Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 37 part 26/28

Now this heaven, conspicuous to the eyes, whence the luminaries and stars shine forth, is assuredly more excellent than all corporeal elements, just as the sense of the eyes is preeminent in the body. But because every spirit is without doubt more excellent than every body, it follows that, not by position of place but by dignity of nature, the spiritual nature is more excellent than this corporeal heaven—even that nature in which the images of corporeal things are expressed. Here there arises something marvelous, that, although the spirit is prior to the body, and the image of a body is posterior to the body, nevertheless, because that which is posterior in time comes to be in that which is prior in nature, the image of a body in the spirit is more excellent than the body itself in its own substance.

We must certainly not suppose that a body makes anything in the spirit, as though the spirit were subjected to the body that makes it, in the place of matter. For in every way that which makes a thing is more excellent than that from which it makes something. And in no way is body more excellent than spirit; rather, in a plain manner spirit is more excellent than body. Although, therefore, we first see some body which we had not seen before, and from that its image begins to be in our spirit, whereby we remember it when it is absent, yet it is not the body that makes that same image in the spirit, but the spirit itself makes it within itself, with a marvellous swiftness that is unspeakably far removed from the slowness of the body;

and its image, as soon as it has been seen by the eyes, is formed in the spirit of the one seeing without the interposition of any point of time. Likewise in hearing: unless the spirit at once formed within itself the image of the voice perceived by the ears and retained it in memory, it would be unknown whether the second syllable were indeed the second, since the first would already be nothing at all, having passed away once it struck the ear. And thus every use of speech, all the sweetness of singing, in short every bodily motion in our actions would slip away and perish and attain no advance, if the spirit did not hold in memory the bodily motions already accomplished, by which it might link together those that follow in acting; and these assuredly it does not hold except as made by itself within itself in the form of images.

The images even of future motions run ahead of the completion of our acts. For what do we do through the body which the spirit has not already anticipated by thinking, first seeing within itself the likenesses of all visible works and in some way arranging them? How these spiritual likenesses of bodily things become known in our soul even to unclean spirits, or what obstacle our soul suffers from this earthly body, so that we cannot in turn see them in each other's spirit, is difficult to find out and explain. Yet by most certain proofs it has been established among us that the thoughts of men have been declared by demons; who, nevertheless, if they could discern in men the inner appearance of the virtues, would not tempt them;

just as that noble and marvellous patience in Job—had the devil without doubt been able to discern it, he would surely have been unwilling to be overcome by the one he tempted. For the rest, that they announce things already done far off, which after some days are confirmed to be true, is not to be wondered at. For they can accomplish this not only by a keenness of perceiving even bodily things incomparably more excellent than ours, but also by the marvellous swiftness of their own bodies, which are assuredly far more subtle.

We have also learned that an unclean spirit, established in a house and afflicting someone, was accustomed to tell—when a presbyter had begun to come to it from twelve miles away—all the places along the route where he was, and how near he was drawing, and when he would enter, and the estate and the house and the bedchamber, until he stood before its sight. All of which, although that afflicted man did not perceive with his eyes, yet unless he perceived it in some way, he would not have announced it so truthfully. Moreover this man was feverish and said these things as though in a delirium. And perhaps he was in fact delirious, but because of these things he was thought to suffer a demon. He received no food for refreshment from his own people, but only from that presbyter. He also resisted his own people violently, as far as he was able;

only when that presbyter came did he grow quiet; to him alone was he subject, and submissively did he answer. Nor yet did that alienation of mind or demon yield even to that same presbyter, except when he was well of the fevers, as delirious men are wont to be healed; nor did he afterwards ever suffer any such thing again. We know too, without any doubt, that a delirious man foretold the coming death of a certain woman—not indeed in the manner of divining, but as though recalling a deed already past. For when mention of her was made in his presence, he said, 'She is dead; I saw her carried out; along this way they passed with her body'—while she was living unharmed; but after a few days she suddenly died and was carried out through that very place by which he had foretold.

