The Heroic Enthusiasts, Part I (Gli Eroici Furori) · 41 of 63 · tr. L. Williams
Fourth Dialogue-h
Heaven the second gift denies, To him who does the first despise.
With these and similar reasons the soul, taking part with the weakest, seeks to recall the thoughts to the care of the body.
And these, although late, come and show themselves, but not in that form in which they departed, but only to declare their rebellion, and force her to follow.
And the sorrowing one thus laments: 23.
Ah, dogs of Actæon, ah, proud ingrates!
Whom to the abode of my divinity I sent; Without hope do ye return to me; And, coming to the mother's side, ye bring Back unto me a too unhappy boon; Ye mangle me, and will that I live not.
Leave me, life, that I may mount up to my sun, A double streamlet, mad, without my fount!
When shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve?
When shall it be, that, taking myself hence, And swiftly rising to the heights above, Together with my heart I may abide, And with my thoughts I may be deified?
The Platonists say that the soul, as to its superior part, always consists in the intellect, in which it has more of understanding than of soul, seeing that it is called soul only in so far as it vivifies the body and sustains it.
So here, the same essence which nourishes and maintains the thoughts on high, together with the exalted heart, is induced by the inferior part to afflict itself, and recall them as rebels.
Cic.
So that they are not two contrary existences, but one, subject to two contradictory terms?
Tans.
So it is, precisely.
As the ray of the sun which touches the earth, and is joined to obscure and to inferior things, which it brightens, vivifies, and kindles, and is then joined to the element of fire—that is, to the star, whence it proceeds, and has its beginning, and is diffused, and in which it has its own and original subsistence—so the soul, which is in the horizon of Nature, is corporeal and incorporeal, and contains that with which it rises to superior things and declines to things inferior.
And this, you may perceive, does not happen by reason and order of local motion, but solely through the impulse of one and of another power or faculty.
As when the sense rises to the imagination, the imagination to the reason, the reason to the intellect, the intellect to the mind, then the whole soul is converted into God, and inhabits the intelligible world; whence, on the other hand, she descends in an inverse manner to the world of feeling, through the intellect, reason, imagination, sense, vegetation.
Cic.
It is true that I have heard that the soul, in order to put itself in the ultimate degree of divine things, descends into the mortal body, and from this goes up again to the divine degrees, which are three degrees of intelligence.
For there are others in which the intellectual surpasses the animal, which are said to be the celestial intelligences; and others in which the animal surpasses the intellectual, which are the human intelligences; others there are, of which those things are equal, as those of demons or heroes.
Tans.
The mind then cannot desire except that which is near, close, known, and familiar.
The pig cannot desire to be a man, nor wish for those things that are suitable to the human appetite.
He likes better to turn about in mud than in a bed of linen, he would prefer a sow to the most beautiful of women, because the affection follows the reason of the species.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The metaphor of the sun ray touching earth and returning to the star illustrates cosmic correspondence.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
The 'mad' state of the soul seeking the sun reflects ecstatic receptivity.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
The text describes the soul as 'mad, without my fount' in its pursuit of the divine sun.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text outlines degrees of intelligence (celestial, human, demons) and levels of ascent.
Bruno's eroici furori — a passionate, ennobling spiritual ardor that drives the soul toward divine wisdom; distinguished from base or animal passions by its orientation to infinite truth.
[auto] The text is from Bruno's work on this subject and describes the soul's passionate, rebellious ascent ('mad', 'rebellion') toward divinity.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The staged ascent from sense to mind parallels the scala amoris structure.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The soul's internal structure of ascent and descent mirrors the cosmic order.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The soul laments its condition as a 'ponderous mass' separated from the divine sun.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text explicitly asks when the soul may be 'deified' and abide with its heart.