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