not that
with a violent collision. In soft things no sound is produced, because the air is broken up in their pores and dispersed as in sponges. In things that
a buzzing which is conveyed back to the sense of hearing. Others say that the sound occurring in the ears after the blockage is of the external air th
For instance, fish, not having this, are cooled through their gills. Those that have a windpipe also have a lung. Fish have neither these nor a heart.
the sense organs of touch, it is clear for every sense organ is both separated and known. Aristotle speaks of the senses both as one each and as many
Aristotle in On the Soul : if sensation ceased, the sense-organ would also cease. But if the second is not, neither is the first. Sensation and sense-
Some add also a sixth, the attentive [faculty], as when a man says, I perceived, I thought, I opined. To this part they also add the activities of t
We can say ten, but not indeed opine it, so that opinion is not up to us. But neither do we imagine what we wish for we see at night what we do not w
in the case of children, the one according to state, and the one in act, as the one governing all things or the one entering from without. Plato says
theoretical versus the practical. The theoretical corresponds to a vision discerning of forms, while the practical corresponds to a vision not only kn
organs. Moreover, at night the nutritive faculty is more active, but the locomotive faculty is not at all. A difficulty: the vegetative faculty produc
simpler, or rather the things inherent in the matter, into which the matter is also divided, which are also prop[erly] called its elements. I say then
he hints that it is not completed from both of the things mixed, but is produced in the union of the soul and the body, not by the soul itself giving
closing the senses, so as to know unknowingly the transcendent substance of that which is. For according to their own opinions, the philosopher who ha
he himself will also pardon his own student for the apparent 78 opposition to him and others will come here again to bear witness for us, the philoso
it grows and is naturally constituted to decay, must in every way grow along with and decay along with the other in a connate manner for that by whic
a demonstration, so also the soul in an infant's body and a more imperfect one, if it were in another, perfect body, would immediately have shown its
I shall use the argument. In what do you say virtue is inherent? or again, is it superimposed on the formless and incorporeal and uncompounded nature,
Porphyry has philosophized in harmony with this. For in discussing the soul, he says: “Just as insomniacs, by the very act of wanting to sleep and wat
have they cast off? Perhaps those who hold the contrary opinion will vex us with these things. But their objection is like a spider's web, which will
to have received watchwords from the first father, nor that they possess the fullness of many bosoms, nor would I accept that they stand before the bo
both the Sibylline and the Orphic ones, and those according to which the Berytian Bulls came to be and Amous the Egyptian, and Socrates and Plato (for
of the bonds by which they were bound, and after this, turning their minds upward, they will approach God. And if the account told about the Sibyl wer
has the front part? What then do you think? a mind scattered in so great a size is from this cause for him both slack and weak, and the soul is simply
would remember any of the things here. But as many of the souls as were allotted to more humble portions and their whole mind has not been snatched aw
Let us not altogether reject the analogy of the eye in the case of the soul, let it be and be called a more precise substance of the soul but if some
The manner of the entry of souls, and likewise of their release or separation from hence, both are most difficult or hard to explain for of the first
but by such powers the soul is led like some kind of thing moved by another, being drawn towards whatever the leaders happen to lead it, but then rath
For that which is according to reason, knowledge is readily at hand, but that which is contrary to reason, is so because it has received such a nature
of beasts, but perhaps the matter which reason has shown not to exist. Therefore our bodies will be resurrected, and there will be nothing to prevent
fitting and gluing it to that by means of a suitable analogy, not placing the rational and intellectual substance into any of the animals for this is
are generated from these powers alone, for this reason, having abandoned the others, they divided the substance of the soul into these alone. But if y
it is in fourths, when one might contemplate these both in the third order of the intellectual virtues and in the fourth of the paradigmatic virtues,
