Mathematical Mirror

and through this the spider makes a geometric web, and the bee a hexagonal house, choosing one of the figures that fill the space, and the swallow [makes] a nest, and so it is with all the works of brutes, which are similar to human artifice. And man, while sleeping, sees wonders through this virtue, and all the virtues of the sensitive soul serve this one and obey it, both the posterior and the anterior [ones], because they all exist for its sake. For the species that are in the imagination multiply themselves into the cogitation, although in the imagination they are according to their primary existence because of the phantasy original: "Phantasia" which uses those species, but the cogitative [virtue] possesses those species more nobly, and the species of the estimative and memorial [virtues] are made in the cogitative [virtue] according to a more noble existence than they have in themselves, and therefore it uses all the other virtues as its instruments. And in man, the rational soul comes from outside and by creation, and is united to the cogitative [virtue] first and immediately, and it uses it principally as its special instrument, and through it, species are made in the rational soul. When that [cogitative virtue] is damaged, the judgment of reason is perverted most of all, and when it is healthy, then the intellect operates well and rationally.

CHAPTER V.

THE Latin text of Aristotle does not show us this distinction, for no explicit mention is made except of the common sense, and imagination, and memory. Because, however, the text of Aristotle cannot be understood there due to its corruption—just as it cannot elsewhere, as it is everywhere [corrupt]—and Avicenna was the perfect imitator and expositor of Aristotle, and the leader and prince of philosophy after him, as the commentator says on the chapter On the Rainbow original: "de Iride", therefore one must adhere to the opinion of Avicenna, which is plain and perfect. And although the translators of the books of Avicenna, as in that book On the Soul