"For Simple Being, which is visible to the mind alone, is to the mind as the being of color is to the sense of sight."

— Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464)


Work Title
Date
1464
Metaphor
"For Simple Being, which is visible to the mind alone, is to the mind as the being of color is to the sense of sight."
Metaphor in Context
CARDINAL
Transfer, then, to intelligible things these [considerations about] perceptual things. For example, [transfer] to Possibility in an unqualified sense, i.e., to Absolute Possibility, [considerations about] light's possibility; and [transfer] to [absolutely] Simple Being [considerations about] the being of color. For Simple Being, which is
visible to the mind alone, is to the mind as the being of color is to the sense of sight.
Moreover, observe what the mind sees in different beings, which are not anything except what they are possible to be and which can have only what-they-have-from-Possibility. And you will see that different beings are only different modes of the manifestation of Possibility but that their [ultimate] Quiddity cannot be different, because it is Possibility itself, which is manifested in different ways.
(9, p. 1427)
Categories
Provenance
Browsing http://www.cla.umn.edu/jhopkins/DeApice12-2000.pdf
Citation
Nicholas of Cusa. Selected Spiritual Writings. Trans. H. Lawrence Bond. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
Date of Entry
04/24/2005

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.