Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 37 part 14/28

Hence I too would the more readily believe that even their later followers — those men who first set these things down in their books — meant rather that in this present life, by a certain perversity of character and by baseness, men become like beasts and so are in a manner changed into beasts, so that by holding out this disgrace before them they might call them back from the depravity of their desires. For as to those things that are reported to have happened — that certain people, as it were, remembered in the bodies of what animals they had been — either such things are told falsely, or this was wrought in their minds by the mockeries of demons.

For if it happens in dreams that by a deceptive memory a man seems to recall that he was something he was not, or did something he did not do, what wonder is it if, by some just and hidden judgment of God, demons are permitted to be capable of something of the sort even in the hearts of the waking?

But the Manichaeans, who either think themselves Christians or wish to be thought so, in this opinion of the transmigration or revolution of souls are worse and more detestable than those pagan philosophers, or than any other vain men who hold this. For those thinkers distinguish the nature of the soul from the nature of God; whereas these men, since they say the soul is nothing else than the very substance of God, and altogether that which God is, do not shrink from calling it so shamefully changeable that there is no kind of herb or worm in which they do not suppose it to be mingled, or into which — with marvellous madness — they think it cannot revolve.

Yet if they would set aside from their minds these questions about the most obscure matters — questions which, so long as they revolve them with a carnal heart, must needs make them slip and tumble into false, harmful, and monstrous opinions — and if they would hold most firmly that one truth which is naturally and truly implanted in every rational soul without any winding turns of argument, namely that God is altogether unchangeable and incorruptible, then their whole thousand-formed fable would suddenly fall to pieces — that fable which in their vain and sacrilegious minds they have painted out of nothing but the most shameful mutability of God. Therefore the human soul is not matter, nor is the soul irrational. What then is it, out of which the soul was made by the breath of God? Was it some body, earthy indeed and moist? By no means;

for from that, rather, flesh was made. For what else is clay than moist earth? Nor is the soul to be believed made from moisture alone, as though flesh were of earth and the soul of water. For it is too absurd to think that the soul of man was made from that out of which the flesh of a fish and a bird was made. Perhaps, then, from air? For to this element even a breath belongs — but ours, not God's. Hence we said above that this might fittingly be supposed, if we believed the world-soul to be, as it were, of one greatest living being, namely God, so that He breathed the soul from the air of His own body, just as our breath comes from our own. But since it is established that God is above every bodily thing of the world and above every spirit that He created, by a distance altogether beyond comparison, how can this rightly be said?

Or perhaps, the more God is present to His whole creation by His singular omnipotence, the more He could make out of air a breath that should be the soul of man? But since the soul is not corporeal — whereas whatever is made from the bodily elements of the world must needs be corporeal, and among the world's elements this air too is reckoned — not even if the soul were said to be made from the element of that pure and heavenly fire ought it to be believed. For there have not been lacking those who asserted that every body can be changed into every body; but that any body, whether earthly or heavenly, is converted into a soul and becomes an incorporeal nature — this I know no one has held, nor does faith admit it.

Furthermore — if we ought not to despise what physicians not only say but even affirm they can prove — although all flesh openly bears an earthy solidity, it nonetheless has in itself also something of air, which is both contained in the lungs and distributed from the heart through the vessels they call arteries; and something of fire, which possesses not only a fiery quality, whose seat is in the liver, but also a bright and clear one, which they show to be, as it were, distilled and to fly upward into the lofty place of the brain, as into the heaven of our body.

From this place too the rays of the eyes flash forth; and from its midst, as from a kind of centre, fine channels are led out not only to the eyes but also to the other senses — namely to the ears, to the nostrils, to the palate — for the sake of hearing, smelling, and tasting; and the very sense of touch, which is present throughout the whole body, is directed from the same brain through the marrow of the neck and that which is contained within the bones by which the spine of the back is joined together, so that from there certain very thin streams, which produce the sense of touch, may spread through all the members.

