Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Second dialogue<br />
DICSONO. So that, in some way, you allow Anaxagoras’ notion, who<br />
qualifies with the word ‘latent’ the particular forms of nature, and you<br />
approve, in part, that of Plato, who has them derive from ideas, and, in part,<br />
that of Empedocles, who has them issue from the intelligence, and, in<br />
certain measure, that of Aristotle, who puts them down as emerging, so to<br />
speak, from the potency of matter?<br />
TEOFILO. Yes, for as we have said, where there is form, there is, in a<br />
way, everything. Where there is soul, spirit, life, there is everything. The<br />
one who forms is the intellect, which acts through the ideal species; even<br />
if it does not bring forms out of matter, it does not then look for them<br />
outside of matter, since this spirit fills everything.<br />
POLIINNIO. Velim scire quomodo forma est anima mundi ubique tota [I<br />
would like very much to know how the world soul is a form which is present<br />
everywhere in its totality], if it is indivisible. It must, then, be very<br />
large, even of infinite dimension, since you say the world is infinite.<br />
GERVASIO. Here is good reason, indeed, for its being large. It is like<br />
what a preacher at Grandazzo in Sicily said of our Lord: to signify that he<br />
is present everywhere, he ordered a crucifix as large as the church, in the<br />
image of God the Father, who has the heavens for a canopy and the starry<br />
sky for a seat, and who possesses such long legs that they stretch down to<br />
earth, which he uses as a footstool. To this preacher came a certain peasant,<br />
saying, ‘Reverend father, how many ells of cloth would it take to make<br />
his hose?’ Another said that all Melazzo and Nicosia’s chickpeas, haricots<br />
and broad beans would not suffice to fill his belly. Be careful, then, that this<br />
world soul is not cut out the same way.<br />
TEOFILO. I would not know how to satisfy your perplexity, Gervasio,<br />
but I can that of Master Poliinnio. But for both of you, I will use a comparison,<br />
for I want you, too, to gather some fruit from our reasonings and<br />
discussions. In short, you must know, then, that the world soul and the<br />
divinity are not present entirely everywhere and through every part, in the<br />
same way as some material thing could be – since that is impossible for any<br />
body or spirit of any kind whatsoever – but are present in a manner that is<br />
not easy to explain, save in the following way. Please note that if we say the<br />
world soul and universal form are everywhere, we do not mean in a corporeal<br />
or dimensional sense, for they are not of that nature and cannot be found<br />
so in any part. They are everywhere present in their entirety in a spiritual<br />
way. To take an example (crude as it is), you might imagine a voice which<br />
is entire inside the whole room, and in every part of it: in effect, one hears<br />
49