On the Making of Man 1 part 6/7

But perhaps, looking at the elements of the whole, you think it difficult, when the air in us has been poured forth to its kindred element, and the hot and the moist and the earthy likewise have been mingled with their cognates, for one's own to run back again out of the common store unto what is proper.

Then do you not reckon, through human examples, that this too does not transcend the bounds of the divine power? You have surely seen somewhere in human dwellings a common herd of certain animals, constituted out of a common store.

But when it is again distributed among the owners, both the familiarity with the houses and the marks set upon them restore to each his own.

Conceiving some such thing also concerning yourself, you will not miss the fitting.

[The body] having dwelt together with the soul as it is disposed, there is a certain hidden relation and recognition belonging to the soul through the co-mingling of what is its own, as though by certain marks set upon it by nature, through which the commonality remains unconfounded, being distinguished by the distinctive features.

When, then, the soul again draws to itself what is kindred and its own, what labour, tell me, is there for the divine power to prevent the concurrence of the proper things, when by a certain unspeakable draw of nature they press on toward what is their own? For that certain signs of our composite remain even after dissolution upon the soul, the dialogue concerning Hades shows—the bodies having been delivered to the tomb, but a certain bodily token having remained with the souls, through which Lazarus too was recognized, and the rich man was not unknown.

Therefore it is in no way outside what is probable to believe that the resolution of the rising bodies again comes about from the common store unto the proper, and especially for one who examines our nature more diligently.

For our being is not wholly in flux and change.

For then it would be wholly unapprehensible, having by nature no fixity;

but according to the more exact account, something of the things in us stands fast, while something advances through alteration.

For the body is altered through increase and diminution, like some garments, putting on the successive ages.

But the form stands unchangeable in itself through every turn, not departing from the signs once set upon it by nature, but appearing through all the body's turns together with its own distinguishing marks.

But let there be excepted from the account the alteration arising from disease, which supervenes upon the form;

for the deformity according to sickness takes hold of the form like some alien mask, which, when removed by reason [of health]...

as in the case of Naaman the Syrian, or in the things narrated in the Gospel, again the form hidden by the disease reappeared in its own distinguishing marks through health.

To the godlike element of the soul, then, there is joined not that which flows in alteration and is removed, but that which is abiding and ever the same in our composite.

And since the variations of mixture in their qualities transform the differences according to form, and the mixture is nothing other than the blending of the elements, and we call elements the things underlying the construction of the whole, through which the human body too is composed—the form, of necessity, remaining with the soul like the imprint of a seal, the things stamped upon the seal are not unrecognized by it, but at the time of the re-elementing it receives those things again to itself, whatever fit the impress of the form;

and those would altogether fit which from the beginning were stamped upon the form.

Therefore it is in no way outside what is probable that one's own should again be resolved from the common store unto each particular.

And it is said too that quicksilver, when poured out of its container upon some flat and dusty place,

rounded into tiny globules, is scattered over the ground, mingling with none of the things it chances upon.

But if someone should again gather into one that which has been scattered in many directions, it of its own accord pours together toward its kindred, being separated by no intervening medium from its proper mixture.

I think one must reckon some such thing concerning the human composite too;

that, if only there should come from God the signal, the suitable parts mingle again of their own accord with their proper ones, no toil thereby arising for Him who re-elements the nature through these.

For even in the case of things growing in the earth, we see no labour of nature upon the wheat, or the millet, or any other of the grain or pulse seeds, in changing into stalk and beard and ears.

For without trouble, of its own accord, the suitable nourishment passes over out of the common store unto the peculiarity of each of the seeds.

If, then, with a common moisture underlying all the growing things, each of those nourished through it has drawn what is suitable unto the addition of its own;

[what wonder is it if], as in the case of the seeds, it likewise comes about that there is such a drawing of one's own? So that it is possible from all these things to learn that the proclamation of the resurrection contains nothing outside the things made known by experience.

And indeed we have been silent about the most familiar of our own things, I mean the very first occasion of our constitution.

