A Treatise on the Soul - Tertullian
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Translated by Peter Holmes, D.D.
Text edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson and
first published by T&T Clark in Edinburgh in 1867. Additional
introductionary material and notes provided for the American
edition by A. Cleveland Coxe, 1886.
Chapter I. It is Not to the Philosophers that We Resort for Information
About the Soul But to God. [1475]
Having discussed with Hermogenes the single point of the origin of the soul,
so far as his assumption led me, that the soul consisted rather in an
adaptation [1476] of matter than of the inspiration [1477] of God, I now
turn to the other questions incidental to the subject; and (in my treatment
of these) I shall evidently have mostly to contend with the philosophers. In
the very prison of Socrates they skirmished about the state of the soul. I
have my doubts at once whether the time was an opportune one for their
(great) master'(to say nothing of the place), although that perhaps does not
much matter. For what could the soul of Socrates then contemplate with
clearness and serenity? The sacred ship had returned (from Delos), the
hemlock draft to which he had been condemned had been drunk, death was now
present before him: (his mind) was, [1478] as one may suppose, [1479]
naturally excited [1480] at every emotion; or if nature had lost her
influence, it must have been deprived of all power of thought. [1481] Or let
it have been as placid and tranquil so you please, inflexible, in spite of
the claims of natural duty, [1482] at the tears of her who was so soon to be
his widow, and at the sight of his thenceforward orphan children, yet his
soul must have been moved even by its very efforts to suppress emotion; and
his constancy itself must have been shaken, as he struggled against the
disturbance of the excitement around him. Besides, what other thoughts could
any man entertain who had been unjustly condemned to die, but such as should
solace him for the injury done to him? Especially would this be the case
with that glorious creature, the philosopher, to whom injurious treatment
would not suggest a craving for consolation, but rather the feeling of
resentment and indignation. Accordingly, after his sentence, when his wife
came to him with her effeminate cry, O Socrates, you are unjustly condemned!
he seemed already to find joy in answering, Would you then wish me justly
condemned? It is therefore not to be wondered at, if even in his prison,
from a desire to break the foul hands of Anytus and Melitus, he, in the face
of death itself, asserts the immortality of the soul by a strong assumption
such as was wanted to frustrate the wrong (they had inflicted upon him). So
that all the wisdom of Socrates, at that moment, proceeded from the
affectation of an assumed composure, rather than the firm conviction of
ascertained truth. For by whom has truth ever been discovered without God?
By whom has God ever been found without Christ? By whom has Christ ever been
explored without the Holy Spirit? By whom has the Holy Spirit ever been
attained without the mysterious gift of faith? [1483] Socrates, as none
can doubt, was actuated by a different spirit. For they say that a demon
clave to him from his boyhood'the very worst teacher certainly,
notwithstanding the high place assigned to it by poets and philosophers'even
next to, (nay, along with) the gods themselves. The teachings of the power
of Christ had not yet been given'(that power) which alone can confute this
most pernicious influence of evil that has nothing good in it, but is rather
the author of all error, and the seducer from all truth. Now if Socrates was
pronounced the wisest of men by the oracle of the Pythian demon, which, you
may be sure, neatly managed the business for his friend, of how much greater
dignity and constancy is the assertion of the Christian wisdom, before the
very breath of which the whole host of demons is scattered! This wisdom of
the school of heaven frankly and without reserve denies the gods of this
world, and shows no such inconsistency as to order a "cock to be sacrificed
to Aesculapius: " [1484] no new gods and demons does it introduce, but
expels the old ones; it corrupts not youth, but instructs them in all
goodness and moderation; and so it bears the unjust condemnation not of one
city only, but of all the world, in the cause of that truth which incurs
indeed the greater hatred in proportion to its fulness: so that it tastes
death not out of a (poisoned) cup almost in the way of jollity; but it
exhausts it in every kind of bitter cruelty, on gibbets and in holocausts.
[1485] Meanwhile, in the still gloomier prison of the world amongst your
Cebeses and Phµdos, in every investigation concerning (man's) soul, it
directs its inquiry according to the rules of God. At all events, you can
show us no more powerful expounder of the soul than the Author thereof. From
God you may learn about that which you hold of God; but from none else will
you get this knowledge, if you get it not from God. For who is to reveal
that which God has hidden? To that quarter must we resort in our inquiries
whence we are most safe even in deriving our ignorance. For it is really
better for us not to know a thing, because He has not revealed it to us,
than to know it according to man's wisdom, because he has been bold enough
to assume it.
Chapter II. The Christian Has Sure and Simple Knowledge Concerning the
Subject Before Us.
Of course we shall not deny that philosophers have sometimes thought the
same things as ourselves. The testimony of truth is the issue thereof. It
sometimes happens even in a storm, when the boundaries of sky and sea are
lost in confusion, that some harbour is stumbled on (by the labouring ship)
by some happy chance; and sometimes in the very shades of night, through
blind luck alone, one finds access to a spot, or egress from it. In nature,
however, most conclusions are suggested, as it were, by that common
intelligence wherewith God has been pleased to endow the soul of man. This
intelligence has been caught up by philosophy, and, with the view of
glorifying her own art, has been inflated (it is not to be wondered at that
I use this language) with straining after that facility of language which is
practised in the building up and pulling down of everything, and which has
greater aptitude for persuading men by speaking than by teaching. She
assigns to things their forms and conditions; sometimes makes them common
and public, sometimes appropriates them to private use; on certainties she
capriciously stamps the character of uncertainty; she appeals to precedents,
as if all things are capable of being compared together; she describes all
things by rule and definition, allotting diverse properties even to similar
objects; she attributes nothing to the divine permission, but assumes as her
principles the laws of nature. I could bear with her pretensions, if only
she were herself true to nature, and would prove to me that she had a
mastery over nature as being associated with its creation. She thought, no
doubt, that she was deriving her mysteries from sacred sources, as men deem
them, because in ancient times most authors were supposed to be (I will not
say godlike, but) actually gods: as, for instance, the Egyptian Mercury,
[1486] to whom Plato paid very great deference; [1487] and the Phrygian
Silenus, to whom Midas lent his long ears, when the shepherds brought him to
him; and Hermotimus, to whom the good people of Clazomenµ built a temple
after his death; and Orpheus; and Musµus; and Pherecydes, the master of
Pythagoras. But why need we care, since these philosophers have also made
their attacks upon those writings which are condemned by us under the title
of apocryphal, [1488] certain as we are that nothing ought to be received
which does not agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in
this present age; [1489] because we do not forget that there have been
false prophets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have
instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world with cunning knowledge of
this (philosophic) cast? It is, indeed, not incredible that any man who is
in quest of wisdom may have gone so far, as a matter of curiosity, as to
consult the very prophets; (but be this as it may), if you take t he
philosophers, you would find in them more diversity than agreement, since
even in their agreement their diversity is discoverable. Whatever things are
true in their systems, and agreeable to prophetic wisdom, they either
recommend as emanating from some other source, or else perversely apply
[1490] in some other sense. This process is attended with very great
detriment to the truth, when they pretend that it is either helped by
falsehood, or else that falsehood derives support from it. The following
circumstance must needs have set ourselves and the philosophers by the ears,
especially in this present matter, that they sometimes clothe sentiments
which are common to both sides, in arguments which are peculiar to
themselves, but contrary in some points to our rule and standard of faith;
and at other times defend opinions which are especially their, own, with
arguments which both sides acknowledge to be valid, and occasionally
conformable to their system of belief. The truth has, at this rate, been
well-nigh excluded by the philosophers, through the poisons with which they
have infected it; and thus, if we regard both the modes of coalition which
we have now mentioned, and which are equally hostile to the truth, we feel
the urgent necessity of freeing, on the one hand, the sentiments held by us
in common with them from the arguments of the philosophers, and of
separating, on the other hand, the arguments which both parties employ from
the opinions of the same philosophers. And this we may do by recalling all
questions to God's inspired standard, with the obvious exception of such
simple cases as being free from the entanglement of any preconceived
conceits, one may fairly admit on mere human testimony; because plain
evidence of this sort we must sometimes borrow from opponents, when our
opponents have nothing to gain from it. Now I am not unaware what a vast
mass of literature the philosophers have accumulated concerning the subject
before us, in their own commentaries thereon'what various schools of
principles there are, what conflicts of opinion, what prolific sources of
questions, what perplexing methods of solution. Moreover, I have looked into
Medical Science also, the sister (as they say) of Philosophy, which claims
as her function to cure the body, and thereby to have a special acquaintance
with the soul. From this circumstance she has great differences with her
sister, pretending as the latter does to know more about the soul, through
the more obvious treatment, as it were, of her in her domicile of the body.
But never mind all this contention between them for pre-eminence! For
extending their several researches on the soul, Philosophy, on the one hand,
has enjoyed the full scope of her genius; while Medicine, on the other hand,
has possessed the stringent demands of her art and practice. Wide are men's
inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their disputes about
conjectures. However great the difficulty of adducing proofs, the labour of
producing conviction is not one whit less; so that the gloomy Heraclitus was
quite right, when, observing the thick darkness which obscured the
researches of the inquirers about the soul, and wearied with their
interminable questions, he declared that he had certainly not explored the
limits of the soul, although he had traversed every road in her domains. To
the Christian, however, but few words are necessary for the clear
understanding of the whole subject. But in the few words there always arises
certainty to him; nor is he permitted to give his inquiries a wider range
than is compatible with their solution; for "endless questions" the apostle
forbids. [1491] It must, however, be added, that no solution may be found
by any man, but such as is learned from God; and that which is learned of
God is the sum and substance of the whole thing.
Chapter III. The Soul's Origin Defined Out of the Simple Words of Scripture.
Would to God that no "heresies had been ever necessary, in order that they
which are; approved may be made manifest!" [1492] We should then be never
required to try our strength in contests about the soul with philosophers,
those patriarchs of heretics, as they may be fairly called. [1493] The
apostle, so far back as his own time, foresaw, indeed, that philosophy would
do violent injury to the truth. [1494] This admonition about false
philosophy he was induced to offer after he had been at Athens, had become
acquainted with that loquacious city, [1495] and had there had a taste of
its huckstering wiseacres and talkers. In like manner is the treatment of
the soul according to the sophistical doctrines of men which "mix their wine
with water." [1496] Some of them deny the immortality of the soul; others
affirm that it is immortal, and something more. Some raise disputes about
its substance; others about its form; others, again, respecting each of its
several faculties. One school of philosophers derives its state from various
sources, while another ascribes its departure to different destinations. The
various schools reflect the character of their masters, according as they
have received their impressions from the dignity [1497] of Plato, or the
vigour [1498] of Zeno, or the equanimity [1499] of Aristotle, or the
stupidity [1500] of Epicurus, or the sadness [1501] of Heraclitus, or
the madness [1502] of Empedocles. The fault, I suppose, of the divine
doctrine lies in its springing from Judµa [1503] rather than from Greece.
Christ made a mistake, too, in sending forth fishermen to preach, rather
than the sophist. Whatever noxious vapours, accordingly, exhaled from
philosophy, obscure the clear and wholesome atmosphere of truth, it will be
for Christians to clear away, both by shattering to pieces the arguments
which are drawn from the principles of things'I mean those of the
philosophers'and by opposing to them the maxims of heavenly wisdom'that is,
such as are revealed by the Lord; in order that both the pitfalls wherewith
philosophy captivates the heathen may be removed, and the means employed by
heresy to shake the faith of Christians may be repressed. We have already
decided one point in our controversy with Hermogenes, as we said at the
beginning of this treatise, when we claimed the soul to be formed by the
breathing [1504] of God, and not out of matter. We relied even there on
the clear direction of the inspired statement which informs us how that "the
Lord God breathed on man's face the breath of life, so that man became a
living soul" [1505] 'by that inspiration of God, of course. On this point,
therefore, nothing further need be investigated or advanced by us. It has
its own treatise, [1506] and its own heretic. I shall regard it as my
introduction to the other branches of the subject.
Chapter IV. In Opposition to Plato, the Soul Was Created and Originated at
Birth.
After settling the origin of the soul, its condition or state comes up next.
For when we acknowledge that the soul originates in the breath of God, it
follows that we attribute a beginning to it. This Plato, indeed, refuses to
assign to it, for he will have the soul to be unborn and unmade. [1507]
We, however, from the very fact of its having had a beginning, as well as
from the nature thereof, teach that it had both birth and creation. And when
we ascribe both birth and creation to it, we have made no mistake: for being
born, indeed, is one thing, and being made is another,'the former being the
term which is best suited to living beings. When distinctions, however, have
places and times of their own, they occasionally possess also reciprocity of
application among themselves. Thus, the being made admits of being taken in
the sense of being brought forth; [1508] inasmuch as everything which
receives being or existence, in any way whatever, is in fact generated. For
the maker may really be called the parent of the thing that is made: in this
sense Plato also uses the phraseology. So far, therefore, as concerns our
belief in the souls being made or born, the opinion of the philosopher is
overthrown by the authority of prophecy [1509] even.
Chapter V. Probable View of the Stoics, that the Soul Has a Corporeal
Nature.
Suppose one summons a Eubulus to his assistance, and a Critolaus, and a
Zenocrates, and on this occasion Plato's friend Aristotle. They may very
possibly hold themselves ready for stripping the soul of its corporeity,
unless they happen to see other philosophers opposed to them in their
purpose'and this, too, in greater numbers'asserting for the soul a corporeal
nature. Now I am not referring merely to those who mould the soul out of
manifest bodily substances, as Hipparchus and Heraclitus (do) out of fire;
as Hippon and Thales (do) out of water; as Empedocles and Critias (do) out
of blood; as Epicurus (does) out of atoms, since even atoms by their
coherence form corporeal masses; as Critolaus and his Peripatetics (do) out
of a certain indescribable quintessence, [1510] if that may be called a
body which rather includes and embraces bodily substances;'but I call on the
Stoics also to help me, who, while declaring almost in our own terms that
the soul is a spiritual essence (inasmuch as breath and spirit are in their
nature very near akin to each other), will yet have no difficulty in
persuading (us) that the soul is a corporeal substance. Indeed, Zeno,
defining the soul to be a spirit generated with (the body, [1511] )
constructs his argument in this way: That substance which by its departure
causes the living being to die is a corporeal one. Now it is by the
departure of the spirit, which is generated with (the body, ) that the
living being dies; therefore the spirit which is generated with (the body)
is a corporeal substance. But this spirit which is generated with (the body)
is the soul: it follows, then, that the soul is a corporeal substance.
Cleanthes, too, will have it that family likeness passes from parents to
their children not merely in bodily features, but in characteristics of the
soul; as if it were out of a mirror of (a man's) manners, and faculties, and
affections, that bodily likeness and unlikeness are caught and reflected by
the soul also. It is therefore as being corporeal that it is susceptible of
likeness and unlikeness. Again, there is nothing in common between things
corporeal and things incorporeal as to their susceptibility. But the soul
certainly sympathizes with the body, and shares in its pain, whenever it is
injured by bruises, and wounds, and sores: the body, too, suffers with the
soul, and is united with it (whenever it is afflicted with anxiety,
distress, or love) in the loss of vigour which its companion sustains, whose
shame and fear it testifies by its own blushes and paleness. The soul,
therefore, is (proved to be) corporeal from this inter-communion of
susceptibility. Chrysippus also joins hands in fellowship with Cleanthes
when he lays it down that it is not at all possible for things which are
endued with body to be separated from things which have not body; because
they have no such relation as mutual contact or coherence. Accordingly
Lucretius says: [1512]
"Tangere enim et tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res."
"For nothing but body is capable of touching or of being touched."
(Such severance, however, is quite natural between the soul and the body);
for when the body is deserted by the soul, it is overcome by death. The
soul, therefore, is endued with a body; for if it were not corporeal, it
could not desert the body.
Chapter VI. The Arguments of the Platonists for the Soul's Incorporeality,
Opposed, Perhaps Frivolously.
These conclusions the Platonists disturb more by subtilty than by truth.
Every body, they say, has necessarily either an animate nature [1513] or
an inanimate one. [1514] If it has the inanimate nature, it receives
motion externally to itself; if the animate one, internally. Now the soul
receives motion neither externally nor internally: not externally, since it
has not the inanimate nature; nor internally, because it is itself rather
the giver of motion to the body. It evidently, then, is not a bodily
substance, inasmuch as it receives motion neither way, according to the
nature and law of corporeal substances. Now, what first surprises us here,
is the unsuitableness of a definition which appeals to objects which have no
affinity with the soul. For it is impossible for the soul to be called
either an animate body or an inanimate one, inasmuch as it is the soul
itself which makes the body either animate, if it be present to it, or else
inanimate, if it be absent from it. That, therefore, which produces a
result, cannot itself be the result, so as to be entitled to the designation
of an animate thing or an inanimate one. The soul is so called in respect of
its own substance. If, then, that which is the soul admits not of being
called an animate body or an inanimate one, how can it challenge comparison
with the nature and law of animate and inanimate bodies? Furthermore, since
it is characteristic of a body to be moved externally by something else, and
as we have already shown that the soul receives motion from some other thing
when it is swayed (from the outside, of course, by something else) by
prophetic influence or by madness, therefore I must be right in regarding
that as bodily substance which, according to the examples we have quoted, is
moved by some other object from without. Now, if to receive motion from some
other thing is characteristic of a body, how much more is it so to impart
motion to something else! But the soul moves the body, all whose efforts are
apparent externally, and from without. It is the soul which gives motion to
the feet for walking, and to the hands for touching, and to the eyes for
sight, and to the tongue for speech'a sort of internal image which moves and
animates the surface. Whence could accrue such power to the soul, if it were
incorporeal? How could an unsubstantial thing propel solid objects? But in
what way do the senses in man seem to be divisible into the corporeal and
the intellectual classes? They tell is that the qualities of things
corporeal, such as earth and fire, are indicated by the bodily senses'of
touch and sight; whilst (the qualities) of incorporeal things'for instance,
benevolence and malignity'are discovered by the intellectual faculties. And
from this (they deduce what is to them) the manifest conclusion, that the
soul is incorporeal, its properties being comprehended by the perception not
of bodily organs, but of intellectual faculties. Well, (I shall be much
surprised) if I do not at once cut away the very ground on which their
argument stands. For I show them how incorporeal things are commonly
submitted to the bodily senses'sound, for instance, to the organ of hearing;
colour, to the organ of sight; smell, to the olfactory organ. And, just as
in these instances, the soul likewise has its contact with [1515] the
body; not to say that the incorporeal objects are reported to us through the
bodily organs, for the express reason that they come into contact with the
said organs. Inasmuch, then, as it is evident that even incorporeal objects
are embraced and comprehended by corporeal ones, why should not the soul,
which is corporeal, be equally comprehended and understood by incorporeal
faculties? It is thus certain that their argument fails. Among their more
conspicuous arguments will be found this, that in their judgment every
bodily substance is nourished by bodily substances; whereas the soul, as
being an incorporeal essence, is nourished by incorporeal aliments'for
instance, by the studies of wisdom. But even this ground has no stability in
it, since Soranus, who is a most accomplished authority in medical science,
affords us as answer, when he asserts that the soul is even nourished by
corporeal aliments; that in fact it is, when failing and weak, actually
refreshed oftentimes by food. Indeed, when deprived of all food, does not
the soul entirely remove from the body? Soranus, then, after discoursing
about the soul in the amplest manner, filling four volumes with his
dissertations, and after weighing well all the opinions of the philosophers,
defends the corporeality of the soul, although in the process he has robbed
it of its immortality. For to all men it is not given to believe the truth
which Christians are privileged to hold. As, therefore, Soranus has shown us
from facts that the soul is nourished by corporeal aliments, let the
philosopher (adopt a similar mode of proof, and) show that it is sustained
by an incorporeal food. But the fact is, that no one has even been able to
quench this man's [1516] doubts and difficulties about the condition of
the soul with the honey-water of Plato's subtle eloquence, nor to surfeit
them with the crumbs from the minute nostrums of Aristotle. But what is to
become of the souls of all those robust barbarians, which have had no
nurture of philosopher's lore indeed, and yet are strong in untaught
practical wisdom, and which although very starvelings in philosophy, without
your Athenian academies and porches, and even the prison of Socrates, do yet
contrive to live? For it is not the soul's actual substance which is
benefited by the aliment of learned study, but only its conduct and
discipline; such ailment contributing nothing to increase its bulk, but only
to enhance its grace. It is, moreover, a happy circumstance that the Stoics
affirm that even the arts have corporeality; since at the rate the soul too
must be corporeal, since it is commonly supposed to be nourished by the
arts. Such, however, is the enormous preoccupation of the philosophic mind,
that it is generally unable to see straight before it. Hence (the story of)
Thales falling into the well. [1517] It very commonly, too, through not
understanding even its own opinions, suspects a failure of its own health.
Hence (the story of) Chrysippus and the hellebore. Some such hallucination,
I take it, must have occurred to him, when he asserted that two bodies could
not possibly be contained in one: he must have kept out of mind and sight
the case of those pregnant women who, day after day, bear not one body, but
even two and three at a time, within the embrace of a single womb. One finds
likewise, in the records of the civil law, the instance of a certain Greek
woman who gave birth to a quint [1518] of children, the mother of all
these at one parturition, the manifold parent of a single brood, the
prolific produce from a single womb, who, guarded by so many bodies'I had
almost said, a people'was herself no less then the sixth person! The whole
creation testifies how that those bodies which are naturally destined to
issue from bodies, are already (included) in that from which they proceed.
Now that which proceeds from some other thing must needs be second to it.
Nothing, however, proceeds out of another thing except by the process of
generation; but then they are two (things).
Chapter VII. The Soul's Corporeality Demonstrated Out of the Gospels.
So far as the philosophers are concerned, we have said enough. As for our
own teachers, indeed, our reference to them is ex abundanti'a surplusage of
authority: in the Gospel itself they will be found to have the clearest
evidence for the corporeal nature of the soul. In hell the soul of a certain
man is in torment, punished in flames, suffering excruciating thirst, and
imploring from the finger of a happier soul, for his tongue, the solace of a
drop of water. [1519] Do you suppose that this end of the blessed poor man
and the miserable rich man is only imaginary? Then why the name of Lazarus
in this narrative, if the circumstance is not in (the category of) a real
occurrence? But even if it is to be regarded as imaginary, it will still be
a testimony to truth and reality. For unless the soul possessed
corporeality, the image of a soul could not possibly contain a finger of a
bodily substance; nor would the Scripture feign a statement about the limbs
of a body, if these had no existence. But what is that which is removed to
Hades [1520] after the separation of the body; which is there detained;
which is reserved until the day of judgment; to which Christ also, on dying,
descended? I imagine it is the souls of the patriarchs. But wherefore (all
this), if the soul is nothing in its subterranean abode? For nothing it
certainly is, if it is not a bodily substance. For whatever is incorporeal
is incapable of being kept and guarded in any way; it is also exempt from
either punishment or refreshment. That must be a body, by which punishment
and refreshment can be experienced. Of this I shall treat more fully in a
more fitting place. Therefore, whatever amount of punishment or refreshment
the soul tastes in Hades, in its prison or lodging, [1521] in the fire or
in Abraham's bosom, it gives proof thereby of its own corporeality. For an
incorporeal thing suffers nothing, not having that which makes it capable of
suffering; else, if it has such capacity, it must be a bodily substance. For
in as far as every corporeal thing is capable of suffering, in so far is
that which is capable of suffering also corporeal. [1522]
Chapter VIII. Other Platonist Arguments Considered.
Besides, it would be a harsh and absurd proceeding to exempt anything from
the class cf corporeal beings, on the ground that it is not exactly like the
other constituents of that class. And where individual creature's possess
various properties, does not this variety in works of the same class
indicate the greatness of the Creator, in making them at the same time
different and yet like, amicable yet rivals? Indeed, the philosophers
themselves agree in saying that the universe consists of harmonious
oppositions, according to Empedocles' (theory of) friendship and enmity.
Thus, then, although corporeal essences are opposed to incorporeal ones,
they yet differ from each other in such sort as to amplify their species by
their variety, without changing their genus, remaining all alike corporeal;
contributing to God's glory in their manifold existence by reason of their
variety; so various, by reason of their differences; so diverse, in that
some of them possess one kind of perception, others another; some feeding on
one kind of aliment, others on another; some, again, possessing visibility,
while others are invisible; some being weighty, others light. They are in
the habit of saying that the soul must be pronounced incorporeal on this
account, because the bodies of the dead, after its departure from them,
become heavier, whereas they ought to be lighter, being deprived of the
weight of a body'since the soul is a bodily substance. But what, says
Soranus (in answer to this argument), if men should deny that the sea is a
bodily substance, because a ship out of the water becomes a heavy and
motionless mass? How much truer and stronger, then, is the soul's corporeal
essence, which carries about the body, which eventually assumes so great a
weight with the nimblest motion! Again, even if the soul is invisible, it is
only in strict accordance with the condition of its own corporeality, and
suitably to the property of its own essence, as well as to the nature of
even those beings to which its destiny made it to be invisible. The eyes of
the owl cannot endure the sun, whilst the eagle is so well able to face his
glory, that the noble character of its young is determined by the unblinking
strength of their gaze; while the eaglet, which turns away its eye from the
sun's ray, is expelled from the nest as a degenerate creature! So true is
it, therefore, than to one eye an object is invisible, which may be quite
plainly seen by another,'without implying any incorporeality in that which
is not endued with an equally strong power (of vision). The sun is indeed a
bodily substance, because it is (composed of) fire; the object, however,
which the eaglet at once admits the existence of, the owl denies, without.
any prejudice, nevertheless, to the testimony of the eagle. There is the
selfsame difference in respect of the soul's corporeality, which is
(perhaps) invisible to the flesh, but perfectly visible to the spirit. Thus
John, being "in the Spirit" of God, [1523] beheld plainly the souls of the
martyrs. [1524]
Chapter IX. Particulars of the Alleged Communication to a Montanist Sister.
When we aver that the soul has a body of a quality and kind peculiar to
itself, in this special condition of it we shall be already supplied with a
decision respecting all the other accidents of its corporeity; how that they
belong to it, because we have shown it to be a body, but that even they have
a quality peculiar to themselves, proportioned to the special nature of the
body (to which they belong); or else, if any accidents (of a body) are
remarkable in this instance for their absence, then this, too, results from
the peculiarity of the condition of the soul's corporeity, from which are
absent sundry qualities which are present to all other corporeal beings. And
yet, notwithstanding all this, we shall not be at all inconsistent if we
declare that the more usual characteristics of a body, such as invariably
accrue to the corporeal condition, belong also to the soul'such as form
[1525] and limitation; and that triad of dimensions [1526] 'I mean length,
and breadth and height'by which philosophers gauge al bodies. What now
remains but for us to give the soul a figure? [1527] Plato refuses to do
this, as if it endangered the soul's immortality. [1528] For everything
which has figure is, according to him, compound, and composed of parts;
[1529] whereas the soul is immortal; and being immortal, it is therefore
indissoluble; and being indissoluble, it is figureless: for if, on the
contrary, it had figure, it would be of a composite and structural
formation. He, however, in some other manner frames for the soul an effigy
of intellectual forms, beautiful for its just symmetry and tuitions of
philosophy, but misshapen by some contrary qualities. As for ourselves,
indeed, we inscribe on the soul the lineaments of corporeity, not simply
from the assurance which reasoning has taught us of its corporeal nature,
but also from the firm conviction which divine grace impresses on us by
revelation. For, seeing that we acknowledge spiritual charismata, or gifts,
we too have merited the attainment of the prophetic gift, although coming
after John (the Baptist). We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has
been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences
in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord's day
in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord;
she both sees and hears mysterious communications; [1530] some men's
hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes
remedies. Whether it be in the reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of
psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, in
all these religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of
seeing visions. It may possibly have happened to us, whilst this sister of
ours was rapt in the Spirit, that we had discoursed in some ineffable way
about the soul. After the people are dismissed at the conclusion of the
sacred services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever
things she may have seen in vision (for all her communications are examined
with the most scrupulous care, in order that their truth may be probed).
"Amongst other things," says she, "there has been shown to me a soul in
bodily shape, and a spirit has been in the habit of appearing to me; not,
however, a void and empty illusion, but such as would offer itself to be
even grasped by the hand, soft and transparent and of an etherial colour,
and in form resembling that of a human being in every respect." This was her
vision, and for her witness there was God; and the apostle most assuredly
foretold that there were to be "spiritual gifts" in the church. [1531]
Now, can you refuse to believe this, even if indubitable evidence on every
point is forthcoming for your conviction? Since, then, the soul is a
corporeal substance, no doubt it possesses qualities such as those which we
have just mentioned, amongst them the property of colour, which is inherent
in every bodily substance. Now what colour would you attribute to the soul
but an etherial transparent one? Not that its substance is actually the
ether or air (although this was the opinion of ¦nesidemus and Anaximenes,
and I suppose of Heraclitus also, as some say of him), nor transparent light
(although Heraclides of Pontus held it to be so). "Thunder-stones," [1532]
indeed, are not of igneous substance, because they shine with ruddy redness;
nor are beryls composed of aqueous matter, because they are of a pure wavy
whiteness. How many things also besides these are there which their colour
would associate in the same class, but which nature keeps widely apart!