Likewise there was among us a boy who, at the onset of puberty, suffered a most acute pain in his genitals, the physicians being quite unable to recognize what it was; except that the very nerve was withdrawn deep within, so that not even when the foreskin—which hung down with immoderate length—was cut off could it appear, but afterwards it was scarcely found. Moreover a viscous and acrid humour, oozing out, burned the testicles and the groin. Yet he did not suffer this sharp pain continuously; but when he did suffer it, he wailed vehemently with a flinging about of his limbs, though of a perfectly sound mind, as usually happens in the torments of bodily pains.

Then, in the midst of his cries, he was snatched away from all his senses and lay with open eyes, seeing none of those standing around, and moving at no pinching. After a while, as though waking up and now no longer in pain, he would tell what he had seen. Then, after a few days had intervened, he suffered the same things again. In all, or nearly all, his visions he said that he saw two persons, one of more advanced age, the other a boy, by whom the things he narrated as having heard and seen were either told or shown to him. On a certain day he saw the joy of the godly singing psalms in a marvellous light, and the various and most atrocious punishments of the ungodly in darkness, those two leading him and showing him these things and disclosing the desert of the felicity of the one group and the unhappiness of the other.

Now this he saw on the Lord's Day of Pascha (Easter), after he had suffered no pain throughout the whole of Lent, though scarcely an interval of three days had previously spared him. But at the very entrance of Lent he had seen those two promising him that for forty days he would feel no pain; afterwards they themselves gave him, as it were, medical advice, that the length of his foreskin should be cut off; and when this was done he had no pain for a long time. But when he again suffered in like manner and began to see similar things, he received advice from them once more, that he should enter the sea up to his groin and, after some delay, depart from it; they promising indeed that from then on he would not suffer that violent pain, but only the trouble of that viscous humour alone; and so it came to pass.

Nor did he ever afterwards suffer any such withdrawal of mind from the senses, nor see any such thing, except previously when, in the midst of pains and horrible cries, suddenly falling silent, he was snatched away. Afterwards, however, when the physicians were curing and healing the rest, he did not persevere in the resolve of holiness. If anyone is able to track down and grasp with certainty the causes and modes of these visions and divinations, I would rather hear him than that it should be expected of me that I myself should discourse on it. Yet what I think—so that neither the learned should mock me as one asserting, nor the unlearned receive me as one teaching, but both should take me as one debating and inquiring rather than knowing—I will not conceal. I compare all these things seen to the things seen by those who dream.

For just as these too are sometimes false, sometimes true, sometimes confused, sometimes tranquil—and the true ones themselves sometimes wholly like the future or openly stated, sometimes foretold by obscure significations and as it were figurative expressions—so also are all those things. But men love to marvel at things unexperienced and to seek the causes of the unusual, while for the most part they take no care to know the daily happenings of the same kind, even though these are often of a more hidden origin.

For just as with words—that is, with the signs we use in speaking—when an unfamiliar word is heard, they first ask what it is, that is, what it means, and this being known, they then ask whence it was so called, while so many things whose origin they know not they hold in ordinary use without care as to whence they were so called: so, when something unusual happens among things, whether bodily or spiritual, they anxiously inquire the causes and reason and demand that these be rendered to them by the learned. Now I am accustomed, when anyone asks me, for example, what 'catus' (shrewd) is, and I answer 'prudent or sharp,' and this does not suffice him, but he goes on to ask whence 'catus' is so called, to refer back in turn and ask whence 'acutus' (sharp) is so called.

Which he nonetheless certainly did not know; but because it was a familiar word, he patiently was ignorant of its origin; whereas that which newly sounded in his ears, he thinks he knows too little what it avails to signify, unless he also inquires whence it is said. Whoever, therefore, asks of me whence things seen, like bodily things, appear in ecstasy—which rarely happens to the soul—I in turn ask whence they appear to those sleeping, which the soul perceives daily; and no one either does not, or does not much, care to inquire about that—as though the nature of such things seen were therefore less marvellous because it is daily, or therefore less to be cared about because it is common to all; or, if they do rightly who do not inquire into these things, they would do more rightly if they were not curious about those either.

