On the Making of Man 1 part 7/7

And since, in those who have ceased to live, when the heat inherent in nature has been quenched, that which is deadened grows cold, for this reason we have also recognized in the heat the cause of life.

For where, when this has failed, deadness has followed, it is altogether necessary to acknowledge that by the presence of this the living creature subsists.

And of such a power we have recognized, as a kind of spring and origin, the heart, from which pipe-like channels, branching off variously one from another, diffuse the fiery and hot breath throughout the whole body.

But since some nourishment must by all means be supplied by nature to accompany the heat;

for fire cannot abide by itself unless nourished by what is appropriate to it;

this the channels of the blood, set forth as if from some spring of the liver, accompany everywhere through the body along with the hot breath, so that the one, being isolated from the other, may not corrupt nature by becoming a disease.

Let this instruct those who are disorderly concerning equity, having learned from nature that covetousness is a destructive disease.

But since the Divine alone is without need, while human poverty stands in need of things from without for its own constitution, for this reason to these three powers, by which we have said the whole body is administered, it brings in matter from without to flow in, lodging in each what is appropriate to it through various entrances.

For to the spring of the blood, which is the liver, it has subjected the supply that comes through nourishment.

For that which is ever introduced through this causes the springs of the blood to gush through the liver, just as the snow upon the mountain, through its own moisture, swells the springs at the foot of the hill, pressing down the proper fluid through the depth into the lower veins.

But the breath about the heart is introduced through the neighbouring organ, which is called the lung and is the receptacle of air, by means of the windpipe lying within it which reaches to the mouth, drawing in the outer breath by respirations.

And the heart, enfolded by this in the midst, in imitation of the activity of the ever-moving fire, itself also moving ceaselessly—doing just what the bellows do in smithies—draws to itself from the adjacent lung, filling its cavities by dilation, and, fanning up its own fiery element, breathes into the arteries that are joined to it.

And it does not cease from doing this—by dilation drawing the outer air into its own cavities, and by contraction discharging that which is from itself into the arteries.

Which seems to me to become for us the cause also of this spontaneous respiration.

For often the mind is occupied with other things, or is altogether at rest, the body being loosed in sleep, yet the respiration of the air does not cease, the will in no way cooperating toward this.

For I think, since the heart is enfolded by the lung and has grown to it at its hinder part, that by its own dilations and contractions it moves the organ together with itself, and so contrives for the lung the drawing-in and breathing-in of the air.

For being rare and full of passages, and having all the cavities in it opening toward the base of the windpipe, when it is contracted and collapses it of necessity squeezes out and sends forth the breath left in its cavities.

But when it recedes and opens out, by its expansion it draws in, through the suction, the air toward that which is being emptied.

And this is the cause of this involuntary respiration: the inability of the fiery element to remain at rest.

For since activity in motion is proper to the hot, and we have recognized the origins of this in the heart, the continuity of motion in this part effects the ceaseless impulse and inbreathing of the air through the lung.

But since our nature is somewhat poor, and in need through all respects of the things for its own constitution, it is not only impoverished of its proper air and of breath, which arouses the heat (this being ever introduced from without for the preservation of the living creature);

but also has the nourishment that supports the body's bulk as something acquired from without.

and would be left useless and unprofitable for the economy of the whole.

But by growing to the receptacle of the upper belly in its front parts, it makes that receptacle warm and moved toward its own activities;

not rousing it to the drawing-in of breath, but to the reception of the appropriate nourishment.

For near to one another are the entrances of the breath and of the nourishment;

and running alongside one another lengthwise, the one beside the other, they are joined together at the upper part in equal measure, so as both to be opened toward one another and to terminate the passages in one mouth, whence the entrance of nourishment is for the one, and of breath for the other.

But toward the depth the contiguity of the pair of passages no longer remains throughout.

For the heart, falling in between the seats of the two, implants the powers, in the one for respiration, in the other for nourishment.

For it is natural for the fiery element to seek the matter that feeds the flame, which indeed of necessity happens also about the receptacle of the nourishment.

