Hildegard, however, not only believed that as the humors were perturbed and the veins boiled, the health of the body would be affected and perhaps a fever set in,[444] but also that passions, such as wrath and petulance, were thereby aroused and the mind affected.[445] This is suggested in a general way in the _Liber divinorum operum_, but is brought out in more detail in the _Causae et curae_, where various types of men are delineated according to the combinations of humors in their bodies, and their characters are sketched and even their fate to some extent predicted therefrom. In one case[446] “the man will be a good scholar, but headlong and too vehement in his studies, so that he scatters his knowledge over too wide a field, as straw is blown by the wind; and he seeks to have dominion over others. In body he is healthy except that his legs are weak and he is prone to gout; but he can live a long while, if it so please God.” Such a passage hardly sounds consistent with Hildegard’s statement elsewhere already noted that man cannot know the length of his life beforehand. In the case of choleric, sanguine, melancholy, and phlegmatic men[447] Hildegard states what the relations of each type will be with women and even to some extent what sort of children they will have. She also discusses four types of women in very similar style.[448] These are not exactly astrological predictions, but they have much the same flavor and seem to leave little place for freedom of the will. [Sidenote: Hildegard’s varying position.] In one passage, however, Hildegard comfortingly adds that nevertheless the Holy Spirit can penetrate the whole nature of man and overcome his mutable nature as the sun dispels clouds, and so counteract the moist influence of the moon. She also states concerning the significations of the stars concerning man’s future, “These significations are not produced by the virtue of the planets themselves alone or stars or clouds, but by the permission and will and decree of God, according as God wished to demonstrate to men the works of the same, just as a coin shows the image of its lord.”[449] In another passage, on the other hand, Hildegard recognizes, like Aquinas later, that it is only rarely and with difficulty that the flesh can be restrained from sinning.[450] [Sidenote: Nativities for the days of the moon.]