Inclination and tendency

Use in the book

Among rival explanations of the soul’s presence in a body, one describes an inclination and tendency toward the body while the soul exercises mastery over it. This is one proposed relation alongside cooperation, participation in a whole, and the presence of an art in its instrument. The directional image does not by itself imply that the body overpowers the soul. The report about Plato at I.14.1a.2 uses neusis and rhopē of a body in a foreign place; there the direction concerns heaviness and lightness.

Places to read

1. I.49.41.6Inclination toward the body is one account of the soul’s relation to it.
2. I.14.1a.2Neusis and rhopē describe a body’s inclination outside its proper place.

Translation in this edition

“Inclination” preserves the directional image. “Fall” would introduce a stronger narrative than this wording requires.

Use in the book

Traherne refuses to identify large desire with vice. The inclination toward riches and dominion is noble, even a highest virtue when rightly guided; misery arises from pursuing inadequate objects by the wrong means. Gifts already near the senses answer desires that conquest leaves unsatisfied.

The study of humanity therefore investigates inclinations rather than simply suppressing them. Curiosity, ambition, emulation, tenderness, and the desire to be esteemed all have a place in the equipment for felicity. Their magnitude indicates the magnitude of the objects intended for them. This affirmative account still requires discrimination: an inclination reveals capacity and destination, but its accustomed object may be an invention of corrupted education.

Places to read

1. I.23The desire for riches becomes virtuous when directed toward freely given treasures.
2. III.42The study of human inclinations leads from humanity to divinity.

In this edition

Inclination and propensity describe native tendencies here; neither term alone guarantees that a particular choice or acquired appetite is right.

Use in the book

V.523456789 distinguishes soul from angel by orientation, not by making the soul material. Angel neither depends on matter nor inclines toward it. Soul is nearer matter and bends toward its animation, yet does not draw its own essence from it. Ficino relates the name anima to this inclination. This is his explanatory account, not an independently established linguistic etymology.

Four arguments secure independence. The causal ranking has already removed matter as soul’s cause. The second argument says a principle immersed in matter could not rise to the divine and join lowest to highest. The third moves from primary self-motion through free activity to circular return into itself. The fourth says the principle that first moves and forms matter rules rather than mixes with it.

The ensuing consequences are separately stated. Soul has no quantitative parts to scatter, no bodily foundation whose removal would make it collapse, no elemental battle entering its essence, and no capacity to receive an alien harmful quality in the material manner. None of these claims requires that the embodied soul have no relation to a body. “Separated” is explained as separable in potency at the end of V.5.9.

The mixing-bowl of souls, attributed to Plato’s Timaeus, supplies an image for the third essence as seat of rational souls. It should not be read as a physical container in which soul-parts are stirred together. The same chapter has excluded quantitative composition.

Places to read

1. V.5.5, V.5.6Soul’s inclination is distinguished from causal dependence, and the prior argument is recalled.
2. V.5.7, V.5.8The world’s bond and circular self-return argue for material independence.
3. V.5.9Rule, separability and absence of bodily routes to destruction are developed together.

Translation in this edition

The apparatus preserves the repeated inclination/dependence contrast rather than treating the words as synonyms. “Mixing-bowl” translates Ficino’s patera and attribution; this companion does not claim to have independently checked an exact quotation from Plato.

alligare / addicere

alligare / addicere. Printed forms: addicta; alligata; alligatur.

To bind or subject to another's control. Freedom from bodily bonds is inferred from self-directed activity; the temperament objection imagines the mind bound to mutable body. References: V.5.8, V.15.13. See Inclination and independence.

immergere / emergere

immergere / emergere. Printed forms: emergeret; immersa.

To immerse and to emerge, images of being bound within matter or rising beyond it. A materially immersed essence could not reach divine things and function as the world's bond. References: V.5.7, V.10.2. See Inclination and independence.

inclinari

inclinari. Printed forms: inclinationem; inclinatur; inclinetur.

To incline toward matter, here an orientation to animation. Soul's inclination explains its lower relation without making matter a cause of its essence. References: V.5.5. See Inclination and independence.

liber / libere / libertas

liber / libere / libertas. Printed forms: libera; liberam; libere; libertate; liberum.

Liber means free, libere freely, and libertas freedom, particularly freedom from material dependence or forced movement. Primary movement is called free; irrational life is said to lack this freedom because sensory objects draw it. References: V.4.8, V.5.8, V.8.3, V.10.2, V.10.3, V.14.8. See Inclination and independence.

patera

patera. Printed forms: pateram.

A bowl, presented as Plato's mixing-bowl of souls. The image names the seat or order of souls, without making them quantitatively mixed bodily ingredients. References: V.5.9. See Inclination and independence.

separabilis

separabilis. Printed forms: separabilis.

Separable, capable of independence from matter. The explicit potentia separabilis qualifies 'separated' without denying embodied relation. References: V.5.9. See Inclination and independence.