Since, however, everything which is very attenuated and transparent bears a
strong resemblance to the air, such would be the case with the soul, since
in its material nature [1533] it is wind and breath, (or spirit); whence
it is that the belief of its corporeal quality is endangered, in consequence
of the extreme tenuity and subtilty of its essence. Likewise, as regards the
figure of the human soul from your own conception, you can well imagine that
it is none other than the human form; indeed, none other than the shape of
that body which each individual soul animates and moves about. This we may
at once be induced to admit from contemplating man's original formation. For
only carefully consider, after God hath breathed upon the face of man the
breath of life, and man had consequently become a living soul, surely that
breath must have passed through the face at once into the interior
structure, and have spread itself throughout all the spaces of the body; and
as soon as by the divine inspiration it had become condensed, it must have
impressed itself on each internal feature, which the condensation had filled
in, and so have been, as it were, congealed in shape, (or stereotyped).
Hence, by this densifying process, there arose a fixing of the soul's
corporeity; and by the impression its figure was formed and moulded. This is
the inner man, different from the outer, but yet one in the twofold
condition. [1534] It, too, has eyes and ears of its own, by means of which
Paul must have heard and seen the Lord; [1535] it has, moreover all the
other members of the body by the help of which it effects all processes of
thinking and all activity in dreams. Thus it happens that the rich man in
hell has a tongue and poor (Lazarus) a finger and Abraham a bosom. [1536]
By these features also the souls of the martyrs under the altar are
distinguished and known. The soul indeed which in the beginning was
associated with Adam's body, which grew with its growth and was moulded
after its form proved to be the germ both of the entire substance (of the
human soul) and of that (part of) creation.
Chapter X. The Simple Nature of the Soul is Asserted with Plato. The
Identity of Spirit and Soul.
It is essential to a firm faith to declare with Plato [1537] that the soul
is simple; in other words uniform and uncompounded; simply that is to say in
respect of its substance. Never mind men's artificial views and theories,
and away with the fabrications of heresy! [1538] Some maintain that there
is within the soul a natural substance'the spirit'which is different from
it: [1539] as if to have life'the function of the soul'were one thing; and
to emit breath'the alleged [1540] function of the spirit'were another
thing. Now it is not in all animals that these two functions are found; for
there are many which only live but do not breathe in that they do not
possess the organs of respiration'lungs and windpipes. [1541] But of what
use is it, in an examination of the soul of man, to borrow proofs from a
gnat or an ant, when the great Creator in His divine arrangements has
allotted to every animal organs of vitality suited to its own disposition
and nature, so that we ought not to catch at any conjectures from
comparisons of this sort? Man, indeed, although organically furnished with
lungs and windpipes, will not on that account be proved to breathe by one
process, and to live by another; [1542] nor can the ant, although
defective in these organs, be on that account said to be without
respiration, as if it lived and that was all. For by whom has so clear an
insight into the works of God been really attained, as to entitle him to
assume that these organic resources are wanting to any living thing? There
is that Herophilus, the well-known surgeon, or (as I may almost call him)
butcher, who cut up no end of persons, [1543] in order to investigate the
secrets of nature, who ruthlessly handled [1544] human creatures to
discover (their form and make): I have my doubts whether he succeeded in
clearly exploring all the internal parts of their structure, since death
itself changes and disturbs the natural functions of life, especially when
the death is not a natural one, but such as must cause irregularity and
error amidst the very processes of dissection. Philosophers have affirmed it
to be a certain fact, that gnats, and ants, and moths have no pulmonary or
arterial organs. Well, then, tell me, you curious and elaborate investigator
of these mysteries, have they eyes for seeing withal? But yet they proceed
to whatever point they wish, and they both shun and aim at various objects
by processes of sight: point out their eyes to me, show me their pupils.
Moths also gnaw and eat: demonstrate to me their mandibles, reveal their
jaw-teeth. Then, again, gnats hum and buzz, nor even in the dark are they
unable to find their way to our ears: [1545] point out to me, then, not
only the noisy tube, but the stinging lance of that mouth of theirs. Take
any living thing whatever, be it the tiniest you can find, it must needs be
fed and sustained by some food or other: show me, then, their organs for
taking into their system, digesting, and ejecting food. What must we say,
therefore? If it is by such instruments that life is maintained, these
instrumental means must of course exist in all things which are to live,
even though they are not apparent to the eye or to the apprehension by
reason of their minuteness. You can more readily believe this, if you
remember that God manifests His creative greatness quite as much in small
objects as in the very largest. If, however, you suppose that God's wisdom
has no capacity for forming such infinitesimal corpuscles, you can still
recognise His greatness, in that He has furnished even to the smallest
animals the functions of life, although in the absence of the suitable
organs,'securing to them the power of sight, even without eyes; of eating,
even without teeth; and of digestion, even without stomachs. Some animals
also have the ability to move forward without feet, as serpents, by a
gliding motion; or as worms, by vertical efforts; or as snails and slugs, by
their slimy crawl. Why should you not then believe that respiration likewise
may be effected without the bellows of the lungs, and without arterial
canals? You would thus supply yourself with a strong proof that the spirit
or breath is an adjunct of the human soul, for the very reason that some
creatures lack breath, and that they lack it because they are not furnished
with organs of respiration. You think it possible for a thing to live
without breath; then why not suppose that a thing might breathe without
lungs? Pray, tell me, what is it to breathe? I suppose it means to emit
breath from yourself. What is it not to live? I suppose it means not to emit
breath from yourself. This is the answer which I should have to make, if "to
breathe" is not the same thing as "to live." It must, however, be
characteristic of a dead man not to respire: to respire, therefore, is the
characteristic of a living man. But to respire is likewise the
characteristic of a breathing man: therefore also to breathe is the
characteristic of a living man. Now, if both one and the other could
possibly have been accomplished without the soul, to breathe might not be a
function of the soul, but merely to live. But indeed to live is to breathe,
and to breathe is to live. Therefore this entire process, both of breathing
and living, belongs to that to which living belongs'that is, to the soul.
Well, then, since you separate the spirit (or breath) and the soul, separate
their operations also. Let both of them accomplish some act apart from one
another'the soul apart, the spirit apart. Let the soul live without the
spirit; let the spirit breathe without the soul. Let one of them quit men's
bodies, let the other remain; let death and life meet and agree. If indeed
the soul and the spirit are two, they may be divided; and thus, by the
separation of the one which departs from the one which remains, there would
accrue the union and meeting together of life and of death. But such a union
never will accrue: therefore they are not two, and they cannot be divided;
but divided they might have been, if they had been (two). Still two things
may surely coalesce in growth. But the two in question never will coalesce,
since to live is one thing, and to breathe is another. Substances are
distinguished by their operations. How much firmer ground have you for
believing that the soul and the spirit are but one, since you assign to them
no difference; so that the soul is itself the spirit, respiration being the
function of that of which life also is! But what if you insist on supposing
that the day is one thing, and the light, which is incidental to the day, is
another thing, whereas day is only the light itself? There must, of course,
be also different kinds of light, as (appears) from the ministry of fires.
So likewise will there be different sorts of spirits, according as they
emanate from God or from the devil. Whenever, indeed, the question is about
soul and spirit, the soul will be (understood to be) itself the spirit, just
is the day is the light itself. For a thing is itself identical with that by
means of which itself exists.
Chapter XI. Spirit'A Term Expressive of an Operation of the Soul, Not of Its
Nature. To Be Carefully Distinguished from the Spirit of God.
But the nature of my present inquiry obliges me to call the soul spirit or
breath, because to breathe is ascribed to another substance. We, however,
claim this (operation) for the soul, which we acknowledge to be an
indivisible simple substance, and therefore we must call it spirit in a
definitive sense'not because of its condition, but of its action; not in
respect of its nature, but of its operation; because it respires, and not
because it is spirit in any especial sense. [1546] For to blow or breathe
is to respire. So that we are driven to describe, by (the term which
indicates this respiration'that is to say) spirit'the soul which we hold to
be, by the propriety of its action, breath. Moreover, we properly and
especially insist on calling it breath (or spirit), in opposition to
Hermogenes, who derives the soul from matter instead of from the afflatus or
breath of God. He, to be sure, goes flatly against the testimony of
Scripture, and with this view converts breath into spirit, because he cannot
believe that the (creature on which was breathed the) Spirit of God fell
into sin, and then into condemnation; and therefore he would conclude that
the soul came from matter rather than from the Spirit or breath of God. For
this reason, we on our side even from that passage, maintain the soul to be
breath and not the spirit, in the scriptural and distinctive sense of the
spirit; and here it is with regret that we apply the term spirit at all in
the lower sense, in consequence of the identical action of respiring and
breathing. In that passage, the only question is about the natural
substance; to respire being an act of nature. I would not tarry a moment
longer on this point, were it not for those heretics who introduce into the
soul some spiritual germ which passes my comprehension: (they make it to
have been) conferred upon the soul by the secret liberality of her mother
Sophia (Wisdom), without the knowledge of the Creator. [1547] But (Holy)
Scripture, which has a better knowledge of the soul's Maker, or rather God,
has told us nothing more than that God breathed on man's face the breath of
life, and that man became a living soul, by means of which he was both to
live and breathe; at the same time making a sufficiently clear distinction
between the spirit and the soul, [1548] in such passages as the following,
wherein God Himself declares: "My Spirit went forth from me, and I made the
breath of each. And the breath of my Spirit became soul." [1549] And
again: "He giveth breath unto the people that are on the earth, and Spirit
to them that walk thereon." [1550] First of all there comes the (natural)
soul, that is to say, the breath, to the people that are on the earth,'in
other words, to those who act carnally in the flesh; then afterwards comes
the Spirit to those who walk thereon,'that is, who subdue the works of the
flesh; because the apostle also says, that "that is not first which is
spiritual, but that which is natural, (or in possession of the natural soul,
) and afterward that which is spiritual." [1551] For, inasmuch as Adam
straightway predicted that "great mystery of Christ and the church,"
[1552] when he said, "This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh;
therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto
his wife, and they two shall become one flesh," [1553] he experienced the
influence of the Spirit. For there fell upon him that ecstasy, which is the
Holy Ghost's operative virtue of prophecy. And even the evil spirit too is
an influence which comes upon a man. Indeed, the Spirit of God not more
really "turned Saul into another man," [1554] that is to say, into a
prophet, when "people said one to another, What is this which is come to the
son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets? " [1555] than did the evil
spirit afterwards turn him into another man'in other words, into an
apostate. Judas likewise was for a long time reckoned among the elect
(apostles), and was even appointed to the office of their treasurer; he was
not yet the traitor, although he was become fraudulent; but afterwards the
devil entered into him. Consequently, as the spirit neither of God nor of
the devil is naturally planted with a man's soul at his birth, this soul
must evidently exist apart and alone, previous to the accession to it of
either spirit: if thus apart and alone, it must also be simple and
un-compounded as regards its substance; and therefore it cannot respire from
any other cause than from the actual condition of its own substance.
Chapter XII. Difference Between the Mind and the Soul, and the Relation
Between Them.
In like manner the mind also, or animus, which the Greeks designate Nous, is
taken by us in no other sense than as indicating that faculty or apparatus
[1556] which is inherent and implanted in the soul, and naturally proper to
it, whereby it acts, whereby it acquires knowledge, and by the possession of
which it is capable of a spontaneity of motion within itself, and of thus
appearing to be impelled by the mind, as if it were another substance, as is
maintained by those who determine the soul to be the moving principle of the
universe [1557] 'the god of Socrates, Valentinus' "only-begotten" of his
father [1558] Bythus, and his mother Sige. How confused is the opinion of
Anaxagoras! For, having imagined the mind to be the initiating principle of
all things, and suspending on its axis the balance of the universe;
affirming, moreover, that the mind is a simple principle, unmixed, and
incapable of admixture, he mainly on this very consideration separates it
from all amalgamation with the soul; and yet in another passage he actually
incorporates it with [1559] the soul. This (inconsistency) Aristotle has
also observed: but whether he meant his criticism to be constructive, and to
fill up a system of his own, rather than destructive of the principles of
others, I am hardly able to decide. As for himself, indeed, although he
postpones his definition of the mind, yet he begins by mentioning, as one of
the two natural constituents of the mind, [1560] that divine principle
which he conjectures to be impassible, or incapable of emotion, and thereby
removes from all association with the soul. For whereas it is evident that
the soul is susceptible of those emotions which it falls to it naturally to
suffer, it must needs suffer either by the mind or with the mind. Now if the
soul is by nature associated with the mind, it is impossible to draw the
conclusion that the mind is impassible; or again, if the soul suffers not
either by the mind or with the mind, it cannot possibly have a natural
association with the mind, with which it suffers nothing, and which suffers
nothing itself. Moreover, if the soul suffers nothing by the mind and with
the mind, it will experience no sensation, nor will it acquire any
knowledge, nor will it undergo any emotion through the agency of the mind,
as they maintain it will. For Aristotle makes even the senses passions, or
states of emotion And rightly too. For to exercise the senses is to suffer
emotion, because to suffer is to feel. In like manner, to acquire knowledge
is to exercise the senses; and to undergo emotion is to exercise the senses;
and the whole of this is a state of suffering. But we see that the soul
experiences nothing of these things, in such a manner as that the mind also
is affected by the emotion, by which, indeed, and with which, all is
effected. It follows, therefore, that the mind is capable of admixture, in
opposition to Anaxagoras; and passible or susceptible of emotion, contrary
to the opinion of Aristotle. Besides, if a separate condition between the
soul and mind is to be admitted, so that they be two things in substance,
then of one of them, emotion and sensation, and every sort of taste, and all
action and motion, will be the characteristics; whilst of the other the
natural condition will be calm, and repose, and stupor. There is therefore
no alternative: either the mind must be useless and void, or the soul. But
if these affections may certainly be all of them ascribed to both, then in
that case the two will be one and the same, and Democritus will carry his
point when he suppresses all distinction between the two. The question will
arise how two can be one'whether by the confusion of two substances, or by
the disposition of one? We, however, affirm that the mind coalesces with
[1561] the soul,'not indeed as being distinct from it in substance, but as
being its natural function and agent. [1562]
Chapter XIII. The Soul's Supremacy.
It next remains to examine where lies the supremacy; in other words, which
of the two is superior to the other, so that with which the supremacy
clearly lies shall be the essentially superior substance; [1563] whilst
that over which this essentially superior substance shall have authority
shall be considered as the natural functionary of the superior substance.
Now who will hesitate to ascribe this entire authority to the soul, from the
name of which the whole man has received his own designation in common
phraseology? How many souls, says the rich man, do I maintain? not how many
minds. The pilot's desire, also, is to rescue so many souls from shipwreck,
not so many minds; the labourer, too, in his work, and the soldier on the
field of battle, affirms that he lays down his soul (or life), not his mind.
Which of the two has its perils or its vows and wishes more frequently on
men's lips'the mind or the soul? Which of the two are dying persons, said to
have to do with the mind or the soul? In short, philosophers themselves, and
medical men, even when it is their purpose to discourse about the mind, do
in every instance inscribe on their title-page [1564] and table of
contents, [1565] "De Anima" ("A treatise on the soul"). And that you may
also have God's voucher on the subject, it is the soul which He addresses;
it is the soul which He exhorts and counsels, to turn the mind and intellect
to Him. It is the soul which Christ came to save; it is the soul which He
threatens to destroy in hell; it is the soul (or life) which He forbids
being made too much of; it is His soul, too (or life), which the good
Shepherd Himself lays down for His sheep. It is to the soul, therefore, that
you ascribe the supremacy; in it also you possess that union of substance,
of which you perceive the mind to be the instrument, not the ruling power.
Chapter XIV. The Soul Variously Divided by the Philosophers; This Division
is Not a Material Dissection.
Being thus single, simple, and entire in itself, it is as incapable of being
composed and put together from external constituents, as it is of being
divided in and of itself, inasmuch as it is indissoluble. For if it had been
possible to construct it and to destroy it, it would no longer be immortal.
Since, however, it is not mortal, it is also incapable of dissolution and
division. Now, to be divided means to be dissolved, and to be dissolved
means to die. Yet (philosophers) have divided the soul into parts: Plato,
for instance, into two; Zeno into three; Panµtius, into five or six;
Soranus, into seven; Chrysippus, into as many as eight; and Apollophanes,
into as many as nine; whilst certain of the Stoics have found as many as
twelve parts in the soul. Posidonius makes even two more than these: he
starts with two leading faculties of the soul,'the directing faculty, which
they designate and the rational faculty, which they call
,'and ultimately subdivided these into seventeen [1566] parts.
Thus variously is the soul dissected by the different schools. Such
divisions, however, ought not to be regarded so much as parts of the soul,
as powers, or faculties, or operations thereof, even as Aristotle himself
has regarded some of them as being. For they are not portions or organic
parts of the soul's substance, but functions of the soul'such as those of
motion, of action, of thought, and whatsoever others they divide in this
manner; such, likewise, as the five senses themselves, so well known to
all'seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. Now, although they have
allotted to the whole of these respectively certain parts of the body as
their special domiciles, it does not from that circumstance follow that a
like distribution will be suitable to the sections of the soul; for even the
body itself would not admit of such a partition as they would have the soul
undergo. But of the whole number of the limbs one body is made up, so that
the arrangement is rather a concretion than a division. Look at that very
wonderful piece of organic mechanism by Archimedes,'I mean his hydraulic
organ, with its many limbs, parts, bands, passages for the notes, outlets
for their sounds, combinations for their harmony, and the array of its
pipes; but yet the whole of these details constitute only one instrument. In
like manner the wind, which breathes throughout this organ at the impulse of
the hydraulic engine, is not divided into separate portions from the fact of
its dispersion through the instrument to make it play: it is whole and
entire in its substance, although divided in its operation. This example is
not remote from (the illustration) of Strato, and ¦nesidemus, and
Heraclitus: for these philosophers maintain the unity of the soul, as
diffused over the entire body, and yet in every part the same. [1567]
Precisely like the wind blown in the pipes throughout the organ, the soul
displays its energies in various ways by means of the senses, being not
indeed divided, but rather distributed in natural order. Now, under what
designations these energies are to be known, and by what divisions of
themselves they are to be classified, and to what special offices and
functions in the body they are to be severally confined, the physicians and
the philosophers must consider and decide: for ourselves, a few remarks only
will be proper.
Chapter XV. The Soul's Vitality and Intelligence. Its Character and Seat in
Man.
In the first place, (we must determine) whether there be in the soul some
supreme principle of vitality and intelligence [1568] which they call "the
ruling power of the soul"' for if this be not admitted, the
whole condition of the soul is put in jeopardy. Indeed, those men who say
that there is no such directing faculty, have begun by supposing that the
soul itself is simply a nonentity. One , a Messenian, and amongst
the medical profession Andreas and Asclepiades, have thus destroyed the
(soul's) directing power, by actually placing in the mind the senses, for
which they claim the ruling faculty. Asclepiades rides rough-shod over us
with even this argument, that very many animals, after losing those parts of
their body in which the soul's principle of vitality and sensation is
thought mainly to exist, still retain life in a considerable degree, as well
as sensation: as in the case of flies, and wasps, and locusts, when you have
cut off their heads; and of she-goats, and tortoises, and eels, when you
have pulled out their hearts. (He concludes), therefore, that there is no
especial principle or power of the soul; for if there were, the soul's
vigour and strength could not continue when it was removed with its
domiciles (or corporeal organs). However, Dicµarchus has several authorities
against him'and philosophers too'Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus,
Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle; whilst in opposition to Andreas and
Asclepiades (may be placed their brother) physicians Herophilus,
Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself; and better than all
others, there are our Christian authorities. We are taught by God concerning
both these questions'viz. that there is a ruling power in the soul, and that
it is enshrined [1569] in one particular recess of the body. For, when one
reads of God as being "the searcher and witness of the heart; " [1570]
when His prophet is reproved by His discovering to him the secrets of the
heart; [1571] when God Himself anticipates in His people the thoughts of
their heart, [1572] "Why think ye evil in your hearts? " [1573] when
David prays "Create in me a clean heart, O God," [1574] and Paul
declares, "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness," [1575] and
John says, "By his own heart is each man condemned; " [1576] when,
lastly, "he who looketh on a woman so as to lust after her, hath already
committed adultery with her in his heart," [1577] 'then both points are
cleared fully up, that there is a directing faculty of the soul, with which
the purpose of God may agree; in other words, a supreme principle of
intelligence and vitality (for where there is intelligence, there must be
vitality), and that it resides in that most precious part [1578] of our
body to which God especially looks: so that you must not suppose, with
Heraclitus, that this sovereign faculty of which we are treating is moved by
some external force; nor with Moschion, [1579] that it floats about
through the whole body; nor with Plato, that it is enclosed in the head; nor
with Zenophanes, that it culminates in the crown of the head; nor that it
reposes in the brain, according to the opinion of Hippocrates; nor around
the basis of the brain, as Herophilus thought; nor in the membranes thereof,
as Strato and Erasistratus said; nor in the space between the eyebrows, as
Strato the physician held; nor within the enclosure [1580] of the breast,
according to Epicurus: but rather, as the Egyptians have always taught,
especially such of them as were accounted the expounders of sacred
truths; [1581] in accordance, too, with that verse of Orpheus or
Empedocles:
"Namque homini sanguis circumcordialis est sensus." [1582]
"Man has his (supreme) sensation in the blood around his heart."
Even Protagoras [1583] likewise, and Apollodorus, and Chrysippus,
entertain this same view, so that (our friend) Asclepiades may go in quest
of his goats bleating without a heart, and hunt his flies without their
heads; and let all those (worthies), too, who have predetermined the
character of the human soul from the condition of brute animals, be quite
sure that it is themselves rather who are alive in a heartless and brainless
state.
Chapter XVI. The Soul's Parts. Elements of the Rational Soul.
That position of Plato's is also quite in keeping with the faith, in which
he divides the soul into two parts'the rational and the irrational. To this
definition we take no exception, except that we would not ascribe this
twofold distinction to the nature (of the soul). It is the rational element
which we must believe to be its natural condition, impressed upon it from
its very first creation by its Author, who is Himself essentially rational.
For how should that be other than rational, which God produced on His own
prompting; nay more, which He expressly sent forth by His own afflatus or
breath? The irrational element, however, we must understand to have accrued
later, as having proceeded from the instigation of the serpent'the very
achievement of (the first) transgression' which thenceforward became inherent
in the soul, and grew with its growth, assuming the manner by this time of a
natural development, happening as it did immediately at the beginning of
nature. But, inasmuch as the same Plato speaks of the rational element only
as existing in the soul of God Himself, if we were to ascribe the irrational
element likewise to the nature which our soul has received from God, then
the irrational element will be equally derived from God, as being a natural
production, because God is the author of nature. Now from the devil proceeds
the incentive to sin. All sin, however, is irrational: therefore the
irrational proceeds from the devil, from whom sin proceeds; and it is
extraneous to God, to whom also the irrationalis an alien principle. The
diversity, then, between these two elements arises from the difference of
their authors. When, therefore, Plato reserves the rational element (of the
soul) to God alone, and subdivides it into two departments the irascible,
which they call , and the concupiscible, which they designate by
the term (in such a way as to make the first common to us and
lions, and the second shared between ourselves and flies, whilst the
rational element is confined to us and God)'I see that this point will have
to be treated by us, owing to the facts which we find operating also in
Christ. For you may behold this triad of qualities in the Lord. There was
the rational element, by which He taught, by which He discoursed, by which
He prepared the way of salvation; there was moreover indignation in Him, by
which He inveighed against the scribes and the Pharisees; and there was the
principle of desire, by which He so earnestly desired to eat the pass over
with His disciples. [1584] In our own cases, accordingly, the irascible
and the concupiscible elements of our soul must not invariably be put to the
account of the irrational (nature), since we are sure that in our Lord these
elements operated in entire accordance with reason. God will be angry, with
perfect reason, with all who deserve His wrath; and with reason, too, will
God desire whatever objects and claims are worthy of Himself. For He will
show indignation against the evil man, and for the good man will He desire
salvation. To ourselves even does the apostle allow the concupiscible
quality. "If any man," says he, "desireth the office of a bishop, he
desireth a good work." [1585] Now, by saying "a good work," he shows us
that the desire is a reasonable one. He permits us likewise to feel
indignation. How should he not, when he himself experiences the same? "I
would," says he, "that they were even cut off which trouble you." [1586]
In perfect agreement with reason was that indignation which resulted from
his desire to maintain discipline and order. When, however, he says, "We
were formerly the children of wrath," [1587] he censures an irrational
irascibility, such as proceeds not from that nature which is the production
of God, but from that which the devil brought in, who is himself styled the
lord or "master" of his own class, "Ye cannot serve two masters," [1588]
and has the actual designation of "father: ""Ye are of your father the
devil." [1589] So that you need not be afraid to ascribe to him the
mastery and dominion over that second, later, and deteriorated nature (of
which we have been speaking), when you read of him as "the sewer of tares,
and the nocturnal spoiler of the crop of corn. [1590]
Chapter XVII. The Fidelity of the Senses, Impugned by Plato, Vindicated by
Christ Himself.
Then, again, when we encounter the question (as to the veracity of those
five senses which we learn with our alphabet; since from this source even
there arises some support for our heretics. They are the faculties of
seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and tasting, and touching. The fidelity
of these senses is impugned with too much severity by the Platonists,
[1591] and according to some by Heraclitus also, and Diocles, and
Empedocles; at any rate, Plato, in the Timµus, declares the operations of
the senses to be irrational, and vitiated [1592] by our opinions or
beliefs. Deception is imputed to the sight, because it asserts that oars,
when immersed in the water, are inclined or bent, notwithstanding the
certainty that they are straight; because, again, it is quite sure that
distant tower with its really quadrangular contour is round; because also it
will discredit the fact of the truly parallel fabric of yonder porch or
arcade, by supposing it to be narrower and narrower towards its end; and
because it will join with the sea the sky which hangs at so great a height
above it. In the same way, our hearing is charged with fallacy: we think,
for instance, that is a noise in the sky which is nothing else than the
rumbling of a carriage; or, if you prefer it [1593] the other way, when
the thunder rolled at a distance, we were quite sure that it was a carriage
which made the noise. Thus, too, are our faculties of smell and taste at
fault, because the selfsame perfumes and wines lose their value after we
have used them awhile. On the same principle our touch is censured, when the
identical pavement which seemed rough to the hands is felt by the feet to be
smooth enough; and in the baths a stream of warm water is pronounced to be
quite hot at first, and beautifully temperate afterwards. Thus, according to
them, our senses deceive us, when all the while we are (the cause of the
discrepancies, by) changing our opinions. The Stoics are more moderate in
their views; for they do not load with the obloquy of deception every one of
the senses, and at all times. The Epicureans, again, show still greater
consistency, in maintaining that all the senses are equally true in their
testimony, and always so'only in a different way. It is not our organs of
sensation that are at fault, but our opinion. The senses only experience
sensation, they do not exercise opinion; it is the soul that opines. They
separated opinion from the senses, and sensation from the soul. Well, but
whence comes opinion, if not from the senses? Indeed, unless the eye had
descried a round shape in that tower, it could have had no idea that it
possessed roundness. Again, whence arises sensation if not from the soul?