For who does not know the wonder-working of nature—what the maternal womb receives, and what it fashions? Or do you not see how simple in a certain way, and uniform in its parts, is that which is cast into the inward parts as the occasion of the body's constitution? And what account could narrate the variety of the composite that is constructed? Who that has not learned such a thing from common nature would deem possible what comes to pass—that that small and as-good-as-nothing thing is the beginning of so great a matter? And I call it great not only looking at the moulding of the body, but at what is worthy of wonder before this, I mean the soul itself, and the things contemplated about it.

Against those who say that souls pre-exist bodies, or, on the contrary, that bodies are fashioned before the souls.

In which there is also a refutation of the fable-making concerning transmigrations of souls.

For perhaps it is not outside the treatise set before us to examine thoroughly the matter disputed in the churches concerning soul and body.

For to some of those before us—those by whom the treatise 'On First Principles' was composed—it seems good to say that souls pre-exist, like some commonwealth in a polity of their own.

And that there too the examples both of vice and of virtue are set forth.

And the soul, abiding in the good, remains untried of entanglement with the body;

but if it should flow away from the partaking of the good, it slides down toward life here, and so comes to be in a body.

But others, attending to the order of the construction of man according to Moses, say that the soul is second to the body in respect of time.

Since God first, having taken dust from the earth, moulded the man;

then thus ensouled him through the in-breathing.

And by this argument they demonstrate the flesh to be more honourable than the soul—the pre-moulded than that which is introduced afterward.

For they say that the soul came to be for the sake of the body, that the formed thing might not be breathless and motionless.

And everything that comes to be for the sake of something is altogether less honourable than that for the sake of which it comes to be.

As the Gospel says, that the soul is more than the food, and the body than the raiment, because these are for the sake of those.

For the soul is not for the sake of the food, nor were the bodies constructed for the sake of the raiment, but... Since, then, in both suppositions the argument is faulty—both of those who fabulously make the souls live beforehand in some state of their own, and of those who deem the bodies to be constructed later than the souls;

it would be necessary to leave none of the things said in the doctrines unexamined.

But to exercise with precision the arguments on both sides, and to uncover all the absurdities lying within the suppositions, would require much both of time and of discourse;

but having examined each of the things said in few words, as is possible, we shall again lay hold of the matters set before us.

Those who take their stand on the former argument, and dogmatize that the polity of the souls is older than the life in the flesh, do not seem to me to be clean of the Hellenic doctrines, the things fabled by them concerning re-embodiment.

For if one should examine accurately, he will find their argument by every necessity dragged down toward this—which they say one of the wise men among them spoke—that the same one became a man, and put on a woman's body, and flew about with birds, and grew as a bush, and obtained the life of the water-creatures.

For truly such doctrines are worthy of the croaking of certain frogs or jackdaws, or the irrationality of fishes, or the insensibility of oak-trees—to say that one soul went through so many things.

And the cause of such absurdity is this: the supposing that souls pre-exist.

For if, having been torn away through some vice from the loftier polity, the soul, after once tasting (as they say) of the bodily life, again becomes a man—and the life in the flesh is altogether confessed to be more passion-prone than the eternal and incorporeal;

it is wholly necessary that the soul, coming to be in such a life, in which there are more occasions toward sinning, should come to be in greater vice, and be disposed more passion-prone than before;

but the passion of the human soul is its likening to the irrational;

and having appropriated itself to this, it flows over into a brutish nature;

and having once journeyed through vice, even when it has come to be in an irrational creature, it never ceases from its advance toward evil.

For the cessation of evil is the beginning of the impulse toward virtue;

but virtue does not exist in irrational creatures.

Therefore it will of necessity always be altered for the worse, ever advancing toward the more dishonourable, and ever finding out what is worse than the nature in which it is.

And just as the sensible is set below the rational, so too from this the falling-away comes about toward the insensible.

But up to this point their argument, even if it is carried outside the truth, yet through a certain consistency derives the absurd from the absurd.

But from this point on the doctrine is fabled through things that hang together by no coherence with them.

For their consistency points to a complete corruption of the soul.

For the soul that has once slipped away from the lofty manner of life will be unable to halt at any fixed measure of evil, but through its attachment to the passions will pass over from the rational to the irrational;

and from that it will be transferred to the insensibility of plants;

and to the insensible there is in some way a neighbour, namely the inanimate;

and upon this follows that which has no existence at all.

