CAPUT XIX. De prima speculatione, et ejus proprietate
The Twofold Consideration: Dan and Naphtali
The chapter introduces two kinds of consideration—one based on imagination alone (Dan) and one mixed with understanding (Naphtali)—and explains that Dan is born first, presenting a fashioned imagination of future things, while Naphtali rises from imagination to true understanding.
But this needs to be known—in fact, it can hardly be ignored—that the kind of reflection that comes more readily to someone meditating is the one that consists in imagination alone. For the kind that is mixed with understanding alone—the more subtle it is, the harder it is to find.1 That is why Dan is born first, and Naphtali later. What is especially striking in this twofold consideration is this: Dan, through a true imagination of present things, presents a fashioned imagination of things still to come.2 Naphtali, by contrast, often rises through a fashioned imagination of the thing described to a true understanding.
The Judgment of Dan: Imagination and Discernment
The text explores the limits of spiritual understanding, noting that while future goods cannot be falsely invented, the torments of the wicked may be pictured differently through imagination, and concludes by explaining why this imaginative son is called Dan—meaning judgment—because he follows the free decision of personal discernment.
For it is not permitted, through spiritual understanding, to invent anything false about future and invisible goods—though it is no fault to picture the torments of the wicked through imagination far differently from how they really are.3 For who in this life is capable of contemplating them entirely as they are? But each person describes them according to his mind's judgment—not as they are, but as he knows how to invent them—by fashioning figures. That may be why this kind of son is called Dan—that is, judgment—because in that kind of representation he doesn't follow a lesson drawn from experience, but the free decision of his own discernment. For since Dan shapes a representation of future things in each person's mind according to that person's own judgment, anyone who calls the craftsman of such images Dan—that is, judgment—is right, I think.
Read the original Latin
Illud autem sciendum est, imo nec hoc ignorari potest, quia illa consideratio meditanti facilius occurrit, quae in sola imaginatione consistit. Nam illa, quae cum sola intelligentia permiscetur, quanto subtilior, tanto difficilius invenitur. Unde est quod Dan prior, Nephtalim vero posterior nascitur. Hoc autem in hac gemina consideratione valde notabile, quod Dan scilicet per praesentium rerum imaginationem veram repraesentat rerum futurarum imaginationem fictam. Nephtalim vero saepe per descriptae rei imaginationem fictam surgit ad intelligentiam veram. Neque enim licet de futuris et invisibilibus bonis per spiritualem intelligentiam aliquid falsum fingere, quamvis absque culpa sit, tormenta malorum multo aliter quam sunt per imaginationem cernere. Quis enim ea omnino prout sunt in hac vita contemplari sufficiat? Sed quisque ea pro arbitrio mentis non qualia sunt, sed qualia fingere novit, figurando describit.
Unde fortassis hic talis filius Dan, id est judicium, vocatur, quia in tali repraesentatione non experientiae documentum, sed suae discretionis sequitur arbitrium. Nam, quoniam Dan futurarum rerum repraesentationem in cujusque mente ex proprio judicio format, recte quis, ut arbitror, artificem talium Dan in judicium vocat.
Notes
- 1 ↩intelligentia rendered as "understanding" (the intellectual power), not as modern "intelligence" (IQ/cleverness).
- 2 ↩imaginationem fictam rendered "fashioned imagination" (formed/constructed image), not "false" in a pejorative sense; contrasts with veram of present, experienced things.
- 3 ↩Contrast: spiritual intelligentia about future goods may not fabricate the false; imaginative picturing of the damned's torments may differ from their actual form without blame (echoing prior chapter's mystical vs. simple reading).
Benjamin Minor (The Twelve Patriarchs / Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation) companion
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