For if the soul had no body, it would have no sensation. Accordingly,
sensation comes from the soul, and opinion from sensation; and the whole
(process) is the soul. But further, it may well be insisted on that there is
a something which causes the discrepancy between the report of the senses
and the reality of the facts. Now, since it is possible, (as we have seen),
for phenomena to be reported which exist not in the objects, why should it
not be equally possible for phenomena to be reported which are caused not by
the senses, but by reasons and conditions which intervene, in the very
nature of the case? If so, it will be only right that they should be duly
recognised. The truth is, that it was the water which was the cause of the
oar seeming to be inclined or bent: out of the water, it was perfectly
straight in appearance (as well as in fact). The delicacy of the substance
or medium which forms a mirror by means of its luminosity, according as it
is struck or shaken, by the vibration actually destroys the appearance of
the straightness of a right line. In like manner, the condition of the open
space which fills up the interval between it and us, necessarily causes the
true shape of the tower to escape our notice; for the uniform density of the
surrounding air covering its angles with a similar light obliterates their
outlines. So, again, the equal breadth of the arcade is sharpened or
narrowed off towards its termination, until its aspect, becoming more and
more contracted under its prolonged roof, comes to a vanishing point in the
direction of its farthest distance. So the sky blends itself with the sea,
the vision becoming spent at last, which had maintained duly the boundaries
of the two elements, so long as its vigorous glance lasted. As for the
(alleged cases of deceptive) hearing, what else could produce the illusion
but the similarity of the sounds? And if the perfume afterwards was less
strong to the smell, and the wine more flat to the taste, and the water not
so hot to the touch, their original strength was after all found in the
whole of them pretty well unimpaired. In the matter, however, of the
roughness and smoothness of the pavement, it was only natural and right that
limbs like the hands and the feet, so different in tenderness and
callousness, should have different impressions. In this way, then, there
cannot occur an illusion in our senses without an adequate cause. Now if
special causes, (such as we have indicated, ) mislead our senses add
(through our senses) our opinions also, then we must no longer ascribe the
deception to the senses, which follow the specific causes of the illusion,
nor to the opinions we form; for these are occasioned and controlled by our
senses, which only follow the causes. Persons who are afflicted with madness
or insanity, mistake one object for another. Orestes in his sister sees his
mother; Ajax sees Ulysses in the slaughtered herd; Athamas and Agave descry
wild beasts in their children. Now is it their eyes or their phrenzy which
you must blame for so vast a fallacy? All things taste bitter, in the
redundancy of their bile, to those who have the jaundice. Is it their taste
which you will charge with the physical prevarication, or their ill state of
health? All the senses, therefore, are disordered occasionally, or imposed
upon, but only in such a way as to be quite free of any fault in their own
natural functions. But further still, not even against the specific causes
and conditions themselves must we lay an indictment of deception. For, since
these physical aberrations happen for stated reasons, the reasons do not
deserve to be regarded as deceptions. Whatever ought to occur in a certain
manner is not a deception. If, then, even these circumstantial causes must
be acquitted of all censure and blame, how much more should we free from
reproach the senses, over which the said causes exercise a liberal sway!
Hence we are bound most certainly to claim for the senses truth, and
fidelity, and integrity, seeing that they never render any other account of
their impressions than is enjoined on them by the specific causes or
conditions which in all cases produce that discrepancy which appears between
the report of the senses and the reality of the objects. What mean you,
then, O most insolent Academy? You overthrow the entire condition of human
life; you disturb the whole order of nature; you obscure the good providence
of God Himself: for the senses of man which God has appointed over all His
works, that we might understand, inhabit, dispense, and enjoy them, (you
reproach) as fallacious and treacherous tyrants! But is it not from these
that all creation receives our services? Is it not by their means that a
second form is impressed even upon the world?'so many arts, so many
industrious resources, so many pursuits, such business, such offices, such
commerce, such remedies, counsels, consolations, modes, civilizations, and
accomplishments of life! All these things have produced the very relish and
savour of human existence; whilst by these senses of man, he alone of all
animated nature has the distinction of being a rational animal, with a
capacity for intelligence and knowledge'nay, an ability to form the Academy
itself! But Plato, in order to disparage the testimony of the senses, in the
Phµdrus denies (in the person of Socrates) his own ability to know even
himself, according to the injunction of the Delphic oracle; and in the
Theµtetus he deprives himself of the faculties of knowledge and sensation;
and again, in the Phµdrus he postpones till after death the posthumous
knowledge, as he calls it, of the truth; and yet for all he went on playing
the philosopher even before he died. We may not, I say, we may not call into
question the truth of the (poor vilified) senses, [1594] lest we should
even in Christ Himself, bring doubt upon [1595] the truth of their
sensation; lest perchance it should be said that He did not really "behold
Satan as lightning fall from heaven; " [1596] that He did not really hear
the Father's voice testifying of Himself; [1597] or that He was deceived
in touching Peter's wife's mother; [1598] or that the fragrance of the
ointment which He afterwards smelled was different from that which He
accepted for His burial; [1599] and that the taste of the wine was
different from that which He consecrated in memory of His blood. [1600]
On this false principle it was that Marcion actually chose to believe that
He was a phantom, denying to Him the reality of a perfect body. Now, not
even to His apostles was His nature ever a matter of deception. He was truly
both seen and heard upon the mount; [1601] true and real was the draught
of that wine at the marriage of (Cana in) Galilee; [1602] true and real
also was the touch of the then believing Thomas. [1603] Read the
testimony of John: "That which we have seen, which we have heard, which we
have looked upon with our eyes, and our hands have handled, of the Word of
life." [1604] False, of course, and deceptive must have been that
testimony, if the witness of our eyes, and ears, and hands be by nature a
lie.
Chapter XVIII. Plato Suggested Certain Errors to the Gnostics. Functions of
the Soul.
I turn now to the department of our intellectual faculties, such as Plato
has handed it over to the heretics, distinct from our bodily functions,
having obtained the knowledge of them before death. [1605] He asks in the
Phµdo, What, then, (do you think) concerning the actual possession of
knowledge? Will the body be a hindrance to it or not, if one shall admit it
as an associate in the search after knowledge? I have a similar question to
ask: Have the faculties of their sight and hearing any truth and reality for
human beings or not? Is it not the case, that even the poets are always
muttering against us, that we can never hear or see anything for certain? He
remembered, no doubt, what Epicharmus the comic poet had said: "It is the
mind which sees, the mind that hears'all else is blind and deaf." To the
same purport he says again, that man is the wisest whose mental power is the
clearest; who never applies the sense of sight, nor adds to his mind the
help of any such faculty, but employs the intellect itself in unmixed
serenity when he indulges in contemplation for the purpose of acquiring an
unalloyed insight into the nature of things; divorcing himself with all his
might from his eyes and ears and (as one must express himself) from the
whole of his body, on the ground of its disturbing the soul, and not
allowing it to possess either truth or wisdom, whenever it is brought into
communication with it. We see, then, that in opposition to the bodily senses
another faculty is provided of a much more serviceable character, even the
powers of the soul, which produce an understanding of that truth whose
realities are not palpable nor open to the bodily senses, but are very
remote from men's everyday knowledge, lying in secret'in the heights above,
and in the presence of God Himself. For Plato maintains that there are
certain invisible substances, incorporeal, celestial, [1606] divine, and
eternal, which they call ideas, that is to say, (archetypal) forms, which
are the patterns and causes of those objects of nature which are manifest to
us, and lie under our corporeal senses: the former, (according to Plato, )
are the actual verities, and the latter the images and likenesses of them.
Well, now, are there not here gleams of the heretical principles of the
Gnostics and the Valentinians? It is from this philosophy that they eagerly
adopt the difference between the bodily senses and the intellectual
faculties,'a distinction which they actually apply to the parable of the ten
virgins: making the five foolish virgins to symbolize the five bodily
senses, seeing that these are so silly and so easy to be deceived; and the
wise virgin to express the meaning of the intellectual faculties, which are
so wise as to attain to that mysterious and supernal truth, which is placed
in the pleroma. (Here, then, we have) the mystic original of the ideas of
these heretics. For in this philosophy lie both their ¦ons and their
genealogies. Thus, too, do they divide sensation, both into the intellectual
powers from their spiritual seed, and the sensuous faculties from the
animal, which cannot by any means comprehend spiritual things. From the
former germ spring invisible things; from the latter, visible things which
are grovelling and temporary, and which are obvious to the senses, placed as
they are in palpable forms. [1607] It is because of these views that we
have in a former passage stated as a preliminary fact, that the mind is
nothing else than an apparatus or instrument of the soul, [1608] and that
the spirit is no other faculty, separate from the soul, but is the soul
itself exercised in respiration; although that influence which either God on
the one hand, or the devil on the other, has breathed upon it, must be
regarded in the light of an additional element. [1609] And now, with
respect to the difference between the intellectual powers and the sensuous
faculties, we only admit it so far as the natural diversity between them
requires of us. (There is, of course, a difference) between things corporeal
and things spiritual, between visible and invisible beings, between objects
which are manifest to the view and those which are hidden from it; because
the one class are attributed to sensation, and the other to the intellect.
But yet both the one and the other must be regarded as inherent in the soul,
and as obedient to it, seeing that it embraces bodily objects by means of
the body, in exactly the same way that it conceives incorporeal objects by
help of the mind, except that it is even exercising sensation when it is
employing the intellect. For is it not true, that to employ the senses is to
use the intellect? And to employ the intellect amounts to a use of the
senses? [1610] What indeed can sensation be, but the understanding of
that which is the object of the sensation? And what can the intellect or
understanding be, but the seeing of that which is the object understood? Why
adopt such excruciating means of torturing simple knowledge and crucifying
the truth? Who can show me the sense which does not understand the object of
its sensation, or the intellect which perceives not the object which it
understands, in so clear away as to prove to me that the one can do without
the other? If corporeal things are the objects of sense, and incorporeal
ones objects of the intellect, it is the classes of the objects which are
different, not the domicile or abode of sense and intellect; in other words,
not the soul (anima) and the mind (animus). By what, in Short, are corporeal
things perceived? If it is by the soul, [1611] then the mind is a
sensuous faculty, and not merely an intellectual power; for whilst it
understands, it also perceives, because without the perception there is no
understanding. If, however, corporeal things are perceived by the soul, then
it follows that the soul's power is an intellectual one, and not merely a
sensuous faculty; for while it perceives it also understands, because
without understanding there is no perceiving. And then, again, by what are
incorporeal things understood? If it is by the mind, [1612] where will be
the soul? If it is by the soul, where will be the mind? For things which
differ ought to be mutually absent from each other, when they are occupied
in their respective functions and duties. It must be your opinion, indeed,
that the mind is absent from the soul on certain occasions; for (you
suppose) that we are so made and constituted as not to know that we have
seen or heard something, on the hypothesis [1613] that the mind was
absent at the time. I must therefore maintain that the very soul itself
neither saw nor heard, since it was at the given moment absent with its
active power'that is to say, the mind. The truth is, that whenever a man is
out of his mind, [1614] it is his soul that is demented'not because the
mind is absent, but because it is a fellow-sufferer (with the soul) at the
time. [1615] Indeed, it is the soul which is principally affected by
casualties of such a kind. Whence is this fact confirmed? It is confirmed
from the following consideration: that after the soul's departure, the mind
is no longer found in a man: it always follows the soul; nor does it at last
remain behind it alone, after death. Now, since it follows the soul, it is
also indissolubly attached to it; just as the understanding is attached to
the soul, which is followed by the mind, with which the understanding is
indissolubly connected. Granted now that the understanding is superior to
the senses, and a better discoverer of mysteries, what matters it, so long
as it is only a peculiar faculty of the soul, just as the senses themselves
are? It does not at all affect my argument, unless the understanding were
held to be superior to the senses, for the purpose of deducing from the
allegation of such superiority its separate condition likewise. After thus
combating their alleged difference, I have also to refute this question of
superiority, previous to my approaching the belief (which heresy propounds)
in a superior god. On this point, however, of a (superior) god, we shall
have to measure swords with the heretics on their own ground. [1616] Our
present subject concerns the soul, and the point is to prevent the insidious
ascription of a superiority to the intellect or understanding. Now, although
the objects which are touched by the intellect are of a higher nature, since
they are spiritual, than those which are embraced by the senses, since these
are corporeal, it will still be only a superiority in the objects'as of
lofty ones contrasted with humble'not in the faculties of the intellect
against the senses. For how can the intellect be superior to the senses,
when it is these which educate it for the discovery of various truths? It is
a fact, that these truths are learned by means of palpable forms; in other
words, invisible things are discovered by the help of visible ones, even as
the apostle tells us in his epistle: "For the invisible things of Him are
clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things
that are made; " [1617] and as Plato too might inform our heretics: "The
things which appear are the image [1618] of the things which are
concealed from view," [1619] whence it must needs follow that this world
is by all means an image of some other: so that the intellect evidently uses
the senses for its own guidance, and authority, and mainstay; and without
the senses truth could not be attained. How, then, can a thing be superior
to that which is instrumental to its existence, which is also indispensable
to it, and to whose help it owes everything which it acquires? Two
conclusions therefore follow from what we have said: (1) That the intellect
is not to be preferred above the senses, on the (supposed) ground that the
agent through which a thing exists is inferior to the thing itself; and (2)
that the intellect must not be separated from the senses, since the
instrument by which a thing's existence is sustained is associated with the
thing itself.
Chapter XIX. The Intellect Coeval with the Soul in the Human Being. An
Example from Aristotle Converted into Evidence Favourable to These Views.
Nor must we fail to notice those writers who deprive the soul of the
intellect even for a short period of time. They do this in order to prepare
the way of introducing the intellect'and the mind also'at a subsequent time
of life, even at the time when intelligence appears in a man. They maintain
that the stage of infancy is supported by the soul alone, simply to promote
vitality, without any intention of acquiring knowledge also, because not all
things have knowledge which possess life. Trees, for instance, to quote
Aristotle's example, [1620] have vitality, but have not knowledge; and
with him agrees every one who gives a share to all animated beings of the
animal substance, which, according to our view, exists in man alone as his
special property,'not because it is the work of God, which all other
creatures are likewise, but because it is the breath of God, which this
(human soul) alone is, which we say is born with the full equipment of its
proper faculties. Well, let them meet us with the example of the trees: we
will accept their challenge, (nor shah we find in it any detriment to our
own argument; ) for it is an undoubted fact, that whilst trees are yet but
twigs and sprouts, and before they even reach the sapling stage, there is in
them their own proper faculty of life, as soon as they spring out of their
native beds. But then, as time goes on, the vigour of the tree slowly
advances, as it grows and hardens into its woody trunk, until its mature age
completes the condition which nature destines for it. Else what resources
would trees possess in due course for the inoculation of grafts, and the
formation of leaves, and the swelling of their buds, and the graceful
shedding of their blossom, and the softening of their sap, were there not in
them the quiet growth of the full provision of their nature, and the
distribution of this life over all their branches for the accomplishment of
their maturity? Trees, therefore, have ability or knowledge; and they derive
it from whence they also derive vitality'that is, from the one source of
vitality and knowledge which is peculiar to their nature, and that from the
infancy which they, too, begin with. For I observe that even the vine,
although yet tender and immature, still understands its own natural
business, and strives to cling to some support, that, leaning on it, and
lacing through it, [1621] it may so attain its growth. Indeed, without
waiting for the husbandman's training, without an espalier, without a prop,
whatever its tendrils catch, it will fondly cling to, [1622] and embrace
with really greater tenacity and force by its own inclination than by your
volition. It longs and hastens to be secure. Take also ivy-plants, never
mind how young: I observe their attempts from the very first to grasp,
objects above them, and outrunning everything else, to hang on to the
highest thing, preferring as they do to spread over walls with their leafy
web and woof rather than creep on the ground and be trodden under by every
foot that likes to crush them. On the other hand, in the case of such trees
as receive injury from contact with a building, how do they hang off as they
grow and avoid what injures them! You can see that their branches were
naturally meant to take the opposite direction, and can very well understand
the vital instincts [1623] of such a tree from its avoidance of the wall.
It is contented (if it be only a little shrub) with its own insignificant
destiny, which it has in its foreseeing instinct thoroughly been aware of
from its: infancy, only it still fears even a ruined building. On my side,
then, why should I not contend for these wise and sagacious natures of
trees? Let them have vitality, as the philosophers permit it; but let them
have knowledge too, although the philosophers disavow it. Even the infancy
of a log, then, may have an intellect (suitable to it): how much more may
that of a human being, whose soul (which may be compared with the nascent
sprout of a tree) has been derived from Adam as its root, and has been
propagated amongst his posterity by means of woman, to whom it has been
entrusted for transmission, and thus has sprouted into life with all its
natural apparatus, both of intellect and of sense! I am much mistaken if the
human person, even from his infancy, when he saluted life with his infant
cries, does not testify to his actual possession of the faculties of
sensation and intellect by the fact of his birth, vindicating at one and the
same time the use of all his senses'that of seeing by the light, that of
hearing by sounds, that of taste by liquids, that of smell by the air, that
of touch by the ground. This earliest voice of infancy, then, is the first
effort of the senses, and the initial impulse of mental perceptions.
[1624] There is also the further fact, that some persons understand this
plaintive cry of the infant to be an augury of affliction in the prospect of
our tearful life, whereby from the very moment of birth (the soul) has to be
regarded as endued with prescience, much more with intelligence. Accordingly
by this intuition [1625] the babe knows his mother, discerns the nurse,
and even recognises the waiting-maid; refusing the breast of another woman,
and the cradle that is not his own, and longing only for the arms to which
he is accustomed. Now from what source does he acquire this discernment of
novelty and custom, if not from instinctive knowledge? Holy does it happen
that he is irritated and quieted, if not by help of his initial intellect?
It would be very strange indeed that infancy were naturally so lively, if it
had not mental power; and naturally so capable of impression and affection,
if it had no intellect. But (we hold the contrary): for Christ, by
"accepting praise out of the mouth of babes and sucklings," [1626] has
declared that neither childhood nor infancy is without sensibility,
[1627] 'the former of which states, when meeting Him with approving shouts,
proved its ability to offer Him testimony; [1628] while the other, by
being slaughtered, for His sake of course, knew what violence meant.
[1629]
Chapter XX. The Soul, as to Its Nature Uniform, But Its Faculties Variously
Developed. Varieties Only Accidental.
And here, therefore, we draw our conclusion, that all the natural properties
of the soul are inherent in it as parts of its substance; and that they grow
and develope along with it, from the very moment of its own origin at birth.
Just as Seneca says, whom we so often find on our side: [1630] "There are
implanted within us the seeds of all the arts and periods of life. And God.
our Master, secretly produces our mental dispositions; "that is, from the
germs which are implanted and hidden in us by means of infancy, and these
are the intellect: for from these our natural dispositions are evolved. Now,
even the seeds of plants have, one form in each kind, but their development
varies: some open and expand in a healthy and perfect state, while others
either improve or degenerate, owing to the conditions of weather and soil,
and from the appliance of labour and care; also from the course of the
seasons, and from the occurrence of casual circumstances. In like manner,
the soul may well be [1631] uniform in its seminal origin, although
multiform by the process of nativity. [1632] And here. local influences,
too, must be taken into account. It has been said that dull and brutish
persons are born at Thebes; and the most accomplished in wisdom and speech
at Athens, where in the district of Colythus [1633] children speak'such
is the precocity of their tongue'before they are a month old. Indeed, Plato
himself tells us, in the Timµus, that Minerva, when preparing to found her
great city, only regarded the nature of the country which gave promise of
mental dispositions of this kind; whence he himself in The Laws instructs
Megillus and Clinias to be careful in their selection of a site for building
a city. Empedocles, however, places the cause of a subtle or an obtuse
intellect in the quality of the blood, from which he derives progress and
perfection in learning and science. The subject of national peculiarities
has grown by this time into proverbial notoriety. Comic poets deride the
Phrygians for their cowardice; Sallust reproaches the Moors for their
levity, and the Dalmatians for their cruelty; even the apostle brands the
Cretans as "liars." [1634] Very likely, too, something must be set down
to the score of bodily condition and the state of the health. Stoutness
hinders knowledge, but a spare form stimulates it; paralysis prostrates the
mind, a decline preserves it. How much more will those accidental
circumstances have to be noticed, which, in addition to the state of one's
body or one's health, tend to sharpen or to dull the intellect! It is
sharpened by learned pursuits, by the sciences, the arts, by experimental
knowledge, business habits, and studies; it is blunted by ignorance, idle
habits, inactivity, lust, inexperience, listlessness, and vicious pursuits.
Then, besides these influences, there must perhaps [1635] be added the
supreme powers. Now these are the supreme powers: according to our
(Christian) notions, they are the Lord God and His adversary the devil; but
according to men's general opinion about providence, they are fate and
necessity; and about fortune, it is man's freedom of will. Even the
philosophers allow these distinctions; whilst on our part we have already
undertaken to treat of them, on the principles of the (Christian) faith, in
a separate work. [1636] It is evident how great must be the influences
which so variously affect the one nature of the soul, since they are
commonly regarded as separate "natures." Still they are not different
species, but casual incidents of one nature and substance'even of that which
God conferred on Adam, and made the mould of all (subsequent ones). Casual
incidents will they always remain, but never will they become!specific
differences. However great, too, at present is the variety of men's
maunders, it was not so in Adam, the founder of their race. But all these
discordances ought to have existed in him as the fountainhead, and thence to
have descended to us in an unimpaired variety, if the variety had been due
to nature.
Chapter XXI. As Free-Will Actuates an Individual So May His Character
Change.
Now, if the soul possessed this uniform and simple nature from the beginning
in Adam, previous to so many mental dispositions (being developed out of
it), it is not rendered multiform by suck various development, nor by the
triple [1637] form predicated of it in "the Valentinian trinity" (that we
may still keep the condemnation of that heresy in view), for not even this
nature is discoverable in Adam. What had he that was spiritual? Is it
because he prophetically declared "the great mystery of Christ and the
church? " [1638] "This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she
shall be called Woman. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother,
and he shall cleave unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh."
[1639] But this (gift of prophecy) only came on him afterwards, when God
infused into him the ecstasy, or spiritual quality, in which prophecy
consists. If, again, the evil of sin was developed in him, this must not be
accounted as a natural disposition: it was rather produced by the
instigation of the (old) serpent as far from being incidental to his nature
as it was from being material in him, for we have already excluded belief in
"Matter." [1640] Now, if neither the spiritual element, nor what the
heretics call the material element, was properly inherent in him (since, if
he had been created out of matter, the germ of evil must have been an
integral part of his constitution), it remains that the one only original
element of his nature was what is called the animal (the principle of
vitality, the soul), which we maintain to be simple and uniform in its
condition. Concerning this, it remains for us to inquire whether, as being
called natural, it ought to be deemed subject to change. (The heretics whom
we have referred to) deny that nature is susceptible of any change,
[1641] in order that they may be able to establish and settle their
threefold theory, or "trinity," in all its characteristics as to the several
natures, because "a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, nor a corrupt tree
good fruit; and nobody gathers figs of thorns, nor grapes of brambles."
[1642] If so, then "God will not be able any longer to raise up from the
stones children unto Abraham; nor to make a generation of vipers bring forth
fruits of repentance." [1643] And if so, the apostle too was in error
when he said in his epistle, "Ye were at one time darkness, (but now are ye
light in the Lord: )" [1644] and, "We also were by nature children of
wrath; " [1645] and, "Such were some of you, but ye are washed."
[1646] The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant
with truth. A corrupt tree will never yield good fruit, unless the better
nature be grafted into it; nor will a good tree produce evil fruit, except
by the same process of cultivation. Stones also will become children of
Abraham, if educated in Abraham's faith; and a generation of vipers will
bring forth the fruits of penitence, if they reject the poison of their
malignant nature. This will be the power of the grace of God, more potent
indeed than nature, exercising its sway over the faculty that underlies
itself within us'even the freedom of our will, which is described as
(of independent authority); and inasmuch as this faculty is
itself also natural and mutable, in whatsoever direction it turns, it
inclines of its own nature. Now, that there does exist within us naturally
this independent authority , we have already shown in
opposition both to Marcion [1647] and to Hermogenes. [1648] if, then,
the natural condition has to be submitted to a definition, it must be
determined to be twofold'there being the category of the born and the
unborn, the made and not-made. Now that which has received its constitution
by being made or by being born, is by nature capable of being changed, for
it can be both born again and re-made; whereas that which is not-made and
unborn will remain for ever immoveable. Since, however, this state is suited
to God alone, as the only Being who is unborn and not-made (and therefore
immortal and unchangeable), it is absolutely certain that the nature of all
other existences which are born and created is subject to modification and
change; so that if the threefold state is to be ascribed to the soul, it
must be supposed to arise from the mutability of its accidental
circumstances, and not from the appointment of nature.
Chapter XXII. Recapitulation. Definition of the Soul.
Hermogenes has already heard from us what are the other natural faculties of
the soul, as well as their vindication and proof; whence it may be seen that
the soul is rather the offspring of God than of matter. The names of these
faculties shall here be simply repeated, that they may not seem to be
forgotten and passed out of sight. We have assigned, then, to the soul both
that freedom of the will which we just now mentioned, and its dominion over
the works of nature, and its occasional gift of divination, independently of
that endowment of prophecy which accrues to it expressly from the grace of
God. We shall therefore now quit this subject of the soul's disposition, in
order to set out fully in order its various qualities. [1649] The soul,
then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal, possessing
body, having form, simple in its substance, intelligent in its own nature,
developing its power in various ways, free in its determinations, subject to
be changes of accident, in its faculties mutable, rational, supreme, endued
with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one (archetypal soul). It
remains for us now to consider how it is developed out of this one original
source; in other words, whence, and when, and how it is produced.
Chapter XXIII. The Opinions of Sundry Heretics Which Originate Ultimately
with Plato.
Some suppose that they came down from heaven, with as firm a belief as they
are apt to entertain, when they indulge in the prospect of an undoubted
return thither. Saturninus, the disciple of Menander, who belonged to
Simon's sect, introduced this opinion: he affirmed that man was made by
angels. A futile, imperfect creation at first, weak and unable to stand, he
crawled upon the ground like a worm, because he wanted the strength to
maintain an erect posture; but afterwards having, by the compassion of the
Supreme Power (in whose image, which had not been fully understood, he was
clumsily formed), obtained a slender spark of life, this roused and righted
his imperfect form, and animated it with a higher vitality, and provided for
its return, on its relinquishment of life, to its original principle.
Carpocrates, indeed, claims for himself so extreme an amount of the supernal
qualities, that his disciples set their own souls at once on an equality
with Christ (not to mention the apostles); and sometimes, when it suits
their fancy, even give them the superiority'deeming them, forsooth, to have
partaken of that sublime virtue which looks down upon the principalities
that govern this world. Apelles tells us that our souls were enticed by
earthly baits down from their super-celestial abodes by a fiery angel,
Isreal's God; and ours, who then enclosed them firmly within our sinful
flesh. The hive of Valentinus fortifies the soul with the germ of Sophia, or
Wisdom; by means of which germ they recognise, in the images of visible
objects, the stories and Milesian fables of their own . I am sorry from
my heart that Plato has been the caterer to all these heretics. For in the
he imagines that souls wander from this world to that, and thence back
again hither; whilst in the he supposes that the children of God, to
whom had been assigned the production of mortal creatures, having taken for
the soul the germ of immortality, congealed around it a mortal body, 'thereby
indicating that this world is the figure of some other. Now, to procure
belief in all this 'that the soul had formerly lived with God in the heavens
above, sharing His ideas with Him, and afterwards came down to live with us
on earth, and whilst here recollects the eternal patterns of things which it
had learnt before' he elaborated his new formula, ,
which means that "learning is reminiscence; "implying that the souls which
come to us from thence forget the things amongst which they formerly lived,
but that they afterwards recall them, instructed by the objects they see
around them. Forasmuch, therefore, as the doctrines which the heretics
borrow from Plato are cunningly defended by this kind of argument, I shall
sufficiently refute the heretics if I overthrow the argument of Plato.
Chapter XXIV. Plato's Inconsistency. He Supposes the Soul Self-Existent, Yet
Capable of Forgetting What Passed in a Previous State.
In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a failure of
memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of divine quality
as to put it on a par with God. He makes it unborn, which single attribute I
might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then
adds that the soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal'since he believed
God to be the same'invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme,
rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to the soul, if he
wanted to call it God? We, however, who allow no appendage to God [1650]
(in the sense of equality), by this very fact reckon the soul as very far
below God: for we suppose it to be born, and hereby to possess something of
a diluted divinity and an attenuated felicity, as the breath (of God),
though not His spirit; and although immortal, as this is an attribute of
divinity, yet for all that passible, since this is an incident of a born
condition, and consequently from the first capable of deviation from
perfection and right, [1651] and by consequence susceptible of a failure
in memory. This point I have discussed sufficiently with Hermogenes.
