VISIO TERTIA, cap. X
The Body's Sides and the Soul's Strength
The physical division of the body's right and left sides mirrors the soul's reliance on justice and the Holy Spirit to prosper in good and endure in adversity.
For in the right side of a person lies the liver and the great heat of the body; that is why the right side is quick to raise itself and to act. On the left side, however, lie the heart and the lung, which strengthen that side for bearing burdens; and they draw heat from the liver as from a furnace. These things signify that on the right side — that is, in the prosperity of a good and upright person's salvation — justice works with the Holy Spirit, so that, raising himself prosperously toward God, he accomplishes whatever good he will; while on the left side, so that he may shun adversity, he desires to be strengthened by confessing God with an upright heart, through the strength of justice.
Hearing, Knowledge, and the Limits of the Soul
The stirrings of the body affect hearing, revealing how justice must guide the soul's reception of good and evil, since good hearing and good knowledge must work together.
But when the veins of the liver are stirred and touched by those humors, they shake the tiny veins of a person's hearing, and sometimes confound that hearing — because through hearing, either health or sickness is often brought to a person: namely, when from prosperity one is shaken beyond measure in joy, or when from adversity one is contracted beyond measure in sorrow. This shows that the tenor of justice, prompted by right thoughts, turns a person away from evil hearing and directs them toward good — it being the case that the soul is sometimes brought both things that are holy and things that are shameful, with the result that a person neither in good things nor in evil things is willing to know how to set any limit for themselves. For good knowledge without good hearing is mute, because what good knowledge knows, good hearing receives, and it has great zeal to treat and declare what is conveyed to it through good knowledge.
Treasuring the Good and Casting Away Evil
Having ordered these faculties, the soul rests by storing good in the heart and rejecting evil, a practice confirmed by the words of Isaiah.
When someone has fittingly arranged all these things, they rest for a while by stepping back from them — like a person who places a treasure in their chest, that is, when they understand good and evil, storing the good away in the secret of their heart and casting evil utterly away from themselves, just as Isaiah exhorts by saying:✦ The words of Isaiah the prophet are fitting for confirming this meaning, and they show in what sense it is to be received.
Read the original Latin
In dextra enim parte hominis jecur et magnus calor corporis est, idcirco et dextra velox ad erigendum se et ad operandum est; in sinistra autem cor et pulmo sunt, quae illam ad onera confortant; et calorem de jecore quemadmodum de fornace habent, quae designant quod in dextra, id est in prosperitate salutis boni et recti hominis, justitia cum Spiritu sancto operatur, ita ut ille prospere ad Deum se erigens, quaelibet bona perficiat; in sinistra autem ut adversa devitet, Deum recto corde confitendo se confortari per robur justitiae exoptat. Sed venae jecoris commotae, humoribus istis tactae, venulas auditus hominis concutiunt, auditumque illius aliquando confundunt, quoniam per auditum homini multoties seu sanitas seu infirmitas infertur, scilicet cum de prosperis supramodum in gaudio concutitur, sive cum de adversis supramodum in tristitia contrahitur, ostendentes quod tenor justitiae cogitationibus rectis provocatus, hominem a malo auditu avertit, et ad bonum dirigit, qui animae illius interdum, et ea quae sancta sunt, et ea quae turpia existunt infert, ita ut homo nec in bonis, nec in malis sibi aliquando modum imponere scire velit. Nam bona scientia sine bono auditu muta est, quia quod bona scientia scit, bonus auditus recipit, illeque magnum studium habet tractare et dictare, quod sibi per bonam scientiam fertur. Qui postquam omnia haec congruenter composuerit, aliquantum ab ipsis cessando quiescit, velut homo qui thesaurum in arcam suam ponit, scilicet cum bonum et malum intelligit, bonum in secreto cordis sui recondens, et malum a se prorsus abjiciens, quemadmodum Isaias dicendo exhortatur:
Verba Isaiae prophetae ad horum astruendam significationem congrua, et quo sensu accipienda sint.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Isa.33.15-Isa.33.16 — Whoever walks in righteousness and speaks uprightly, who refuses gain from oppression, who shakes his hands free from holding a bribe, who stops his ear from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil — Isa.33.16 — He shall dwell on the heights; his refuge shall be the rocky fortresses; his bread is given, his waters are sure.
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