Since, therefore, the soul receives by these, as by messengers, whatever of bodily things does not lie hidden from it, while it is itself something so wholly other that, when it wishes to understand things divine, or God, or even altogether to consider itself and its own powers, so as to grasp something true and certain, it turns itself away even from this very light of the eyes, and — perceiving that this light is in this task not only no help but even something of a hindrance — raises itself up into the gaze of the mind:

how can it be something of that same kind, when the highest thing of that kind is nothing but the light which flashes from the eyes, by which the soul is aided only for perceiving bodily forms and colours, whereas it has within itself innumerable things far unlike the whole class of bodies, things which it beholds only by understanding and reason, to which no sense of the flesh aspires? Wherefore the nature of the human soul is indeed neither of earth nor of water nor of air nor of any fire whatsoever; and yet through a subtler nature of body — that is, through light and air — it administers the matter of its own grosser body, that is, a certain moist earth which has been turned into the quality of flesh.

For without these two there is neither any sense in the body nor any voluntary movement of the body by the soul. And just as knowing ought to come before doing, so perceiving comes before moving. The soul, therefore, since it is an incorporeal thing, first acts upon the body that is nearest to the incorporeal — such as is fire, or rather light, and air — and through these upon the other, coarser parts of the body, such as moisture and earth, out of which the bulk of the flesh is made solid, which are more subjected to being acted upon than endowed for acting. It does not, then, seem to me that it was said, 'man was made into a living soul,' except because he began to perceive in the body: which is the surest sign of animate and living flesh.

For shrubs also are moved, not only by a force impelling from without, as when they are stirred by the winds, but by that movement whereby whatever pertains to the growth and form of the tree is stirred from within, by which the sap is drawn into the root and turned into those things of which the nature of grass or wood consists; for none of these happens without an internal movement. But this movement is not voluntary, such as that which is joined to sense for the administration of the body, as in every kind of animals — which Scripture calls a living soul. For in us too, unless that movement were also present, our bodies would neither grow nor put forth nails and hair. But if this alone were in us, without sense and that voluntary movement, man would not be said to have been made into a living soul.

Accordingly, since the front part of the brain, from which all the senses are distributed, is placed toward the forehead, and in the face are, as it were, the very organs of perceiving — except the sense of touch, which is diffused throughout the whole body; yet even this is shown to have its own path from that same front part of the brain, a path which is led backward through the crown and the neck to the marrow of the spine, of which we spoke a little before, whence indeed the face too, like the whole body, has the sense of touch, apart from the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting, which are placed in the face alone — for this reason I judge it was written that God breathed into the face of man the breath of life, when he was made into a living soul.

For the front part is deservedly set before the hinder part, because the former leads and the latter follows, and from the former comes sense, from the latter movement, just as counsel precedes action. And since there is no bodily movement following upon sense without intervals of time, and we cannot act through intervals of time by voluntary movement except by the help of memory, therefore three, as it were, ventricles of the brain are pointed out: one in front toward the face, from which comes all sense; another behind toward the neck, from which comes all movement; and a third between the two, in which they show that memory is vigorous, lest, when movement follows sense, a man should fail to connect what is to be done, if he has forgotten what he has done.

These things they say have been proved by sure signs, since even these very parts, when affected by some disease or defect, once the functions either of perceiving, or of moving the members, or of remembering the body's movement had failed, sufficiently declared what each was capable of; and by the treatment applied to them it was ascertained for the restoration of what thing each availed. But the soul acts in these parts as in instruments; it is itself none of them; rather it gives them life and governs all, and through them looks after the body and this life, in which man was made into a living soul. Therefore, when it is asked whence the soul itself is — that is, out of what, as it were, matter God made this breath which is called the soul — nothing corporeal ought to present itself.

For as God excels every creature, so the soul excels every corporeal creature in dignity of nature. Yet through light and air — which in the world itself are the more excellent bodies and have more of the excellence of acting than the corpulence of being acted upon, as moisture and earth have — it administers the body, as through those things which are more like spirit. For bodily light announces something; but that to which it announces is not the same as the light; and the soul is this — that to which it announces — not that which announces. And when it feels the afflictions of the body with distress, it is offended that its own action, by which it is present to govern the body, is hindered by the disturbance of the body's temperament, and this offence is called pain.

