VISIO QUARTA, cap. XLIII
The Hidden Seed of Teeth
The formation of teeth in a child is likened to flowers hidden in winter branches, waiting for summer's heat to break forth.
When a baby is tender, fluid descends from its brain to the gums and, together with certain other humors, forms small cavities in them, in which it lies hidden right up until the maturity just mentioned — the way tiny flowers lie hidden through the winter in the branches of a tree. But when the strength of blood and its heat have then risen up in the child like summer, that same fluid, thickened with other humors and the heat of the blood, breaks forth into the teeth, just as when the heat of summer arrives, tiny flowers on the branches of trees begin to appear.
The Soul's Captivity in the Body's Heat
As the body matures and blood grows hot, the soul is drawn into the body's passions, working against its own nature amid the allurements of the flesh.
For before teeth have formed in the baby himself, he is gripped by heavy pain in the gums as the fluid of the brain and other humors hollow them out; and later, once boyhood has passed and he has been established in the fullness of his blood, with the holiness of the soul now fading in him through the taste of flesh, he embraces wantonness — and so a person of that age must be held under the strict guardianship of fear. And so the soul rules over the body while a person, still placed in uncertainty, is thinking about what to choose or do, or what not to; yet in the body it is led and bound as if captive, without delay, and when a person commits evil through the taste of sin by the heat of thickened blood, the soul itself also works — against its own nature, though unwilling — along with the body. And just as the heat of summer brings the sprouts of the earth and the fruits of trees to maturity, so a person, delighted by the allurements of the flesh through the heat of his own blood, does not stop committing whatever vices he has the strength to carry out.
The Inner Meaning of Teeth
A reflective question invites the reader to consider how the grinding of food by teeth mirrors the soul's inner spiritual work.
What is the point of teeth breaking up and grinding the food that nourishes a person, and how does the soul imitate these things in its own inner depths?
Read the original Latin
Cum autem infans tener est, liquor de cerebro illius ad gengivas descendit, et cum caeteris quibusdam humoribus cavernulas in illis facit, in quibus etiam usque ad praefatam maturitatem latet, velut flosculi per hiemem in ramis arboris latent. Sed cum deinde fortitudo sanguinis et calor quasi aestas in illo exsurrexerit, idem liquor cum aliis humoribus et calore sanguinis coagulatus, in dentes erumpit, quemadmodum cum calor aestatis supervenerit, flosculi in ramis arborum apparere incipiunt. Infans enim priusquam dentes in ipso oriantur, gengivis per liquorem cerebri caeterosque humores cavatis, gravi dolore infirmitatis interim tenetur, qui postea puerili aetate transacta, in plenitudine sanguinis sui constitutus, sanctitate animae per gustum carnis in eo jam deficiente, lasciviam amplectitur, ideoque homo illius aetatis sub magna custodia timoris habendus est. Ita et anima corpori dominatur, dum homo adhuc in dubio positus cogitat quid eligere vel agere velit, vel quid non; quae tamen in corpore sine mora quasi captiva ducitur et ligatur, et quando homo gustu peccati per ferventem sanguinem coagulato malum committit, ipsa quoque cum corpore suo contraria naturae suae licet invita operatur. Et quemadmodum calor aestatis germina terrae et fructus arborum ad maturitatem perducit, sic homo per fervorem sanguinis sui illecebris carnis delectatus, quaelibet vitia prout valet perficere non desistit.
Quod dentes, qui cibos quibus homo alitur comminuunt et circumferunt, similitudinem molendini obtineant, et quomodo anima in interioribus suis ista imitetur.
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