Animagical Minds

[Jacob Lewis]

No: HPFGUIDX 45864

Hey all,

There's been a lot of discussion over whether or not Animagi keep their
mental abilities while in their 'Animal Form', and I thought I'd throw in my
(or rather, CS Lewis') two knutes:

In his book _The_Discarded_Image_, CS Lewis discloses that, to the Medieval
Mind, there were three, um, 'aspects' to a person's soul:  Vegetable,
Sensitive, and Rational.  The first, which is responsible for all our basic
growing, eating, &c. is simple enough, but here's the tough part: the
Sensitive is what divides beasts from plants, and lets us, well, sense
things (there are ten senses, BTW, five outside that we all know, and five
'inside', which are: memory, instinct, retention of perception (different
from memory), thinking, and common sense).  The Rational aspect, in short,
is the ability to understand complex truths.

Perhaps, and this is a big perhaps, what happens when a human becomes an
animal is that he retains his sensitive soul (which, recall, has the virtues
of memory, &c.) but, um... 'puts away' the rational soul (which animals do
not have).  Thus, the Animagus can make decisions, put things together,
figure out what they're doing, make plans, etc -- but would fall flat on
their face if you tried to make them understand, say, Plato, or -- for a
more recent Wiz -- Paracelsus.

Jacob, who doubts whether JKR consciously used this theory at all.