Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/519

the heavenly bodies, and affected by the qualities of naturall and corporeall things: now I call the sensitiveness of the soul, that vivifying and rectifying power of the body, the originall of the senses; the soul it self doth manifest in this body its sensitive powers and perceiveth corporeall things by the body, and locally moveth the body, and governeth it in his place, and nourisheth it in a body. In this sensitiveness two most principal powers predominate; viz. one which is called the Phantasy, or imaginative or cogitative faculty, of whose power we have already spoken, where we have handled the passions of the soul: the other which is called the sense of nature, of the which also we have spoken, where we made mention of witchcraft. Man therefore by the nature of his body is under fate; the soul of man, by the sensitiveness moveth nature in Fate; but by the mind is above fate, in the order of providence; yet reason is free at its own choice; therefore the soul by reason ascendeth into the mind, where it is replenished with divine light; sometimes it descendeth into sensitiveness and is affected by the influences of the heavenly bodies, and qualities of naturall things, and is distracted by the passions and the encountring of sensible objects: sometimes the soul revolveth it selfe wholly into reason, searching out other things either by discourse, or by contemplating it self: for it is possible, that that part of the reason, which the Peripateticks call the possible Intellect, may be brought to this, that it may freely discourse and operate without conversion to his Phantasmes: for so great is the command of this reason, that as often as any thing incurreth either into the mind, or into the sensitiveness, or into nature, or into the body, it cannot passe into the soul, unless reason apply it self to it; by this means the soul perceiveth it self neither to see, nor hear, nor feel, nor that it suffereth any things by the externall senses, untill cogitative reason first apprehend it; but it appiehendeth it when it is at leisure, not when it earnestly gapeth after another thing, as we manifestly see by these who heed not those that they meet, when they more seriously think on something else. Know therefore that neither the superiour influences, nor naturall affections,