[1652] But it may be further observed, that if the soul is to merit being
accounted a god, by reason of all its qualities being equal to the
attributes of God, it must then be subject to no passion, and therefore to
no loss of memory; for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to that
of which you predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato
himself deems the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties,
and which Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. Now we
need not raise the doubt whether so divine a faculty as the soul was capable
of losing memory: the question rather is, whether it is able to recover
afresh that which it has lost. I could not decide whether that, which ought
to have lost memory, if it once incurred the loss, would be powerful enough
to recollect itself, Both alternatives, indeed, will agree very well with my
soul, but not with Plato's. In the second place, my objection to him will
stand thus: (Plato, ) do you endow the soul with a natural competency for
understanding those well-known ideas of yours? Certainly I do, will be your
answer. Well, now, no one will concede to you that the knowledge, (which you
say is) the gift of nature, of the natural sciences can fail. But the
knowledge of the sciences fails; the knowledge of the various fields of
learning and of the arts of life fails; and so perhaps the knowledge of the
faculties and affections of our minds fails, although they seem to be
inherent in our nature, but really are not so: because, as we have already
said, [1653] they are affected by accidents of place, of manners and
customs, of bodily condition, of the state of man's health'by the influences
of the Supreme Powers, and the changes of man's free-will. Now the
instinctive knowledge of natural objects never fails, not even in the brute
creation. The lion, no doubt, will forget his ferocity, if surrounded by the
softening influence of training; he may become, with his beautiful mane, the
plaything of some Queen Berenice, and lick her cheeks with his tongue. A
wild beast may lay aside his habits, but his natural instincts will not be
forgotten. He will not forget his proper food, nor his natural resources,
nor his natural alarms; and should the queen offer him fishes or cakes, he
will wish for flesh; and if, when he is ill, any antidote be prepared for
him, he will still require the ape; and should no hunting-spear be presented
against him, he will yet dread the crow of the cock. In like manner with
man, who is perhaps the most forgetful of all creatures, the knowledge of
everything natural to him will remain in-eradicably fixed in him,'but this
alone, as being alone a natural instinct. He will never forget to eat when
he is hungry; or to drink when he is thirsty; or to use his eyes when he
wants to see; or his ears, to hear; or his nose, to smell; or his mouth, to
taste; or his hand, to touch. These are, to be sure, the senses, which
philosophy depreciates by her preference for the intellectual faculties. But
if the natural knowledge of the sensuous faculties is permanent, how happens
it that the knowledge of the intellectual faculties fails, to which the
superiority is ascribed? Whence, now, arises that power of forgetfulness
itself which precedes recollection? From long lapse of time, he says. But
this is a shortsighted answer. Length of time cannot be incidental to that
which, according to him, is unborn, and which therefore must be deemed most
certainly eternal. For that which is eternal, on the ground of its being
unborn, since it admits neither of beginning nor end of time, is subject to
no temporal criterion. And that which time does not measure, undergoes no
change in consequence of time; nor is long lapse of time at all influential
over it. If time is a cause of oblivion, why, from the time of the soul's
entrance into the body, does memory fail, as if thenceforth the soul were to
be affected by time? for the soul, being undoubtedly prior to the body, was
of course not irrespective of time. Is it, indeed, immediately on the
soul's entrance into the body that oblivion takes place, or some time
afterwards? If immediately, where will be the long lapse of the time which
is as yet inadmissible in the hypothesis? [1654] Take, for instance, the
case of the infant. If some time afterwards, will not the soul, during the
interval previous to the moment of oblivion, Still exercise its powers of
memory? And how comes it to pass that the soul subsequently forgets, and
then afterwards again remembers? How long, too, must the lapse of the time
be regarded as having been, during which the oblivion oppressed the soul?
The whole course of one's life, I apprehend, will be insufficient to efface
the memory of an age which endured so long before the soul's assumption of
the body. But then, again, Plato throws the blame upon the body, as if it
were at all credible that a born substance could extinguish the power of one
that is unborn. There exist, however, among bodies a great many differences,
by reason of their rationality, their bulk, their condition, their age, and
their health. Will there then be supposed to exist similar differences in
obliviousness? Oblivion, however, is uniform and identical. Therefore bodily
peculiarity, with its manifold varieties, will not become the cause of an
effect which is an invariable one. There are likewise, according to Plato's
own testimony, many proofs to show that the soul has a divining faculty, as
we have already advanced against Hermogenes. But there is not a man living,
who does not himself feel his soul possessed with a presage and augury of
some omen, danger, or joy. Now, if the body is not prejudicial to
divination, it will not, I suppose, be injurious to memory. One thing is
certain, that souls in the same body both forget and remember. If any
corporeal condition engenders forgetfulness, how will it admit the opposite
state of recollection? Because recollection, after forgetfulness, is
actually the resurrection of the memory. Now, how should not that which is
hostile to the memory at first, be also prejudicial to it in the second
instance? Lastly, who have better memories than little children, with their
fresh, unworn souls, not yet immersed in domestic and public cares, but
devoted only to those studies the acquirement of which is itself a
reminiscence? Why, indeed, do we not all of us recollect in an equal degree,
since we are equal in our forgetfulness? But this is true only of
philosophers! But not even of the whole of them. Amongst so many nations, in
so great a crowd of sages, Plato, to be sure, is the only man who has
combined the oblivion and the recollection of ideas. Now, since this main
argument of his by no means keeps its ground, it follows that its entire
superstructure must fall with it, namely, that souls are supposed to be
unborn, and to live in the heavenly regions, and to be instructed in the
divine mysteries thereof; moreover, that they descend to this earth, and
here recall to memory their previous; existence, for the purpose, of course,
of supplying to our heretics the fitting materials for their systems.
Chapter XXV. Tertullian Refutes, Physiologically, the Notion that the Soul
is Introduced After Birth.
I shall now return to the cause of this digression, in order that I may
explain how all souls are derived from one, when and where and in what
manner they are produced. Now, touching this subject, it matters not whether
the question be started by the philosopher, by the heretic, or by the crowd.
Those who profess the truth care nothing about their opponents, especially
such of them as begin by maintaining that the soul is not conceived in the
womb, nor is formed and produced at the time that the flesh is moulded, but
is impressed from without upon the infant before his complete vitality, but
after the process of parturition. They say, moreover, that the human seed
having been duly deposited ex concubiter in the womb, and having been by
natural impulse quickened, it becomes condensed into the mere substance of
the flesh, which is in due time born, warm from the furnace of the womb, and
then released from its heat. (This flesh) resembles the case of hot iron,
which is in that state plunged into cold water; for, being smitten by the
cold air (into which it is born), it at once receives the power of
animation, and utters vocal sound. This view is entertained by the Stoics,
along with ¦nesidemus, and occasionally by Plato himself, when he tells us
that the soul, being quite a separate formation, originating elsewhere and
externally to the womb, is inhaled [1655] when the new-born infant first
draws breath, and by and by exhaled [1656] with the man's latest breath.
We shall see whether this view of his is merely fictitious. Even the medical
profession has not lacked its Hicesius, to prove a traitor both to nature
and his own calling. These gentlemen, I suppose, were too modest to come to
terms with women on the mysteries of childbirth, so well known to the
latter. But how much more is there for them to blush at, when in the end
they have the women to refute them, instead of commending them. Now, in such
a question as this, no one can be so useful a teacher, judge, or witness, as
the sex itself which is so intimately concerned. Give us your testimony,
then, ye mothers, whether yet pregnant, or after delivery (let barren women
and men keep silence),'the truth of your own nature is in question, the
reality of your own suffering is the point to be decided. (Tell us, then, )
whether you feel in the embryo within you any vital force [1657] other
than your own, with which your bowels tremble, your sides shake, your entire
womb throbs, and the burden which oppresses you constantly changes its
position? Are these movements a joy to you, and a positive removal of
anxiety, as making you confident that your infant both possesses vitality
and enjoys it? Or, should his restlessness cease, your first fear would be
for him; and he would be aware of it within you, since he is disturbed at
the novel sound; and you would crave for injurious diet, [1658] or would
even loathe your food'all on his account; and then you and he, (in the
closeness of your sympathy, ) would share together your common ailments'so
far that with your contusions and bruises would he actually become
marked,'whilst within you, and even on the selfsame parts of the body,
taking to himself thus peremptorily [1659] the injuries of his mother!
Now, whenever a livid hue and redness are incidents of the blood, the blood
will not be without the vital principle, [1660] or soul; or when disease
attacks the soul or vitality, (it becomes a proof of its real existence,
since) there is no disease where there is no soul or principle of life.
Again, inasmuch as sustenance by food, and the want thereof, growth and
decay, fear and motion, are conditions of the soul or life, he who
experiences them must be alive. And, so, he at last ceases to live, who
ceases to experience them. And thus by and by infants are still-born; but
how so, unless they had life? For how could any die, who had not previously
lived? But sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb, an infant
is put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he impedes
parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die himself. Accordingly,
among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a
nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all, and
keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, [1661] by
means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but
unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook,
wherewith the entire f£tus is extracted [1662] by a violent delivery.
There is also (another instrument in the shape of) a copper needle or spike,
by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: they
give it, from its infanticide function, the name of , the
slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such apparatus was
possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus, and
Herophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder Soranus himself,
who all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and pitied
this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to
escape being tortured alive. Of the necessity of such harsh treatment I have
no doubt even Hicesius was convinced, although he imported their soul into
infants after birth from the stroke of the frigid air, because the very term
for soul, forsooth, in Greek answered to such a refrigeration! [1663]
Well, then, have the barbarian and Roman nations received souls by some
other process, (I wonder; ) for they have called the soul by another name
than ? How many nations are there who commence life [1664] under
the broiling sun of the torrid zone, scorching their skin into its swarthy
hue? Whence do they get their souls, with no frosty air to help them? I say
not a word of those well-warmed bed-rooms, and all that apparatus of heat
which ladies in childbirth so greatly need, when a breath of cold air might
endanger their life. But in the very bath almost a babe will slip into life,
and at once his cry is heard! if, however, a good frosty air is to the soul
so indispensable a treasure, then beyond the German and the Scythian tribes,
and the Alpine and the Argµan heights, nobody ought ever to be born! But the
fact really is, that population is greater within the temperate regions of
the East and the West, and men's minds are sharper; whilst there is not a
Sarmatian whose wits are not dull and humdrum. The minds of men, too, would
grow keener by reason of the cold, if their souls came into being amidst
nipping frosts; for as the substance is, so must be its active power. Now,
after these preliminary statements, we may also refer to the case of those
who, having been cut out of their mother's womb, have breathed and retained
life'your Bacchuses [1665] and Scipios. [1666] If, however, there be
any one who, like Plato, [1667] supposes that two souls cannot, more than
two bodies could, co-exist in the same individual, I, on the contrary, could
show him not merely the co-existence of two souls in one person, as also of
two bodies in the same womb, but likewise the combination of many other
things in natural connection with the soul'for instance, of demoniacal
possession; and that not of one only, as in the case of Socrates' own demon;
but of seven spirits as in the case of the Magdalene; [1668] and of a
legion in number, as in the Gadarene. [1669] Now one soul is naturally
more susceptible of conjunction with another soul, by reason of the identity
of their substance, than an evil spirit is, owing to their diverse natures.
But when the same philosopher, in the sixth book of The Laws, warns us to
beware lest a vitiation of seed should infuse a soil into both body and soul
from an illicit or debased concubinage, I hardly know whether he is more
inconsistent with himself in respect of one of his previous statements, or
of that which he had just made. For he here shows us that the soul proceeds
from human seed (and warns us to be on our guard about it), not, (as he had
said before, ) from the first breath of the new-born child. Pray, whence
comes it that from similarity of soul we resemble our parents in
disposition, according to the testimony of Cleanthes, [1670] if we are
not produced from this seed of the soul? Why, too, used the old astrologers
to cast a man's nativity from his first conception, if his soul also draws
not its origin from that moment? To this (nativity) likewise belongs the
inbreathing of the soul, whatever that is.
Chapter XXVI. Scripture Alone Offers Clear Knowledge on the Questions We
Have Been Controverting.
Now there is no end to the uncertainty and irregularity of human opinion,
until we come to the limits which God has prescribed. I shall at last retire
within our own lines and firmly hold my ground there, for the purpose of
proving to the Christian (the soundness of) my answers to the Philosophers
and the Physicians. Brother (in Christ), on your own foundation [1671]
build up your faith. Consider the wombs of the most sainted women instinct
with the life within them, and their babes which not only breathed therein,
but were even endowed with prophetic intuition. See how the bowels of
Rebecca are disquieted, [1672] though her child-bearing is as yet remote,
and there is no impulse of (vital) air. Behold, a twin offspring chafes
within the mother's womb, although she has no sign as yet of the twofold
nation. Possibly we might have regarded as a prodigy the contention of this
infant progeny, which struggled before it lived, which had animosity
previous to animation, if it had simply disturbed the mother by its
restlessness within her. But when her womb opens, and the number of her
offspring is seen, and their presaged condition known, we have presented to
us a proof not merely of the (separate) souls of the infants, but of their
hostile struggles too. He who was the first to be born was threatened with
detention by him who was anticipated in birth, who was not yet fully brought
forth, but whose hand only had been born. Now if he actually imbibed life,
and received his soul, in Platonic style, at his first breath; or else,
after the Stoic rule, had the earliest taste of animation on touching the
frosty air; what was the other about, who was so eagerly looked for, who was
still detained within the womb, and was trying to detain (the other)
outside? I suppose he had not yet breathed when he seized his brother's
heel; [1673] and was still warm with his mother's warmth, when he so
strongly wished to be the first to quit the womb. What an infant! so
emulous, so strong, and already so contentious; and all this, I suppose,
because even now full of life! Consider, again, those extraordinary
conceptions, which were more wonderful still, of the barren woman and the
virgin: these women would only be able to produce imperfect offspring
against the course of nature, from the very fact that one of them was too
old to bear seed, and the other was pure from the contact of man. If there
was to be bearing at all in the case, it was only fitting that they should
be born without a soul, (as the philosopher would say, ) who had been
irregularly conceived. However, even these have life, each of them in his
mother's womb. Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in her
womb; [1674] Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had instigated her
within. [1675] The mothers recognise each their own offspring, being
moreover each recognised by their infants, which were therefore of course
alive, and were not souls merely, but spirits also. Accordingly you read the
word of God which was spoken to Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the
belly, I knew thee." [1676] Since God forms us in the womb, He also
breathes upon us, as He also did at the first creation, when "the Lord God
formed man, and breathed into him the breath of life." [1677] Nor could
God have known man in the womb, except in his entire nature: "And before
thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee." [1678] Well, was
it then a dead body at that early stage? Certainly not. For "God is not the
God of the dead, but of the living."
Chapter XXVII. Soul and Body Conceived, Formed and Perfected in Element
Simultaneously.
How, then, is a living being conceived? Is the substance of both body and
soul formed together at one and the same time? Or does one of them precede
the other in natural formation? We indeed maintain that both are conceived,
and formed, and perfectly simultaneously, as well as born together; and that
not a moment's interval occurs in their conception, so that, a prior place
can be assigned to either. [1679] Judge, in fact, of the incidents of
man's earliest existence by those which occur to him at the very last. As
death is defined to be nothing else than the separation of body and soul,
[1680] life, which is the opposite of death, is susceptible of no other
definition than the conjunction of body and soul. If the severance happens
at one and the same time to both substances by means of death, so the law of
their combination ought to assure us that it occurs simultaneously to the
two substances by means of life. Now we allow that life begins with
conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception;
life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul
does. Thus, then, the processes which act together to produce separation by
death, also combine in a simultaneous action to produce life. If we assign
priority to (the formation of) one of the natures, and a subsequent time to
the other, we shall have further to determine the precise times of the
semination, according to the condition and rank of each. And that being so,
what time shall we give to the seed of the body, and what to the seed of the
soul? Besides, if different periods are to be assigned to the seminations
then arising out of this difference in time, we shall also have different
substances. [1681] For although we shall allow that there are two kinds
of seed'that of the body and that of the soul'we still declare that they are
inseparable, and therefore contemporaneous and simultaneous in origin. Now
let no one take offence or feel ashamed at an interpretation of the
processes of nature which is rendered necessary (by the defence of the
truth). Nature should be to us an object of reverence, not of blushes. It is
lust, not natural usage, which has brought shame on the intercourse of the
sexes. It is the excess, not the normal state, which is immodest and
unchaste: the normal condition has received a blessing from God, and is
blest by Him: "Be fruitful, and multiply, (and replenish the earth.)"
[1682] Excess, however, has He cursed, in adulteries, and wantonness, and
chambering. [1683] Well, now, in this usual function of the sexes which
brings together the male and the female in their common intercourse, we know
that both the soul and the flesh discharge a duty together: the soul
supplies desire, the flesh contributes the gratification of it; the soul
furnishes the instigation, the flesh affords the realization. The entire man
being excited by the one effort of both natures, his seminal substance is
discharged, deriving its fluidity from the body, and its warmth from the
soul. Now if the soul in Greek is a word which is synonymous with cold,
[1684] how does it come to pass that the body grows cold after the soul has
quitted it? Indeed (if I run the risk of offending modesty even, in my
desire to prove the truth), I cannot help asking, whether we do not, in that
very heat of extreme gratification when the generative fluid is ejected,
feel that somewhat of our soul has gone from us? And do we not experience a
faintness and prostration along with a dimness of sight? This, then, must be
the soul-producing seed, which arises at once from the out-drip of the soul,
just as that fluid is the body-producing seed which proceeds from the
drainage of the flesh. Most true are the examples of the first creation.
Adam's flesh was formed of clay. Now what is clay bug an excellent moisture,
whence should spring the generating fluid? From the breath of God first came
the soul. But what else is the breath of God than the vapour of the spirit,
whence should spring that which we breathe out through the generative fluid?
Forasmuch, therefore, as these two different and separate substances, the
clay and the breath, combined at the first creation in forming the
individual man, they then both amalgamated and mixed their proper seminal
rudiments in one, and ever afterwards communicated to the human race the
normal mode of its propagation, so that even now the two substances,
although diverse from each other, flow forth simultaneously in a united
channel; and finding their way together into their appointed seed-plot, they
fertilize with their combined vigour the human fruit out of their respective
natures. And inherent in this human product is his own seed, according to
the process which has been ordained for every creature endowed with the
functions of generation. Accordingly from the one (primeval) man comes the
entire outflow and redundance of men's souls'nature proving herself true to
the commandment of God, "Be fruitful, and multiply." [1685] For in the
very preamble of this one production, "Let us make man," [1686] man's
whole posterity was declared and described in a plural phrase, "Let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea," etc. [1687] And no wonder: in
the seed lies the promise and earnest of the crop.
Chapter XXVIII. The Pythagorean Doctrine of Transmigration Sketched and
Censured.
What, then, by this time means that ancient saying, mentioned by Plato,
[1688] concerning the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence
and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again
depart from this life, and afterwards become alive from the dead? Some will
have it that this is a saying of Pythagoras; Albinus supposes it to be a
divine announcement, perhaps of the Egyptian Mercury. [1689] But there is
no divine saying, except of the one true God, by whom the prophets, and the
apostles, and Christ Himself declared their grand message. More ancient than
Saturn a good deal (by some nine hundred years or so), and even than his
grandchildren, is Moses; and he is certainly much more divine, recounting
and tracing out, as he does, the course of the human race from the very
beginning of the world, indicating the several births (of the fathers of
mankind) according to their names and their epochs; giving thus plain proof
of the divine character of his work, from its divine authority and word. If,
indeed, the sophist of Samos is Plato's authority for the eternally
revolving migration of souls out of a constant alternation of the dead and
the living states, then no doubt did the famous Pythagoras, however
excellent in other respects, for the purpose of fabricating such an opinion
as this, rely on a falsehood, which was not only shameful, but also
hazardous. Consider it, you that are ignorant of it, and believe with us. He
feigns death, he conceals himself underground, he condemns himself to that
endurance for some seven years, during which he learns from his mother, who
was his sole accomplice and attendant, what he was to relate for the belief
of the world concerning those who had died since his seclusion; [1690]
and when he thought that he had succeeded in reducing the frame of his body
to the horrid appearance of a dead old man, he comes forth from the place of
his concealment and deceit, and pretends to have returned from the dead. Who
would hesitate about believing that the man, whom he had supposed to have
died, was come back again to life? especially after hearing from him facts
about the recently dead, [1691] which he evidently could only have
discovered in Hades itself! Thus, that men are made alive after death, is
rather an old statement. But what if it be rather a recent one also? The
truth does not desire antiquity, nor does falsehood shun novelty. This
notable saying I hold to be plainly false, though ennobled by antiquity. How
should that not be false, which depends for its evidence on a falsehood?'How
can I help believing Pythagoras to be a deceiver, who practises deceit to
win my belief? How will he convince me that, before he was Pythagoras, he
had been Aethalides, and Euphorbus, and the fisherman Pyrrhus, and
Hermotimus, to make us believe that men live again after they have died,
when he actually perjured himself afterwards as Pythagoras. In proportion as
it would be easier for me to believe that he had returned once to life in
his own person, than so often in the person of this man and that, in the
same degree has he deceived me in things which are too hard to be credited,
because he has played the impostor in matters which might be readily
believed. Well, but he recognised the shield of Euphorbus, which had been
formerly consecrated at Delphi, and claimed it as his own, and proved his
claim by signs which were generally unknown. Now, look again at his
subterranean lurking-place, and believe his story, if you can. For, as to
the man who devised such a tricksty scheme, to the injury of his health,
fraudulently wasting his life, and torturing it for seven years underground,
amidst hunger, idleness, and darkness'with a profound disgust for the mighty
sky'what reckless effort would he not make, what curious contrivance would
he not attempt, to arrive at the discovery of this famous shield? Suppose
now, that he found it in some of those hidden researches; suppose that he
recovered some slight breath of report which survived the now obsolete
tradition; suppose him to have come to the knowledge of it by an inspection
which he had bribed the beadle to let him have,'we know very well what are
the resources of magic skill for exploring hidden secrets: there are the
catabolic spirits, which floor their victims; [1692] and the paredral
spirits, which are ever at their side [1693] to haunt them; and the
pythonic spirits, which entrance them by their divination and
ventriloquistic [1694] arts. For was is not likely that Pherecydes also,
the master of our Pythagoras, used to divine, or I would rather say rave and
dream, by such arts and contrivances as these? Might not the self-same demon
have been in him, who, whilst in Euphorbus, transacted deeds of blood? But
lastly, why is it that the man, who proved himself to have been Euphorbus by
the evidence of the shield, did not also recognise any of his former Trojan
comrades? For they, too, must by this time have recovered life, since men
were rising again from the dead:
Chapter XXIX. The Pythagorean Doctrine Refuted by Its Own First Principle,
that Living Men are Formed from the Dead.
It is indeed, manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it
does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. For
from the beginning the living came first in the order of things, and
therefore also from the beginning the dead came afterwards in order. But
these proceeded from no other source except from the living. The living had
their origin in any other source (you please) than in the dead; whilst the
dead had no source whence to derive their beginning, except from the living.
If, then, from the very first the living came not from the dead, why should
they afterwards (be said to) come from the dead? Had that original source,
whatever it was, come to an end? Was the form or law thereof a matter for
regret? Then why was it preserved in the case of the dead? Does it not
follow that, because the dead came from the living at the first, therefore
they always came from the living? For either the law which obtained at the
beginning must have continued in both of its relations, or else it must have
changed in both; so that, if it had become necessary for the living
afterwards to proceed from the dead, it would be necessary, in like manner,
for the dead also not to proceed from the living. For if a faithful
adherence to the institution was not meant to be perpetuated in each
respect, then contraries cannot in due alternation continue to be re-formed
from contraries. We, too, will on our side adduce against you certain
contraries, of the born and the unborn, of vision [1695] and blindness,
of youth and old age, of wisdom and folly. Now it does not follow that the
unborn proceeds from the born, on the ground that a contrary issues from a
contrary; nor, again, that vision proceeds from blindness, because blindness
happens to vision; nor, again, that youth revives from old age, because
after youth comes the decrepitude of senility; nor that folly [1696] is
born with its obtuseness from wisdom, because wisdom may possibly be
sometimes sharpened out of folly. Albinus has some fears for his (master and
friend) Plato in these points, and labours with much ingenuity to
distinguish different kinds of contraries; as if these instances did not as
absolutely partake of the nature of contrariety as those which are expounded
by him to illustrate his great master's principle'I mean, life and death.
Nor is it, for the matter of that, true that life is restored out of death,
because it happens that death succeeds [1697] life.
Chapter XXX. Further Refutation of the Pythagorean Theory. The State of
Contemporary Civilisation.
But what must we say in reply to what follows? For, in the first place, if
the living come from the dead, just as the dead proceed from the living,
then there must always remain unchanged one and the selfsame number of
mankind, even the number which originally introduced (human) life. The
living preceded the dead, afterwards the dead issued from the living, and
then again the living from the dead. Now, since this process was evermore
going on with the same persons, therefore they, issuing from the same, must
always have remained in number the same. For they who emerged (into life)
could never have become more nor fewer than they who disappeared (in death).
We find, however, in the records of the Antiquities of Man, [1698] that
the human race has progressed with a gradual growth of population, either
occupying different portions of the earth as aborigines, or as nomad tribes,
or as exiles, or as conquerors'as the Scythians in Parthia, the in
Peloponnesus, the Athenians in Asia, the Phrygians in Italy, and the
in Africa; or by the more ordinary methods of migration, which
they call or colonies, for the purpose of throwing off redundant
population, disgorging into other abodes their overcrowded masses. The
aborigines remain still in their old settlements, and have also enriched
other districts with loans of even larger populations. Surely it is obvious
enough, if one looks at the whole world, that it is becoming daily better
cultivated and more fully peopled than anciently. All places are now
accessible, all are well known, all open to commerce; most pleasant farms
have obliterated all traces of what were once dreary and dangerous wastes;
cultivated fields have subdued forests; flocks and herds have expelled wild
beasts; sandy deserts are sown; rocks are planted; marshes are drained; and
where once were hardly solitary cottages, there are now large cities. No
longer are (savage) islands dreaded, nor their rocky shores feared;
everywhere are houses, and inhabitants, and settled government, and
civilized life. What most frequently meets our view (and occasions
complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the
world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow
more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst
Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence,
and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for
nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race; and yet,
when the hatchet has once felled large masses of men, the world has hitherto
never once been alarmed at the sight of a restitution of its dead coming
back to life after their millennial exile. [1699] But such a spectacle
would have become quite obvious by the balance of mortal loss and vital
recovery, if it were true that the dead came back again to life. Why,
however, is it after a thousand years, and not at the moment, that this
return from death is to take place, when, supposing that the loss is not at
once supplied, there must be a risk of an utter extinction, as the failure
precedes the compensation? Indeed, this furlough of our present life would
be quite disproportioned to the period of a thousand years; so much briefer
is it, and on that account so much more easily is its torch extinguished
than rekindled. Inasmuch, then, as the period which, on the hypothesis we
have discussed, ought to intervene, if the living are to be formed from the
dead, has not actually occurred, it will follow that we must not believe
that men come back to life from the dead (in the way surmised in this
philosophy).
Chapter XXXI. Further Exposure of Transmigration, Its Inextricable
Embarrassment.
Again, if this recovery of life from the dead take place at all, individuals
must of course resume their own individuality. Therefore the souls which
animated each several body must needs have returned separately to their
several bodies. Now, whenever two, or three, or five souls are re-enclosed
(as they constantly are) in one womb, it will not amount in such cases to
life from the dead, because there is not the separate restitution which
individuals ought to have; although at this rate, (no doubt, ) the law of
the primeval creation is signally kept, [1700] by the production still of
several souls out of only one! Then, again, if souls depart at different
ages of human life, how is it that they come back again at one uniform age?
For all men are imbued with an infant soul at their birth. But how happens
it that a man who dies in old age returns to life as an infant? If the soul,
whilst disembodied, decreases thus by retrogression of its age, how much
more reasonable would it be, that it should resume its life with a richer
progress in all attainments of life after the lapse of a thousand years! At
all events, it should return with the age it had attained at its death, that
it might resume the precise life which it had relinquished. But even if, at
this rate, they should reappear the same evermore in their revolving cycles,
it would be proper for them to bring back with them, if not the selfsame
forms of body, at least their original peculiarities of character, taste,
and disposition, because it would be hardly possible [1701] for them to
be regarded as the same, if they were deficient in those characteristics by
means of which their identity should be proved. (You, however, meet me with
this question): How can you possibly know, you ask, whether all is not a
secret process? may not the work of a thousand years take from you the power
of recognition, since they return unknown to you? But I am quite certain
that such is not the case, for you yourself present Pythagoras to me as (the
restored) Euphorbus. Now look at Euphorbus: he was evidently possessed of a
military and warlike soul, as is proved by the very renown of the sacred
shields. As for Pythagoras, however, he was such a recluse, and so
unwarlike, that he shrank from the military exploits of which Greece was
then so full, and preferred to devote himself, in the quiet retreat of
Italy, to the study of geometry, and astrology, and music'the very opposite
to Euphorbus in taste and disposition. Then, again, the Pyrrhus (whom he
represented) spent his time in catching fish; but Pythagoras, on the
contrary, would never touch fish, abstaining from even the taste of them as
from animal food. Moreover, ¦thalides and Hermotimus had included the bean
amongst the common esculents at meals, while Pythagoras taught his disciples
not even to pass through a plot which was cultivated with beans. I ask,
then, how the same souls are resumed, which can offer no proof of their
identity, either by their disposition, or habits, or living? And now, after
all, (we find that) only four souls are mentioned as recovering life
[1702] out of all the multitudes of Greece. But limiting ourselves merely to
Greece, as if no transmigrations of souls and resumptions of bodies
occurred, and that every day, in every nation, and amongst all ages, ranks,
and sexes, how is it that Pythagoras alone experiences these changes into
one personality and another? Why should not I too undergo them? Or if it be
a privilege monopolized by philosophers'and Greek philosophers only, as if
Scythians and Indians had no philosophers'how is it that Epicurus had no
recollection that he had been once another man, nor Chrysippus, nor Zeno,
nor indeed Plato himself, whom we might perhaps have supposed to have been
Nestor, from his honeyed eloquence?
