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Journal	Methodology and History of Psychology	Year	2018	Issue	4	Pages	111–140
Section	History of Psychology	Type	Scientific article	DOI	10.7868/S1819265318040118
Citation	Vultejus H. (2018). Diatriba o filosofskom soveršenstve čeloveka [The diatribe on the man's philosophical perfection] // Metodologiâ i istoriâ psihologii. Iss. 4. P. 111–140.

The Diatribe on the man's Philosophical perfection of Hermann Vultejus, the jurisconsult, publicly proposed in the place of prolegomenon for the interpretation of the Timaeus of Plato the 30 of Jan. in the year 1581. The Diatribe of Hermann Vultejus is the first work included by Rodolphus Goclenius in his compilatory ΨΥΧΟΛΟΓΙΑ. This opus of a younger colleague of Goclenius has nothing of an invective; it is a discourse of rather didactic character. Written in a high-flown rhetorical manner akin to that of the Dedicatory Letter of Goclenius and likewise patched with ciceronianisms, the Diatribe of Vultejus is as conspicuous among all components of this compilation as a watercolour picture among technical drawings. Although the exploration of the perfection of man in its essential manifestations seems to be the main objective of the Diatribe, yet the equipollence of such notions as "ΨΥΧΟΛΟΓΙΑ," "man's perfection," "spirit," "debate on its origin," postulated initially by Goclenius, compels Vultejus to concentrate mostly on the Pro et Contra ex traduce controversy – the principal focus of the debate on the origin of the spirit (i.e. of the rational soul) and the true and only subject-matter of the book. A metaphor for the 'biological' transfer of the human soul, ex traduce was the immediate inference from the Biblical story about the creation of the First Man's soul out of Divine breath (Gen. II: 7). Contemporaneous with theology but heavy with materialistic and monistic implications ex traduce was barely tolerated by the Church whose Fathers and Doctors with few exceptions deemed it incompatible with the official religious doctrine. The burden of confutation of ex traduce taken over by a number of scholars and born for centuries in itself is a manifestation of the antinomical nature of this phenomenon and Goclenius himself became thereafter aware of the Sisyphean labour he had undertaken. The author of the Diatribe, however, has not yet lost his illusions. After the introduction where the elements of Aristotelian methodology are outlined, the main theme is developing. Whole series of arguments, objections and refutations form the almost theatrical machinery with the help of which ex traduce is confronted and defeated on the arena of theology as well as of metaphysics. But besides the spirit "and first and foremost [the debate] on its origin" human perfection should be sought in his body and in social institutions with which it is implicated. Hermann Vultejus thus makes a sketch of anatomy and physiology following the general lines of Vesalius, to which he appends another one, where, as the model of a social organism, he outlines the Roman Constitution of the late Republic and the early Empire (the Principate). Still, nevertheless, he fails to give a distinct representation of the idea of human perfection, his work offers an image of a compound of three different blocks scarcely cemented by rhetoric; he fails as well to relate its subject-matter to the Timaeus, the interpretation of which served as a pretext for the writing of the Diatribe.