Cause Principle Unity

On magic
disturbed by things which do not affect or disturb us. And sometimes we
are touched and injured more significantly by those things whose assaults
we are not aware of than we are by things which we do perceive. As a result,
many things which are seen, and forms which are absorbed through the
eyes, do not arouse any consciousness in our direct and external sensory
powers. Nevertheless, they do penetrate more deeply and lethally, so
that the internal spirit is immediately conscious of them, as if it were
a foreign sense or living thing. Thus, it would not be easy to refute some
of the Platonists and all of the Pythagoreans, who believe that one
human person of himself lives in many animals, and when one of these
animals dies, even the most important one, the others survive for a long
time.
Hence, it would obviously be stupid to think that we are affected and
injured only by those visible forms which generate clear awareness in the
senses and the soul. That would not be much different from someone who
thinks that he is injured more or less only by blows of which he is more or
less conscious. However, we experience more discomfort and suffering by
being pricked by a needle or by a thorn irritating the skin than we do by a
sword thrust through from one side of the body to the other, whose effect
is later felt a great deal more, but at the time we are unaware of the injury
caused by its penetration of parts of the body.
So, indeed, there are many things which stealthily pass through the eyes
and capture and continuously intrude upon the spirit up to the point of the
death of the soul, even though they do not cause as much awareness as do
less significant things. For example, seeing certain gestures or emotions or
actions can move us to tears. And the souls of some faint at the sight of the
spilling of another’s blood or in observing the dissection of a cadaver. There
is no other cause of this than a feeling which binds through vision.
Fourthly, the bondings arising from imagination
The role of the imagination is to receive images derived from the senses
and to preserve, combine and divide them. This happens in two ways.
First, it occurs by the free creative choice of the person who imagines, for
example, poets, painters, story writers and all who combine images in some
organized way. Second, it occurs without such deliberate choice. The
latter also happens in two ways: either through some other cause which
chooses and selects, or through an external agent. The latter, again, is
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