Date: c. 1016-1021

"[The Active Intellect's] relation to our souls is that of the Sun to our vision."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"So, initially coming to know something is like treating the eye, but then when the eye is healthy, whenever it wants it looks at something from which a given form is taken, while when it turns from that thing, that [thing] comes to be in potency proximate to act."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: w. c. 1210

"The mind's hand shapes the entire house before the body's hand builds it."

— Vinsauf, Geoffrey of [called Galfridus Anglicus] (fl. 1208-1213)

Date: 1257

"For this triple vision, man was endowed with a triple eye, as explained by Hugh of St. Victor: the eye of flesh, of reason, and of contemplation; the eye of flesh, to see the world and what it contains; the eye of reason, to see the soul and what it contains; the eye of contemplation, to see God...

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

Date: 1257

"As Adam's flesh had been tainted by his sinful soul, becoming prone to lust, so the flesh seeded with lust and carrying in itself a virulent infection, taints and vitiates the soul."

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

Date: 1257

"Consequently, while original sin is a disease infecting both elements, the personal and the physical - the personal through the will and the physical through the flesh - the stain of original sin is blotted out in the soul, while on the other hand the infection and its consequences remain in the...

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

Date: 1257

"This disease denies to the soul the life of grace; [it denies it] the enabling rectitude of all the virtues; it inclines the soul in a certain measure toward every kind of sin."

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

Date: 1273

"We may therefore say that the soul understands, as the eye sees; but it is more correct to say that man understands through the soul."

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Date: 1273

"For that whereby primarily anything acts is a form of the thing to which the act is to be attributed: for instance, that whereby a body is primarily healed is health, and that whereby the soul knows primarily is knowledge; hence health is a form of the body, and knowledge is a form of the soul."

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Date: 1273

"It is separate indeed according to its intellectual power, because the intellectual power does not belong to a corporeal organ, as the power of seeing is the act of the eye; for understanding is an act which cannot be performed by a corporeal organ, like the act of seeing."

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)