Sense

Use in the book

Bodily senses already establish a mode of participation in the world: beauty reaches the eye and air sustains the body without purchase or exclusion. They provide an initial schooling in gratitude. Yet Traherne also speaks of a sense of greatness, want, and happiness that belongs to the soul’s intelligent awareness.

The difference between having and enjoying turns on this fuller sense. Unvalued gifts are as though absent, and the person who does not prize them is described as asleep or dead. Divine perfection supplies the highest model: wants and their satisfactions are both vividly present without disturbing blessedness. Sense consequently bridges receptive perception and appreciative consciousness, while never making bodily sensation adequate to every divine object.

Places to read

1. I.21The right of the senses is an immediate title to enjoyment of creation.
2. I.44God’s sense of wants gives perpetual value to their satisfaction.
3. I.49Failure to prize existing gifts is figured as sleeping senses.
4. II.92A glorious sense of the world must be accompanied by awareness of the soul’s greatness.

In this edition

Sensible commonly means aware or perceptibly affected, not merely prudent or reasonable. Attend also to the shift between plural bodily senses and singular sense of a spiritual reality.

Use in the book

Sense apprehends bodily features through their qualities, not sheer bulk alone. Ficino's example of a visible wall makes the order clear: color and light affect sight before the wall's magnitude is judged. Embodied minds ordinarily turn toward sensible things in order to understand, whereas separate minds consider what is intelligible in itself. The comparison establishes differences of object and dependence rather than declaring all sensation false. Imagining a soul stripped of sensation, imagination, and generation helps Ficino describe pure angelic mind, while also distinguishing intellect from the soul's wider functions.

Imagination gathers what the five senses receive separately. Intellect sees more clearly, unites what imagination apprehends through many images, and knows universal principles beyond imagination's scope. This coordinating faculty nevertheless misleads when its image-based mode is imposed on eternity or divine presence. It clothes simple, abiding eternity in successive time; it substitutes extended lines for divine rays and imagines God occupying a place within an immense bodily container. Reason answers that corporeal extension and endless subdivision are not the measure of divine greatness. The fault lies in that application of imagination, not in treating the faculty as intrinsically evil.

Book IV emphasizes imagination's constructive mediation. In the geometer comparison, intellectual principles shape imagination from within and through it shape imaginative spirit. This differs from tracing a figure in dust: materia phantastica names the internally formed imaginative medium rather than an ordinary material surface. The neighboring account of divine wisdom and natural seeds must be read with a translation discrepancy in view: its Latin places natural seeds in the vivifying and motive power, while the supplied English reverses that relation.

In the Euclid example, the lantern reveals a particular step, imagination conceives it, appetite chooses it, and the feet execute it. The named traveler comes from Megara to hear Socrates; this does not identify him with the geometer of the separate analogy. Celestial imagination similarly attends to a seed presented by the motive power and unfolds the corresponding configuration. Imagination thus mediates both particular cognition and directed bodily realization. Its relation to reason changes with context, just as ratio elsewhere names an account or principle rather than the faculty opposed to imagination.

The five senses receive their objects separately; imagination gathers their contributions and adds something higher; intellect sees in one what imagination presents in many images and also knows universal principles. Crucially, Ficino says intellect sees individual things more clearly as well. The ascent to universals is therefore not presented as losing particulars. God’s single power is argued to encompass what humans know through the three levels.

Further passage references. Proem.9; I.2.13; I.3.2, I.3.26; I.5.16; I.6.9; II.5.2–32; II.6.12–1423; II.9.16; IV.1.11; IV.2.13–IV.2.16234

II.9.16, II.9.17: Integrated cognition retains individuals while adding universal principles and every mode of being

Places to read

1. I.2.13 and I.3.2Sensible qualities, rather than bare bulk alone, account for the visible wall and its cognition.
2. II.5.2–32 and II.6.12–1423Image-bound imagination distorts eternity and divine presence when it imposes spatial or successive models.
3. IV.1.11The geometer forms imagination from within, unlike drawing in dust.
4. IV.2.13–16234Imagination receives a particular displayed step or seed and mediates its desired execution.

Translation in this edition

The same imagination that misleads when bodily imagery is imposed upon eternity mediates successful action in Book IV. The geometer and the Euclid traveling from Megara are separate examples; the IV.1.11 seed/power reversal must not be used to reconstruct their causal sequence.

“Collectively” for summatim here parallels its use for divine intuition in II.10.10, but the powers are not thereby identical. The local hierarchy and the qualifications of divine names remain necessary.

cogitare / fingere / effingere

cogitare / fingere / effingere. Printed forms: Cogitamus; cogitamus; cogitare; cogitari; effingi; fingi.

To think, imagine, or fashion mentally. The mind can conceive a degree beyond any assigned finite number; pure capacity can include whatever can be imagined. References: II.4.3, II.4.4, II.6.12. See Sense and imagination.

discernere / animadvertere

discernere / animadvertere. Printed forms: animadvertimus; discernamus; Discernere; discernit.

To discriminate or notice what is conceived. A person may conceive pure infinity without recognizing it as God; imagination also discriminates sensory contributions. References: II.5.2, II.6.12, II.9.16. See Sense and imagination.

iudicium / perdo

iudicium / perdo. Printed forms: iudicium; perditur.

Judgement and its loss or impairment. Distance impairs judgement of a wall’s quantity sooner than perception of colour and light, supporting quality’s perceptual priority in the argument. References: I.2.13. See Sense and imagination.

quinque sensus / singulatim / summatim

quinque sensus / singulatim / summatim. Printed forms: quinque; sensibus; sensus; singulatim; summatim.

Five senses, separate reception, and gathered cognition. Imagination integrates sensory contributions; divine collective intuition is a higher use of summatim, not sensory summary. References: II.9.16, II.10.10. See Sense and imagination.

sensus rationalis

sensus rationalis. Printed forms: sensum, inquam, rationalem.

Rational perception or awareness. Ficino argues that a nature ordering its works more rationally than humans cannot lack a superior form of awareness. References: II.13.19. See Sense and imagination.

volutare secum

volutare secum. Printed forms: secum ipsa volutat.

To turn something over inwardly in thought. Mind's thinking of geometrical principles shapes imagination without an external hand or drawing tool. References: IV.1.11. See Sense and imagination.

Euclid (authorities and cited works)

Euclid. In the lantern example, he plans to travel from Megara to Athens to hear Socrates; each step still requires a particular perception, desire, and action. The passage does not identify him as the geometer used in another analogy. IV.2.13–16234. See Fate; Sense and imagination.