VISIO QUARTA, cap. XXVIII
The Brain's Dark Humor
The moist breath rising to the brain produces a protective darkness that resists excessive heat and sends phlegm and bile downward, like a dark fire unleashing storms.
But the brain also has a certain darkness above it, because a person's breath, being moist, sends that moisture upward, and where it reaches its limit and can go no further, it produces darkness; and this darkness resists heat, so that the same brain doesn't break out into burning — just as a dark fire holds back a bright flame so it doesn't cross its boundary; and this same darkness of the brain sends phlegm and bile down into the rest of the body, just as that dark fire often produces storms, thunder, and hail upon the earth.
Pride Darkens the Mind
When the soul reaches upward in pride, it darkens its own knowledge, yet this darkness paradoxically restrains divine wrath and, when unrepentant, invites harsher judgment.
In this way, when the soul stretches its knowledge upward in the swell of pride, through that very act it darkens it as though from above, because a person's sighs, stretched toward pride, lack the purity of true light. And so this inner turmoil also resists the higher strength in this way: that the same strength, by the heat of heavenly desires, does not stir up that knowledge, just as the judgment of God, which gradually examines human sins, often holds back its power so it doesn't completely crush the sinner. And the darkness of that same knowledge brings desire and reckless sin upon a careless person all the more often, because it does not look up to the heavenly judgment — so that the same judgment, in punishing, crushes the various excesses of those who do wrong.
Soul and Body in Tension
The soul, bound in love to the body, alternates between consenting to its cravings and repenting in fiery reason, like a bee working pure and clouded honey, as flesh and spirit struggle together in bright and dark works.
The soul, then — since it holds the embrace of love toward the body with which it works — often consents to it, and when again it recognizes the dark stain of that consent in the fiery faculty of reason, it makes the flesh afflict itself through repentance, and then comforts it again, so the person doesn't give way in his senses. For in the human body the soul remains according to what it finds in its humors, just as a bee works its honeycomb with honey in its vessel — now pure, now clouded. For when the soul ascends upward in this way with its fiery reason, so that the body cannot bear that ascent, it then comes back down and strengthens the body, because the flesh is like frail earth; and so soul and body have different struggles between them, since a person performs both bright and dark works as the soul and flesh work together.
The Sun, the World, and the Inner Life
As the whole body is sustained by the brain just as the world is sustained by the sun, so the three illuminated parts of the world and its one dark part correspond mystically to the inner life of a person.
So it is that the whole body of a person is sustained by the brain, just as the upper and lower regions are strengthened by the sun, which stands at the center of the planets; and likewise, although three parts of the world are illuminated by the sun, God has left the fourth part dark and cold — and the mystical meaning of these things corresponds to the inner life of a person.
Read the original Latin
Sed et cerebrum quamdam nigredinem superius habet, quia anhelitus hominis humidus existens humiditatem illam sursum mittit, quae in fine suo ubi ultra non procedit, nigredinem facit, et nigredo haec ardori resistit, ne idem cerebrum in fervorem erumpat, velut etiam niger ignis lucidum ignem retinet, ne terminum suum transeat; eademque nigredo cerebri flegma et livorem reliquo corpori immittit, quemadmodum et niger ignis iste tempestates, tonitrua et grandinem multoties super terram producit. Isto modo anima cum scientiam suam in favore elationis sursum extendit, per illum eam quasi superius denigrat, quoniam suspiria hominis ibi in elationem extenta puritate verae lucis carent. Unde etiam et ipsa turbulentia supernae fortitudini hoc modo repugnat, quod eadem fortitudo calore coelestium desideriorum eamdem scientiam non excitat, sicut et vindicta Dei, quae peccata hominum paulatim examinat, potentiam ejus multoties retinet, ne peccantem hominem omnino conterat. Et tenebrositas ejusdem scientiae concupiscentiam et temeritatem peccatorum negligenti homini saepius infert, quia supernum judicium non inspicit, ut etiam idem judicium in vindicta diversos excessus delinquentium conterit. Anima utique quoniam amplexionem dilectionis ad corpus cum quo operatur habet, saepe illi consentit, et cum iterum nigredinem consensus istius in ignea rationalitate agnoverit, carnem per poenitentiam se affligere facit, et iterum illam confortat, ne homo in sensibus suis deficiat. In corpore namque hominis anima manet, secundum quod illud in humoribus suis invenit, ut etiam apis favum cum melle in vase suo operatur, nunc scilicet purum, nunc autem turbidum. Quando enim anima cum ignea rationalitate sursum hoc modo ascendit, ut corpus ascensum illum tolerare non possit, tunc iterum descendit, et corpus confortat, quia caro velut terra fragilis est, et sic anima et corpus diversa certamina inter se habent, quoniam homo lucida et tenebrosa opera cum anima et carne operatur.
Quod ita cerebro totum corpus hominis quemadmodum sole, qui medius planetarum est, superiora et inferiora roborentur, et de eo quod tribus partibus mundi a sole illustratis, quartam Deus tenebrosam et frigidam reliquerit, et mystica horum ratio secundum interiorem hominem.
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