Chapter XXXII. Empedocles Increased the Absurdity of Pythagoras by
Developing the Posthumous Change of Men into Various Animals.
But the fact is, Empedocles, who used to dream that he was a god, and on
that account, I suppose, disdained to have it thought that he had ever
before been merely some hero, declares in so many words: "I once was
Thamnus, and a fish." Why not rather a melon, seeing that he was such a
fool; or a cameleon, for his inflated brag? It was, no doubt, as a fish (and
a queer one too!) that he escaped the corruption of some obscure grave, when
he preferred being roasted by a plunge into ; after which accomplishment
there was an end for ever to his or putting himself into
another body'(fit only now for) a light dish after the roast-meat. At this
point, therefore, we must likewise contend against that still more monstrous
presumption, that in the course of the transmigration beasts pass from human
beings, and human beings from beasts. Let (Empedocles') Thamnuses alone. Our
slight notice of them in passing will be quite enough: (to dwell on them
longer will inconvenience us, ) lest we should be obliged to nave recourse
to raillery and laughter instead of serious instruction. Now our position is
this: that the human soul cannot by any means at all be transferred to
beasts, even when they are supposed to originate, according to the
philosophers, out of the substances of the elements. Now let us suppose that
the soul is either fire, or water, or blood, or spirit, or air, or light; we
must not forget that all the animals in their several kinds have properties
which are opposed to the respective elements. There are the cold animals
which are opposed to fire'water-snakes, lizards, salamanders, and what
things soever are produced out of the rival element of water. In like
manner, those creatures are opposite to water which are in their nature dry
and sapless; indeed, locusts, butterflies, and chameleons rejoice in
droughts. So, again, such creatures are opposed to blood which have none of
its purple hue, such as snails, worms, and most of the fishy tribes. Then
opposed to spirit are those creatures which seem to have no respiration,
being unfurnished with lungs and windpipes, such as gnats, ants, moths, and
minute things of this sort. Opposed, moreover, to air are those creatures
which always live under ground and under water, and never imbibe air'things
of which you are more acquainted with the existence than with the names.
Then opposed to light are those things which are either wholly blind, or
possess eyes for the darkness only, such as moles, bats, and owls. These
examples (have I adduced), that I might illustrate my subject from clear and
palpable natures. But even if I could take in my hand the "atoms" of
Epicurus, or if my eye could see the "numbers" of Pythagoras, or if my foot
could stumble against the "ideas" of Plato, or if I could lay hold of the
"entelechies" of Aristotle, the chances would be, that even in these
(impalpable) classes I should find such animals as I must oppose to one
another on the ground of their contrariety. For I maintain that, of
whichsoever of the before-mentioned natures the human soul is composed, it
would not have been possible for it to pass for new forms into animals so
contrary to each of the separate natures, and to bestow an origin by its
passage on those beings, from which it would have to be excluded and
rejected rather than to be admitted and received, by reason of that original
contrariety which we have supposed it to possess, [1703] and which
commits the bodily substance receiving it to an interminable strife; and
then again by reason of the subsequent contrariety, which results from the
development inseparable from each several nature. Now it is on quite
different conditions [1704] that the soul of man has had assigned to it
(in individual bodies [1705] ) its abode, and aliment, and order, and
sensation, and affection, and sexual intercourse, and procreation of
children; also (on different conditions has it, in individual bodies,
received especial) dispositions, as well as duties to fulfil, likings,
dislikes, vices, desires, pleasures, maladies, remedies'in short, its own
modes of living, its own outlets of death. How, then, shall that (human)
soul which cleaves to the earth, and is unable without alarm to survey any
great height, or any considerable depth, and which is also fatigued if it
mounts many steps, and is suffocated if it is submerged in a
fish-pond,'(how, I say, shall a soul which is beset with such weaknesses)
mount up at some future stage into the air in an eagle, or plunge into the
sea in an eel? How, again, shall it, after being nourished with generous and
delicate as well as exquisite viands, feed deliberately on, I will not say
husks, but even on thorns, and the wild fare of bitter leaves, and beasts of
the dung-hill, and poisonous worms, if it has to migrate into a goat or into
a quail?'nay, it may be, feed on carrion, even on human corpses in some bear
or lion? But how indeed (shall it stoop to this), when it remembers its own
(nature and dignity)? In the same way, you may submit all other instances to
this criterion of incongruity, and so save us from lingering over the
distinct consideration of each of them in turn. Now, whatever may be the
measure and whatever the mode of the human soul, (the question is forced
upon us, ) what it will do in far larger animals, or in very diminutive
ones? It must needs be, that every individual body of whatever size is
filled up by the soul, and that the soul is entirely covered by the body.
How, therefore, shall a man's soul fill an elephant? How, likewise, shall it
be contracted within a gnat? If it be so enormously extended or contracted,
it will no doubt be exposed to peril. And this induces me to ask another
question: If the soul is by no means capable of this kind of migration into
animals, which are not fitted for its reception, either by the habits of
their bodies or the other laws of their being, will it then undergo a change
according to the properties of various animals, and be adapted to their
life, notwithstanding its contrariety to human life'having, in fact, become
contrary to its human self by reason of its utter change? Now the truth is,
if it undergoes such a transformation, and loses what it once was, the human
soul will not be what it was; and if it ceases to be its former self, the
metensomatosis, or adaptation of some other body, comes to nought, and is
not of course to be ascribed to the soul which will cease to exist, on the
supposition of its complete change. For only then can a soul be said to
experience this process of the metensomatosis, when it undergoes it by
remaining unchanged in its own (primitive) condition. Since, therefore, the
soul does not admit of change, lest it should cease to retain its identity;
and yet is unable to remain unchanged in its original state, because it
fails then to receive contrary (bodies),'I still want to know some credible
reason to justify such a transformation as we are discussing. For although
some men are compared to the beasts because of their character, disposition,
and pursuits (since even God says, "Man is like the beasts that perish"
[1706] ), it does not on this account follow that rapacious persons become
kites, lewd persons dogs, ill-tempered ones panthers, good men sheep,
talkative ones swallows, and chaste men doves, as if the selfsame substance
of the soul everywhere repeated its own nature in the properties of the
animals (into which it passed). Besides, a substance is one thing, and the
nature of that substance is another thing; inasmuch as the substance is the
special property of one given thing, whereas the nature thereof may possibly
belong to many things. Take an example or two. A stone or a piece of iron is
the substance: the hardness of the stone and the iron is the nature of the
substance. Their hardness combines objects by a common quality; their
substances keep them separate. Then, again, there is softness in wool, and
softness in a feather: their natural qualities are alike, (and put them on a
par; ) their substantial qualities are not alike, (and keep them distinct.)
Thus, if a man likewise be designated a wild beast or a harmless one, there
is not for all that an identity of soul. Now the similarity of nature is
even then observed, when dissimilarity of substance is most conspicuous:
for, by the very fact of your judging that a man resembles a beast, you
confess that their soul is not identical; for you say that they resemble
each other, not that they are the same. This is also the meaning of the word
of God (which we have just quoted): it likens man to the beasts in nature,
but not in substance. Besides, God would not have actually made such a
comment as this concerning man, if He had known him to be in substance only
bestial
Chapter XXXIII. The Judicial Retribution of These Migrations Refuted with
Raillery.
Forasmuch as this doctrine is vindicated even on the principle of judicial
retribution, on the pretence that the souls of men obtain as their partners
the kind of animals which are suited to their life and deserts,'as if they
ought to be, according to their several characters, either slain in
criminals destined to execution, or reduced to hard work in menials, or
fatigued and wearied in labourers, or foully disgraced in the unclean; or,
again, on the same principle, reserved for honour, and love, and care, and
attentive regard in characters most eminent in, rank and virtue, usefulness,
and tender sensibility,'I must here also remark, that if souls undergo a
transformation, they will actually not be able to accomplish and experience
the destinies which they shall deserve; and the aim and purpose of judicial
recompense will be brought to nought, as there will be wanting the sense and
consciousness of merit and retribution. And there must be this want of
consciousness, if souls lose their condition; and there must ensue this
loss, if they do not continue in one stay. But even if they should have
permanency enough to remain unchanged until the judgment,'a point which
Mercurius ¦gyptius recognised, when he said that the soul, after its
separation from the body, was not dissipated back into the soul of the
universe, but retained permanently its distinct individuality, "in order
that it might render," to use his own words, "an account to the Father of
those things which it has done in the body; " '(even supposing all this, I
say, ) I still want to examine the justice, the solemnity, the majesty, and
the dignity of this reputed judgment of God, and see whether human judgment
has not too elevated a throne in it'exaggerated in both directions, in its
office both of punishments and rewards, too severe in dealing out its
vengeance, and too lavish in bestowing its favour. What do you suppose will
become of the soul of the murderer? (It will animate), I suppose, some
cattle destined for the slaughter-house and the shambles, that it may itself
be killed, even as it has killed; and be itself flayed, since it has fleeced
others; and be itself used for food, since it has cast to the wild beasts
the ill-fated victims whom it once slew in woods and lonely roads. Now, if
such be the judicial retribution which it is to receive, is not such a soul
likely to find more of consolation than of punishment, in the fact that it
receives its coup de grGce from the hands of most expert practitioners'is
buried with condiments served in the most piquant styles of an Apicius or a
Lurco, is introduced to the tables of your exquisite Ciceros, is brought up
on the most splendid dishes of a Sylla, finds its obsequies in a banquet, is
devoured by respectable (mouths) on a par with itself, rather than by kites
and wolves, so that all may see how it has got a man's body for its tomb,
and has risen again after returning to its own kindred race'exulting in the
face of human judgments, if it has experienced them? For these barbarous
sentences of death consign to various wild beasts, which are selected and
trained even against their nature for their horrible office the criminal who
has committed murder, even while yet alive; nay, hindered from too easily
dying, by a contrivance which retards his last moment in order to aggravate
his punishment. But even if his soul should have anticipated by its
departure the sword's last stroke, his body at all events must not escape
the weapon: retribution for his own crime is yet exacted by stabbing his
throat and stomach, and piercing his side. After that he is flung into the
fire, that his very grave may be cheated. [1707] In no other way, indeed,
is a sepulture allowed him. Not that any great care, after all, is bestowed
on his pyre, so that other animals light upon his remains. At any rate, no
mercy is shown to his bones, no indulgence to his ashes, which must be
punished with exposure and nakedness. The vengeance which is inflicted among
men upon the homicide is really as great as that which is imposed by nature.
Who would not prefer the justice of the world, which, as the apostle himself
testifies, "beareth not the sword in vain," [1708] and which is an
institute of religion when it severely avenges in defence of human life?
When we contemplate, too, the penalties awarded to other crimes'gibbets, and
holocausts, and sacks, and harpoons, and precipices'who would not think it
better to receive his sentence in the courts of Pythagoras and Empedocles?
For even the wretches whom they will send into the bodies of asses and mules
to be punished by drudgery and slavery, how will they congratulate
themselves on the mild labour of the mill and the water-wheel, when they
recollect the mines, and the convict-gangs, and the public works, and even
the prisons and black-holes, terrible in their idle, do-nothing routine?
Then, again, in the case of those who, after a course of integrity, have
surrendered their life to the Judge, I likewise look for rewards, but I
rather discover punishments. To be sure, it must be a handsome gain for good
men to be restored to life in any animals whatsoever! Homer, so dreamt
Ennius, remembered that he was once a peacock; however, I cannot for my part
believe poets, even when wide awake. A peacock, no doubt, is a very pretty
bird, pluming itself, at will, on its splendid feathers; Jut then its wings
do not make amends for its voice, which is harsh and unpleasant; and there
is nothing that poets like better than a good song. His transformation,
therefore, into a peacock was to Homer a penalty, not an honour. The
world's remuneration will bring him a much greater joy, when it lauds him as
the father of the liberal sciences; and he will prefer the ornaments of his
fame to the graces of his tail! But never mind! let poets migrate into
peacocks, or into swans, if you like, especially as swans have a respectable
voice: in what animal will you invest that righteous hero ¦acus? In what
beast will you clothe the chaste and excellent Dido? What bird shall fall to
the lot of Patience? what animal to the lot of Holiness? what fish to that
of Innocence? Now all creatures are the servants of man; all are his
subjects, all his dependants. If by and by he is to become one of these
creatures, he is by such a change debased and degraded he to whom, for his
virtues, images, statues, and titles are freely awarded as public honours
and distinguished privileges, he to Whom the senate and the people vote even
sacrifices! Oh, what judicial sentences for gods to pronounce, as men's
recompense after death! They are more mendacious than any human judgments;
they are contemptible as punishments, disgusting as rewards; such as the
worst of men could never fear, nor the best desire; such indeed, as
criminals will aspire to, rather than saints,'the former, that they may
escape more speedily the world's stern sentence,'the latter that they may
more tardily incur it. How well, (forsooth), O ye philosophers do you teach
us, and how usefully do you advise us, that after death rewards and
punishments fall with lighter weight! whereas, if any judgment awaits souls
at all, it ought rather to be supposed that it will be heavier at the
conclusion of life than in the conduct [1709] thereof, since nothing is
more complete than that which comes at the very last'nothing, moreover, is
more complete than that which is especially divine. Accordingly, God's
judgment will be more full and complete, because it will be pronounced at
the very last, in an eternal irrevocable sentence, both of punishment and of
consolation, (on men whose) souls are not to transmigrate into beasts, but
are to return into their own proper bodies. And all this once for all, and
on "that day, too, of which the Father only knoweth; " [1710] (only
knoweth, ) in order that by her trembling expectation faith may make full
trial of her anxious sincerity, keeping her gaze ever fixed on that day, in
her perpetual ignorance of it, daily fearing that for which she yet daily
hopes.
Chapter XXXIV. These Vagaries Stimulated Some Profane Corruptions of
Christianity. The Profanity of Simon Magus Condemned.
No tenet, indeed, under cover of any heresy has as yet burst upon us,
embodying any such extravagant fiction as that the souls of human beings
pass into the bodies of wild beasts; but yet we have deemed it necessary to
attack and refute this conceit, as a consistent sequel to the preceding
opinions, in order that Homer in the peacock might be got rid of as
effectually as Pythagoras in Euphorbus; and in order that, by the demolition
of the metempsychosis and metensomatosis by the same blow, the Found might
be cut away which has furnished no inconsiderable support to our heretics.
There is the (infamous) Simon of Samaria in the Acts of the Apostles, who
chaffered for the Holy Ghost: after his condemnation by Him, and a vain
remorse that he and his money must perish together, [1711] he applied his
energies to the destruction of the truth, as if to console himself with
revenge. Besides the support with which his own magic arts furnished him, he
had recourse to imposture, and purchased a Tyrian woman of the name of Helen
out of a brothel, with the same money which he had offered for the Holy
Spirit,'a traffic worthy of the wretched man. He actually reigned himself to
be the Supreme Father, and further pretended that the woman was his own
primary conception, wherewith he had purposed the creation of the angels and
the archangels; that after she was possessed of this purpose she sprang
forth from the Father and descended to the lower spaces, and there
anticipating the Father's design had produced the angelic powers, which knew
nothing of the Father, the Creator of this world; that she was detained a
prisoner by these from a (rebellious) motive very like her own, lest after
her departure from them they should appear to be the offspring of another
being; and that, after being on this account exposed to every insult, to
prevent her leaving them anywhere after her dishonour, she was degraded even
to the form of man, to be confined, as it were, in the bonds of the flesh.
Having during many ages wallowed about in one female shape and another, she
became the notorious Helen who was so ruinous to Priam, and afterwards to
the eyes of Stesichorus, whom, she blinded in revenge for his lampoons, and
then restored to sight to reward him for his eulogies. After wandering about
in this way from body to body, she, in her final disgrace, turned out a
viler Helen still as a professional prostitute. This wench, therefore, was
the lost sheep, upon whom the Supreme Father, even Simon, descended, who,
after he had recovered her and brought her back'whether on his shoulders or
loins I cannot tell'cast an eye on the salvation of man, in order to gratify
his spleen by liberating them from the angelic powers. Moreover, to deceive
these he also himself assumed a visible shape; and reigning the appearance
of a man amongst men, he acted the part of the Son in Judea, and of the
Father in Samaria. O hapless Helen, what a hard fate is yours between the
poets and the heretics, who have blackened your fame sometimes with
adultery, sometimes with prostitution! Only her rescue from Troy is a more
glorious affair than her extrication from the brothel. There were a thousand
ships to remove her from Troy; a thousand pence were probably more than
enough to withdraw her from the stews. Fie on you, Simon, to be so tardy in
seeking her out, and so inconstant in ransoming her! How different from
Menelaus! As soon as he has lost her, he goes in pursuit of her; she is no
sooner ravished than he begins his search; after a ten years' conflict he
boldly rescues her: there is no lurking, no deceiving, no cavilling. I am
really afraid that he was a much better "Father," who laboured so much more
vigilantly, bravely, and perseveringly, about the recovery of his Helen.
Chapter XXXV. The Opinions of Carpocrates, Another Offset from the
Pythagorean Dogmas, Stated and Confuted.
However, it is not for you alone, (Simon), that the transmigration
philosophy has fabricated this story. Carpocrates also makes equally good
use of it, who was a magician and a fornicator like yourself, only he had
not a Helen. [1712] And why should he not? since he asserted that souls
are reinvested with bodies, in order to ensure the overthrow by all means of
divine and human truth. For, (according to his miserable doctrine, ) this
life became consummated to no man until all those blemishes which are held
to disfigure it have been fully displayed in its conduct; because there is
nothing which is accounted evil by nature, but simply as men think of it.
The transmigration of human souls, therefore, into any kind of heterogeneous
bodies, he thought by all means indispensable, whenever any depravity
whatever had not been fully perpetrated in the early stage of life's
passage. Evil deeds (one may be sure) appertain to life. Moreover, as often
as the soul has fallen short as a defaulter in sin, it has to be recalled to
existence, until it "pays the utmost farthing," [1713] thrust out from
time to time into the prison of the body. To this effect does he tamper with
the whole of that allegory of the Lord which is extremely clear and simple
in its meaning, and ought to be from the first understood in its plain and
natural sense. Thus our "adversary" (therein mentioned [1714] ) is the
heathen man, who is walking with us along the same road of life which is
common to him and ourselves. Now "we must needs go out of the world,"
[1715] if it be not allowed us to have conversation with them. He bids us,
therefore, show a kindly disposition to such a man. "Love your enemies,"
says He, "pray for them that curse you," [1716] lest such a man in any
transaction of business be irritated by any unjust conduct of yours, and
"deliver thee to the judge" of his own (nation [1717] ), and you be
thrown into prison, and be detained in its close and narrow cell until you
have liquidated all your debt against him. [1718] Then, again, should you
be disposed to apply the term "adversary" to the devil, you are advised by
the (Lord's) injunction, while you are in the way with him," to make even
with him such a compact as may be deemed compatible with the requirements of
your true faith. Now the compact you have made respecting him is to renounce
him, and his pomp, and his angels. Such is your agreement in this matter.
Now the friendly understanding you will have to carry out must arise from
your observance of the compact: you must never think of getting back any of
the things which you have abjured, and have restored to him, lest he should
summon you as a fraudulent man, and a transgressor of your agreement, before
God the Judge (for in this light do we read of him, in another passage, as
"the accuser of the brethren," [1719] or saints, where reference is made
to the actual practice of legal prosecution); and lest this Judge deliver
you over to the angel who is to execute the sentence, and he commit you to
the prison of hell, out of which there will be no dismissal until the
smallest even of your delinquencies be paid off in the period before the
resurrection. [1720] What can be a more fitting sense than this? What a
truer interpretation? If, however, according to Carpocrates, the soul is
bound to the commission of all sorts of crime and evil conduct, what must we
from his system understand to be its "adversary" and foe? I suppose it must
be that better mind which shall compel it by force to the performance of
some act of virtue, that it may be driven from body to body, until it be
found in none a debtor to the claims of a virtuous life. This means, that a
good tree is known by its bad fruit'in other words, that the doctrine of
truth is understood from the worst possible precepts. I apprehend [1721]
that heretics of this school seize with especial avidity the example of
Elias, whom they assume to have been so reproduced in John (the Baptist) as
to make our Lord's statement sponsor for their theory of transmigration,
when He said, "Elias is come already, and they knew him not; " [1722] and
again, in another passage, "And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which
was for to come." [1723] Well, then, was it really in a Pythagorean sense
that the Jews approached John with the inquiry, "Art thou Elias? " [1724]
and not rather in the sense of the divine prediction, "Behold, I will send
you Elijah" the Tisbite? [1725] The fact, however, is, that their
metempsychosis, or transmigration theory, signifies the recall of the soul
which had died long before, and its return to some other body. But Elias is
to come again, not after quitting life (in the way of dying), but after his
translation (or removal without dying); not for the purpose of being
restored to the body, from which he had not departed, but for the purpose of
revisiting the world from which he was translated; not by way of resuming a
life which he had laid aside, but of fulfilling prophecy,'really and truly
the same man, both in respect of his name and designation, as well as of his
unchanged humanity. How, therefore could John be Elias? You have your answer
in the angel's announcement: "And he shall go before the people," says he,
"in the spirit and power of Elias"'not (observe) in his soul and his body.
These substances are, in fact, the natural property of each individual;
whilst "the spirit and power" are bestowed as external gifts by the grace of
God and so may be transferred to another person according to the purpose and
will of the Almighty, as was anciently the case with respect to the spirit
of Moses. [1726]
Chapter XXXVI. The Main Points of Our Author's Subject. On the Sexes of the
Human Race.
For the discussion of these questions we abandoned, if I remember rightly,
ground to which we must now return. We had established the position that the
soul is seminally placed in man, and by human agency, and that its seed from
the very beginning is uniform, as is that of the soul also, to the race of
man; (and this we settled) owing to the rival opinions of the philosophers
and the heretics, and that ancient saying mentioned by Plato (to which we
referred above). [1727] We now pursue in their order the points which
follow from them. The soul, being sown in the womb at the same time as the
body, receives likewise along with it its sex; and this indeed so
simultaneously, that neither of the two substances can be alone regarded as
the cause of the sex. Now, if in the semination of these substances any
interval were admissible in their conception, in such wise that either the
flesh or the soul should be the first to be conceived, one might then
ascribe an especial sex to one of the substances, owing to the difference in
the time of the impregnations, so that either the flesh would impress its
sex upon the soul, or the soul upon the sex; even as Apelles (the heretic,
not the painter [1728] ) gives the priority over their bodies to the
souls of men and women, as he had been taught by Philumena, and in
consequence makes the flesh, as the later, receive its sex from the soul.
They also who make the soul supervene after birth on the flesh predetermine,
of course, the sex of the previously formed soul to be male or female,
according to (the sex of) the flesh. But the truth is, the seminations of
the two substances are inseparable in point of time, and their effusion is
also one and the same, in consequence of which a community of gender is
secured to them; so that the course of nature, whatever that be, shall draw
the line (for the distinct sexes). Certainly in this view we have an
attestation of the method of the first two formations, when the male was
moulded and tempered in a completer way, for Adam was first formed; and the
woman came far behind him, for Eve was the later formed. So that her flesh
was for a long time without specific form (such as she afterwards assumed
when taken out of Adam's side); but she was even then herself a living
being, because I should regard her at that time in soul as even a portion of
Adam. Besides, God's afflatus would have animated her too, if there had not
been in the woman a transmission from Adam of his soul also as well as of
his flesh.
Chapter XXXVII. On the Formation and State of the Embryo. Its Relation with
the Subject of This Treatise.
Now the entire process of sowing, forming, and completing the human embryo
in the womb is no doubt regulated by some power, which ministers herein to
the will of God, whatever may be the method which it is appointed to employ.
Even the superstition of Rome, by carefully attending to these points,
imagined the goddess Alemona to nourish the f£tus in the womb; as well as
(the goddesses) Nona and Decima, called after the most critical months of
gestation; and Partula, to manage and direct parturition; and Lucina, to
bring the child to the birth and light of day. We, on our part, believe the
angels to officiate herein for God. The embryo therefore becomes a human
being in the womb from the moment that its form is completed. The law of
Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion,
inasmuch as there exists already the rudiment of a human being, [1729]
which has imputed to it even now the condition of life and death, since it
is already liable to the issues of both, although, by living still in the
mother, it for the most part shares its own state with the mother. I must
also say something about the period of the soul's birth, that I may omit
nothing incidental in the whole process. A mature and regular birth takes
place, as a general rule, at the commencement of the tenth month. They who
theorize respecting numbers, honour the number ten as the parent of all the
others, and as imparting perfection to the human nativity. For my own part,
I prefer viewing this measure of time in reference to God, as if implying
that the ten months rather initiated man into the ten commandments; so that
the numerical estimate of the time needed to consummate our natural birth
should correspond to the numerical classification of the rules of our
regenerate life. But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh
month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honour
of a numerical agreement with the sabbatical period; so that the month in
which God's image is sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its
number tally with the day on which God's creation was completed and
hallowed. Human nativity has sometimes been allowed to be premature, and yet
to occur in fit and perfect accordance with an hebdomad sevenfold number, as
an auspice of our resurrection, and rest, and kingdom. The ogdoad, or
eightfold number, therefore, is not concerned in our formation; [1730]
for in the time it represents there will be no more marriage. [1731] We
have already demonstrated the conjunction of the body and the soul, from the
concretion of their very seminations to the complete formation of the f£tus.
We now maintain their conjunction likewise from the birth onwards; in the
first place, because they both grow together, only each in a different
manner suited to the diversity of their nature'the flesh in magnitude, the
soul in intelligence'the flesh in material condition, the soul in
sensibility. We are, however, forbidden to suppose that the soul increases
in substance, lest it should be said also to be capable of diminution in
substance, and so its extinction even should be believed to be possible; but
its inherent power, in which are contained all its natural peculiarities, as
originally implanted in its being, is gradually developed along with the
flesh, without impairing the germinal basis of the substance, which it
received when breathed at first into man. Take a certain quantity of gold or
of silver'a rough mass as yet: it has indeed a compact condition, and one
that is more compressed at the moment than it will be; yet it contains
within its contour what is throughout a mass of gold or of silver. When this
mass is afterwards extended by beating it into leaf, it becomes larger than
it was before by the elongation of the original mass, but not by any
addition thereto, because it is extended in space, not increased in bulk;
although in a way it is even increased when it is extended: for it may be
increased in form, but not in state. Then, again, the sheen of the gold or
the silver, which when the metal was any in block was Inherent in it no
doubt really, but yet only obscurely, shines out in developed lustre.
Afterwards various modifications of shape accrue, according to the
feasibility in the material which makes it yield to the manipulation of the
artisan, who yet adds nothing to the condition of the mass but its
configuration. In like manner, the growth and developments of the soul are
to be estimated, not as enlarging its substance, but as calling forth Its
powers.
Chapter XXXVIII. On the Growth of the Soul. Its Maturity Coincident with the
Maturity of the Flesh in Man.
