to it with joy over such art of nature, and inspires a new spirit replete with virtue, which draws that which it finds active there into its own substance, and makes one single soul which lives and feels and circles on itself. And that thou mayst the less wonder at this doctrine, consider the warmth of the sun which, combining with the juice that flows from the vine, becomes wine. And when Lachesis has no more thread, this soul is loosed from the flesh, and virtually bears away with itself both the human and the divine; the other faculties all of them mute,[8] but memory, understanding, and will[9] far more acute in action than before. Without staying, it falls of itself, marvelously to one of the banks.[10] Here it first knows its own roads. Soon as the place there circumscribes it, the formative virtue rays out around it in like manner, and as much as in the living members.[11] And as the air when it is full of rain becomes adorned with divers colors by another’s rays which are reflected in it, so here the neighboring air shapes itself in that form which is virtually imprinted upon it by the soul that hath stopped.[12] And then like the flamelet which follows the fire wherever it shifts, so its new form follows the spirit. Since thereafter from this it has its aspect, it is called a shade; and by this it shapes the organ for every sense even to the sight; by this we speak, and by this we laugh, by this we make the tears and the sighs, which on the mountain thou mayst have perceived. According as the desires and the other affections impress us the shade is shaped; and this is the cause of that at which thou wonderest.” [1] The doctrine set forth by Statius in the following discourse is derived from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., i. 118, 119, who, in his turn, derived it from Aristotle. It is to be found, more briefly stated, in the Convito, iv. 21. [2] A portion of the blood remains after the veins are supplied; in the heart all the blood receives the virtue by which it gives form to the various organs of the body. [3] The heart. [4] The vegetative soul in the plant has attained its full development, “has arrived;” in the animal is “on the way” to perfection. [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.