For by so much as it becomes fiery through the neighbouring warmth, by so much the more does it draw to itself the things that feed the heat;

and such an impulse we name appetite.

But if that which contains the nourishment should lay hold of sufficient matter, not even so does the activity of the fire grow still.

Rather, as in a smelting-furnace, it produces a kind of melting-down of the matter, and having dissolved what was compacted and poured it out, it transfers it, as from a crucible, to the channels that come next.

Then, having separated the coarser part from the pure, it leads the fine part through certain channels to the gates of the liver;

but the material residue of the nourishment it thrusts off into the wider passages of the intestines, and, turning it about in their manifold windings over time, it keeps the nourishment back within the inward parts, so that it may not, on account of the straightness of the passage, be easily cast off and at once stir the living creature toward appetite, and the human being never cease from such occupation after the manner of the irrational creatures.

But since the liver especially had need of the heat's cooperation for the turning of the fluids into blood, while this lies apart from the heart in position (for it was not possible, I think, that a thing which is an origin and root of vital power should be cramped about the other origin), in order that some part of the economy might not be impaired by the distance from the heating substance;

a sinewy passage (this is named an artery by those wise in such matters), receiving the fiery breath of the heart, carries it to the liver, being joined together there somewhere near the entrance of the fluids, and, having brought the moisture to a boil through the heat, deposits in the fluid something of its kinship with fire, dyeing the form of the blood red with its fire-like colour.

Then, setting out from there, certain twin channels, each enclosing tube-like its own breath and blood—so that the fluid, accompanying and being lightened by the motion of the heat, might be easy to convey—are sown throughout the whole body in manifold division, splitting into countless beginnings and offshoots of channels through every part.

And the two principles of the vital powers, having been mingled with one another—both that which sends the heat everywhere through the body, and that which sends the moisture—offer, as it were, a necessary loan from their own resources, as a tribute to the more sovereign power of the vital economy.

And this is the power observed about the meninges and the brain, from which proceeds every movement of a joint, every contraction of muscles, and every voluntary breath sent to the several parts, displaying our earthen statue as active and in motion, as if by some mechanism.

For the purest of the heat and the finest of the moisture, united from each power through a kind of mixture and blending, nourish and constitute the brain through the vapours.

From which again the emanation, refined into the very purest, anoints the membrane that encloses the brain, which, passing downward from above tube-like into the depth, through the successive vertebrae, conducting both itself and the marrow lodged within it, terminates together at the base of the spine;

itself, like some charioteer, imparting to all the junctions of bones and joints, and to the beginnings of the muscles, the impulse and the power of each individual movement and rest.

And one might conjecture the like also concerning the heart, that, like some secure house, it has been fitted around and fortified with the firmest enclosures of the bones in a circle.

For behind it is the spine, secured on either side by the shoulder-blades.

And on each side the position of the ribs, embracing it, makes the middle hard to injure.

And in front the breastbone and the pair of collar-bones are set as a defence, so that on every side its safety may be guarded from things that trouble it from without.

And just as one may see in agriculture, when rain from clouds, or the inflow of channels, makes the ground beneath it sodden.

Let some garden be set before the discourse, nourishing within itself countless varieties of trees and all manner of forms of things growing from the earth, of which the shape, and the quality, and the peculiarity of colour are observed in each with much difference.

So many things, then, being nourished by the moisture in one and the same place, the power that moistens each is, by nature, one;

but the peculiarity of the things nourished changes the moisture into different qualities.

For the same moisture becomes bitter in wormwood;

and changes into a deadly juice in hemlock;

and becomes other in other things—in saffron, in balsam, in the poppy.

For in one it is warmed, in another cooled, in another holds a middle quality.

And in the bay tree, and in the rush, and the like, it is fragrant; but in the fig and the pear it is sweetened.

And through the vine it became the cluster and wine;

and the juice of the apple, and the redness of the rose, and the brightness of the lily, and the blue of the violet, and the purple of the hyacinth's dye, and all that may be seen upon the earth, sprouting up from one and the same moisture, are differentiated into so many differences in shape and form and qualities.