Now we have already [1732] laid down the principle, that all the natural
properties of the soul which relate to sense and intelligence are inherent
in its very substance, and spring from its native constitution, but that
they advance by a gradual growth through the stages of life and develope
themselves in different ways by accidental circumstances, according to
men's means and arts, their manners and customs their local situations, and
the influences of the Supreme Powers; [1733] but in pursuance of that
aspect of the association of body and soul which We have now to consider, we
maintain that the puberty of the soul coincides with that of the body, and
that they attain both together to this full growth at about the fourteenth
year of life, speaking generally,'the former by the suggestion of the
senses, and the latter by the growth of the bodily members; and (we fix on
this age) not because, as Asclepiades supposes, reflection then begins, nor
because the civil laws date the commencement of the real business of life
from this period, but because this was the appointed order from the very
first. For as Adam and Eve felt that they must cover their nakedness after
their knowledge of good and evil so we profess to have the same discernment
of good and evil from the time that we experience the same sensation of
shame. Now from the before-mentioned age (of fourteen years) sex is suffused
and clothed with an especial sensibility, and concupiscence employs the
ministry of the eye, and communicates its pleasure to another, and
understands the natural relations between male and female, and wears the
fig-tree apron to cover the shame which it still excites, and drives man out
of the paradise of innocence and chastity, and in its wild pruriency falls
upon sins and unnatural incentives to delinquency; for its impulse has by
this time surpassed the appointment of nature, and springs from its vicious
abuse. But the strictly natural concupiscence is simply confined to the
desire of those aliments which God at the beginning conferred upon than. "Of
every tree of the garden" He says, "ye shall freely eat; " [1734] and
then again to the generation which followed next after the flood He enlarged
the grant: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; behold, as
the green herb have I given you all these things," [1735] 'where He has
regard rather to the body than to the soul, although it be in the interest
of the soul also. For we must remove all occasion from the caviller, who,
because the soul apparently wants ailments, would insist on the soul's being
from this circumstance deemed mortal, since it is sustained by meat and
drink and after a time loses its rigour when they are withheld, and on their
complete removal ultimately droops and dies. Now the point we must keep in
view is not merely which particular faculty it is which desires these
(aliments), but also for what end; and even if it be for its own sake, still
the question remains, Why this desire, and when felt, and how long? Then
again there is the consideration, that it is one thing to desire by natural
instinct, and another thing to desire through necessity; one thing to desire
as a property of being, another thing to desire for a special object. The
soul, therefore, will desire meat and drink'for itself indeed, because of a
special necessity; for the flesh, however, from the nature of its
properties. For the flesh is no doubt the house of the soul, and the soul is
the temporary inhabitant of the flesh. The desire, then, of the lodger will
arise from the temporary cause and the special necessity which his very
designation suggests,'with a view to benefit and improve the place of his
temporary abode, while sojourning in it; not with the view, certainly, of
being himself the foundation of the house, or himself its walls, or himself
its support and roof, but simply and solely with the view of being
accommodated and housed, since he could not receive such accommodation
except in a sound and well-built house. (Now, applying this imagery to the
soul, ) if it be not provided with this accommodation, it will not be in its
power to quit its dwelling-place, and for want of fit and proper resources,
to depart safe and sound, in possession, too, of its own supports, and the
aliments which belong to its own proper condition,'namely immortality,
rationality, sensibility, intelligence, and freedom of the will.
Chapter XXXIX. The Evil Spirit Has Marred the Purity of the Soul from the
Very Birth.
All these endowments of the soul which are bestowed on it at birth are still
obscured and depraved by the malignant being who, in the beginning, regarded
them with envious eye, so that they are never seen in their spontaneous
action, nor are they administered as they ought to be. For to what
individual of the human race will not the evil spirit cleave, ready to
entrap their souls from the very portal of their birth, at which he is
invited to be present in all those superstitious processes which accompany
childbearing? Thus it comes to pass that all men are brought to the birth
with idolatry for the midwife, whilst the very wombs that bear them, still
bound with the fillets that have been wreathed before the idols, declare
their offspring to be consecrated to demons: for in parturition they invoke
the aid of Lucina and Diana; for a whole week a table is spread in honour of
Juno; on the last day the fates of the horoscope [1736] are invoked; and
then the infant's first step on the ground is sacred to the goddess Statina.
After this does any one fail to devote to idolatrous service the entire head
of his son, or to take out a hair, or to shave off the whole with a razor,
or to bind it up for an offering, or seal it for sacred use'in behalf of the
clan, of the ancestry, or for public devotion? On this principle of early
possession it was that Socrates, while yet a boy, was found by the spirit of
the demon. Thus, too, is it that to all persons their genii are assigned,
which is only another name for demons. Hence in no case (I mean of the
heathen, of course) is there any nativity which is pure of idolatrous
superstition. It was from this circumstance that the apostle said, that when
either of the parents was sanctified, the children were holy; and this as
much by the prerogative of the (Christian) seed as by the discipline of the
institution (by baptism, and Christian education). "Else," says he, "were
the children unclean" by birth: [1737] as if he meant us to understand
that the children of believers were designed for holiness, and thereby for
salvation; in order that he might by the pledge of such a hope give his
support to matrimony, which he had determined to maintain in its integrity.
Besides, he had certainly not forgotten what the Lord had so definitively
stated: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God; " [1738] in other words, he cannot be holy.
Chapter XL. The Body of Man Only Ancillary to the Soul in the Commission of
Evil.
Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is
born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains
without this regeneration; [1739] and because unclean, it is actively
sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with
its own shame. Now although the flesh is sinful, and we are forbidden to
walk in accordance with it, [1740] and its works are condemned as lusting
against the spirit, [1741] and men on its account are censured as
carnal, [1742] yet the flesh has not such ignominy on its own account.
For it is not of itself that it thinks anything or feels anything for the
purpose of advising or commanding sin. How should it, indeed? It is only a
ministering thing, and its ministration is not like that of a servant or
familiar friend'animated and human beings; but rather that of a vessel, or
something of that kind: it is body, not soul. Now a cup may minister to a
thirsty man; and yet, if the thirsty man will not apply the cup to his
mouth, the cup will yield no ministering service. Therefore the differentia,
or distinguishing property, of man by no means lies in his earthy element;
nor is the flesh the human person, as being some faculty of his soul, and a
personal quality; but it is a thing of quite a different substance and
different condition, although annexed to the soul as a chattel or as an
instrument for the offices of life. Accordingly the flesh is blamed in the
Scriptures, because nothing is done by the soul without the flesh in
operations of concupiscence, appetite, drunkenness, cruelty, idolatry, and
other works of the flesh,'operations, I mean, which are not confined to
sensations, but result in effects. The emotions of sin, indeed, when not
resulting in effects, are usually imputed to the soul: "Whosoever looketh on
a woman to lust after, hath already in his heart committed adultery with
her." [1743] But what has the flesh alone, without the soul, ever done in
operations of virtue, righteousness, endurance, or chastity? What absurdity,
however, it is to attribute sin and crime to that substance to which you do
not assign any good actions or character of its own! Now the party which
aids in the commission of a crime is brought to trial, only in such a way
that the principal offender who actually committed the crime may bear the
weight of the penalty, although the abettor too does not escape indictment.
Greater is the odium which falls on the principal, when his officials are
punished through his fault. He is beaten with more stripes who instigates
and orders the crime, whilst at the same time he who obeys such an evil
command is not acquitted.
Chapter XLI. Notwithstanding the Depravity of Man's Soul by Original Sin,
There is Yet Left a Basis Whereon Divine Grace Can Work for Its Recovery by
Spiritual Regeneration.
There is, then, besides the evil which supervenes on the soul from the
intervention of the evil spirit, an antecedent, and in a certain sense
natural, evil which arises from its corrupt origin. For, as we have said
before, the corruption of our nature is another nature having a god and
father of its own, namely the author of (that) corruption. Still there is a
portion of good in the soul, of that original, divine, and genuine good,
which is its proper nature. For that which is derived from God is rather
obscured than extinguished. It can be obscured, indeed, because it is not
God; extinguished, however, it cannot be, because it comes from God. As
therefore light, when intercepted by an opaque body, still remains, although
it is not apparent, by reason of the interposition of so dense a body; so
likewise the good in the soul, being weighed down by the evil, is, owing to
the obscuring character thereof, either not seen at all, its light being
wholly hidden, or else only a stray beam is there visible where it struggles
through by an accidental outlet. Thus some men are very bad, and some very
good; but yet the souls of all form but one genus: even in the worst there
is something good, and in the best there is something bad. For God alone is
without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since Christ is also
God. Thus the divinity of the soul bursts forth in prophetic forecasts in
consequence of its primeval good; and being conscious of its origin, it
bears testimony to God (its author) in exclamations such as: Good God! God
knows! and Good-bye! [1744] Just as no soul is without sin, so neither is
any soul without seeds of good. Therefore, when the soul embraces the faith,
being renewed in its second birth by water and the power from above, then
the veil of its former corruption being taken away, it beholds the light in
all its brightness. It is also taker up (in its second birth) by the Holy
Spirit, just as in its first birth it is embraced by the unholy spirit. The
flesh follows the soul now wedded to the Spirit, as a part of the bridal
portion'no longer the servant of the soul, but of the Spirit. O happy
marriage, if in it there is committed no violation of the nuptial vow!
Chapter XLII. Sleep, the Mirror of Death, as Introductory to the
Consideration of Death.
It now remains (that we discuss the subject) of death, in order that our
subject-matter may terminate where the soul itself completes it; although
Epicurus, indeed, in his pretty widely known doctrine, has asserted that
death does not appertain to us. That, says he, which is dissolved lacks
sensation; and that which is without sensation is nothing to us. Well, but
it is not actually death which suffers dissolution and lacks sensation, but
the human person who experiences death. Yet even he has admitted suffering
to be incidental to the being to whom action belongs. Now, if it is in man
to suffer death, which dissolves the body and destroys the senses, how
absurd to say that so great a susceptibility belongs not to man! With much
greater precision does Seneca say: "After death all comes to an end, even
(death) itself." From which position of his it must needs follow that death
will appertain to its own self, since itself comes to an end; and much more
to man, in the ending of whom amongst the "all," itself also ends. Death,
(says Epicurus) belongs not to us; then at that rate, life belongs not to
us. For certainly, if that which causes our dissolution have no relation to
us, that also which compacts and composes us must be unconnected with us. If
the deprivation of our sensation be nothing to us, neither can the
acquisition of sensation have anything to do with us. The fact, however, is,
he who destroys the very soul, (as Epicurus does), cannot help destroying
death also. As for ourselves, indeed, (Christians as we are), we must treat
of death just as we should of the posthumous life and of some other province
of the soul, (assuming) that we at all events belong to death, if it. does
not pertain to us. And on the same principle, even sleep, which is the very
mirror of death, is not alien from our subject-matter.
Chapter XLIII. Sleep a Natural Function as Shown by Other Considerations,
and by the Testimony of Scripture.
Let us therefore first discuss the question of sleep, and afterwards in what
way the soul encounters [1745] death. Now sleep is certainly not a
supernatural thing, as some philosophers will have it be, when they suppose
it to be the result of causes which appear to be above nature. The Stoics
affirm sleep to be "a temporary suspension of the activity of the senses;
" [1746] the Epicureans define it as an intermission of the animal
spirit; Anaxagoras and Xenophanes as a weariness of the same; Empedocles and
Parmenides as a cooling down thereof; Strato as a separation of the (soul's)
connatural spirit; Democritus as the soul's indigence; Aristotle as the
interruption [1747] of the heat around the heart. As for myself, I can
safely say that i have never slept in such a way as to discover even a
single one of these conditions. Indeed, we cannot possibly believe that
sleep is a weariness; it is rather the opposite, for it undoubtedly removes
weariness, and a person is refreshed by sleep instead of being fatigued.
Besides, sleep is not always the result of fatigue; and even when it is, the
fatigue continues no longer. Nor can I allow that sleep is a cooling or
decaying of the animal heat, for our bodies derive warmth from sleep in such
a way that the regular dispersion of the food by means of sleep could not so
easily go on if there were too much heat to accelerate it unduly, or cold to
retard it, if sleep had the alleged refrigerating influence. There is also
the further fact that perspiration indicates an over-heated digestion; and
digestion is predicated of us as a process of concoction, which is an
operation concerned with heat and not with cold. In like manner, the
immortality of the soul precludes belief in the theory that sleep is an
intermission of the animal spirit, or an indigence of the spirit, or a
separation of the (soul's) connatural spirit. The soul perishes if it
undergoes diminution or intermission. Our only resource, indeed, is to agree
with the Stoics, by determining the soul to be a temporary suspension of the
activity of the senses, procuring rest for the body only, not for the soul
also. For the soul, as being always in motion, and always active, never
succumbs to rest,'a condition which is alien to immortality: for nothing
immortal admits, any end to its operation; but sleep is an end of operation.
It is indeed on the body, which is subject to mortality, and on the body
alone, that sleep graciously bestows [1748] a cessation from work. He,
therefore, who shall doubt whether sleep is a natural function, has the
dialectical experts calling in question the whole difference between things
natural and supernatural'so that what things he supposed to be beyond nature
he may, (if he likes, ) be safe in assigning to nature, which indeed has
made such a disposition of things, that they may seemingly be accounted as
beyond it; and so, of course, all things are natural or none are natural,
(as occasion requires.) With us (Christians), however, only that can receive
a hearing which is suggested by contemplating God, the Author of all the
things which we are now discussing. For we believe that nature, if it is
anything, is a reasonable work of God. Now reason presides over sleep; for
sleep is so fit for man, so useful, so necessary, that were it not for it,
nota soul could provide agency for recruiting the body, for restoring its
energies, for ensuring its health, for supplying suspension from work and
remedy against labour, and for the legitimate enjoyment of which day
departs, and night provides an ordinance by taking from all objects their
very colour. Since, then, sleep is indispensable to our life, and health,
and succour, there can be nothing pertaining to it which is not reasonable,
and which is not natural. Hence it is that physicians banish beyond the
gateway of nature everything which is contrary to what is vital healthful,
and helpful to nature; for those maladies which are inimical to
sleep'maladies of the mind and of the stomach'they have decided to be
contrariant to nature, and by such decision have determined as its corollary
that sleep is perfectly natural. Moreover, when they declare that sleep is
not natural in the lethargic state, they derive their conclusion from the
fact that it is natural when it is in its due and regular exercise. For
every natural state is impaired either by defect or by excess, whilst it is
maintained by its proper measure and amount. That, therefore, will be
natural in its condition which may be rendered non-natural by defect or by
excess. Well, now, what if you were to remove eating and drinking from the
conditions of nature? if in them lies the chief incentive to sleep. It is
certain that, from the very beginning of his nature, man was impressed with
these instincts (of sleep). [1749] If you receive your instruction from
God, (you will find) that the fountain of the human race, Adam, had a taste
of drowsiness before having a draught of repose; slept before he laboured,
or even before he ate, nay, even before he spoke; in Order that men may see
that sleep is a natural feature and function, and one which has actually
precedence over all the natural faculties. From this primary instance also
we are led to trace even then the image of death in sleep. For as Adam was a
figure of Christ, Adam's sleep shadowed out the death of Christ, who was to
sleep a mortal slumber, that from the wound inflicted on His side might, in
like manner (as Eve was formed), be typified the church, the true mother of
the living. This is why sleep is so salutary, so rational, and is actually
formed into the model of that death which is general and common to the race
of man. God, indeed, has willed (and it may be said in passing that He has,
generally, in His dispensations brought nothing to pass without such types
and shadows) to set before us, in a manner more fully and completely than
Plato's example, by daily recurrence the outlines of man's state, especially
concerning the beginning and the termination thereof; thus stretching out
the hand to help our faith more readily by types and parables, not in words
only, but also in things. He accordingly sets before your view the human
body stricken by the friendly power of slumber, prostrated by the kindly
necessity of repose immoveable in position, just as it lay previous to life,
and just as it will lie after life is past: there it lies as an attestation
of its form when first moulded, and of its condition when at last
buried'awaiting the soul in both stages, in the former previous to its
bestowal, in the latter after its recent withdrawal. Meanwhile the soul is
circumstanced in such a manner as to seem to be elsewhere active, learning
to bear future absence by a dissembling of its presence for the moment. We
shall soon know the case of Hermotimus. But yet it dreams in the interval.
Whence then its dreams? The fact is, it cannot rest or be idle altogether,
nor does it confine to the still hours of sleep the nature of its
immortality. It proves itself to possess a constant motion; it travels over
land and sea, it trades, it is excited, it labours, it plays, it grieves, it
rejoices, it follows pursuits lawful and unlawful; it shows what very great
power it has even without the body, how well equipped it is with members of
its own, although betraying at the same time the need it has of impressing
on some body its activity again. Accordingly, when the body shakes off its
slumber, it asserts before your eye the resurrection of the dead by its own
resumption of its natural functions. Such, therefore, must be both the
natural reason and the reasonable nature of sleep. If you only regard it as
the image of death, you initiate faith, you nourish hope, you learn both how
to die and how to live, you learn watchfulness, even while you sleep.
Chapter XLIV. The Story of Hermotimus, and the Sleeplessness of the Emperor
Nero. No Separation of the Soul from the Body Until Death.
With regard to the case of Hermotimus, they say that he used to be deprived
of his soul in his sleep, as if it wandered away from his body like a person
on a holiday trip. His wife betrayed the strange peculiarity. His enemies,
finding him asleep, burnt his body, as if it were a corpse: when his soul
returned too late, it appropriated (I suppose) to itself. the guilt of the
murder. However the good citizens of Clazomenµ consoled poor Hermotimus with
a temple, into which no woman ever enters, because of the infamy of this
wife. Now why this story? In order that, since the vulgar belief so readily
holds sleep to be the separation of the soul from the body, credulity should
not be encouraged by this case of Hermotimus. It must certainly have been a
much heavier sort of slumber: one would presume it was the nightmare, or
perhaps that diseased languor which Soranus suggests in opposition to the
nightmare, or else some such malady as that which the fable has fastened
upon Epimenides, who slept on some fifty years or so. Suetonius, however,
informs us that Nero never dreamt, and Theopompus says the same thing about
Thrasymedes; but Nero at the close of his life did with some difficulty
dream after some excessive alarm. What indeed would be said, if the case of
Hermotimus were believed to be such that the repose of his soul was a state
of actual idleness during sleep, and a positive separation from his body?
You may conjecture it to be anything but such a licence of the soul as
admits of flights away from the body without death, and that by continual
recurrence, as if habitual to its state and constitution. If indeed such a
thing were told me to have happened at any time to the soul'resembling a
total eclipse of the sun or the moon'I should verily suppose that the
occurrence had been caused by God's own interposition, for it would not be
unreasonable for a man to receive admonition from the Divine Being either in
the way of warning or of alarm, as by a flash of lightning, or by a sudden
stroke of death; only it would be much the more natural conclusion to
believe that this process should be by a dream, because if it must be
supposed to be, (as the hypothesis we are resisting assumes it to be, ) not
a dream, the occurrence ought rather to happen to a man whilst he is wide
awake.
Chapter XLV. Dreams, an Incidental Effect of the Soul's Activity. Ecstasy.
We are bound to expound at this point what is the opinion of Christians
respecting dreams, as incidents of sleep, and as no slight or trifling
excitements of the soul, which we have declared to be always occupied and
active owing to its perpetual movement, which again is a proof and evidence
of its divine quality and immortality. When, therefore, rest accrues to
human bodies, it being their own especial comfort, the soul, disdaining a
repose which is not natural to it, never rests; and since it receives no
help from the limbs of the body, it uses its own. Imagine a gladiator
without his instruments or arms, and a charioteer without his team, but
still gesticulating the entire course and exertion of their respective
employments: there is the fight, there is the struggle; but the effort is a
vain one. Nevertheless the whole procedure seems to be gone through,
although it evidently has not been really effected. There is the act, but
not the effect. This power we call ecstasy, in which the sensuous soul
stands out of itself, in a way which even resembles madness. [1750] Thus
in the very beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: "And God sent an
ecstasy upon Adam, and he slept." [1751] The sleep came on his body to
cause it to rest, but the ecstasy fell on his soul to remove rest: from that
very circumstance it still happens ordinarily (and from the order results
the nature of the case) that sleep is combined with ecstasy. In fact, with
what real feeling, and anxiety, and suffering do we experience joy, and
sorrow, and alarm in our dreams! Whereas we should not be moved by any such
emotions, by what would be the merest fantasies of course, if when we dream
we were masters of ourselves, (unaffected by ecstasy.) In these dreams,
indeed, good actions are useless, and crimes harmless; for we shall no more
be condemned for visionary acts of sin, than we shall be crowned for
imaginary martyrdom. But how, you will ask, can the soul remember its
dreams, when it is said to be without any mastery over its own operations?
This memory must be an especial gift of the ecstatic condition of which we
are treating, since it arises not from any failure of healthy action, but
entirely from natural process; nor does it expel mental function'it
withdraws it for a time. It is one thing to shake, it is another thing to
move; one thing to destroy, another thing to agitate. That, therefore, which
memory supplies betokens soundness of mind; and that which a sound mind
ecstatically experiences whilst the memory remains unchecked, is a kind of
madness. We are accordingly not said to be mad, but to dream, in that state;
to be in the full possession also of our mental faculties, [1752] if we
are at any time. For although the power to exercise these faculties
[1753] may be dimmed in us, it is still not extinguished; except that it may
seem to be itself absent at the very time that the ecstasy is energizing in
us in its special manner, in such wise as to bring before us images of a
sound mind and of wisdom, even as it does those of aberration.
Chapter XLVI. Diversity of Dreams and Visions. Epicurus Thought Lightly of
Them, Though Generally Most Highly Valued. Instances of Dreams.
We now find ourselves constrained to express an opinion about the character
of the dreams by which the soul is excited. And when shall we arrive at the
subject of death? And on such a question I would say, When God shall permit:
that admits of no long delay which must needs happen at all events. Epicurus
has given it as his opinion that dreams are altogether vain things; (but he
says this) when liberating the Deity from all sort of care, and dissolving
the entire order of the world, and giving to all things the aspect of merest
chance, casual in their issues, fortuitous in their nature. Well, now, if
such be the nature of things, there must be some chance even for truth,
because it is impossible for it to be the only thing to be exempted from the
fortune which is due to all things. Homer has assigned two gates to
dreams, [1754] 'the horny one of truth, the ivory one of error and
delusion. For, they say, it is possible to see through horn, whereas ivory
is untransparent. Aristotle, while expressing his opinion that dreams are in
most cases untrue, yet acknowledges that there is some truth in them. The
people of Telmessus will not admit that dreams are in any case unmeaning,
but they blame their own weakness when unable to conjecture their
signification. Now, who is such a stranger to human experience as not
sometimes to have perceived some truth in dreams? I shall force a blush from
Epicurus, If I only glance at some few of the more remarkable instances.
Herodotus [1755] relates how that Astyages, king of the Medes, saw in a
dream issuing from the womb of his virgin daughter a flood which inundated
Asia; and again, in the year which followed her marriage, he saw a vine
growing out from the same part of her person, which overspread the whole of
Asia. The same story is told prior to Herodotus by Charon of Lampsacus. Now
they who interpreted these visions did not deceive the mother when they
destined her son for so great an enterprise, for Cyrus both inundated and
overspread Asia. Philip of Macedon, before he became a father, had seen
imprinted on the pudenda of his consort Olympias the form of a small ring,
with a lion as a seal. He had concluded that an offspring from her was out
of the question (I suppose because the lion only becomes once a father),
when Aristodemus or Aristophon happened to conjecture that nothing of an
unmeaning or empty import lay under that seal, but that a son of very
illustrious character was portended. They who know anything of Alexander
recognise in him the lion of that small ring. Ephorus writes to this effect.
Again, Heraclides has told us, that a certain woman of Himera beheld in a
dream Dionysius' tyranny over Sicily. Euphorion has publicly recorded as a
fact, that, previous to giving birth to Seleucus, his mother Laodice foresaw
that he was destined for the empire of Asia. I find again from Strabo, that
it was owing to a dream that even Mithridates took possession of Pontus; and
I further learn from Callisthenes that it was from the indication of a dream
that Baraliris the Illyrian stretched his dominion from the Molossi to the
frontiers of Macedon. The Romans, too, were acquainted with dreams of this
kind. From a dream Marcus Tullius (Cicero) had learnt how that one, who was
yet only a little boy, and in a private station, who was also plain Julius
Octavius, and personally unknown to (Cicero) himself, was the destined
Augustus, and the suppressor and destroyer of (Rome's) civil discords. This
is recorded in the Commentaries of Vitellius. But visions of this prophetic
kind were not confined to predictions of supreme power; for they indicated
perils also, and catastrophes: as, for instance, when Cµsar was absent from
the battle of Philippi through illness, and thereby escaped the sword of
Brutus and Cassius, and then although he expected to encounter greater
danger still from the enemy in the field, he quitted his tent for it, in
obedience to a vision of Artorius, and so escaped (the capture by the enemy,
who shortly after took possession of the tent); as, again, when the daughter
of Polycrates of Samos foresaw the crucifixion which awaited him from the
anointing of the sun and the bath of Jupiter. [1756] So likewise in sleep
revelations are made of high honours and eminent talents; remedies are also
discovered, thefts brought to light, and treasures indicated. Thus Cicero's
eminence, whilst he was still a little boy, was foreseen by his nurse. The
swan from the breast of Socrates soothing men, is his disciple Plato. The
boxer Leonymus is cured by Achilles in his dreams. Sophocles the tragic poet
discovers, as he was dreaming, the golden crown, which had been lost from
the citadel of Athens. Neoptolemus the tragic actor, through intimations in
his sleep from Ajax himself, saves from destruction the hero's tomb on the
Rhoetean shore before Troy; and as he removes the decayed stones, he returns
enriched with gold. How many commentators and chroniclers vouch for this
phenomenon? There are Artemon, Antiphon, Strato, Philochorus, Epicharmus,
Serapion, Cratippus, and Dionysius of Rhodes, and Hermippus'the entire
literature of the age. I shall only laugh at all, if indeed I ought to laugh
at the man who fancied that he was going to persuade us that Saturn dreamt
before anybody else; which we can only believe if Aristotle, (who would fain
help us to such an opinion, ) lived prior to any other person. Pray forgive
me for laughing. Epicharmus, indeed, as well as Philochorus the Athenian,
assigned the very highest place among divinations to dreams. The whole world
is full of oracles of this description: there are the oracles of Amphiaraus
at Oropus, of Amphilochus at Mallus, of Sarpedon in the Troad, of Trophonius
in B£otia, of Mopsus in Cilicia, of Hermione in Macedon, of Pasiphäe in
Laconia. Then, again, there are others, which with their original
foundations, rites, and historians, together with the entire literature of
dreams, Hermippus of Berytus in five portly volumes will give you all the
account of, even to satiety. But the Stoics are very fond of saying that
God, in His most watchful providence over every institution, gave us dreams
amongst other preservatives of the arts and sciences of divination, as the
especial support of the natural oracle. So much for the dreams to which
credit has to be ascribed even by ourselves, although we must interpret them
in another sense. As for all other oracles, at which no one ever dreams,
what else must we declare concerning them, than that they are the diabolical
contrivance of those spirits who even at that time dwelt in the eminent
persons themselves, or aimed at reviving the memory of them as the mere
stage of their evil purposes, going so far as to counterfeit a divine power
under their shape and form, and, with equal persistence in evil, deceiving
men by their very boons of remedies, warnings, and forecasts,'the only
effect of which was to injure their victims the more they helped them; while
the means whereby they rendered the help withdrew them from all search after
the true God, by insinuating into their minds ideas of the false one? And of
course so pernicious an influence as this is not shut up nor limited within
the boundaries of shrines and temples: it roams abroad, it flies through the
air, and all the while is free and unchecked. So that nobody can doubt that
our very homes lie open to these diabolical spirits, who beset their human
prey with their fantasies not only in their chapels but also in their
chambers.
Chapter XLVII. Dreams Variously Classified. Some are God-Sent, as the Dreams
of Nebuchadnezzar; Others Simply Products of Nature.
We declare, then, that dreams are inflicted on us mainly by demons, although
they sometimes turn out true and favourable to us. When, however, with the
deliberate aim after evil, of which we have just spoken, they assume a
flattering and captivating style, they show themselves proportionately vain,
and deceitful, and obscure, and wanton, and impure. And no wonder that the
images partake of the character of the realities. But from God'who has
promised, indeed, "to pour out the grace of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh,
and has ordained that His servants and His handmaids should see visions as
well as utter prophecies" [1757] 'must all those visions be regarded as
emanating, which may be compared to the actual grace of God, as being
honest, holy, prophetic, inspired, instructive, inviting to virtue, the
bountiful nature of which causes them to overflow even to the profane, since
God, with grand impartiality, "sends His showers and sunshine on the just
and on the unjust." [1758] It was, indeed by an inspiration from God that
Nebuchadnezzar dreamt his dreams; [1759] and almost the greater part of
mankind get their knowledge of God from dreams. Thus it is that, as the
mercy of God super-abounds to the heathen, so the temptation of the evil one
encounters the saints, from whom he never withdraws his malignant efforts to
steal over them as best he may in their very sleep, if unable to assault
them when they are awake. The third class of dreams will consist of those
which the soul itself apparently creates for itself from an intense
application to special circumstances. Now, inasmuch as the soul cannot dream
of its own accord (for even Epicharmus is of this opinion), how can it
become to itself the cause of any vision? Then must this class of dreams be
abandoned to the action of nature, reserving for the soul, even when in the
ecstatic condition, the power of enduring whatever incidents befall it?
Those, moreover, which evidently proceed neither from God, nor from
diabolical inspiration, nor from the soul, being beyond the reach as well of
ordinary expectation, usual interpretation, or the possibility of being
intelligibly related, will have to be ascribed in a separate category to
what is purely and simply the ecstatic state and its peculiar conditions.
Chapter XLVIII. Causes and Circumstances of Dreams. What Best Contributes to
Efficient Dreaming.