And the air which is infused into the nerves obeys the will, so as to move the members, but is not itself the will. And that middle part announces the movement of the members, that it may be retained by memory, but is not itself the memory. In short, so long as these, as it were, ministries of the soul fail in any way through some defect or disturbance, the messengers of perceiving and the servants of moving ceasing, the soul, as having no reason to be present, departs. But if they do not fail as they are wont to do in death, its intention is disturbed, like that of one striving to make whole again the things that are slipping and yet not availing. And in what matters it is disturbed, thence it is known which part of the ministries is at fault, so that, if it can, medicine may come to the rescue.

For that the soul is one thing, and these its bodily ministries — whether vessels, or organs, or whatever they can more fitly be called — another, is plainly evident from this: that very often, by a vehement intensity of thought, it turns itself away from all things, so that it does not notice many things set before its open and rightly functioning eyes; and, if the intensity is greater, while it was walking it suddenly stops, turning away entirely the nod of command from the ministry of the motion by which the feet were being moved; but if the intensity of thought is not so great as to fix the walker in his place, yet is nonetheless so great that it does not leave free that middle part of the brain which announces the body's movements.

— to attend to it, then a man sometimes forgets both whence he comes and whither he goes, and passes unawares the farmhouse to which he was heading, his body's nature being sound but his own attention called away to something else. Wherefore, as to those certain bodily particles of the bodily heaven — that is, of light and air — which first receive the nods of the life-giving soul, because they are nearer to incorporeal nature than moisture and earth, so that at their proximate ministry the whole mass is administered: whether God mingled or joined them to the body of the living being from this surrounding and superimposed heaven, or whether He made these too from clay, as He made the flesh — this is a question not pertinent to the matter. For it is credible that every body can be changed into every body;

but to believe that any body whatever can be changed into a soul is absurd. Wherefore neither is that to be listened to which certain people have supposed: that there is a certain fifth kind of body out of which souls come, which is neither earth nor water nor air nor fire — whether the more turbulent and earthy fire or that heavenly, pure and shining fire — but some other thing, I know not what, which lacks a common name, yet is nevertheless a body. For if those who hold this opinion mean by 'body' what we too mean — that is, any nature whatever that occupies a space of place by length, breadth, and height — then neither is the soul this, nor is it to be believed made from it. For whatever is of such a kind — to say no more — can in any part of itself be divided or circumscribed by lines:

and if the soul underwent this, it could in no way know such lines as cannot be cut along their length — which it nonetheless knows cannot be found in body. Nor does anything of the sort occur to it about itself, since it cannot not know itself, even when, in order that it may know itself, it inquires. For when it seeks itself, it knows that it seeks itself — which it could not know if it did not know itself. Nor does it seek itself from anywhere but from itself. When, therefore, it knows itself as seeking, it certainly knows itself, and all that it knows, it knows wholly. Since therefore it knows itself as seeking, it knows itself wholly; therefore it knows the whole of itself; for it knows not something else, but its very self wholly. Why then does it still seek itself, if it knows itself as seeking?

For unless it knew itself, it could not know itself as seeking itself; but this is in the present. What it seeks about itself is what it was before, or what it will be. Let it therefore cease, at least for now, to suspect that it is a body, because, if it were anything of the sort, it would know itself as such — it that knows itself better than the heaven and the earth, which it knows through the eyes of its own body. I forbear to say that that faculty of its own — which even beasts, or the birds of the air, are understood to have, when they return to their dwellings or nests, whereby the images of all bodily things are received — is in no way like any body; and surely this ought rather to be like a body, wherein the likenesses of bodily things are contained.

But if this is not a body — since it is certain that those likenesses of bodies are there not only retained by memory but even figured innumerably at will — how much less can the soul by any other power of its own be like a body! But if by some other notion they call 'body' everything that exists — that is, every nature and substance — this manner of speaking is not indeed to be admitted, lest we find no way, when speaking, to distinguish from bodies those things that are not bodies; yet we need not labour overmuch about the word. For we too say that whatever the soul is, it is not one of these four most familiar elements, which are manifest bodies, but neither is it that which God is.

But what it is cannot be better told than as soul, or spirit of life. For 'of life' is added because this air too is often called spirit. Yet they have also called the soul by the same name as this air, so that no name can now be found by which to distinguish properly this nature, which is neither body nor God, nor life without sense, such as can be believed to be in trees, nor life without a rational mind, such as is in beasts, but a life now lower than that of angels, and destined to be what the angels' is, if it shall have lived here according to the precept of its Creator.

