[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis]

A marginal illustration of a hand with a pointing index finger (manicule) is positioned to the left of the first line of text. In the second paragraph, a large decorative initial 'C' contains a circular diagram within its counter; the diagram features a circle intersected by various lines forming internal compartments or a geometric figure.

from myself to add anything, since neither my life nor my science is sufficient for this, but like the peacock who is friends with the slender pen, I have elicited not from myself, but from the authorities of other holy theologians, words and sentences suitable for this work. But if by chance, pushed by necessity, something appears to be mine, do not believe me, but let them weigh the truths which I assert from reason.

¶ First Image.

Since, therefore, the study of the whole of philosophy requires nothing else, not only of man, to whom all that is said is yielded, but we are born to it and have the habit of investigating that he might be a knower of himself, the form of God, so that he might more easily attend to the knowledge of his Creator. But so that you may be able to arrive at the action of knowing your Creator, observe the order of your creation, who, as He disposed to create you, first prepared vegetative things, second sensitive things, for your aid, wonderfully in a certain life. The life of which He instituted not for their own sake, but for you as for ordered parts out of which an integral whole would be perfected. Because man is everything, and in man every creature is complete. For man is vegetative like plants, sensitive like beasts, intellectual like angels. But so that you may be able to know more fully in what they differ from themselves and in what these souls—namely, vegetative, sensitive, and rational—agree, take this example for yourself. Just as a letter and a syllable relate to a word, so the vegetative and sensitive soul relate to the rational. And just as a letter and a syllable can be known specifically by themselves, yet they are not for their own sake, but for the sake of the word, so the vegetative soul in its powers is known in the sensitive. But yet these two souls are not for their own sake, but for the perfection of the rational soul. So neither is the word for its own sake, but for...