and so interpreting the Platonic opinion, but they do not seem to me to have grasped the precise meaning of his doctrine. But if I shall clarify for y
and with nothing separating them, it is necessary for the one to be ordered, and the other to order and the one which is ordered has its form divided
what is hard and resistant in them has been smoothed out by me. But what follows from this must be attributed to them alone for, proposing to speak a
proceeds from it and returns to it.” Then indeed he works out the point by division. For if it only remained, it would in no way differ from its cause
in our sacred writings, neither a whole soul nor any whole nature, apart from the partial ones, has been dogmatically established1. I for my part reje
by the energy, then also the substance is perfected according to it, and these things stand in each other according to one energy. For he who does not
having a life activated according to intellect and reason the psychic is defined according to reason 124 and takes care of divisible souls the physi
tormenting them. But there are, they say, both on earth divine daimons and in the air, guardians of the animals there, and <in> the water, extending t
make it superior to the confusion of life, but, if possible, may you not even leave behind in the terrestrial world the very body which you have put o
cast under your mind: for there is no plant of truth on earth» that is: do not busy your mind with the great measures of the earth, as the geographer
Gregory by reason and contemplation leads the soul up to the more divine things by reason that is according to us, the more intellectual and better,
such a lion-bearing fount of heaven and the stars, but the ruling part of its own existence conceals the vision of them. Chaldaean Oracle. From all si
often appearing, they feign the semblance of some goodness towards the one being initiated. Chaldean Oracle. The soul of mortals will draw God into it
they can. Whence everything they say and show is false and insubstantial for they know existing things through forms but that which knows future thi
and fear is the holding back of his goodness towards us for the sake of the economy. Chaldean Oracle. The Father snatched himself away, not even enclo
they are possessed by passions. Therefore, it is necessary for these also to receive their part of the whole judgment and, having been filled up with
for it is higher than being venerated, than being uttered, and than being conceived. A Chaldean Oracle. The Iynges, being conceived by the Father, the
an unknown password, spoken and unspoken. And they often bring the soul down 148 into the world for many reasons, either through the shedding of its w
of truth and of love. After which are the demiurgic fountains, such as that of the ideas, according to which the cosmos and the things in it have shap
enclosing the triad towards itself and they call these also intelligible. After these, another order of the intelligible and at the same time intelle
to the setting [sun], and the pit to the one just at mid-heaven. And thus, gently separating the membrane of the liver, [which is placed] upon the org
parts of philosophy is necessary. For according to moral philosophy it is necessary to assume that not all things are and come to be by necessity, but
knowledge and sees not only the essences themselves, but also their powers and their activities, both those according to nature and those contrary to
he acquired. For even before the birth of both, God knew that the one would be good, and the other would turn out bad and this knowledge is an unchan
from the one who knows, and it revolves around the thing known and is made like the one who knows. I mean something like this: the knowledge of the so
they fabricate. For I too had a certain little man, ignoble in soul, but by no means the least of storytellers to him, at any rate, such phantoms pre
Opuscula psychologica, theologica, daemonologica
Of the most wise Psellus, concerning the soul The soul, having turned towards itself and understood its own nature, knows its essential harmonies and the subsistent numbers and figures of such a kind, and how it has ineffable images of the heavenly things. And having looked up toward the intellect and having beheld the intelligible spectacles as in a mirror, it perceives the intellectual powers in the universe and exults in a wondrous pleasure, it is with the souls that have been released from bodies and it envisions the famed plain of truth, and it intellectually grasps beings and distinguishes beings and again joins together what is by nature to be distinguished and what is to be joined. But having been carried up even from the intelligible forms and having approached the one beyond intellect, it has super-intellection unknowingly; for there, both