Bones and cartilages, veins, arteries, sinews, ligaments, flesh, skin, fat, hair, glands, nails, eyes, nostrils, ears—all such things, and countless others besides, separated from one another by different properties, are nourished, each suitably to its own nature, by the one form of nourishment; so that the nourishment, drawing near to each of the underlying parts, is altered in conformity to whatever it approaches, becoming proper and connatural to the peculiarity of that part.

For if it should come to be at the eye, it is blended with the visual part, and is appropriately distributed into each according to the differences of the tunics about the eye.

And if it should flow into the parts pertaining to hearing, it is mingled with the auditory nature;

and coming to be in the lip, it became lip;

and in bone it is compacted, and in marrow it is softened, and it is given tension along with the sinew, and is stretched out over the surface, and passes into nails, and is refined into the generation of hairs by the appropriate vapours.

If it should advance through winding passages, it puts forth the hairs curlier and crimped; but if the procession of the hair-making vapours should be through straight passages, it brings them forth taut and straight.

undertaking to show of what kind, and out of what materials, each of the parts in us is constituted—both the things for living, and the things for living well, and if there is any other besides these which we conceived in the first division.

For the thing set before us was to show that the seminal cause of our constitution is neither an incorporeal soul nor a soulless body, but that from ensouled and living bodies a living and ensouled living creature is generated at the first;

and that human nature, having received it, like some nurse, nourishes it with its own powers;

and that it is nourished according to both parts, and has its growth manifest correspondingly in each part.

For straightway, through this skilful and scientific fashioning, it displays the power of the soul interwoven with it—appearing more faintly at the first, but afterwards shining out together with the perfecting of the instrument.

Such a thing as may be seen in the case of stone-carvers.

For the form of some living creature is set before the craftsman to show forth in the stone;

and having proposed this, first he broke the stone off from its kindred mass;

then, having chipped away its superfluous parts, he advanced it somehow through the first outline by the imitation aimed at his purpose, so that even the unskilled might, through what appears, guess at the aim of the art.

Again, having worked it further, he drew nearer to the likeness of the thing he was striving for.

Then, having wrought the perfect and exact form upon the material, he brought the art to its completion;

and there is a lion, or whatever it happens to be that has come into being from the craftsman—that which a little before was a shapeless stone;

not the material having been changed into the form, but the form having been wrought by art upon the material.

He who reasons something of this kind also concerning the soul will not miss what is probable.

For we say that nature, which fashions all things, taking from kindred matter the part derived from the human being into itself, fashions the statue.

And just as, by the gradual working of the stone, the form followed—more faint at the first, but more perfect after the completion of the work;

so also, in the carving of the instrument, the form of the soul appears in proportion to its underlying subject—imperfect in the imperfect, and perfect in the perfect.

But it would have been perfect from the beginning, had not nature been maimed through evil.

And the great Apostle also teaches such a doctrine in his epistle to the Corinthians, saying:

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I reasoned as a child."

"But when I became a man, I put away the things of the child." No other soul having entered into the man besides that which was conceived in the youth, the more childish understanding is done away, and the manly one comes into being;

but the same soul displays in the one its imperfection, and in the other its perfection.

For just as we say that the things which grow and increase are alive—and all things that partake of life and natural motion no one would call soulless—yet neither can it be said that such life partakes of a perfect soul.

For a kind of psychic activity that comes to be in plants did not reach as far as the movements of sense.

And again, a certain psychic power coming to be by addition in the irrational creatures did not itself either attain to the end, not having admitted within itself the grace of reason and understanding.

And if anything else partakes of life, by a certain misuse of custom we call it ensouled—not that the soul is perfect in these, but that there are certain parts of psychic activity, which we have learned came to be also in the human being, according to the mystical account of man's origin given by Moses, on account of his kinship with that which is subject to passion.

the old man, and to put on the new, which is renewed after the image of him that created him.

But let us all return to that god-formed grace in which God at the beginning created the human being, when he said:

"Let us make man according to our image and likeness." To whom be the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages.