Chapter Nine: On the Meaning of the Irascible Faculty

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his form. As for the second, he is (1) deficient in the two of them. As for the third, his heart is strong and abundant in heat while the brain is small and of little [16] coldness; and such a one is swift to anger and to ruin. As for the fourth, his heart is small and his brain large by reason of the abundance of matter (māddah); and therefore he is of little understanding and weak of heart

Chapter Nine

On the meaning of the irascible power

It is that which repels what harms us, or what we suppose to be such; and its dwelling is the heart, which has two cavities, one of them on the right and the other on the left. In the left there is generated a subtle, vaporous, spiritual body, from which the animal spirit (al-rūḥ al-ḥayawānīyah) is sent forth in the arteries to all the regions of the body. And it is in this spirit that joy and sorrow (2) are caused; so that if its heat be abundant (3) it entails insolence and shamelessness, and if it fall short it brings on abjectness and corruption, and if it be balanced it brings on courage. And so likewise with concern for affairs, and swiftness in them or holding back from them, by reason of the increase of heat and its diminution, and the rest of that kind

— Notes —

[17] 1 ) Omitted in the original: fa-yakūn.

[17] 2 ) In the original: wa-al-faraḥ.

[17] 3 ) He intends tawāfarat.