Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 24 part 9/9

All these things, therefore, if we take them wisely, although we call the visions truthful, we nevertheless do not call them true bodies. But it belongs to a more extended discourse to inquire most carefully concerning this kind of bodily likenesses: whether even the angels, whether good or evil, appear thus when they appear in the form of men or of any bodies whatever, or whether they have some true bodies and are rather seen in the truth of these; or whether indeed in dreams or in ecstasy they are discerned in these — not as bodies, but as likenesses of bodies — while to men who are awake they present true bodies to be seen and, if need be, even to be touched. But I do not think these matters are to be sought out and examined in this book. For now, let enough have been said concerning the incorporeal soul.

But if you would rather believe it to be corporeal, you must first define what a body is, lest perchance, when we are agreed about the thing itself, we should labour in vain over a mere name. Yet how many absurdities have followed upon your conceiving of such a body in the soul as those things are which by all the learned are called bodies — that is, things which by the distance of length, breadth, and height occupy spaces of place, smaller in their smaller parts and larger in their larger — this, I think, you already prudently perceive. It remains to show how, although 'spirit' is also properly said to be not the whole soul but a certain part of it — as the Apostle says: 'and may your whole spirit and soul and body' (1 Thess 5:23), or that far more expressly in the book of Job:

'Thou hast set free my soul from my spirit' (cf. Job) — yet the whole soul too may be called by this name, though this seems much rather to be a question of names, not of things. For since it is agreed that there is something in the soul which is properly named 'spirit,' and that, this being excepted, the soul is also properly named — there is now no contention about the things themselves; especially since I too say that this is properly called spirit which you also call spirit, that is, that whereby we reason and understand, when these things are so distinctly spoken of, as the Apostle says: 'and your whole spirit and soul and body.' And this spirit he seems to call also 'mind,' when he says: 'with the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin' (Rom 7:25). For the very statement is:

'And the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh' (Gal 5:17), so that what he there called 'mind' is understood here to be called 'spirit' — not, as you suppose, that 'the whole mind is called that which consists of soul and spirit,' which where you may have read I do not know. For we are not accustomed to call our 'mind' anything but our rational and intellectual part. And by this, when the same Apostle says: 'be renewed in the spirit of your mind' (Eph 4:23), what else did he say than 'be renewed in your mind'? For thus the 'spirit of the mind' is nothing other than the mind, just as 'the body of the flesh' can be nothing other than the flesh. For this too is written: 'in the putting off of the body of the flesh' (Col 2:11), where he calls the flesh 'the body of the flesh.'

He speaks indeed also in another sense of the spirit of man, which he altogether distinguishes from the mind: 'for if I pray with a tongue,' he says, 'my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful' (1 Cor 14:14). But we are not now speaking of that spirit which is distinct from the mind — that has its own difficult question of the same kind; for in many ways and in diverse significations do the divine Scriptures name 'spirit' — but of that with which we are now dealing, whereby we reason, understand, and are wise. It is agreed between us that this too is properly named spirit, in such a way that it is not the whole soul, but a certain part of it.

Yet if you deny that the soul is also spirit, on this ground — that its understanding is distinctly called spirit — you might likewise deny that the whole seed of Jacob is called Israel, since, apart from Judah, 'Israel' was also distinctly the name given to the ten tribes which were then in Samaria. But what need is there to linger here longer? Now, then, attend to that whereby we may more easily show that that which is soul is also called spirit. When you hear or read, of the Lord as he was dying, what is written: 'and bowing his head, he gave up the spirit' (John 19:30), you would have it understood as though he had signified the whole by a part, not that that which is soul can also be named spirit. But that I may be able the more readily to prove what I say, I will call you yourself as witness, more quickly and conveniently.

For you have so defined spirit that beasts appear to have not spirit but soul; for they are called irrational precisely because they have not the power of understanding and reason. Hence, when you admonished man himself to know his own nature, you spoke thus: 'For since the good God has made nothing without reason, and has brought forth man himself as a rational animal, capable of intellect, endowed with reason and lively in sense, to distribute by prudent ordering all things devoid of reason.' By these your words you have sufficiently asserted what is altogether most true — that man is endowed with reason and capable of understanding, which surely the animals devoid of reason are not.

Hence too, by divine testimony, you have compared to beasts — which certainly have no understanding — those men who do not understand. This is written also in another place: 'Be not as the horse and the mule, which have no understanding' (Ps 31:9). Since these things are so, attend also to the words by which you defined and described spirit, when you strive to distinguish it from the soul. 'This soul,' you say, 'which has its origin from the breath of God, could not be without its own sense and inmost understanding, which is spirit.' And a little after: 'and although the soul,' you say, 'animates the body, yet that which perceives, which is wise, which is vigorous, must needs be spirit.' Likewise a little after: 'the soul will be one thing,' you say, 'and the spirit another — the wisdom and the sense of the soul.'

By these words you sufficiently indicate what you hold the spirit of man to be — that is, our rational part, whereby the soul perceives and understands, not as it is perceived by the senses of the body, but as is that inmost sense from which 'sententia' (judgment) takes its name. And from this, without doubt, we are set above the beasts, in that they are devoid of reason. The beasts, therefore, have not spirit — that is, understanding and the sense of reason and wisdom — but only soul. For of them too it was said: 'let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls' (Gen 1:20), and: 'let the earth bring forth the living soul' (Gen 1:24). That therefore you may most fully and most plainly know that that which is soul is, after the manner of the divine oracles, also called spirit — even the spirit of a beast is so named.