But I marvel much more, and am much more amazed above all, at how great a swiftness and ease the soul fashions within itself the images of bodies which it has seen through the eyes of the body, than at the visions of those dreaming or even in ecstasy. Yet whatever be that nature of things seen, without doubt it is not body. For whoever is not content to know this, let him inquire from others whence also they arise; I confess that I do not know. This much plainly it is granted to gather from the proofs of examples. Just as the pallor, redness, trembling, or even sickness of bodies sometimes has its causes from the body, sometimes from the soul—from the body indeed, when either a humour is suffused, or food, or something else of the body is thrown in from outside;

but from the soul, when it is either disturbed by fear, or confounded by shame, or grows angry, or loves, or anything of this kind—and not without reason, if that which animates and rules, when it is more vehemently moved, more vehemently agitates the body. So too, for the soul itself to go on into those things seen which are not announced to it through the senses of the body but through an incorporeal substance, and so to go on that it does not discern whether they be bodies or the likenesses of bodies—this sometimes happens from the body, sometimes from the spirit:

And from the body indeed, either by a natural alternation, as are the things seen by sleepers—for to sleep belongs to man from the body—or by some ill health with the senses disturbed, as when by the delirious both bodies are seen and things like bodies, as though these too were present before the eyes; or when the senses are wholly shut off, as often those afflicted with some grave sickness, though the body is present, being long absent and then restored to human company, said that they had seen many things;

But from the spirit, when with the body wholly sound and whole they are snatched into alienation—either so that both through the senses of the body they see bodies and in the spirit certain likenesses which they do not distinguish from bodies, or so that they are wholly turned away from the senses of the flesh and, perceiving nothing at all through them, dwell in the likenesses of bodies by that spiritual vision. But when an evil spirit seizes upon these things, it makes them either demoniacs, or possessed, or false prophets; when, however, a good spirit does, it makes them faithful ones speaking mysteries, or—understanding also being added—true prophets, or, for the time in which it behoves something to be shown through them, seers and narrators. But when the cause is from the body, that such things seen are perceived, it is not the body that exhibits them;

for the body has not such power that it should form anything spiritual; but with the path of attention from the brain—by which the mode of perceiving is directed—either lulled, or disturbed, or even blocked, the soul itself, which by its own motion cannot cease from this work, because through the body it is not permitted, or not fully permitted, to perceive bodily things or to direct the force of its attention toward bodily things, acts by the spirit or beholds the likenesses of bodily things set before it. And if indeed it itself produces them, they are mere phantasies; but if it beholds them as set before it, they are showings.

Finally, when the eyes are in pain or are extinguished, because the cause is not in the seat of the brain whence the very attention of perceiving is directed, visions of this kind do not occur, although an obstacle to perceiving bodily things exists from the body. For the blind see something more when sleeping than when awake; since in those sleeping the way of perceiving in the brain, which leads attention to the eyes, is lulled asleep, and therefore that attention itself, turned to something else, discerns the things seen in dreams as though bodily appearances were present, so that the sleeper seems to himself to be awake and thinks that he beholds not likenesses of bodies but the very bodies:

But when the blind are awake, the attention of perceiving is led along those paths, and when it has come to the region of the eyes it is not thrust forth outside, but remains there, so that they feel themselves to be awake and rather to be in darkness while waking even by day, than to be sleeping whether by day or by night. For even those who are not blind, very many sleep with open eyes, seeing nothing through them, yet not for that reason seeing nothing—since they discern with the spirit the things seen in dreams; but if they wake with closed eyes, they are present neither to the visions of sleepers nor of the waking.

Yet so much avails the fact that the way of perceiving reaches from the brain even to their eyes, neither lulled nor disturbed nor blocked, and leads the soul's attention even up to the closed doors, as it were, of the body, that the images of bodies are indeed thought of, but in no way are held in place of those bodies which are perceived through the eyes. So much difference does it make where the impediment to perceiving bodily things occurs, when it occurs in the body. For if it occurs only in the very entrances and, as it were, doors of the senses—as in the eyes, in the ears, and the other senses of the body—only the perception of bodily things is impeded; but the soul's attention is not so turned away to something else that it holds the images of bodies in place of bodies;

but if the cause is within, in the brain, whence the paths are directed toward perceiving those things which are outside, the very vessels of attention are lulled or disturbed or blocked, by which the soul strives at beholding or perceiving those things which are outside. And since it does not lose that striving, it forms the likenesses with such vividness that, being unable to distinguish the images of bodily things from bodily things themselves, it does not know whether it is among the former or the latter; and when it does know, it knows in a far different manner than when the likenesses of bodies are being turned over in thought or occur to it: which manner cannot in any way be grasped except by those who have experienced it.

