[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis]

boils in natural movement, which its own industry or sensibility or reason dictates. Conversely, by delay or subtraction, the irascible power manifests its act in impetuous movements, etc. In the lower potencies, the concupiscible power is the appetite for things pertaining to the body, in which, however, it cannot rest because they are not the creator; but it will adhere to the creator if the concupiscible power is quiet. But if the concupiscible power turns itself in an unordered way toward created things, then sensuality in its potencies runs wild so that reason does not intervene, and man becomes worse than every beast. And that affection, namely love, which is called the foot of the soul, because by it the soul is moved to the place toward which it tends; if it is quiet, it is called love; if it is that which abstracts what it has for God, it is not called love, but cupidity or lust. Which, if it has placed itself in falling by its own will, it does not stand, but seeks to fall unwillingly. But if the concupiscible power has taken the beginning of its action from higher potencies, namely from reason or intelligence, the affections descending from it are ordered to the highest good, that is, to God, from whom there is no hope of tending further. And then love is called charity. And the movement of the irascible power is made strength. The highest good has placed the concupiscible power of the soul, as its most ardent desire, within itself as a drink of the most pure living water, and has put away the mortal drink; and by daily affections, it is to be led and brought, so that from its own will, it may extend its hand to whatever it wishes. The soul was also made by God with an irascible power so that it might contain its anger for the sake of its own salvation and strength, and might remain irrevocably in the perseverance of the highest good.

Concerning the Eighth Image.

Reason is the guide and ruler of all potencies, or the charioteer of the chariots. It is the power that compares the cause and the effect, the pot and the potter. It has the balance of the mind of discretion; it distinguishes good from evil. It is that which leads wisdom, gives light from darkness, glory from ignominy, life from death. It is the power of the soul which, knowing the causes of all things, is moved by natural movement, and through the study of inquiry, it investigates the beginning, the middle, and the end of them. For from it, genius is born, whose primary task is to seek the causes of things and to present them to the notice of intelligence.