On the other hand, the body opens up to the soul a window to the world through the five sensory organs whose messages go to the same cardiac apparatus which now is engaged in codifying them so that they may become comprehensible. Called phantasia or inner sense, the sidereal spirit transforms messages from the five senses in phantasms perceptible to the soul. For the soul cannot grasp anything that is not converted into a sequence of phantasms; in short, it can understand nothing without phantasms (aneu phantasmatos). This passage is rendered in Latin by William of Moerbecke, translator of Aristotle, as follows: Numquam sine phantasmate intelligit anima. And St. Thomas uses it almost literally in his Summa theologica, which was of enormous influence in the succeeding centuries: Intelligere sine conversione ad phantasmata est (animae) praeter naturam.
– Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (1987), p. 5