So that, by this sequence carried to its conclusion, the soul would altogether pass over for them into non-being.

Therefore its return again to the better will of necessity become impossible for it.

But in fact they bring the soul back up from a bush to a human being.

Therefore by this they prove that life in a bush is more to be preferred than incorporeal existence.

But beneath the insensible nature lies the inanimate, to which, by logical sequence, the very principle of their doctrine leads the soul.

But since they do not wish this, either they shut the soul up in the insensible, or, if from there they would bring it back to human life, they will (as has been said) prove the woody existence preferable to the original state—if indeed from the latter came the fall into evil, while from the former arises the ascent to virtue.

Therefore such an argument is shown to be headless and incomplete—the argument which contrives that souls live by themselves before their life in the flesh, and are bound to bodies on account of evil.

And as for those who say that the soul is younger than the body, the absurdity of that view was established beforehand by what was said earlier.

Therefore the argument from both sides is equally to be rejected.

And this is so: that we should neither suppose, after the error of the Greeks, that souls which revolve with the universe, being weighed down by some evil, through inability to keep pace with the swiftness of the heaven's motion fall down to earth;

nor again should we say that the human being, like some clay statue first moulded, has the soul come into being for this body's sake.

For then the intellectual nature would be shown to be of less honour than the moulded clay.

An argument that the cause of existence is one and the same for both soul and body.

But since the human being is one, composed of soul and body, we must posit the principle of his constitution as one and common, so that he may not become both older and younger than himself, with the bodily part taking precedence in him and the other coming after.

Rather, we say that by the foreknowing power of God—according to the argument given a little before—the whole fullness of humanity pre-exists, prophecy bearing witness to this, which says that God knows all things before their coming to be.

But in the fashioning of each individual we do not place the one before the other—neither the soul before the body, nor the reverse;

so that the human being may not be at strife with himself, divided by a difference in time.

For if the one were to pre-exist and the other come after, the power of the Creator would be convicted of imperfection, as not sufficing for the whole all at once, but dividing the work and busying itself piecemeal about each of the two halves.

But just as in wheat, or in any other of the seeds, we say that the whole form pertaining to the ear is comprehended potentially—the blade, the stalk, the joints between, the fruit, the awns—and that none of these pre-exists or comes to be before the others in the principle of the seed's nature, but rather that the power lying within the seed is made manifest in a certain natural order, while no other nature is introduced from without;

in the same way we have understood that the human seed also has, in the first starting-point of its constitution, the power of nature sown together within it.

And it unfolds and is made manifest by a certain natural sequence as it advances toward completion, taking on nothing from outside as a means to its perfecting;

but rather it leads itself onward to perfection through sequence.

So that it is true to say neither that the soul is before the body, nor the body apart from the soul, but that there is one principle of both: according to the loftier account, laid down in the first will of God; and according to the other, established in the starting-points of generation.

For just as it is not possible to discern the articulation into limbs in that which is implanted for the conception of the body before its fashioning;

so neither is it possible to perceive the soul's properties in that same thing before it advances into actuality.

And just as no one would doubt that that which is implanted is shaped into the differences of joints and inward parts—no other power coming in from without, but that which is naturally inherent passing over into its own activity;

so also concerning the soul one may by analogy suppose the like: that even if it is not recognized through any activities in the visible realm, it is nonetheless present in that thing.

For indeed the very form of the human being who is to be constituted is present in that thing potentially, but lies hidden because it is not possible for it to appear before the necessary sequence is fulfilled.

So too the soul is present in that thing even while not appearing, and will appear through its own proper and natural activity, advancing together with the bodily growth.

For since the power that issues toward conception is separated off, not from a dead body, but from one ensouled and living;

for this reason we say it is reasonable not to suppose that to be dead and soulless which is sent forth from a living thing as a starting-point of life.

For that which is soulless in the flesh is altogether dead also.

And deadness comes about by the privation of soul.

But no one would say in this case that privation is older than the possession—unless someone contrives that the soulless, which is deadness, is older than the soul.

For we make this the proof of life in human beings: that there is something warm and active and in motion.

But that which is cold and motionless in bodies is nothing other than deadness.

Since, therefore, we observe that this thing of which we are speaking is warm and active, we infer from these signs that it is also not soulless.