sensation and imagination and opinion and intellectual perception and simply all apprehension and distinction are inactive. And just as in a great and ineffable fire by nature, our soul, having fallen then, has forgotten itself, and is unmindful both of what it saw before and of what we knew precisely, and having closed all its own faculties, it rests unknowingly in the pure light. Do not, therefore, characterize its essence from its lowest faculties and from the common ones of the composite being, I mean sensation and imagination, but investigate it from the higher and more intellectual ones. And you will surely find it somewhere not only separate from the body, but also living a divine life. And whatever someone utters in a crisis, lamenting his own life, he does not send forth these sounds from the pure soul, but from that which is mixed with the body and, as it were, has become irrational with it. 2 Of Psellus [de anima et mente] Intellect is the most perfect state of the soul, and soul is a self-moving substance, or rather, immortal; for everything that is self-moving is of such a nature. Intellect is not one thing, and soul another. For since the soul has faculties, some rational and others irrational, of the rational ones some are vital and appetitive, and others are rational and cognitive. Again, the rational and cognitive ones are divided into opinion, discursive thought, and intellect. Of the irrational ones, some are cognitive, and others vital and appetitive; the cognitive are imagination and sensation, and the vital and appetitive are spirit and desire. And there are also three called vegetative: the nourishing, the augmenting, and the generating. The intellect, therefore, being the third and highest part of the rational and cognitive faculties of the soul, is not something other than it. For how could it be, which has been called most divine, eternal, and immortal especially because of this, being separated from bodies by this alone, which, in bodies, is as if buried and mixed in some heaps of earth, and as if through some most pure eye contemplates divine things, rising up together out of the activities of the body. And reason is a vehicle of this. For the immanent reason, being nothing other, is a kind of intellect, but the expressed reason is nevertheless a vehicle of the intellect; for through it, conversing unextendedly with things outside, it does not depart from the things within. Of Psellus, concerning the five faculties of the soul Intellect is that which is moved by nature from God and is the source of thoughts, which indeed holds the place of a craftsman if indeed it is brought forth as is fitting; and discursive thought is the very activity of the intellect through which thoughts are thought, as one might say, 3 being the art of a craftsman; and opinion is the supposition concerning things immediately thought that they are of one sort or another, correctly if they are thought correctly, but badly if the opposite. And sensation is the
Opuscula psychologica, theologica, daemonologica
Τοῦ σοφωτάτου Ψελλοῦ περὶ ψυχῆς Στραφεῖσα ψυχὴ πρὸς ἑαυτὴν καὶ τὴν οἰκείαν φύσιν νοήσασα τάς τε οὐσιώδεις ἑαυτῆς ἁρμονίας
ἐπίσταται καὶ τοὺς ἐνυποστάτους ἀριθμοὺς καὶ τὰ τοιουτότροπα σχήματα καὶ ὡς εἰκόνας ἀρρήτους ἔχει τῶν οὐρανίων. ἀνανεύσασα
δὲ πρὸς τὸν νοῦν καὶ τὰ νοητὰ ἐνοπτρισαμένη θεάματα τὰς ἐν τῷ παντὶ νοερὰς δυνάμεις κατανοεῖ καὶ θαυμασίαν ἀγάλλεται ἡδονήν,
ταῖς τε ἀπολυθείσαις τῶν σωμάτων ψυχαῖς σύνεστι καὶ τὸ θρυλλούμενον τῆς ἀληθείας πεδίον φαντάζεται, ἐπιβάλλει τε νοερῶς τοῖς
οὖσι καὶ διακρίνει τὰ ὄντα καὶ αὖθις συνάπτει ἅ τε πέφυκε διακρίνεσθαι καὶ ἃ συνάπτεσθαι. ἀνενεχθεῖσα δὲ καὶ τῶν νοητῶν εἰδῶν
καὶ τῷ ὑπὲρ νοῦν ἑνὶ προσεγγίσασα ἀγνώστως ἔχει τὴν ὑπερνόησιν· ἄπρακτος γὰρ ἐκεῖσε καὶ αἴσθησις καὶ φαντασία καὶ δόξα καὶ
νοερὰ κατανόησις καὶ πᾶσα ἁπλῶς ἐπιβολὴ καὶ διάκρισις. ὥσπερ δὲ ἐν πυρὶ πολλῷ καὶ ἀφάτῳ τὴν φύσιν ἡ ἡμετέρα τηνικαῦτα πεσοῦσα
ψυχὴ ἐπιλέλησται μὲν ἑαυτῆς, ἀμνημονεῖ δὲ ὧν τε ἑώρακε πρότερον καὶ ὧν ἔγνωμεν ἀκριβῶς, μύσασα δὲ τὰς ἑαυτῆς πάσας δυνάμεις
τῷ ἀκηράτῳ φωτὶ ἀγνώστως ἐπαναπαύεται. Μὴ τοίνυν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων αὐτῆς δυνάμεων καὶ τῶν κοινῶν τοῦ συνθέτου, αἰσθήσεώς φημι
καὶ φαντασίας, τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῆς χαρακτήριζε, ἀλλ' ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπερκειμένων καὶ νοερωτέρων ἐξακριβοῦ. καὶ εὑρήσεις που πάντως αὐτὴν
οὐ χωριστὴν μόνον τοῦ σώματος, ἀλλὰ καὶ θείαν ζῶσαν ζωήν. ὁπόσα δέ τις ἐν περιστάσει φθέγγεται τὴν οἰκείαν ζωὴν ἀπολοφυρόμενος,
οὐκ ἐκ τῆς ἀκηράτου ψυχῆς προΐεται τὰς φωνάς, ἀλλ' ἐκ τῆς καταμιχθείσης τῷ σώματι καὶ οἷον συναλογωθείσης αὐτῷ. 2 Τοῦ Ψελλοῦ
[δε ανιμα ετ μεντε] Νοῦς ἐστιν ἕξις ψυχῆς ἡ τελειοτάτη, ψυχὴ δὲ αὐτοκίνητος οὐσία εἴτ' οὖν ἀθάνατος· τοιοῦτον γὰρ πᾶν τὸ αὐτοκίνητον.
