During its residence in the body the soul plays the part usually
assigned to it in the earlier mediaeval psychology, before the ideas of
Nemesius and Ibn Ghazali had been elaborated and systematized by Albert
and Aquinas. Hildegard regards the brain as having three chambers or
divisions, corresponding to the three parts of man’s nature, an idea
encountered in the writings of St. Augustine. Parallel to these there
are, she tells us,
‘three elements in man by which he shows life; to wit, soul
(_anima_), body (_corpus_), and sense (_sensus_). The soul vivifies
the body and inspires the senses; the body attracts the soul and
reveals the senses; the senses affect the soul and allure the
body. For the soul rules the body as a flame throws light into
darkness, and it has two principal powers or limbs, the intellect
(_intellectus_) and the will (_voluntas_); not indeed that the soul
has limbs to move itself, but that it manifests itself thereby as
the sun declares himself by his brightness.... For the intellect
is attached to the soul as the arms to the body: for as the body
is prolonged into arms with fingers and hands attached, so the
intellect is produced from the soul by the operation of its various
powers.’[112]
We need follow Hildegard no further into her maze of micro-cosmology,
in which an essential similarity and relationship is discovered
between the qualities of the soul, the constitution of the external
cosmos, and the structure of the body, a thought which appears as the
culmination of her entire system and provides the clue to the otherwise
incomprehensible whole.[113]