684. About the excellence of the faculties of a soul or spirit, compared with the faculties they had while living in the world
Besides the superior faculties a soul acquires after being released from the body, spoken of previously here and there [400, 433, 662], there is also the fact that they grasp a much richer meaning in mental images, or in a given subject. This is due to their pictorial mental imagery, but what it is like cannot be adequately described. These images are ideas, shaped in definite, diverse ways so that they at once see the meaning, which appears as if shaped to the sight. Thus they receive a fuller meaning of things, in a way that is not possible in the life of the body.
684. CONCERNING THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE FACULTIES OF A SOUL OR SPIRIT ABOVE THE FACULTIES HE POSSESSED WHEN HE LIVED IN THE BODY
Besides the pre-eminent faculties which a soul acquires after his release from the body, (concerning which [I have written] before, here and there [nos. 400, 433, 662), there is also the fact that souls perceive the meanings of ideas, or the sense of a thing, much more fully, and this by means of imaginative representations, the quality of which cannot be adequately described. Ideas are, as it were, formed in certain different ways so that they at once see the sense, that is, it appears as if formed to their sight; thus they derive the fuller sense of things, which could not possibly happen in the life of the body.
684. De praestantia facultatum animae seu spiritus, prae facultatibus ejus, dum vixit in corpore
Praeter facultates praestantes, quas anima post solutionem a corpore adipiscitur 1
, de quibus prius, passim [400, 433, 662], etiam id est, quod sensum 2
idearum seu sensum rei percipiant multo pleniorem, et quidem per repraesentationes imaginativas, quae non satis describi possunt, quales sint, sunt quasi formatae idea 3
certis et diversis modis, sic ut illico videant sensum, seu visus ejus, sicut formatus apparet, ita sensum rerum pleniorem accipiunt, quod fieri nequit in vita corporis.
Footnotes:
1. The Manuscript has adipisitur
2. in J.F.I. Tafel's edition sensa
3. in J.F.I. Tafel's edition et Manuscript ideo