But just as, with regard to its bodily part, we do not call it flesh and bones and hair and all that is seen in the human frame, but say that each of these exists potentially, though not yet appearing as something visible;

so too, with regard to the psychic part, we say that the rational, the appetitive, and the spirited faculties, and all that is observed in the soul, do not yet have place in that thing, but that, in proportion to the constitution and perfecting of the body, the activities of the soul also grow together with their underlying subject.

For just as the human being, when perfected in his greater growth, has the soul's activity shining clearly through;

so at the beginning of the constitution he displays in himself a cooperation of the soul fitting and commensurate to the present need, in that the soul fashions for itself, by means of the matter implanted, the dwelling suited to it.

For neither do we reckon it possible for the soul to be fitted into structures belonging to another, just as the seal in wax cannot be made to fit an engraving belonging to another.

For just as the body advances from a very small beginning toward perfection, so also the soul's activity, implanted correspondingly in its underlying subject, increases together and grows together with it.

For in its first constitution there goes before it, like some root hidden in the earth, only the growth-giving and nourishing power.

For the smallness of that which receives does not have room for more.

Then, when the plant has come forth into the light and shown its shoot to the sun, the grace of sense-perception blossoms forth.

And when it has grown stout and risen up to a proportionate height, then, like some fruit, the rational power begins to shine forth—not appearing all at once in its fullness;

but increasing together with the perfecting of the organ through careful tending, ever bearing fruit in such measure as the power of the underlying subject can contain.

But if you seek the psychic activities in the fashioning of the body—"Take heed to yourself," says Moses—and you will read, as in a book, the history of the soul's works.

For nature herself recounts to you, more vividly than any words, the soul's manifold operations in the body, both in its general and in its particular arrangements.

But I think it superfluous to recount in words the things concerning ourselves, as though we were describing some marvels from beyond our borders.

For who, beholding himself, needs words to be taught his own nature? For it is possible, by considering the manner of life and learning how the body is suited to every vital activity, to know about what the natural power of the soul was occupied at the first fashioning of that which comes to be.

So that by this too it is manifest to those who are not unobservant, that what was implanted in nature's workshop—being drawn off from a living body for the planting of the living creature—did not come to be dead and soulless.

For indeed it is not as dead that we cast into the earth the kernels of fruits and the offshoots of roots, deprived of the vital power inherent in their nature, but as preserving in themselves the property of the original, hidden indeed, yet altogether living.

And the surrounding earth does not implant such a power, introducing it from without out of itself;

for in that case even dead pieces of wood would be brought forth into sprouting;

but it renders manifest the power that lies upon it, nourishing it through its own moisture into root and bark and pith, and perfecting the plant in the outgrowths of its branches.

Which could not have come to be, had not some natural power been implanted together with it—a power which, drawing into itself from the surrounding matter the nourishment akin and suited to it, became a bush, or a tree, or an ear of grain, or some one of the shrubby growths.

A somewhat more medical contemplation, in brief, concerning the construction of our body.

But the exact arrangement of our body each man teaches himself, from what he sees and lives and perceives, having his own nature as his teacher.

And it is possible also, by taking up the inquiry concerning these matters which has been laboured over in books by those wise in such things, to learn all with precision.

Of these, some have been taught by dissection how each of the things within us is situated;

while others have both understood and described for what purpose all the parts of the body have come to be, so that from this the knowledge of the human structure might suffice for the diligent.

But if anyone should demand that the Church be the teacher of all these things, so as to need nothing of the voice from without (for this is the law of the spiritual sheep, as the Lord says, not to hear the voice of a stranger), we will treat the discourse concerning these matters briefly.

We have observed three things concerning the nature of the body, for the sake of which each of the parts within us has been constructed.

For some parts exist for the sake of living, others for the sake of living well, and yet others are suited to the succession of those who come after.

Now those things in us which are of such a kind that without them human life cannot subsist, we have observed in three parts;

namely, in the brain, the heart, and the liver.

But those things which are a kind of addition of good things, and a generous bounty of nature granting to the human being the good life through them, are the organs pertaining to sense-perception.

For such things do not establish life—since often, even when some of them are lacking, the human being is no less alive—but without them it is impossible to have a share in the pleasures that accompany life.