And certainly beasts have not that spirit which your Charity, distinguishing it from the soul, has defined. Whence it is manifest that by a general term the soul of a beast could rightly be so called, as is read in the book of Ecclesiastes: 'Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of man goes upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goes downward into the earth?' (Eccl 3:21). And likewise in the devastation of the flood it is written: 'and all flesh died that moved upon the earth, of fowls, of cattle, and of beasts, and of wild animals; and every creeping thing that moves upon the earth, and every man, and all things whatsoever that have the spirit of life' (Gen 7:21-22) — where, all the windings of doubt being removed, we understand 'spirit' to be a general name for the soul.

And indeed the signification of this name extends so widely that even God is called Spirit; and this airy breath, although it be corporeal, is in the Psalm called 'the spirit of the tempest' (Ps 148:8). Wherefore I think that that which is soul is also named spirit (according to that: 'Thou wilt take away their spirit, and they shall fail' — Ps 103:29 — and again: 'their spirit shall go forth, and shall return to its own earth' — that is, the body to its own dust — Ps 145:4). Therefore the name 'spirit' belongs to the soul from the fact that it is spiritual; the name 'soul' belongs to it from the fact that it animates the body, that is, gives it life. I judge that, admonished by these testimonies of the divine pages which I have recalled — where the soul even of a beast, which has no understanding, is read to be called spirit — you will no longer deny it.

Wherefore, if you both grasp and understand those things which have been discussed concerning the incorporeal soul, there is no reason why I should displease you because I said that I know it to be not a body but a spirit — since it is both shown not to be a body and is by a general name called spirit. Therefore, if you receive and read these books, written to you with lavished love, with love repaid; if at the beginning of your own first book you both hear yourself and are zealous, as you said, 'not to defend your own opinion if it be detected as improvable' — beware above all of those eleven things concerning which I admonished you in the earlier book: that you say not 'the soul comes from God in such a way that he created it neither out of nothing nor out of another thing, but out of his own nature';

or that 'through infinite time he thus always gives souls, just as he himself who gives is always'; or that 'the soul has lost some merit through the flesh which it had before the flesh'; or that 'the soul recovers its former condition through the flesh, and is reborn through that very flesh through which it had deserved to be defiled'; or that 'the soul, before all sin, deserved to be a sinner'; or that 'infants who die without the baptism of regeneration attain to the pardon of original sins'; or that 'those whom the Lord has predestined to baptism can die beforehand, and that which the Almighty predestined be not fulfilled in them'; or that 'concerning those who expire before they are baptized, it was said what is written:

He was caught up, lest malice should change his understanding' (Wis 4:11) — and other things pertaining to this sense; or that 'some of those mansions which the Lord said were many in his Father's house are outside the kingdom of God'; or that 'the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ is to be offered for those who have departed from the body unbaptized'; or that 'some of those who die without the baptism of Christ are received meanwhile into paradise, and afterward attain even the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven.' Beware above all of these things, my son; and do not delight to be surnamed 'Victor' [Vincentius Victor], if you would be a conqueror of error; nor think, when you do not know something, that you know it; but, that you may know, learn to be ignorant.

For one sins, not by being ignorant of something among the hidden works of God, but by rashly asserting things unknown as though known, and by putting forward and defending false things as true. But my own ignorance — as to whether the souls of men are made new, or are derived from the parents (souls which, however, it is not lawful to doubt are made by God the Creator not out of his own substance) — ought either not to be reproved, or to be reproved by him from whom, by his teaching, it can also be taken away; and that souls have in themselves incorporeal likenesses of bodies, but are not themselves bodies; and that, with the distinction between soul and spirit preserved, the soul is also universally named spirit — this I think I have persuaded your Charity.

But if I have not been able to persuade you, whether nevertheless I have said those things which I ought to have said to persuade, those who read will rather judge. If indeed you desire perhaps to know any other things — of which very many in your books seem to me to need correction — let it not be burdensome for you to come, not as a disciple to a master, but as a young man to an old one, as a strong man to a weak one. For even though you ought not to have published those books, yet with greater and truer glory is anyone corrected reproved by his own confession than praised by the mouth of any who errs.

Although in the recital of those same books I do not believe that all your hearers and praisers either previously held those things which sound doctrine disapproves, or agreed with you in them; but rather, their mind's edge being blunted by the very rush and course of your recital, they could take too little notice of these things — or at least even those who could take notice praised in you not the most limpid truth of things, but the abundance of words and the ability and native talent of your genius. For very often eloquence is proclaimed and loved in the promise of a young man, even though he has not yet the maturity and trustworthiness of a teacher.

Wherefore, that you yourself may both be rightly wise, and that what you speak may not only be able to delight others but also to edify, you ought to take care over your discourses, setting aside the applause of others. About the same time a certain Vincentius Victor in Mauretania Caesariensis found, in the possession of a certain Spanish presbyter named Peter, a little work of mine, where in a certain place I confessed that I did not know, concerning the origin of the souls of individual men — whether they are propagated from that of the first man and thereafter from the parents, or whether, as to that first one, they are given singly to individuals without any propagation — yet that I did know the soul to be not a body but a spirit; and against these views of mine he wrote to that same Peter two books, which Renatus the monk sent to me from Caesarea.

Having read these, I returned four in reply: one to Renatus the monk, another to the presbyter Peter, and two to Victor himself. But that to Peter, although it has the length of a book, is nevertheless a letter, which I did not wish to separate from the other three. In all these, in which many necessary matters are discussed, I defended, concerning the origin of the souls which are given to individual men, my own hesitation, and I exposed the many errors and the perversities of his presumption. Yet the young man I treated, not as one to be too hastily detested, but as one still to be taught, with as much gentleness as I could; and from him I received writings of his own correction. Of this work the book to Renatus thus begins: 'Your sincerity, us…'; but that to Peter thus:

'To the most beloved lord, brother and fellow-presbyter Peter'; and of the two latest, addressed to Vincentius Victor, the first thus begins: 'That which I thought I ought to write to you.'