[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis]

accepts the forms adapted by imagination to the memory and joins them without experience. Whence fantasy is a deceptive creator of new forms. For it fashions forms which were never presented to the senses, such as when it fashions in a dog the head of a man, or the feet of a horse on the head of a hippocentaur. Thus fantasy and its sister imagination, in the mind of man, by proposing and dividing things and forms and their manifold intentions, do not rest. And in these occupations, the light of divine grace is extinguished, and natural intelligence is not a little impeded. For the fiction of fantasy does not speak the truth before God, which does not make the face of man, but corrupts the heart. Whence the psalm Psalm 15:1: "Lord, who shall dwell in your tabernacle? He who speaks truth in his heart." For it is not occupied with fantastic fictions. For fantasy by itself finds nothing, if it is subtly considered, but joins forms found in the memory, foolishly and discreetly. Whence Augustine on Job: God created the creatures, but human foolishness provides the form. For some, having strayed from the intelligence of truth, think that they can examine God or the soul or other intelligible things by fantastic fiction, and they deceive themselves into error. Whence in the book of Wisdom Wisdom 1:5: "The holy spirit of discipline will flee from deceit and will withdraw itself from thoughts that are without understanding." Therefore, imagination was given to man because divine goodness wished to imprint the forms of its creation on the rational soul, so that wherever it turned, it might behold the sign of its spouse and, in the contemplation of such ineffable gifts, might breathe with a more ardent embrace. Fantasy was given to man so that while he might behold the manifold variety of forms in himself, he might more easily understand the power of his creator, and what works he could lose in his homeland if he found such various fantastic forms in himself.

Concerning the Sixth Image.

Memory is an apprehensive potency which takes its beginning from the sense and the estimative virtue, whose intentions it collects for itself and preserves the forms of things perceived by imagination and fantasy in a potential habit, so that it may render the singular act of imagination for the multitude of perceptions.