[5] From the vegetative, the soul has become sensitive,—anima sensitiva.
[6] A being possessed of intellect,—the last stage in the progress of the soul, when it becomes came intellective.
[7] Averroes asserted the intellect to be impersonal and undivided in essence; not formally, but instrumentally only, united with the individual. Hence there was no personal immortality.
[8] The faculties of sense mute because their organs no longer exist.
[9]The spiritual faculties.
[10] Of Acheron or of Tiber, according as the soul is damned or saved.
[11] In this account of the formation of the bodily semblance in the spiritual realms, Statius no longer follows the doctrine of Aquinas. The conception is derived from Plato; but the form given to it is peculiar to Dante.
[12] Stopped in the place allotted to it.
And now we had come to the last circuit,[1] and turning to the right hand, we were intent upon another care. Here the bank shoots forth flame, and the ledge breathes a blast upward which drives it back, and sequesters a path from it.[2] Wherefore it was needful to go one by one along the unenclosed side; and on the one hand I was afraid of the fire, and on the other I was afraid of falling off. My Leader said, “Through this place, one must keep tight the rein upon the eyes, because for little one might go astray.” “Summae Deus clementiae,”[3] in the bosom of the great burning then I heard singing, which made me care not less to turn. And I saw spirits going through the flame; wherefore I looked at them and at my own steps, apportioning to each my sight from moment to moment. After the end of that hymn, they loudly cried: “Virum non cognosco;”[4] then began again the hymn with low voice; this finished, they cried anew, “To the wood Diana kept herself, and drove therefrom Helice,[5] who had felt the poison of Venus.” Then they turned to singing; then wives they cried out, and husbands who were chaste, as virtue and marriage enjoin upon us. And I believe this mode suffices them through all the time the fire burns them. With such cure it is needful, and with such food, that the last wound of all should be closed up.
[1] The word in the original is tortura. Benvenuto’s comment is, “nunc incipiebant torquere et flectere viam, ideo talem deflectionem appellat torturam.” Buti, on the contrary, says, “tortura cioe tormento.”