For hence it came about that, sleeping, I knew that I was seeing in dreams, and yet I did not distinguish those likenesses of bodily things which I saw from the bodily things themselves in the same way as, when thinking of them even with closed eyes or set in darkness, we are wont to distinguish them. So much avails that very attention of the mind—whether it be led through even to the senses, though closed, or, in the very brain, whence it strives toward these things, be turned aside to something else by some existing cause—so that, although the soul sometimes knows that it beholds not bodies but the likenesses of bodies, or, being less instructed and thinking them to be bodies themselves, perceives that it sees them not with the body but with the spirit, it is nevertheless far from that effecting by which it is presented to its own body: whence even the blind know that they are awake,

when they distinguish, with a sure notion, the imagined likenesses of bodies from the bodies which they cannot see. But when, with the body sound and the senses not lulled by sleep, by some hidden spiritual work the soul is snatched into those things seen which are like bodily things, it is not, because the mode is different, therefore also the nature of the things seen different—since even in those causes which arise from the body there is assuredly a difference, and sometimes from the contrary. For the delirious have, not by sleeping, but rather by disturbed ways of perceiving in the head, such things to see as those dreaming see, whose attention in sleeping is turned away from the sense of waking and is converted to seeing those things.

When, therefore, that happens not by sleeping, but this by sleeping, nevertheless the things which are seen are not of another genus than of the nature of the spirit, by which or in which the likenesses of bodies are made. So, although the cause of the alienated attention be diverse—when, with the body sound and the person waking, by some hidden spiritual force the soul is snatched, so that in place of bodies it sees in the spirit the expressed likenesses of bodily things—the nature of the things seen is nevertheless the same. For it cannot be said that, when the cause is in the body, then the soul, without any presentiment of future things, turns over the images of bodies of itself, as it is also wont to do in thinking, but when it is taken up in seeing those things by the spirit, these are shown divinely; since Scripture openly says:

'I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and the young men shall see visions, and the old men shall dream dreams,' attributing both to the divine operation; and: 'The angel of the Lord appeared to the man in dreams, saying: Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife,' and again: 'Take the child and go into Egypt.' And so, that a man's spirit should be taken up by a good spirit to see these images, unless they signify something, I do not think happens; but when the cause is in the body, that the human spirit should be intent on beholding them more distinctly, it is not always to be believed that they signify something, but they signify then, when they are inspired by a spirit that shows, whether to one sleeping or to one suffering something else from the body whereby he might be alienated from the senses of the flesh.

We know too that to those waking and afflicted by no sickness nor stirred up by frenzy, thoughts have been introduced by some hidden instinct, which by uttering them they would divine—not only while doing something else, as the high priest Caiaphas prophesied, when his intention had no will of prophesying, but also to those undertaking it, so that in the manner of divining they might say something. For certain young men, in jest, in order to deceive, where travellers were journeying, feigned themselves to be astrologers (mathematici), being wholly ignorant even whether the twelve signs were being named. When they saw their host marvelling at what they said and attesting them to be most true, they proceeded more boldly to further things. And he, attesting, marvelled at all of them.

At last he asked them about the safety of his son, whom he long desired though absent, and, because he was unexpectedly delaying, he was anxious lest something had befallen him. But they, not caring what truth might be known after their departure, provided only that for the present they might render the man glad, being about to set out soon, answered that he was safe and drawing near, and would come on that very day on which they were speaking these things; for they did not fear lest, when the whole day had been finished, he should pursue them the next day, they being refuted. Why say more? While they were now arranging to depart, behold, suddenly, they being still placed there, he came. Likewise another was dancing before a musician (symphoniacus), where there were many idols, at a certain solemn festival of the pagans, not seized by any

spirit seized, but in ludicrous imitation aping the possessed, with the bystanders and spectators knowing it. For it was the custom that, after the sacrifices had been performed before the meal and the fanatics had been agitated, if any young men after the meal wished to sport in that manner, none was forbidden. He therefore, while dancing, silence having been made for him, jesting and surrounded by a laughing crowd, foretold that on that night which was impending, in that wood which was nearby, a man would be slain by a lion, and that at the dawning of the day a throng would flock together to look at his corpse and would desert the place of that solemn festival.

