table, takes in time heart virtue informative of all the human
members; even as that blood does, which passes through the veins
to become those members.[2] Digested yet again, it descends to
the part whereof it is more becoming to be silent than to speak;
and thence, afterwards, it drops upon another's blood in the
natural vessel. There one and the other meet together; the one
ordained to be passive, and the other to be active because of the
perfect place[3] wherefrom it is pressed out; and, conjoined with
the former, the latter begins to operate, first by coagulating,
and then by quickening that to which it gives consistency for its
own material. The active virtue having become a soul, like that
of a plant (in so far different that this is on the way, and that
already arrived),[4] so worketh then, that now it moves and
feels, as a sea-fungus doth; and then it proceeds to organize the
powers of which it is the germ. Now, son, the virtue is
displayed, now it is diffused, which issues from the heart of the
begetter, where nature is intent on all the members.[5] But how
from an animal it becomes a speaking being,[6] thou as yet
seest not; this is such a point that once it made one wiser than
thee to err, so that in his teaching he separated from the soul
the potential intellect, because he saw no organ assumed by
it.[7] Open thy heart unto the truth that is coming, and know
that, so soon as in the foitus the articulation of the brain is
perfect, the Primal Motor turns to it with joy over such art of
nature, and inspires a new spirit replete with virtue, which
draws that which it finds active there into its own substance,
and makes one single soul which lives and feels and circles on
itself. And that thou mayst the less wonder at this doctrine,
consider the warmth of the sun which, combining with the juice
that flows from the vine, becomes wine. And when Lachesis has no
more thread, this soul is loosed from the flesh, and virtually
bears away with itself both the human and the divine; the other
faculties all of them mute,[8] but memory, understanding, and
will[9] far more acute in action than before. Without staying, it
falls of itself, marvelously to one of the banks.[10] Here it
first knows its own roads. Soon as the place there circumscribes
it, the formative virtue rays out around it in like manner, and
as much as in the living members.[11] And as the air when it is
full of rain becomes adorned with divers colors by another's rays
which are reflected in it, so here the neighboring air shapes
itself in that form which is virtually imprinted upon it by the
soul that hath stopped.[12] And then like the flamelet which
follows the fire wherever it shifts, so its new form follows the
spirit. Since thereafter from this it has its aspect, it is
called a shade; and by this it shapes the organ for every sense
even to the sight; by this we speak, and by this we laugh, by
this we make the tears and the sighs, which on the mountain thou
mayst have perceived. According as the desires and the other
affections impress us the shade is shaped; and this is the cause
of that at which thou wonderest."

[1] The doctrine set forth by Statius in the following discourse
is derived from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., i. 118, 119,
who, in his turn, derived it from Aristotle. It is to be found,
more briefly stated, in the Convito, iv. 21.

[2] A portion of the blood remains after the veins are supplied;
in the heart all the blood receives the virtue by which it gives
form to the various organs of the body.

[3] The heart.

[4] The vegetative soul in the plant has attained its full
development, "has arrived;" in the animal is "on the way" to
perfection.

[5] From the vegetative, the soul has become sensitive,--anima
sensitiva.

[6] A being possessed of intellect,--the last stage in the
progress of the soul, when it becomes came intellective.

[7] Averroes asserted the intellect to be impersonal and
undivided in essence; not formally, but instrumentally only,
united with the individual. Hence there was no personal
immortality.

[8] The faculties of sense mute because their organs no longer
exist.

[9]The spiritual faculties.

[10] Of Acheron or of Tiber, according as the soul is damned or
saved.

[11] In this account of the formation of the bodily semblance in
the spiritual realms, Statius no longer follows the doctrine of
Aquinas. The conception is derived from Plato; but the form
given to it is peculiar to Dante.

[12] Stopped in the place allotted to it.


And now we had come to the last circuit,[1] and turning to the
right hand, we were intent upon another care. Here the bank
shoots forth flame, and the ledge breathes a blast upward which
drives it back, and sequesters a path from it.[2] Wherefore it
was needful to go one by one along the unenclosed side; and on
the one hand I was afraid of the fire, and on the other I was
afraid of falling off. My Leader said, "Through this place, one


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