But whence it is — that is, out of what, as it were, matter it was made, or from what perfect and blessed nature it flowed down, or whether it was made altogether out of nothing — even if this is doubted and inquired into, this at least is by no means to be doubted: that, if there was anything before, that which was, was made by God, and that it was now made by God, so that it should be a living soul; for either there was nothing, or that which now is, was not. But as for that part in which we were inquiring, as it were, into its matter, out of what it was made, we have now treated it sufficiently. Now, if it in no way existed before, it must be asked how it can be understood that its causal ratio was said to have existed in the first six days of God's works, when God made man to His own image — which is not rightly understood except according to the soul.

But it is to be feared lest, when we say that God did not then create the very natures and substances that were to be, while He created all things together, but rather certain causal ratios of those future things, we be thought to say something empty. For what are these causal ratios, according to which God could already be said to have made man to His own image, whose body He had not yet fashioned from clay, into whom He had not yet made a soul by breathing? And of the human body indeed, even if there was some hidden ratio by which it was to be formed, there was also the matter out of which it was to be formed — that is, earth, in which that ratio can be seen to have lain hidden, as it were, in a seed;

but for the making of the soul — that is, for the making of the breath which was to be the soul of man — in what nature was that causal ratio first established, when God said, 'Let us make man to our image and likeness' — which cannot rightly be understood except according to the soul — if there was no nature in which it might be established? For if this ratio was in God, not in the creature, then it was not yet established. How then was it said, 'God made man to the image of God'? But if it was already in the creature — that is, in those things which God created all together at once — in what creature was it? Whether in a spiritual or in a corporeal one? If in a spiritual one, was it doing anything in the bodies of the world, whether heavenly or earthly?

And was this idle within it before man was established in his own proper nature, just as in man himself, already leading his own proper life, there is present latently and inactively the ratio of generating, which does not operate except through intercourse and conception? Or did that spiritual creature also, in which this ratio was latently present, do nothing of its own work? And to what end was it created? Was it that it might contain the ratio of the future human soul, or of future souls, as though they could not exist in themselves, but only in some creature already living its own life — just as the ratio of generating cannot exist except in some natures already existing and perfected?

Was there, then, established as the parent of the soul some spiritual creature, in which lies the ratio of the future soul, which does not come forth from it except when God makes it to be breathed into man? For neither does God create and form the offspring — whether of the seed or of the already-existing progeny itself — out of man, except through Wisdom that reaches everywhere by reason of her purity, so that nothing defiled runs into her, while she stretches mightily from end to end and disposes all things sweetly.

But I do not know how it can be understood that some spiritual creature, I know not which, was created for this purpose alone, which was not mentioned among God's foundations made through those six days, when God was said to have made man on the sixth day — man whom He had not yet made in his proper nature, but as yet only in causal ratio in that creature which was not mentioned. For that creature ought rather to have been mentioned, which was so consummated that it was not still to be made according to a ratio preceding it.

Or perhaps, in the nature of that day which He first established — if that day is rightly taken to be the intellectual spirit — God inserted this causal ratio of making the soul, when on the sixth day He made man to His own image, foreordaining, that is, the cause and ratio according to which He would make him after those seven days: so that, namely, the causal ratio of his body may be believed to have been created in the nature of earth, but that of his soul in the nature of that day?

But what else is said, when this is said, than that the angelic spirit is, as it were, the parent of the human soul, if in it there is thus pre-established the ratio of the human soul to be created, just as in a man there is that of his future offspring — so that the parents of human bodies indeed are men, but of souls are angels, while the Creator both of bodies and of souls is God, yet of bodies from men, of souls from angels; or of the first body from earth and of the first soul from the angelic nature, where He had pre-established their causal ratios, when He first made man in those things which He created all together, but thereafter now men from men, body from body, soul from soul!