They say that dreams are more sure and clear when they happen towards the
end of the night, because then the vigour of the soul emerges, and heavy
sleep departs. As to the seasons of the year, dreams are calmer in spring,
since summer relaxes, and winter somehow hardens, the soul; while autumn,
which in other respects is trying to health, is apt to enervate the soul by
the lusciousness of its fruits. Then, again, as regards the position of
one's body during sleep, one ought not to lie on his back, nor on his right
side, nor so as to wrench [1760] his intestines, as if their cavity were
reversely stretched: a palpitation of the heart would ensue, or else a
pressure on the liver would produce a painful disturbance of the mind. But
however this be, I take it that it all amounts to ingenious conjecture
rather than certain proof (although the author of the conjecture be no less
a man than Plato); [1761] and possibly all may be no other than the
result of chance. But, generally speaking, dreams will be under control of a
man's will, if they be capable of direction at all; for we must not examine
what opinion on the one hand, and superstition on the other, have to
prescribe for the treatment of dreams, in the matter of distinguishing and
modifying different sorts of food. As for the superstition, we have an
instance when fasting is prescribed for such persons as mean to submit to
the sleep which is necessary for receiving the oracle, in order that such
abstinence may produce the required purity; while we find an instance of the
opinion when the disciples of Pythagoras, in order to attain the same end,
reject the bean as an aliment which would load the stomach, and produce
indigestion. But the three brethren, who were the companions of Daniel,
being content with pulse alone, to escape the contamination of the royal
dishes, [1762] received from God, besides other wisdom, the gift
especially of penetrating and explaining the sense of dreams. For my own
part, I hardly know whether fasting would not simply make me dream so
profoundly, that I should not be aware whether I had in fact dreamt at all.
Well, then, you ask, has not sobriety something to do in this matter?
certainly it is as much concerned in this as it is in the entire subject: if
it contributes some good service to superstition, much more does it to
religion. For even demons require such discipline from their dreamers as a
gratification to their divinity, because they know that it is acceptable to
God, since Daniel (to quote him again) "ate no pleasant bread" for the space
of three weeks. [1763] This abstinence, however, he used in order to
please God by humiliation, and not for the purpose of producing a
sensibility and wisdom for his soul previous to receiving communication by
dreams and visions, as if it were not rather to effect such action in an
ecstatic state. This sobriety, then, (in which our question arises, ) will
have nothing to do with exciting ecstasy, but will rather serve to recommend
its being wrought by God.
Chapter XLIX. No Soul Naturally Exempt from Dreams.
As for those persons who suppose that infants do not dream, on the ground
that all the functions of the soul throughout life are accomplished
according to the capacity of age, they ought to observe attentively their
tremors, and nods, and bright smiles as they sleep, and from such facts
understand that they are the emotions of their soul as it dreams, which so
readily escape to the surface through the delicate tenderness of their
infantine body. The fact, however, that the African nation of the Atlantes
are said to pass through the night in a deep lethargic sleep, brings down on
them the censure that something is wrong in the constitution of their soul.
Now either report, which is occasionally calumnious against barbarians,
deceived Herodotus, [1764] or else a large force of demons of this sort
domineers in those barbarous regions. Since, indeed, Aristotle remarks of a
certain hero of Sardinia that he used to withhold the power of visions and
dreams from such as resorted to his shrine for inspiration, it must lie at
the will and caprice of the demons to take away as well as to confer the
faculty of dreams; and from this circumstance may have arisen the remarkable
fact (which we have mentioned [1765] ) of Nero and Thrasymedes only
dreaming so late in life. We, however, derive dreams from God. Why, then,
did not the Atlantes receive the dreaming faculty from God, because there is
really no nation which is now a stranger to God, since the gospel flashes
its glorious light through the world to the ends of the earth? Could it then
be that rumour deceived Aristotle, or is this caprice still the way of
demons? (Let us take any view of the case), only do not let it be imagined
that any soul is by its natural constitution exempt from dreams.
Chapter L. The Absurd Opinion of Epicurus and the Profane Conceits of the
Heretic Menander on Death, Even Enoch and Elijah Reserved for Death.
We have by this time said enough about sleep, the mirror and image of death;
and likewise about the occupations of sleep, even dreams. Let us now go on
to consider the cause of our departure hence'that is, the appointment and
course of death'because we must not leave even it unquestioned and
unexamined, although it is itself the very end of all questions and
investigations. According to the general sentiment of the human race, we
declare death to be "the debt of nature." So much has been settled by the
voice of God; [1766] such is the contract with everything which is born:
so that even from this the frigid conceit of Epicurus is refuted, who says
that no such debt is due from us; and not only so, but the insane opinion of
the Samaritan heretic Menander is also rejected, who will have it that death
has not only nothing to do with his disciples, but in fact never reaches
them. He pretends to have received such a commission from the secret power
of One above, that all who partake of his baptism become immortal,
incorruptible and instantaneously invested with resurrection-life. We read,
no doubt, of very many wonderful kinds of waters: how, for instance, the
vinous quality of the stream intoxicates people who drink of the Lyncestis;
how at Colophon the waters of an oracle-inspiring fountain [1767] affect
men with madness; how Alexander was killed by the poisonous water from Mount
Nonacris in Arcadia. Then, again, there was in Judea before the time of
Christ a pool of medicinal virtue. It is well known how the poet has
commemorated the marshy Styx as preserving men from death; although Thetis
had, in spite of the preservative, to lament her son. And for the matter of
that, were Menander himself to take a plunge into this famous Styx, he would
certainly have to die after all; for you must come to the Styx, placed as it
is by all accounts in the regions of the dead. Well, but what and where are
those blessed and charming waters which not even John Baptist ever used in
his preministrations, nor Christ after him ever revealed to His disciples?
What was this wondrous bath of Menander? He is a comical fellow, I ween.
[1768] But why (was such a font) so seldom in request, so obscure, one to
which so very few ever resorted for their cleansing? I really see something
to suspect in so rare an occurrence of a sacrament to which is attached so
very much security and safety, and which dispenses with the ordinary law of
dying even in the service of God Himself, when, on the contrary, all nations
have "to ascend to the mount of the Lord and to the house of the God of
Jacob," who demands of His saints in martyrdom that death which He exacted
even of His Christ. No one will ascribe to magic such influence as shall
exempt from death, or which shall refresh and vivify life, like the vine by
the renewal of its condition. Such power was not accorded to the great Medea
herself'over a human being at any rate, if allowed her over a silly sheep.
Enoch no doubt was translated, [1769] and so was Elijah; [1770] nor
did they experience death: it was postponed, (and only postponed, ) most
certainly: they are reserved for the suffering of death, that by their blood
they may extinguish Antichrist. [1771] Even John underwent death,
although concerning him there had prevailed an ungrounded expectation that
he would remain alive until the coming of the Lord. [1772] Heresies,
indeed, for the most pan spring hurriedly into existence, from examples
furnished by ourselves: they procure their defensive armour from the very
place which they attack. The whole question resolves itself, in short, into
this challenge: Where are to be found the men whom Menander himself has
baptized? whom he has plunged into his Styx? Let them come forth and stand
before us'those apostles of his whom he has made immortal? Let my (doubting)
Thomas see them, let him hear them, let him handle them'and he is convinced.
Chapter LI. Death Entirely Separates the Soul from the Body.
But the operation of death is plain and obvious: it is the separation of
body and soul. Some, however, in reference to the soul's immortality, on
which they have so feeble a hold through not being taught of God, maintain
it with such beggarly arguments, that they would fain have it supposed that
certain souls cleave to the body even after death. It is indeed in this
sense that Plato, although he despatches at once to heaven such souls as he
pleases, [1773] yet in his Republic [1774] exhibits to us the corpse
of an unburied person, which was preserved a long time without corruption,
by reason of the soul remaining, as he says, unseparated from the body. To
the same purport also Democritus remarks on the growth for a considerable
while of the human nails and hair in the grave. Now, it is quite possible
that the nature of the atmosphere tended to the preservation of the
above-mentioned corpse. What if the air were particularly dry, and the
ground of a saline nature? What, too, if the substance of the body itself
were unusually dry and arid? What, moreover, if the mode of the death had
already eliminated from the corpse all corrupting matter? As for the nails,
since they are the commencement of the nerves, they may well seem to be
prolonged, owing to the nerves themselves being relaxed and extended, and to
be protruded more and more as the flesh fails. The hair, again, is nourished
from the brain, which would cause it endure for a long time as its secret
aliment and defence. Indeed, in the case of living persons themselves, the
whole head of hair is copious or scanty in proportion to the exuberance of
the brain. You have medical men (to attest the fact). But not a particle of
the soul can possibly remain in the body, which is itself destined to
disappear when time shall have abolished the entire scene on which the body
has played its part. And yet even this partial survival of the soul finds a
place in the opinions of some men; and on this account they will not have
the body consumed at its funeral by fire, because they would spare the small
residue of the soul. There is, however, another way of accounting for this
pious treatment, not as if it meant to favour the relics of the soul, but as
if it would avert a cruel custom in the interest even of the body; since,
being human, it is itself undeserving of an end which is also inflicted upon
murderers. The truth is, the soul is indivisible, because it is immortal;
(and this fact) compels us to believe that death itself is an indivisible
process, accruing indivisibly to the soul, not indeed because it is
immortal, but because it is indivisible. Death, however, would have to be
divided in its operation, if the soul were divisible into particles, any one
of which has to be reserved for a later stage of death. At this rate, a part
of death will have to stay behind for a portion of the soul. I am not
ignorant that some vestige of this opinion still exists. I have found it out
from one of my own people. I am acquainted with the case of a woman, the
daughter of Christian parents, [1775] who in the very flower of her age
and beauty slept peacefully (in Jesus), after a singularly happy though
brief married life. Before they laid her in her grave, and when the priest
began the appointed office, at the very first breath of his prayer she
withdrew her hands from her side, placed them in an attitude of devotion,
and after the holy service was concluded restored them to their lateral
position. Then, again, there is that well-known story among our own people,
that a body voluntarily made way in a certain cemetery, to afford room for
another body to be placed near to it. If, as is the case, similar stories
are told amongst the heathen, (we can only conclude that) God everywhere
manifests signs of His own power'to His own people for their comfort, to
strangers for a testimony unto them. I would indeed much rather suppose that
a portent of this kind happened from the direct agency of God than from any
relics of the soul: for if there were a residue of these, they would be
certain to move the other limbs; and even if they moved the hands, this
still would not have been for the purpose of a prayer. Nor would the corpse
have been simply content to have made way for its neighbour: it would,
besides, have benefited its own self also by the change of its position. But
from whatever cause proceeded these phenomena, which you must put down
amongst signs and portents, it is impossible that they should regulate
nature. Death, if it once falls short of totality in operation, is not
death. If any fraction of the soul remain, it makes a living state. Death
will no more mix with life, than will night with day.
Chapter LII. All Kinds of Death a Violence to Nature, Arising from Sin. Sin
an Intrusion Upon Nature as God Created It.
Such, then, is the work of death'the separation of the soul from the body.
Putting out of the question fates and fortuitous circumstances, it has been,
according to men's views, distinguished in a twofold form'the ordinary and
the extraordinary. The ordinary they ascribe to nature, exercising its quiet
influence in the case of each individual decease; the extraordinary is said
to be contrary to nature, happening in every violent death. As for our own
views, indeed, we know what was man's origin, and we boldly assert and
persistently maintain that death happens not by way of natural consequence
to man, but owing to a fault and defect which is not itself natural;
although it is easy enough, no doubt, to apply the term natural to faults
and circumstances which seem to have been (though from the emergence of an
external cause [1776] ) inseparable to us from our very birth. If man had
been directly appointed to die as the condition of his creation, [1777]
then of course death must be imputed to nature. Now, that he was not thus
appointed to die, is proved by the very law which made his condition depend
on a warning, and death result from man's arbitrary choice. Indeed, if he
had not sinned, he certainly would not have died. That cannot be nature
which happens by the exercise of volition after an alternative has been
proposed to it, and not by necessity'the result of an inflexible and
unalterable condition. Consequently, although death has various issues,
inasmuch as its causes are manifold, we cannot say that the easiest death is
so gentle as not to happen by violence (to our nature). The very law which
produces death, simple though it be, is yet violence. How can it be
otherwise, when so close a companionship of soul and body, so inseparable a
growth together from their very conception of two sister substances, is
sundered and divided? For although a man may breathe his last for joy, like
the Spartan Chilon, while embracing his son who had just conquered in the
Olympic games; or for glory, like the Athenian Clidemus, while receiving a
crown of gold for the excellence of his historical writings; or in a dream,
like Plato; or in a fit of laughter, like Publius Crassus,'yet death is much
too violent, coming as it does upon us by strange and alien means, expelling
the soul by a method all its own, calling on us to die at a moment when one
might live a jocund life in joy and honour, in peace and pleasure. That is
still a violence to ships: although far away from the Capharean rocks,
assailed by no storms, without a billow to shatter them, with favouring
gale, in gliding course, with merry crews, they founder amidst entire
security, suddenly, owing to some internal shock. Not dissimilar are the
shipwrecks of life,'the issues of even a tranquil death. It matters not
whether the vessel of the human body goes with unbroken timbers or shattered
with storms, if the navigation of the soul be overthrown.
Chapter LIII. The Entire Soul Being Indivisible Remains to the Last Act of
Vitality; Never Partially or Fractionally Withdrawn from the Body.
But where at last will the soul have to lodge, when it is bare and divested
of the body? We must certainly not hesitate to follow it thither, in the
order of our inquiry. We must, however, first of all fully state what
belongs to the topic before us, in order that no one, because we have
mentioned the various issues of death, may expect from us a special
description of these, which ought rather to be left to medical men, who are
the proper judges of the incidents which appertain to death, or its causes,
and the actual conditions of the human body. Of course, with the view of
preserving the truth of the soul's immortality, whilst treating this topic,
I shall have, on mentioning death, to introduce phrases about dissolution of
such a purport as seems to intimate that the soul escapes by degrees, and
piece by piece; for it withdraws (from the body) with all the circumstances
of a decline, seeming to suffer consumption, and suggests to us the idea of
being annihilated by the slow process of its departure. But the entire
reason of this phenomenon is in the body, and arises from the body. For
whatever be the kind of death (which operates on man), it undoubtedly
produces the destruction either of the matter, or of the region, or of the
passages of vitality: of the matter, such as the gall and the blood; of the
region, such as the heart and the liver; of the passages, such as the veins
and the arteries . Inasmuch, then, as these parts of the body are severally
devastated by an injury proper to each of them, even to the very last ruin
and annulling of the vital powers 'in other words, of the ends, the sites,
and the functions of nature' it must needs come to pass, amidst the gradual
decay of its instruments, domiciles, and spaces, that the soul also itself,
being driven to abandon each successive part, assumes the appearance of
being lessened to nothing; in some such manner as a charioteer is assumed to
have himself failed, when his horses, through fatigue, withdraw from him
their energies. But this assumption applies only to the circumstances of the
despoiled person, not to any real condition of suffering. Likewise the
body's charioteer, the animal spirit, fails on account of the failure of its
vehicle, not of itself'abandoning its work, but not its vigour'languishing
in operation, but not in essential condition'bankrupt in solvency, not in
substance'be-cause ceasing to put in an appearance, but not ceasing to
exist. Thus every rapid death 'such as a decapitation, or a breaking of the
neck, [1778] which opens at once a vast outlet for the soul; or a sudden
ruin, which at a stroke crushes every vital action, like that inner ruin
apoplexy' retards not the soul's escape, nor painfully separates its
departure into successive moments. Where, however, the death is a lingering
one, the soul abandons its position in the way in which it is itself
abandoned. And yet it is not by this process severed in fractions: it is
slowly drawn out; and whilst thus extracted, it causes the last remnant to
seem to be but a part of itself. No portion, however, must be deemed
separable, because it is the last; nor, because it is a small one, must it
be regarded as susceptible of dissolution. Accordant with a series is its
end, and the middle is prolonged to the extremes; and the remnants cohere to
the mass, and are waited for, but never abandoned by it. And I will even
venture to say, that the last of a whole is the whole; because while it is
less, and the latest, it yet belongs to the whole, and completes it. Hence,
indeed, many times it happens that the soul in its actual separation is more
powerfully agitated with a more anxious gaze, and a quickened loquacity;
whilst from the loftier and freer position in which it is now placed, it
enunciates, by means of its last remnant still lingering in the flesh, what
it sees, what it hears, and what it: is beginning to know. In Platonic
phrase, indeed, the body is a prison, [1779] but in the apostle's it is
"the temple of God," [1780] because it is in Christ. Still, (as must be
admitted, ) by reason of its enclosure it obstructs and obscures the soul,
and sullies it by the concretion of the flesh; whence it happens that the
light which illumines objects comes in upon the soul in a more confused
manner, as if through a window of horn. Undoubtedly, when the soul, by the
power of death, is released from its concretion with the flesh, it is by the
very release cleansed and purified: it Is, moreover, certain that it escapes
from the veil of the flesh into open space, to its clear, and pure, and
intrinsic light; and then finds itself enjoying its enfranchisement from
matter, and by virtue of its liberty it recovers its divinity, as one who
awakes out of sleep passes from images to verities. Then it tells out what
it sees; then it exults or it fears, according as it finds what lodging is
prepared for it, as soon as it sees the very angel's face, that arraigner of
souls, the Mercury of the poets.
Chapter LIV. Whither Does the Soul Retire When It Quits the Body? Opinions
of Philosophers All More or Less Absurd. The Hades of Plato.
To the question, therefore, whither the soul is withdrawn, we now give an
answer. Almost all the philosophers, who hold the soul's immortality,
notwithstanding their special views on the subject, still claim for it this
(eternal condition), as Pythagoras, and Empedocles, and Plato, and as they
who indulge it with some delay from the time of its quitting the flesh to
the conflagration of all things, and as the Stoics, who place only their own
souls, that is, the souls of the wise, in the mansions above. Plato, it is
true, does not allow this destination to all the souls, indiscriminately, of
even all the philosophers, but only of those who have cultivated their
philosophy out of love to boys. So great is the privilege which impurity
obtains at the hands of philosophers! In his system, then, the souls of the
wise are carried up on high into the ether: according to Arius, [1781]
into the, air; according to the Stoics, into the moon. I wonder, indeed,
that they abandon to the earth the souls of the unwise, when they affirm
that even these are instructed by the wise, so much their superiors. For
where is the school where they can have been instructed in the vast space
which divides them? By what means can the pupil-souls have resorted to their
teachers, when they are parted from each other by so distant an interval?
What profit, too, can any instruction afford them at all in their posthumous
state, when they are on the brink of perdition by the universal fire? All
other souls they thrust down to Hades, which Plato, in his Phµdo, [1782]
describes: as the bosom of the earth, where all the filth of the world
accumulates, settles, and exhales, and where every separate draught of air
only renders denser still the impurities of the seething mass.
Chapter LV. The Christian Idea of the Position of Hades; The Blessedness of
Paradise Immediately After Death. The Privilege of the Martyrs.
By ourselves the lower regions (of Hades) are not supposed to be a bare
cavity, nor some subterranean sewer of the world, but a vast deep space in
the interior of the earth, and a concealed recess in its very bowels;
inasmuch as we read that Christ in His death spent three days in the heart
of the earth, [1783] that is, in the secret inner recess which is hidden
in the earth, and enclosed by the earth, and superimposed on the abysmal
depths which lie still lower down. Now although Christ is God, yet, being
also man, "He died according to the Scriptures," [1784] and "according to
the same Scriptures was buried." [1785] With the same law of His being He
fully complied, by remaining in Hades in the form and condition of a dead
man; nor did He ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the
lower parts of the earth, that He might there make the patriarchs and
prophets partakers of Himself. [1786] (This being the case), you must
suppose Hades to be a subterranean region, and keep at arm's length those
who are too proud to believe that the souls of the faithful deserve a place
in the lower regions. [1787] These persons, who are "servants above their
Lord, and disciples above their Master," [1788] would no doubt spurn to
receive the comfort of the resurrection, if they must expect it in
Abraham's bosom. But it was for this purpose, say they, that Christ
descended into hell, that we might not ourselves have to descend thither.
Well, then, what difference is there between heathens and Christians, if the
same prison awaits them all when dead? How, indeed, shall the soul mount up
to heaven, where Christ is already sitting at the Father's right hand, when
as yet the archangel's trumpet has not been heard by the command of God,
[1789] 'when as yet those whom the coming of the Lord is to find on the
earth, have not been caught up into the air to meet Him at His coming,
[1790] in company with the dead in Christ, who shall be the first to
arise? [1791] To no one is heaven opened; the earth is still safe for
him, I would not say it is shut against him. When the world, indeed, shall
pass away, then the kingdom of heaven shall be opened. Shall we then have to
sleep high up in ether, with the boy-loving worthies of Plato; or in the air
with Arius; or around the moon with the Endymions of the Stoics? No, but in
Paradise, you tell me, whither already the patriarchs and prophets have
removed from Hades in the retinue of the Lord's resurrection. How is it,
then, that the region of Paradise, which as revealed to John in the Spirit
lay under the altar, [1792] displays no other souls as in it besides the
souls of the martyrs? How is it that the most heroic martyr Perpetua on the
day of her passion saw only her fellow-martyrs there, in the revelation
which she received of Paradise, if it were not that the sword which guarded
the entrance permitted none to go in thereat, except those who had died in
Christ and not in Adam? A new death for God, even the extraordinary one for
Christ, is admitted into the reception-room of mortality, specially altered
and adapted to receive the new-comer. Observe, then, the difference between
a heathen and a Christian in their death: if you have to lay down your life
for God, as the Comforter [1793] counsels, it is not in gentle fevers and
on soft beds, but in the sharp pains of martyrdom: you must take up the
cross and bear it after your Master, as He has Himself instructed you.
[1794] The sole key to unlock Paradise is your own life's blood. [1795]
You have a treatise by us, [1796] (on Paradise), in which we have
established the position that every soul is detained in safe keeping in
Hades until the day of the Lord.
Chapter LVI. Refutation of the Homeric View of the Soul's Detention from
Hades Owing to the Body's Being Unburied. That Souls Prematurely Separated
from the Body Had to Wait for Admission into Hades Also Refuted.
There arises the question, whether this takes place immediately after the
soul's departure from the body; whether some souls are detained for special
reasons in the meantime here on earth; and whether it is permitted them of
their own accord, or by the intervention of authority, to be removed from
Hades [1797] at some subsequent time? Even such opinions as these are not
by any means lacking persons to advance them with confidence. It was
believed that the unburied dead were not admitted into the infernal regions
before they had received a proper sepulture; as in the case of Homer's
Patroclus, who earnestly asks for a burial of Achilles in a dream, on the
ground that he could not enter Hades through any other portal, since the
souls of the sepulchred dead kept thrusting him away. [1798] We know that
Homer exhibited more than a poetic licence here; he had in view the fights
of the dead. Proportioned, indeed, to his care for the just honours of the
tomb, was his censure of that delay of burial which was injurious to souls.
(It was also his purpose to add a warning), that no man should, by detaining
in his house the corpse of a friend, only expose himself, along with the
deceased, to increased injury and trouble, by the irregularity [1799] of
the consolation which he nourishes with pain and grief. He has accordingly
kept a twofold object in view in picturing the complaints of an unburied
soul: he wished to maintain honour to the dead by promptly attending to
their funeral, as well as to moderate the feelings of grief which their
memory excited. But, after all, how vain is it to suppose that the soul
could bear the rites and requirements of the body, or carry any of them away
to the infernal regions! And how much vainer still is it, if injury be
supposed to accrue to the soul from that neglect of burial which it ought to
receive rather as a favour! For surely the soul which had no willingness to
die might well prefer as tardy a removal to Hades as possible. It will love
the undutiful heir, by whose means it still enjoys the light. If, however,
it is certain that injury accrues to the soul from a tardy interment of the
body'and the gist of the injury lies in the neglect of the burial'it is yet
in the highest degree unfair, that should receive all the injury to which
the faulty delay could not possibly be imputed, for of course all the fault
rests on the nearest relations of the dead. They also say that those souls
which are taken away by a premature death wander about hither and thither
until they have completed the residue of the years which they would have
lived through, had it not been for their untimely fate. Now either their
days are appointed to all men severally, and if so appointed, I cannot
suppose them capable of being shortened; or if, notwithstanding such
appointment, they may be shortened by the will of God, or some other
powerful influence, then (I say) such shortening is of no validity, if they
still may be accomplished in some other way. If, on the other hand, they are
not appointed, there cannot be any residue to be fulfilled for unappointed
periods. I have another remark to make. Suppose it be an infant that dies
yet hanging on the breast; or it may be an immature boy; or it may be, once
more, a youth arrived at puberty: suppose, moreover, that the life in each
case ought to have reached full eighty years, how is it possible that the
soul of either could spend the whole of the shortened years here on earth
after losing the body by death? One's age cannot be passed without one's
body, it being by help of the body that the period of life has its duties
and labours transacted. Let our own people, moreover, bear this in mind,
that souls are to receive back at the resurrection the self-same bodies in
which they died. Therefore our bodies must be expected to resume the same
conditions and the same ages, for it is these particulars which impart to
bodies their especial modes. By what means, then, can the soul of an infant
so spend on earth its residue of years, that it should be able at the
resurrection to assume the state of an octogenarian, although it had barely
lived a month? Or if it shall be necessary that the appointed days of life
be fulfilled here on earth, must the same course of life in all its
vicissitudes, which has been itself ordained to accompany the appointed
days, be also passed through by the soul along with the days? Must it employ
itself in school studies in its passage from infancy to boyhood; play the
soldier in the excitement and vigour of youth and earlier manhood; and
encounter serious and judicial responsibilities in the graver years between
ripe manhood and old age? Must it ply trade for profit, turn up the soil
with hoe and plough, go to sea, bring actions at law, get married, toil and
labour, undergo illnesses, and whatever casualties of weal and woe await it
in the lapse of years? Well, but how are all these transactions to be
managed without one's body? Life (spent) without life? But (you will tell
me) the destined period in question is to be bare of all incident whatever,
only to be accomplished by merely elapsing. What, then, is to prevent its
being fulfilled in Hades, where there is absolutely no use to which you can
apply it? We therefore maintain that every soul, whatever be its age on
quitting the body, remains unchanged in the same, until the time shall come
when the promised perfection shall be realized in a state duly tempered to
the measure of the peerless angels. Hence those souls must be accounted as
passing an exile in Hades, which people are apt to regard as carried off by
violence, especially by cruel tortures, such as those of the cross, and the
axe, and the sword, and the lion; but we do not account those to be violent
deaths which justice awards, that avenger of violence. So then, you will
say, it is all the wicked souls that are banished in Hades. (Not quite so
fast, is my answer.) I must compel you to determine (what you mean by
Hades), which of its two regions, the region of the good or of the bad. If
you mean the bad, (all I can say is, that) even now the souls of the wicked
deserve to be consigned W those abodes; if you mean the good why should you
judge to be unworthy of such a resting-place the souls of infants and of
virgins, and [1800] those which, by reason of their condition in life
were pure and innocent?
Chapter LVII. Magic and Sorcery Only Apparent in Their Effects. God Alone
Can Raise the Dead.
