First Decade, Chapter Eight
On the perfection of the rational soul when rapt or placed in ecstasy, under which seven questions are resolved
Question One
Whether, if a soul is rapt or abstracted from the senses, it can by its own nature divine or know future things; under this question seven little questions are resolved, each of which will be explained below in its own order
It is asked whether divinations in rapt souls are in them by nature. To this it first seems that it must be answered that they are natural to rapt souls, which is proved by reason, authorities, and an example.
First, by reason, thus: the intellectual cognition of a human being is more efficacious than the cognition of brute animals. But certain animals naturally know certain future things, just as cawing crows signify that rain will soon come. Hence Virgil says in Book I of the Georgics:
And the hoarse crow calls the rain with importunate voice.
Therefore, much more will a rapt soul be able naturally to know and divine future things.
For this there is the authority of Augustine, who says in Book XII of the Confessions that, when the human soul approaches death, it foreknows certain future things through the subtlety of its nature; and in Book XII of On Genesis he says that, insofar as the human soul is abstracted from the senses, it belongs to it to foresee future things. Hence it is commonly said that those who are dying, violently insane, sleeping, rapt, or frenzied sometimes divine future things.
Likewise Gregory, in Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 25, says that the human soul itself, when about to depart from the body, through the subtlety of its nature divines and foresees certain future things. He sets down there the example of a certain monk named Gerontius, of his monastery in the city—the monastery of Saint Andrew, or of Saint Gregory—who, oppressed by a grave bodily infirmity, saw men clothed in white descending toward him and saying: “We have come for this purpose: that we may send certain brothers from Gregory’s monastery into military service—Saint Marcellus, Valentinianus, Angelus, and also Gerontius, who beholds us.” When he returned to himself, he disclosed this vision to those three, all of whom then began to die in the same order in which they had been named in the description.
But to the contrary is Ecclesiastes 8, which says: “Great is the affliction of man, because he is ignorant of past things, and he can know future things by no messenger.”
In answer it must be said that there are several ways of speaking about the divination of future things by a rational soul.
For the natural philosophers say that divinations of this kind sometimes occur through an impression of higher bodies. For it is manifest that higher bodies make an impression upon lower bodies. Hence, since the sensitive powers are acts of bodily organs, it follows that the phantasy is in some manner changed by the impression of celestial bodies. And because celestial bodies are the causes of many future things, certain signs of some future things come to be in the imagination.
These signs, however, are perceived more by those sleeping at night than by those awake during the day. For, as the Philosopher says in the book On Sleep and Waking, the things which are carried during the day are more greatly dissipated; for the air at night is more free from disturbance, because nights are quieter, and they produce perception in the body because of sleep, since small interior motions are perceived more by those sleeping than by those awake. These motions, indeed, produce the things from which future events are foreseen.
There is a second way of speaking about divination, belonging to Lord Albert in his commentary on the book On Sleep and Waking. He says that, just as the light of the rays of the stars, communicated to the elements, causes in the elements a certain active power directed toward many effects which the elements could not have produced by themselves—and thus the elements become instruments of the stars—so also the celestial intelligences, that is, the angels, when our organs have been purified, pour into them intrinsic powers by which things that occur at a distance, and future things, are very often foretold. This is accustomed to occur at dawn, when digestion has been completed and fumes do not ascend from the stomach to the brain.
There is also a third, common way of speaking about divination, belonging to theologians, who say that revelations and divinations of souls sometimes proceed from a natural disposition, sometimes from a manifestation by demons, and sometimes from divine revelation.
In the first way, when the soul approaches death itself, it sometimes foreknows certain future things through the subtlety of its nature. This must not be understood as though the soul by its own nature possessed some power of divination, for the natural mode of cognizing belonging to a conjoined soul is to receive cognition from the senses, and not to cognize future things while abstracted from the senses, as Thomas says in the First Part. But the soul is said to divine and foreknow future things in death because, when it is abstracted from the body and from the bodily senses, it is rendered more apt to perceive subtle motions and an influx either divine, or of separated substances, or of celestial bodies.
Second, revelations sometimes occur to human beings from the impression of celestial bodies, as was said above according to the philosophers.
Third, they occur from a manifestation by demons. For since the intellect of demons is higher in the order of nature than the human intellect, the demons know, even by their natural cognition, certain things which are remote from human cognition; and they can reveal such things to human beings, as will be said below in the Third Decade.
Certain revelations occur from divine inspiration, as is said in Daniel 2: “There is a God who reveals mysteries from heaven.” God, moreover, reveals his secrets to human beings, whether through himself or through his angels, in many ways: namely, through a dream, through a vision, through an oracle, through illumination of the mind, and through a transport of the mind.
In the first way, through a dream, something is revealed to us while we are sleeping, through the impression of imaginable forms; and that which is revealed is covered with figures and veiled in images, as when Jacob, while sleeping, saw the ladder in Genesis 28.
A vision occurs when, during wakefulness, something is revealed through the impression of imaginable forms, and the things occur in the order in which they appeared. Such was the vision of Isaiah, concerning which it is said in chapter 6 of the same book: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a high throne”; and such was Daniel’s vision concerning the weeks.
An oracle occurs when, in dreams, Christ, or an angel, a father or mother, or some saint or holy person openly announces whether something will occur or not occur, or that something must be avoided or done. Such was Joseph’s dream in Matthew 1 and the dream of Pharaoh’s butler. Oracles of this kind are accustomed to occur at dawn, when digestion has been completed and fumes do not ascend from the stomach to the brain.
These oracles do not require interpretation if they occur to learned persons, as was the case with Joseph, the husband of Mary, and with Lucianus, to whom Saint Gamaliel appeared. But if they occur to unlearned persons, they require a revelation, as did that dream of Pharaoh’s butler which Joseph interpreted.
And interpreters of dreams say that faith must be given to oracles, provided that they are not illusions of demons, which holy men, as Gregory says in the Dialogues, discern by an inward savor.
Illumination of the mind, as Isidore says in Book III of the Etymologies, is the fullness of the Holy Spirit, through which God revealed his secrets to the apostles, according to that statement of the Apostle: “But God has revealed them to us through the Holy Spirit”; and Acts 2: “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”
To certain persons, moreover, God reveals his secrets through a transport of the mind, that is, an ecstasy or rapture, as Peter saw the vessel let down from heaven with various animals in Acts 10. Such was the ecstasy—or, according to another translation, the sleep—of Adam, concerning which a fuller explanation will be given below.
Lastly, God reveals his secrets to certain persons through the expression of sensible signs: either through a bodily thing appearing outwardly, as God spoke to Moses through the cloud; or through a voice sounding outwardly, as it sounded to Abraham, saying, “Do not extend your hand over the boy,” in Genesis 22; or through a parable signifying mystically, that is, through a voice formed as though by a human being, together with the likeness of some thing, as Balaam says in Numbers 23, “Taking up his parable,” and so forth.
To Augustine and Gregory, who seem by reason, authorities, and an example to maintain that divinations are in the soul by nature, as was brought forward at the beginning of this little question, the answer is given with Thomas in the First Part: Augustine is speaking there not assertively, but by recounting the opinion of Plato, who held that the soul receives cognition of things according to participation in the Ideas, and that it receives this participation better when it is abstracted from the bodily senses, namely while sleeping or in death.
Gregory likewise does not understand divination to be in the soul by nature, but through revelation, as was said in the body of the question.
These things are from Thomas in the First Part, question 86, and from the authors brought forward within the little question.