It is hard to say that the soul is the daughter of an angel or of angels; but much harder still, of the corporeal heaven — how much more, then, of the sea and the earth! Far less, therefore, was the causal ratio of the soul pre-established in any corporeal creature, when God made man to His own image, before He animated with breath the man formed from clay in his own time — if it is absurd to believe that He founded the soul causally in the angelic nature. Let us therefore see whether perhaps that can be true which certainly seems to me more tolerable to human opinion: that God, in those first works in which He created all things together, also created the human soul, which He would in its own time breathe into the members of the body formed from clay:

and that the ratio of that body He created causally in those things founded all together, according to which it should come to be, when it was to be made — the human body. For neither do we rightly understand that which was said, 'to His own image,' except in the soul, nor that which was said, 'male and female,' except in the body. Let it therefore be believed — if no authority of the Scriptures or ratio of truth contradicts — that man was so made on the sixth day, that the causal ratio of the human body indeed was created in the elements of the world, but the soul itself was already created, just as the first day was established, and, once created, lay hidden in the works of God, until in its own time He should, by breathing — that is, by inspiring — insert it into the body formed from clay. But here again there arises a question not to be scorned.

For if the soul had already been made and lay hidden, where could it be better than there? What then was the cause that the soul, living innocently, was inserted into the life of this flesh, in which, by sinning, it should offend Him who created it, whence there should deservedly follow it the toil of hardship and the torment of damnation? Or is this to be said: that by its own will it was inclined to administering the body, in which life of the body — since one can live both justly and unjustly — it should have that which it chose, either a reward for justice or a punishment for iniquity, so that this may not be contrary to that apostolic sentence, in which he says that those not yet born had done nothing good or evil?

For that inclination of the will toward the body is not yet an act either of justice or of iniquity, of which an account is to be rendered in the judgment of God, when each shall receive according to the things he has done through the body, whether good or evil. Why then should not this also now be believed: that it came to the body by the nod of God, where, if it should be willing to act according to His precept, it would receive the reward of eternal life and of the fellowship of the angels; but if it should despise Him, it would pay the most just penalties, whether of long-lasting toil or of eternal fire? Or, since this very thing — to have obeyed the willing God — is already surely a good act, will it be contrary to the saying that those not yet born had done nothing either good or evil?

If these things are so, we shall confess that the soul was not created in that class of things which was foreknowing of its own future work, whether just or unjust. For it is too incredible that it could have been inclined by its own will to the life of the body, if it foreknew that it would so sin in certain respects as to be justly punished with perpetual torment. The Creator is indeed justly praised in all things, who made all things very good. For He is to be praised not only for those to whom He gave foreknowledge, since He is rightly praised also because He created the beasts, than which human nature is more excellent even in those men who sin. For the nature of man is from God, not the iniquity in which he himself has become entangled by the ill use of free will:

yet if he did not have it (free will), he would excel less in the nature of things. For a man living justly is to be conceived of even as not foreknowing the future, and there is to be seen how the excellence of a good will is in no way hindered from living rightly and pleasing God by the fact that, ignorant of the future, he lives by faith. Whoever, therefore, would not have a creature of this kind to be among things, contradicts the goodness of God; but whoever would not have it pay penalties for its sins, is an enemy of equity. But if the soul is made for this, that it should be sent into a body, it may be asked whether, if it should be unwilling, it is compelled. But it is better to believe that it wills this naturally — that is, that it is created in such a nature that it wills, just as it is natural to us to will to live;

But to live wickedly belongs no longer to nature, but to a perverse will, which punishment justly follows. In vain, then, is it now asked out of what material, as it were, the soul was made, if it can rightly be understood to have been made among those first works, when the day was made. For just as those things which were not came to be, so this too came to be among them. And if there was also some material capable of being formed, both corporeal and spiritual — yet this too not established except by God, from whom are all things — a material which would indeed precede its own formation not in time but in origin, as the voice precedes song, then what more fittingly is believed than that the soul was made of spiritual material?

But if anyone is unwilling to reckon it as made except when it was breathed into the already-formed body, let him consider what he will answer when it is asked out of what it was made.

For either he will say that God made or makes something out of nothing after that completion of His works — and then he must look to how he explains that on the sixth day man was made in the image of God, which cannot rightly be understood except in respect of the soul; that is, in what nature the causal reason of that thing which did not yet exist had been made — or he will say that the soul was made not out of nothing but out of something already existing, and he will labour in inquiring what that nature is, whether corporeal or spiritual, according to those questions which we have handled above; while that same difficulty still remains, so that it is further asked in what substance among the creatures first established in the six days God made that causal reason of the soul which He had not yet made either out of nothing or out of something.