And the third aim looks to continuance and to succession.

And there are also certain others besides these, which are laid down as common to all for the sake of preservation.

introducing through themselves the appropriate supplies—such as the belly and the lung: the one fanning the heart's fire with breath, the other lodging nourishment in the inward parts.

So, then, the structure within us being thus divided, it is possible to understand precisely that the power that conduces to living is not carried through us uniformly by some single thing;

but rather nature, distributing among many parts the resources for our constitution, makes the contribution from each one necessary to the whole.

So that the things also which nature has contrived for the safety and beauty of life are both more numerous and have much difference from one another.

But I think it necessary first to distinguish briefly the primary principles of the things that contribute to the constitution of our life.

Now the matter of the whole body, which underlies the several members in common, let it be passed over in silence for the present;

for general physiology will contribute nothing to our aim, which is the particular contemplation.

Since, then, it is agreed by all that there is in us a portion of all that is observed elementally in the cosmos—of the hot and the cooling, and of the other pairing conceived in the moist and the dry—we must take up the several things in detail.

We see, then, three powers that govern life: one of which warms the whole with heat; another moistens with fluid that which is being heated, so that, by the equipoise of the opposite qualities, the living creature may be kept at the mean—neither the moisture being parched up by the excess of heat, nor the heat being quenched by the prevailing of that which moistens.

And the third power holds together by itself, through a kind of conjunction and harmony, the separated joints, fitting them with the ligaments that proceed from itself, and sending forth to all the self-moving and voluntary power;

and when this fails, the part becomes deadened and corpse-like, having no share in the voluntary breath.

For since the hard and resistant does not receive the activities of sense-perception—as may be seen in our bones and in the plants in the earth, in which we observe a kind of form of life in their growing and being nourished, yet the resistance of the underlying substance, being contrary, did not admit sensation;

for this reason it was necessary that a kind of wax-like structure should be laid down for the activities of sense, able to be impressed by the apprehending impressions, neither dissolved by excessive moisture;

for that which is impressed would not abide in the moist;

nor yet resisting through immoderate solidity;

for that which is unyielding gives no impression to the seals;

but holding a mean between softness and firmness, so that the living creature might not be deprived of the fairest of nature's operations—I mean the sensitive movement.

Since, then, the soft and yielding, having none of the activity that comes from firm things, would be altogether motionless and unarticulated, like the sea-lungs;

for this reason nature mingles with the body the firmness of bones, and having united these to one another through their natural fitting-together, and tightened their joints with the bonds of the sinews, thus clothed them with flesh receptive of sensations, distributed over the surface so as to be more resistant to suffering and of better tension.

Upon this firm nature of the bones, then, as upon certain load-bearing pillars, having placed the whole weight of the body, nature did not implant the bone in the whole as one undivided thing.

For then it would have remained motionless and inactive, if the human being had been so constructed—like some tree remaining in one place, with neither the alternation of the legs leading the motion forward, nor the service of the hands being of use to life.

But as it is, by this device nature contrived that the instrument should be capable of moving from place to place and of action, by implanting in the body, by means of the voluntary breath that passes through the sinews, the impulse and power toward movements.

Hence the service of the hands, manifold and versatile, and suited to every device.

Hence the turnings of the neck, and the bendings and liftings of the head, and the activity of the jaw, and the opening of the eyelids that happens together with a nod, and the movements of the rest of the joints, which are effected by certain sinews drawn up or relaxed, as if by some mechanism.

And the power that passes through these has a kind of self-commanded impulse, operating in each several part by the voluntary breath according to a certain dispensation of nature.

And the root and origin of all the movements pertaining to the sinews has been shown to be the sinewy membrane that surrounds the brain.

We do not therefore think it necessary to busy ourselves further about the vital parts—what each is like—since in this the motive activity has been shown.

But that the brain contributes something very great to life, the opposite occurrence clearly shows.

For if the membrane around it should suffer any wound or rupture, death immediately follows upon the injury, nature not holding out against the wound even for an instant; just as, when some foundation is undermined, the whole building is shaken down together with that part;

that, then, by whose suffering the destruction of the whole living creature is evident, would rightly be acknowledged to hold the cause of life.