Page:Isaac of nineveh mystical treatises.djvu/15

 world. Therefore they even cannot perceive their affections and because they do not perceive them they are not anxious to be cured from them.

The world is said by speculative examination to be the extension of a common name unto distinct affections. If we wish to call the affections by a common name we call them world; if we mention the affections separately, we call them by their separate names. The affections are parts of the usual current of the world. Where they have ceased, there the world’s current has ceased. They are: love of riches; gathering of possessions; fatness of the body giving rise to the tendency towards carnal desire; love of honour which is the source of envy exercising government; pride and haughtiness of magistracy; folly; glory among men, which is the cause of choler, bodily fear.

Where their current has been dammed, there the world, after their example, has to some extent ceased to be maintained and to exist. In the same way as some of the saints, who though being alive, yet are dead; for they are alive bodily, but they do not live carnally. See in which of those thou art alive; then thou shalt know in how many parts thou art living to the world and in how many thou art dead.

When thou hast learned what the world is, thou wilt be instructed in these distinctions and also concerning thy being bound to the world or thy being free from it.

In short: the world is bodily behaviour and carnal thoughts. For the overcoming of the world is also to be recognised in these two: viz. from the change of behaviour and from the alteration of the impulses.

From the impulses of thy mind to the things towards which its impulses go astray, thou canst understand the measure of thy behaviour: viz. to which things thy nature turns without labour; which are the constant inclinations and which are those set into motion fortuitously; whether the mind is the agent for the apprehension of incorporeal impulses only, or whether it works wholly through matter; whether this materiality is an affected state, or whether the impulses are but the stamps of the mind’s service to the body, so that the mind, not of its own will, is hallucinating concerning those faculties by which it performs virtues and from which, in a sound state, it derives its motive for fervour and concentration of thought, so that the mind can act corporeally, even with the loftiest aim, be-