It is either a very fine thing to be detained in these infernal regions with
the Aori, or souls which were prematurely hurried away; or else a very bad
thing indeed to be there associated with the Biaeothanati, who suffered
violent deaths. I may be permitted to use the actual words and terms with
which magic rings again, that inventor of all these odd opinions'with its
Ostanes, and Typhon, and Dardanus, and Damigeron, and Nectabis, and
Berenice. There is a well-known popular bit of writing, [1801] which
undertakes to summon up from the abode of Hades the souls which have
actually slept out their full age, and had passed away by an honourable
death, and had even been buried with full rites and proper ceremony. What
after this shall we say about magic? Say, to be sure, what almost everybody
says of it'that it is an imposture. But it is not we Christians only whose
notice this system of imposture does not escape. We, it is true, have
discovered these spirits of evil, not, to be sure, by a complicity with
them, but by a certain knowledge which is hostile to them; nor is it by any
procedure which is attractive to them, but by a power which subjugates them
that we handle (their wretched system)'that manifold pest of the mind of
man, that artificer of all error, that destroyer of our salvation and our
soul at one swoop. [1802] In this way, even by magic, which is indeed
only a second idolatry, wherein they pretend that after death they become
demons, just as they were supposed in the first and literal idolatry to
become gods (and why not? since the gods are but dead things), the
before-mentioned Aori Biaeothanati are actually invoked,'and not
unfairly, [1803] if one grounds his faith on this principle, that it is
clearly credible for those souls to be beyond all others addicted to
violence and wrong, which with violence and wrong have been hurried away by
a cruel and premature death and which would have a keen appetite for
reprisals. Under cover, however, of these souls, demons operate, especially
such as used to dwell in them when they were in life, and who had driven
them, in fact, to the fate which had at last carried them off. For, as we
have already suggested, [1804] there is hardly a human being who is
unattended by a demon; and it is well known to many, that premature and
violent deaths, which men ascribe to accidents, are in fact brought about by
demons. This imposture of the evil spirit lying concealed in the persons of
the dead, we are able, if I mistake not, to prove by actual facts, when in
cases of exorcism (the evil spirit) affirms himself sometimes to be one of
the relatives [1805] of the person possessed by him, sometimes a
gladiator or a bestiarius, [1806] and sometimes even a god; always making
it one of his chief cares to extinguish the very truth which we are
proclaiming, that men may not readily believe that all souls remove to
Hades, and that they may overthrow faith in the resurrection and the
judgment. And yet for all that, the demon, after trying to circumvent the
bystanders, is vanquished by the pressure of divine grace, and sorely
against his will confesses all the truth. So also in that other kind of
magic, which is supposed to bring up from Hades the souls now resting there,
and to exhibit them to public view, there is no other expedient of imposture
ever resorted to which operates more powerfully. Of course, why a phantom
becomes visible, is because a body is also attached to it; and it is no
difficult matter to delude the external vision of a man whose mental eye it
is so easy to blind. The serpents which emerged from the magicians' rods,
certainly appeared to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians as bodily substances. It
is true that the verity of Moses swallowed up their lying deceit. [1807]
Many attempts were also wrought against the apostles by the sorcerers Simon
and Elymas, [1808] but the blindness which struck (them) was no
enchanter's trick. What novelty is there in the effort of an unclean spirit
to counterfeit the truth? At this very time, even, the heretical dupes of
this same Simon (Magus) are so much elated by the extravagant pretensions of
their art, that they undertake to bring up from Hades the souls of the
prophets themselves. And I suppose that they can do so under cover of a
lying wonder. For, indeed, it was no less than this that was anciently
permitted to the Pythonic (or ventriloquistic) spirit [1809] 'even to
represent the soul of Samuel, when Saul consulted the dead, after (losing
the living) God. [1810] God forbid, however, that we should suppose that
the soul of any saint, much less of a prophet, can be dragged out of (its
resting-place in Hades) by a demon. We know that "Satan himself is
transformed into an angel of light" [1811] 'much more into a man of
light'and that at last he will "show himself to be even God," [1812] and
will exhibit "great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible,
he shall deceive the very elect." [1813] He hardly [1814] hesitated on
the before-mentioned occasion to affirm himself to be a prophet of God, and
especially to Saul, in whom he was then actually dwelling. You must not
imagine that he who produced the phantom was one, and he who consulted it
was another; but that it was one and the same spirit, both in the sorceress
and in the apostate (king), which easily pretended an apparition of that
which it had already prepared them to believe as real'(even the spirit)
through whose evil influence Saul's heart was fixed where his treasure was,
and where certainly God was not. Therefore it came about, that he saw him
through whose aid he believed that he was going to see, because he believed
him through whose help he saw. But we are met with the objection, that in
visions of the night dead persons are not unfrequently seen, and that for a
set purpose. [1815] For instance, the Nasamones consult private oracles
by frequent and lengthened visits to the sepulchres of their relatives, as
one may find in Heraclides, or Nymphodorus, or Herodotus; [1816] and the
Celts, for the game purpose, stay away all night at the tombs of their brave
chieftains, as Nicander affirms. Well, we admit apparitions of dead persons
in dreams to be not more really true than those of living persons; but we
apply the same estimate to all alike'to the dead and to the living, and
indeed to all the phenomena which are seen. Now things are not true because
they appear to be so, but because they are fully proved to be so. The truth
of dreams is declared from the realization, not the aspect. Moreover, the
fact that Hades is not in any case opened for (the escape of) any soul, has
been firmly established by the Lord in the person of Abraham, in His
representation of the poor man at rest and the rich man in torment.
[1817] No one, (he said, ) could possibly be despatched from those abodes to
report to us how matters went in the nether regions,'a purpose which, (if
any could be, ) might have been allowable on such an occasion, to persuade a
belief in Moses and the prophets. The power of God has, no doubt, sometimes
recalled men's souls to their bodies, as a proof of His own transcendent
rights; but there must never be, because of this fact, any agreement
supposed to be possible between the divine faith and the arrogant
pretensions of sorcerers, and the imposture of dreams, and the licence of
poets. But yet in all cases of a true resurrection, when the power of God
recalls souls to their bodies, either by the agency of prophets, or of
Christ, or of apostles, a complete presumption is afforded us, by the solid,
palpable, and ascertained reality (of the revived body), that its true form
must be such as to compel one's belief of the fraudulence of every
incorporeal apparition of dead persons.
Chapter LVIII. Conclusion. Points Postponed. All Souls are Kept in Hades
Until the Resurrection, Anticipating Their Ultimate Misery or Bliss.
All souls, therefore; are shut up within Hades: do you admit this? (It is
true, whether) you say yes or no: moreover, there are already experienced
there punishments and consolations; and there you have a poor man and a
rich. And now, having postponed some stray questions [1818] for this part
of my work, I will notice them in this suitable place, and then come to a
close. Why, then, cannot you suppose that the soul undergoes punishment and
consolation in Hades in the interval, while it awaits its alternative of
judgment, in a certain anticipation either of gloom or of glory? You reply:
Because in the judgment of God its matter ought to be sure and safe, nor
should there be any inkling beforehand of the award of His sentence; and
also because (the soul) ought to be covered first by its vestment [1819]
of the restored flesh, which, as the partner of its actions, should be also
a sharer in its recompense. What, then, is to take place in that interval?
Shall we sleep? But souls do not sleep even when men are alive: it is indeed
the business of bodies to sleep, to which also belongs death itself, no less
than its mirror and counterfeit sleep. Or will you have it, that nothing is
there done whither the whole human race is attracted, and whither all man's
expectation is postponed for safe keeping? Do you think this state is a
foretaste of judgment, or its actual commencement? a premature encroachment
on it, or the first course in its full ministration? Now really, would it
not be the highest possible injustice, even [1820] in Hades, if all were
to be still well with the guilty even there, and not well with the righteous
even yet? What, would you have hope be still more confused after death?
would you have it mock us still more with uncertain expectation? or shall it
now become a review of past life, and an arranging of judgment, with the
inevitable feeling of a trembling fear? But, again, must the soul always
tarry for the body, in order to experience sorrow or joy? Is it not
sufficient, even of itself, to suffer both one and the other of these
sensations? How often, without any pain to the body, is the soul alone
tortured by ill-temper, and anger, and fatigue, and very often
unconsciously, even to itself? How often, too, on the other hand, amidst
bodily suffering, does the soul seek out for itself some furtive joy, and
withdraw for the moment from the body's importunate society? I am mistaken
if the soul is not in the habit, indeed, solitary and alone, of rejoicing
and glorifying over the very tortures of the body. Look for instance, at the
soul of Mutius Scµvola as he melts his right hand over the fire; look also
at Zeno's, as the torments of Dionysius pass over it. [1821] The bites of
wild beasts are a glory to young heroes, as on Cyrus were the scars of the
bear. [1822] Full well, then, does the soul even in Hades know how to joy
and to sorrow even without the body; since when in the flesh it feels pain
when it likes, though the body is unhurt; and when it likes it feels joy
though the body is in pain. Now if such sensations occur at its will during
life, how much rather may they not happen after death by the judicial
appointment of God! Moreover, the soul executes not all its operations with
the ministration of the flesh; for the judgment of God pursues even simple
cogitations and the merest volitions. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." [1823]
Therefore, even for this cause it is most fitting that the soul, without at
all waiting for the flesh, should be punished for what it has done without
the partnership of the flesh. So, on the same principle, in return for the
pious and kindly thoughts in which it shared not the help of the flesh,
shall it without the flesh receive its consolation. Nay more, [1824] even
in matters done through the flesh the soul is the first to conceive them,
the first to arrange them, the first to authorize them, the first to
precipitate them into acts. And even if it is sometimes unwilling to act, it
is still the first to treat the object which it means to effect by help of
the body. In no case, indeed, can an accomplished fact be prior to the
mental conception [1825] thereof. It is therefore quite in keeping with
this order of things, that that part of our nature should be the first to
have the recompense and reward to which they are due on account of its
priority. In short, inasmuch as we understand "the prison" pointed out in
the Gospel to be Hades, [1826] and as we also interpret "the uttermost
farthing" [1827] to mean the very smallest offence which has to be
recompensed there before the resurrection, [1828] no one will hesitate to
believe that the soul undergoes in Hades some compensatory discipline,
without prejudice to the full process of the resurrection, when the
recompense will be administered through the flesh besides. This point the
Paraclete has also pressed home on our attention in most frequent
admonitions, whenever any of us has admitted the force of His words from a
knowledge of His promised spiritual disclosures. [1829] And now at last
having, as I believe, encountered every human opinion concerning the soul,
and tried its character by the teaching of (our holy faith, ) we have
satisfied the curiosity which is simply a reasonable and necessary one. As
for that which is extravagant and idle, there will evermore be as great a
defect in its information, as there has been exaggeration and self-will in
its researches.
Footnotes
[1474] [It is not safe to date this treatise before a.d. 203, and perhaps it
would be unsafe to assign a later date. The note of the translator, which
follows, relieves me from any necessity to add more, just here.]
[1475] In this treatise we have Tertullian's speculations on the origin, the
nature, and the destiny of the human soul. There are, no doubt, paradoxes
startling to a modern reader to be found in it, such as that of the soul's
corpereity; and there are weak and inconclusive arguments. But after all
such drawbacks (And they are not more than what constantly occur in the most
renowned speculative writers of antiquity), the reader will discover many
interesting proofs of our author's character for originality of thought,
width of information, firm grasp of his subject, and vivacious treatment of
it, such as we have discovered in other parts of his writings. If his
subject permits Tertullian less than usual of an appeal to his favourite
Holy Scripture, he still makes room for occasional illustration from it, and
with his characteristic ability; If, however, there is less of his sacred
learning in it, the treatise teems with curious information drawn from the
secular literature of that early age. Our author often measures swords with
Plato in his discussions on the soul, and it is not too much to say that he
shows himself a formidable opponent to the great philosopher. See Bp. Kaye,
On Tertullian, pp. 199, 200.
[1476] Suggestu. [Kaye, pp. 60 and 541.]
[1477] Flatu "the breath."
[1478] Utique.
[1479] Consternata.
[1480] Consternata.
[1481] Externata. "Externatus = . Gloss. Philox.
[1482] Pietatis.
[1483] Fidei sacramento.
[1484] The allusion is to the inconsistency of the philosopher, who
condemned the gods of the vulgar, and died offering a gift to one of them.
[1485] Vivicomburio.
[1486] Mentioned below, c. xxxiii.; also Adv. Valent. c. xv.
[1487] See his Phoedrus, c. lix. (p. 274); also Augustin, De. Civ. Dei,
viii. 11; Euseb. Praep. Evang. ix. 3.
[1488] Or spurious; not to be confounded with our so-called Apocrypha,
which were in Tertullian's days called Libri Ecclesiastici.
[1489] Here is a touch of Tertullian's Montanism.
[1490] Subornant.
[1491] 1 Tim. i. 4.
[1492] 1 Cor. x. 19.
[1493] Compare Tertullian's Adv. Hermog. c. viii.
[1494] Col. ii. 8.
[1495] Linguatam civitatem. Comp. Acts xvii. 21.
[1496] Isa. i. 22.
[1497] Honor.
[1498] Vigor. Another reading has "rigor" , harshness.
[1499] Tenor.
[1500] Stupor.
[1501] Moeror.
[1502] Furor.
[1503] Isa. ii. 3.
[1504] Flatu.
[1505] Gen. ii. 7.
[1506] Titulus.
[1507] See his Phoedrus, c. xxiv.
[1508] Capit itaque et factuaram provenisse poni.
[1509] Or, "inspiration."
[1510] Ex quinta nescio qua substantia. Comp. Cicero's Tuscul. i. 10.
[1511] Consitum.
[1512] De Nat. Rer. i. 305.
[1513] Animale, "having the nature of soul."
[1514] Inanimale.
[1515] Accedit.
[1516] We follow Oehler's view of this obscure passage, in preference to
Rigaltius'.
[1517] See Tertullian's Ad Nationes (our translation), p. 33, Supra..
[1518] Quinionem.
[1519] Luke xvi. 23, 24.
[1520] Ad inferna. [See p. 59, supra.]
[1521] Diversorio.
[1522] Compare De Resur. Carnis, xvii. There is, however, some variation
in Tertullian's language on this subject. In his Apol. xlviii. He speaks as
if the soul could not suffer when separated from the body. See also his De
Testimonio Animoe, ch. iv., p. 177, supra; and see Bp. Kaye, p. 183.
[1523] Rev. i. 10.
[1524] Rev. vi. 9.
[1525] Habitum.
[1526] Illud trifariam distantivum Fr. Junius.
[1527] Effigiem.
[1528] See his Phoedo, pp. 105, 106.
[1529] Structile.
[1530] Sacramenta.
[1531] 1 Cor. xii. 1-11. [A key to our author's
[1532] Cerauniis gemmis.
[1533] Tradux.
[1534] Dupliciter unus.
[1535] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4.
[1536] Luke xvi. 23, 24.
[1537] See his Phoedo, p. 80; Timoeus, §12, p. 35 (Bekker, pp. 264, 265)
[1538] We have here combined two readings, effigies (Oehler's) and
hoereses (the usual one).
[1539] Aliam.
[1540] This is the force of the subjunctive fiat.
[1541] Arterias.
[1542] Aliunde spirabit, aliunde vivet. "In the nature of man, life and
breath are inseparable" Bp. Kaye, p. 184.
[1543] Sexcentos.
[1544] Odit.
[1545] Aurium caeci.
[1546] Proprie "by reason of its nature."
[1547] See the tract Adv. Valentin., c. xxv. infra.
[1548] Compare the Adv. Hermog. xxxii. xxxiii.; also Irenaeus, v. 21, 17.
[See Vol. I. p. 527, this Series.]
[1549] Tertullian's reading of Isa. lvii. 16.
[1550] Isa. xlii. 5.
[1551] 1 Cor. xv. 46.
[1552] Eph. v. 31, 32.
[1553] Gen. ii. 24, 25.
[1554] 1 Sam. x. 6.
[1555] 1 Sam. x. 11.
[1556] Suggestum.
[1557] Comp. The Apology, c. xlviii.; August. De Civ. Dei, xiii. 17.
[1558] Comp. Adv. Valentin. vii.infra.
[1559] Addicit.
[1560] Alterum animi genus.
[1561] Concretum.
[1562] Substantiae officium.
[1563] Substantiae massa.
[1564] Faciem operis.
[1565] Fontem materiae.
[1566] This is Oehler's text; another reading has twelve, which one would
suppose to be the right one.
[1567] Ubique ipsa.
[1568] Sapientialis.
[1569] Consecratum.
[1570] Wisd. i. 6.
[1571] Prov. xxiv. 12.
[1572] Ps. cxxxix. 23.
[1573] Matt. ix. 4.
[1574] Ps. li. 12.
[1575] Rom. x. 10.
[1576] 1 John iii. 20.
[1577] Matt. v. 28.
[1578] In eo thesauro.
[1579] Not Suidas' philosopher of that name, but a renowned physician
mentioned by Galen and Pliny (Oehler).
[1580] Lorica.
[1581] The Egyptian hierophants.
[1582] The original, as given in Stobaeus, Eclog. i. p. 1026, is this
hexameter:
[1583] Or probably that Praxagoras the physician who is often mentioned
by Athenaeus and by Pliny (Pamel.).
[1584] Luke xxii. 15.
[1585] 1 Tim. iii. 1.
[1586] Gal. v. 12.
[1587] Eph. ii. 3.
[1588] Matt. vi. 24.
[1589] John vi. 44.
[1590] Matt. xiii. 25.
[1591] Academici.
[1592] Coimplicitam "entangled" or "embarassed." See the Timoeus pp. 27,
28.
[1593] Vel.
[1594] Sensus istos.
[1595] Deliberetur.
[1596] Luke x. 18.
[1597] Matt. iii. 17.
[1598] Matt. viii. 15.
[1599] Matt. xxvi. 7-12.
[1600] Matt. xxvi. 27, 28; Luke xxii. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xi. 25.
[1601] Matt. xvii. 3-8.
[1602] John ii. 1-10.
[1603] John xx. 27.
[1604] 1 John i. 1.
[1605] Said ironically, as if rallying Plato for inconsistency between
his theory here and the fact.
[1606] Supermundiales "placed above this world."
[1607] Imaginibus.
[1608] See above, c. xii. p. 192.
[1609] Above, c. xi. p. 191.
[1610] Intelligere sentire est.
[1611] Oehler has "anima;" we should rather have expected "animo," which
is another reading.
[1612] "Animo" this time.
[1613] Subjunctive verb, "fuerit."
[1614] Dementit.
[1615] The opposite opinion was held by Tertullian's opponents, who
distinguished between the mind and the soul. They said, that when a man was
out of his mind, his mind left him, but that his soul remained. (Lactantius,
De Opif. xviii.; Instit. Div. vii. 12; La Cerda).
[1616] See his treatise, Against Marcion.
[1617] Rom. i. 20.
[1618] Facies.
[1619] Timoeus, pp. 29, 30, 37, 38.
[1620] His De Anima, ii. 2, 3.
[1621] Innixa et innexa.
[1622] Amabit.
[1623] Animationem. The possession and use of an "anima."
[1624] Intellectuam.
[1625] Spiritu. The mental instinct, just mentioned.
[1626] Ps. viii. 2; Matt. xxi. 16.
[1627] Hebetes.
[1628] Matt. xxi. 15.
[1629] Matt. ii. 16-18.
[1630] Saepe noster.
[1631] Licebit.
[1632] Fetu.
[1633] Tertullian perhaps mentions this "demus" of Athens as the
birthplace of Plato (Oehler).
[1634] Tit. i. 12.
[1635] Si et alia.
[1636] Tetullian wrote a work De Fato, which is lost. Fulgentius, p.
561, gives a quotation from it.
[1637] i.e., the carnal, the animal, and the spiritual. Comp. Adv.
Valentin. xxv., and De Resur. Carnis, lv.
[1638] Eph. v. 32.
[1639] Gen. ii. 23, 24.
[1640] See Adv. Hermog. xiii.
[1641] See Adv. Valentin. xxix.
[1642] Luke vi. 43, 44.
[1643] Matt. iii. 7-9.
[1644] Eph. v. 8.
[1645] Eph. ii. 3.
[1646] 1 Cor. vi. 11.
[1647] See our Anti-Marcion, ii. 5-7.
[1648] In his work against this man, entitled De Censu Animoe, not now
extant.
[1649] Tertullian had shown that "the soul is the breath or afflatus of
God." in ch. iv. And xi. above. He demonstrated its "immortality" in ch.
ii.'iv., vi., ix., xiv.; and he will repeat his proof hereafter, in ch.
xxiv., xxxviii., xlv., li., liii., liv. Moreover, he illustrates the soul's
"corporeity" in ch. v.-viii.; its "endowment with form or figure," in ch.
ix.; its "simplicity in substance" in ch. x. and xi.; its "inherent
intelligence," in ch. xii.; its varied development, in ch. xiii.-xv. The
soul's "rationality," "supremacy," and "instinctive divination," Tertullian
treated of in his treatise De Censu Animoe against Hermogenes (as he has
said in the text); but he has treated somewhat of the soul's "rational
nature" ins his sixteenth Chapter above; in the fourteenth and fifteenth
Chapters he referred to the soul's "supremacy or hegemony:" whilst we have
had a hint about its "divining faculty," even in infants, in ch. xix. The
propagation of souls from the one archetypal soul is the subject of the
Chapter before us, as well as of the five succeeding ones (La Cerda).
[1650] Nihil Deo appendimus.
[1651] Exorbitationis.
[1652] In his, now lost, treatise, De Censu Animoe.
[1653] Above, in ch. xix. xx. pp. 200, 201.
[1654] Or, "which has been too short for calculation."
[1655] "Inhaled" is Bp. Kaye's word for adduci, "taken up."
[1656] Educi.
[1657] Vivacitas.
[1658] Ciborum vanitates.
[1659] Rapiens.
[1660] Anima.
[1661] Anulocultro. [To be seen in the Museum at Naples.]
[1662] Or, "the whole business (totem facinus) is despatched.
[1663] So Plato, Cratylus, p. 399, c. 17.
[1664] Censentur.
[1665] Liberi aliqui.
[1666] See Pliny, Natural History, vii. 9.
[1667] See above, ch. x.
[1668] Mark xvi. 9.
[1669] Mark vi. 1-9.
[1670] See above, ch. v.
[1671] Of the Scriptures.
[1672] Gen. xxv. 22, 23.
[1673] Gen. xxv. 26.
[1674] Luke i. 41-45.
[1675] Luke i. 46.
[1676] Jer. i. 5.
[1677] Gen. ii. 7.
[1678] Jer. i. 5.
[1679] Comp. De Resurr. Carnis, xlv.
[1680] So Plato, Phoedo p. 64.
[1681] Materiae
[1682] Gen. i. 28.
[1683] Lupanaria.
[1684] See above, c. xxv. p. 206.
[1685] Gen. i. 28.
[1686] Ver. 26.
[1687] Ver. 26.
[1688] Phoedo, p. 70.
[1689] [Hermes. See Bacon, De Aug. i. p. 99.]
[1690] De posteris defunctis.
[1691] De posteris defunctis.
[1692] From , to knock down.
[1693] From , sitting by one.
[1694] From , an attitude of Pythius Apollo, this class were
sometimes called , ventriloquists.
[1695] Visualitatis.
[1696] Insipientiam. "Imbecility" is the meaning here, though the word
takes the more general sense in the next clause.
[1697] Deferatur.
[1698] A probable allusion to Varro's work, De Antiqq. Rerum Humanarum.
[1699] An allusion to Plato's notion that, at the end of a thousand
years, such a restoration of the dead, took place. See his Phaedrus, p. 248,
and De Republ. x. p. 614.
[1700] Signatur. Rigaltius reads "singulatur, after the Codex Agobard.,
as meaning, "The single origin of the human race is in principle
maintained," etc.
[1701] Temere.
[1702] Recensentur.
[1703] Hujus.
[1704] Alias.
[1705] This is the force of the objective nouns, which are all put in
the plural form.
[1706] Ps. xlix. 20.
[1707] Or, "that he may be punished even in his sepulture."
[1708] Rom. xiii. 4.
[1709] In administratione.
[1710] Mark. xii. 32.
[1711] Acts viii. 18-21. [Vol. I. pp. 171, 182, 193, 347.]
[1712] For Carpocrates, see Irenaeus, i. 24; Eusebius, H.E. iv. 7;
Epiphan. Hoe. 27.
[1713] Matt. v. 26.
[1714] ver. 25.
[1715] 1 Cor. v. 10.
[1716] Luke vi. 27.
[1717] Matt. v. 25.
[1718] Ver. 26.
[1719] Rev. xii. 10.
[1720] Mor resurrectionis. For the force of the phrase, as apparently
implying a doctrine of purgatory, and an explanation of Tertullian's
teaching on this point, see Bp. Kaye on Tertullian, pp. 328, 329. [See p.
59, supra.]
[1721] Spero.
[1722] Matt. xvii. 12.
[1723] Matt. xi. 14.
[1724] John i. 21.
[1725] Mal. iv. 5.
[1726] Num. xii. 2.
[1727] In ch. xxviii. At the beginning.
[1728] See above, ch. xxiii. [Also p. 246,infra.]
[1729] Causa hominis.
[1730] The ogdoad, or number eight, mystically representing "heaven,"
where they do not marry.
[1731] Beyond the hebdomad comes the resurrection, on which see Matt.
xxii. 30.
[1732] See above, in ch. xx.
[1733] See above, in ch. xxiv.
[1734] Gen. ii. 16.
[1735] Gen. ix. 3.
[1736] Fata Scribunda.
[1737] 1 Cor. vii. 14.
[1738] John iii. 5.
[1739] Rom. vi. 4.
[1740] Gal. v. 16.
[1741] Ver. 17.
[1742] Rom. viii. 5.
[1743] Matt. v. 28.
[1744] Deo commendo = God be wi' ye. De Test. c. ii. p. 176, supra.
[1745] Decurrat.
[1746] So Bp. Kaye, p. 105.
[1747] Marcorem, "the decay."
[1748] Adulatur.
[1749] Gen. ii. 21.
[1750] We had better give Tertullian's own succinct definition:
[1751] Gen. ii. 21.
[1752] Prudentes.
[1753] Sapere.
[1754] See the Odyssey, xix. 526, etc. [Also, Aeneid, vi. 894.]
[1755] See i. 107, etc.
[1756] See an account of her vision and its interpretation in Herodot.
iv. 124.
[1757] Joel iii. 1.
[1758] Matt. v. 45.
[1759] Dan. ii. 1, etc.
[1760] Conresupinatis.
[1761] See his Timoeus, c. xxxii. p. 71.
[1762] Dan. i. 8-14.
[1763] Dan. x. 2.
[1764] Who mentions this story of the Atlantes in iv. 184.
[1765] In ch. xliv. p. 223.
[1766] Gen. ii. 17 [Not ex natura, but as penalty.]
[1767] Scaturigo daemonica.
[1768] It is difficult to say what Tertullian means by his "comicum
credo." Is it a playful parody on the heretic's name, the same as the comic
poet's (Menander)?
[1769] Gen. v. 24; Heb. xi. 5.
[1770] 2 Kings. ii. 11.
[1771] Rev. xi. 3.
[1772] John. xxi. 23.
[1773] See below, ch. liv.
[1774] Ch. x. p. 614.
[1775] Vernaculam ecclesiae.
[1776] Ex Accidentia.
[1777] In mortem directo institutus est. [See p. 227, supra.]
[1778] We have made Tertullian's "Cervicum messis" include both these
modes of instantaneous death.
[1779] Phoedo, p. 62, c. 6.
[1780] 1 Cor. iii. 16, vi. 19; 2 Cor. vi. 16.
[1781] An Alexandrian philosopher in great repute with the Emperor
Augustus.
[1782] Phoedo, pp. 112-114.
[1783] Matt. xii. 40.
[1784] 1 Cor. xv. 3.
[1785] Ver. 4.
[1786] 1 Pet. iii. 19.
[1787] See Irenaeus, adv. Hares. v. [Vol. I. p. 566, this Series.]
[1788] Matt. x. 24.
[1789] 1 Cor. xv. 52 and 1 Thess. iv. 16.
[1790] 1 Thess. iv. 17.
[1791] Ver. 16.
[1792] Rev. vi. 9.
[1793] Paracletus.
[1794] Matt. xvi. 24.
[1795] The souls of the martyrs were, according to Tertullian, at one
removed to Paradise. (Bp. Kaye, p. 249).
[1796] De Paradiso. [Compare, p. 216, note 9, supra.]
[1797] Ab inferis.
[1798] Iliad, xxiii. 72, etc.
[1799] Enormitate.
[1800] We have treated this particle as a conjunction but it may only be
an intensive particle introducing an explanatory clause: "even those which
were pure," etc. [a better rendering.]
[1801] Litteratura.
[1802] Oehler takes these descriptive clauses as meant of Satan, instead
of being synonymes of magic, as the context seems to require.
[1803] Aeque.
[1804] Above, in ch. xxxix. p. 219.
[1805] Aliquem ex parentibus.
[1806] One who fought with wild beasts in the public games, only without
the weapons allowed to the gladiator.
[1807] Ex. vii. 12.
[1808] Acts. viii. 9, xiii. 8.
[1809] See above in ch. xxviii. p. 209, supra.
[1810] 1 Sam. xxviii. 6-16.
[1811] 2 Cor. xi. 14.
[1812] 2 Thess. ii. 4.
[1813] Matt. xxiv. 24.
[1814] Sifore.
[1815] Non frustra.
[1816] In iv. 172.
[1817] Luke xvi. 26. [Compare note 15. p. 231. supra.]
[1818] Nescio quid.
[1819] "Operienda" is Oehler's text; another reading gives
"opperienda," q.d., "the soul must wait for the restored body."
[1820] This "etiam" is "otium" in the Agobardine ms., a good reading;
q.d. "a most inquitous indifference to justice," etc.
[1821] Comp. The Apology, last Chapter.
[1822] Xen. Cyropaed. p. 6.
[1823] Matt. v. 28.
[1824] Quid nunc si.
[1825] Conscientia.
[1826] Matt. v. 25.
[1827] Ver. 26.
[1828] Morâ resurrectionis. See above, on this opinion of Tertullian, in
ch. xxxv.
[1829] [A symptom of Montainism.]
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