Dodi Ve-Nechdi (Quaestiones Naturales)

back of the head, the middle of the head being reserved for the ratio (reason). The seat of the animal soul is in the heart, and that of the vegetable soul in the liver (according to Plato, in the abdomen). Through the blood we get the right proportions in the mixtures of the four chief moistures of the organism, the humours, each of which has its special seat. Yellow bile and black bile, blood, and phlegm have each two of the distinctive qualities—warm, cold, moist, and dry—being either warm and dry, cold and dry, warm and moist, or cold and moist.

Adelard was the first to make accessible to the West, by means of translations, the knowledge of the writings of Galen, as well as the works of the Arabic and Jewish physicians.

Body and soul are two completely different substances; their junction is purely external and accidental, as they bear the impress of attributes that are totally opposed. Combination and change characterize the body, while simplicity and eternity characterize the soul. By virtue of her origin and powers, the soul governs the body, which she protects. She existed before and without the body, and in her pre-existent state, she was pure spirit—free and untrammeled. By her entry into earthly life, she is subjected to conditions of existence that are totally different; she is incarcerated in the body as in a prison-chamber, so that she is limited in her spiritual uplifting, with many defects attaching to her, rendering her clear outlook blurred and weak. The soul's striving to ascend out of the world of matter into the intellectual region, and thus to reach the highest perfection, is an effort to regain her former condition. The soul's mandate when joined to the body is to restore the body to its right and proper measure and to preserve its equilibrium; but the soul, in her earthly course, falls from her high estate of spirituality and purity into the low depths of materialism. Her original, natural, and good dispositions are thereby converted into their opposites; even the ratio loses its hold and rule through the influence of the body.

In order to gauge the general structural differences in the two works, the Dodi of Berachya and the Quaestiones of Adelard, I have supplied in the translation of the former work a cross-reference at the head of each chapter. This will make the comparison easy, and certainly more vivid than any brief and bare summing-up on my part in this