οὐχ ἕτερον δέ τι νοῦς ἐστιν, ἕτερον δὲ ψυχή. τῆς γὰρ ψυχῆς ἐχούσης δυνάμεις τὰς μὲν λογικὰς τὰς δὲ ἀλόγους, τῶν λογικῶν αἱ
μὲν ζωτικαί εἰσι καὶ ὀρεκτικαί, αἱ δὲ λογικαὶ καὶ γνωστικαί. πάλιν αἱ λογικαὶ καὶ γνωστικαὶ διαιροῦνται εἰς δόξαν καὶ διάνοιαν
καὶ νοῦν. τῶν δὲ ἀλόγων αἱ μὲν γνωστικαί, αἱ δὲ ζωτικαὶ καὶ ὀρεκτικαί· γνωστικαὶ μὲν φαντασία καὶ αἴσθησις, ζωτικαὶ δὲ καὶ
ὀρεκτικαὶ θυμὸς καὶ ἐπιθυμία. εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ φυτικαὶ καλούμεναι τρεῖς, θρεπτικὴ αὐξητικὴ καὶ γεννητική. ὁ τοίνυν νοῦς μέρος τῶν
λογικῶν καὶ γνωστικῶν δυνάμεων τὸ τρίτον καὶ ἀνώτατον τῆς ψυχῆς ὢν οὐχ ἕτερόν τι παρ' αὐτήν ἐστι. πῶς γάρ, ἥτις καὶ κατὰ τοῦτον
μάλιστα θειοτάτη ἀίδιός τε καὶ ἀθάνατος λέλεκται, τούτῳ καὶ μόνῳ χωριζομένη σωμάτων ἡ ἐν σώμασι καθάπερ ἐν χώμασί τισι κατακεχωσμένη
καὶ πεφυρμένη καὶ ὡσπερεὶ διά τινος ὀφθαλμοῦ καθαρωτάτου θεωροῦσα τὰ θεῖα τῶν τοῦ σώματος ἐνεργειῶν συνεξανισταμένη. τούτου
δὲ καὶ ὁ λόγος ὄχημα. οὐκ ἄλλο τι γὰρ ὑπάρχων ὁ ἐνδιάθετος λόγος νοῦς τίς ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ προφορικὸς ὅμως ὄχημα νοῦ· δι' αὐτοῦ
γὰρ ἀδιαστάτως τοῖς θύραθεν προσομιλῶν τῶν ἐντὸς οὐκ ἐξίσταται. Τοῦ Ψελλοῦ περὶ τῶν πέντε δυνάμεων τῆς ψυχῆσ Νοῦς μέν ἐστιν
ὁ θεόθεν κατὰ φύσιν κινούμενος καὶ πηγάζων τὰ νοήματα, ὅς γε καὶ τεχνίτου λόγον ἐπέχει εἴ γε ὡς προσήκει προάγεται· διάνοια
δὲ αὐτὴ τοῦ νοὸς ἡ ἐνέργεια δι' ἧς νοοῦνται τὰ νοούμενα, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις 3 τέχνη οὖσα τεχνίτου· δόξα δὲ ἡ τῶν ἀθρόως νοηθέντων
τοιῶσδε ἢ τοιῶσδε ἔχουσα ὑπόληψις, καλῶς μὲν εἰ καλῶς νοοῦνται, κακῶς δὲ εἰ τοὔμπαλιν. αἴσθησις δέ ἐστιν ἡ
