04, RICHARD MCKEON 



in both animate and inanimate bodies, the soul only in animate 

 bodies. Certain virtues must be present if the body is to com- 

 plete its operations. 



Constantine lists three general virtues: one pertains only to 

 nature and is therefore called natural; a second, pertaining to 

 the soul, only vivifies and is called spiritual; a third, also per- 

 taining to the soul, gives understanding, sense, and voluntary 

 motion, and is called animate. The action of natural virtue, 

 which consists in generation, nutrition, and growth, is universal 

 in animals and plants. Spiritual virtue is common to rational 

 and irrational animals, but not to plants; it consists in the 

 vivification which is accomplished by the action of the heart 

 and the dilation and contraction of the arteries for the con- 

 servation of natural bodily heat. The animate virtue is partly 

 common to rational and irrational animals, for both participate 

 in sense and voluntary motion, and partly not, for only rational 

 animals have fantasy, reason, and memory. This analysis per- 

 mits the reduction of all actions to kinds of motion, and 

 Constantine elaborates the enumeration of six kinds of motion, 

 two simple and four complex, all depending ultimately on the 

 simple contraries. 



The details of medical theory and practice, for which this 

 analytic structure was prepared, are organized relative to the 

 means of recognizing and controlling the mixtures of these 

 qualities, Constantine is credited with a translation of The 

 Book of Degrees (Liber de Gradibus) ascribed to Isaac Israeli 

 but of unknown origin, in which medicinal simples are con- 

 sidered in terms of their varying degrees of hot and cold, dry 

 and moist. Constantine reports four principal grades: a food 

 or medicine is in the first degree of heat if it is below that of the 

 human body; in the second degree if it is of the same tempera- 

 ture; in the third degree if it is somewhat hotter; in the fourth 

 if it is extremely hot. The consideration of the contraries is an 

 analytical device for the unification of physiology, pathology, 

 and therapy. The doctrines of the four elements and the four 

 qualities, whose development can be traced from Hippocrates 