And it came to pass; when it had become sufficiently clear to all who were present, in all his movements, that he had said this in sporting and jesting, with a mind nowhere disturbed or alienated—he himself too marvelling the more at what happened, the more he knew with what mind and mouth he had uttered it.

In what manner these things seen come into the spirit of man—whether they are first formed there, or, being already formed, are introduced and beheld by a certain conjunction, so that thus the angels show to men their own thoughts and the likenesses of bodily things, which they pre-form in their own spirit by the foreknowledge of future things, just as they too see our thoughts, not indeed with eyes, because not with body, but with spirit, yet with this difference, that they know ours even if we are unwilling, whereas we cannot know theirs unless they are shown—because they hold them, as I think, so within their power to conceal by spiritual means, just as we, by certain interposed obstacles, hide our bodies lest they be seen by others' eyes—and what happens in our spirit, so that sometimes only images signifying something are beheld, but whether they signify anything is unknown, sometimes indeed they are perceived to signify something, but what they signify is not known, sometimes, however, as by a fuller demonstration, the human soul sees both by the spirit the images themselves and by the mind what they signify:

both to know is most difficult, and, if we should now know it, to discourse and explain it is most laborious. But what I now think it sufficient to intimate is this: it is certain that there is a certain spiritual nature in us, wherein the likenesses of bodily things are formed—whether when we touch some body by the sense of the body, and immediately its likeness is formed in the spirit and stored up in the memory; or when we think of absent bodies already known, so that from them a certain spiritual aspect is formed, which were already in the spirit even before we thought of them; or when, of those bodies which we do not know but yet do not doubt to exist, we behold likenesses, not as those things are, but as it comes to hand;

or when we think of other things, which either are not, or are not known to exist, according to our own judgment or opinion; or when, from wherever, neither with us doing it nor willing it, various forms of bodily likenesses are turned over in the mind; or when, about to do something bodily, we arrange those very things which are to be in that action, and anticipate them all by thought; or now in the very act, whether when we speak or when we do, all bodily motions, that they may be put forth, are anticipated by their likenesses within in the spirit—for not even any, however brief, syllable would have sounded in its order unless foreseen; or when dreams are seen by those sleeping, signifying either nothing or something;

or when, with the ways of perceiving disturbed within by bodily ill health, the spirit so mingles the images of bodies with real bodies that they can be distinguished either scarcely or not at all, and either signify something or arise without any signification; or when, with some sickness or bodily pain wholly growing heavy and blocking within the ways by which the attention of the soul was put forth and strove to perceive through the flesh, the images of bodily things arise or are shown—the spirit being made absent more deeply than by sleep—either signifying something or appearing without any signification;

or when, with no cause existing from the body, but with some spirit taking up and snatching it, the soul is lifted into seeing likenesses of bodies of this kind, mingling with them things seen bodily, when it also uses the senses of the body at the same time; or when, the spirit so taking it up, it is alienated from every sense of the body and turned away, so that it is held by spiritual vision in the likenesses of bodies alone—where I do not know whether any things signifying nothing can be seen.

This spiritual nature, therefore, in which not bodies but the likenesses of bodies are expressed, has visions of a lower kind than that light of the mind and understanding, by which both these lower things are judged and those things are discerned which are neither bodies nor bear any forms like bodies—such as the mind itself and every good affection of the soul, to which its vices are contrary, which are rightly blamed and condemned in men. For in what other way is the understanding itself beheld except by understanding? So too are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, and other things of this kind, by which one draws near to God, and God himself, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things.

Although, therefore, in the same soul visions occur—whether those which are perceived through the body, such as this bodily heaven and earth and whatever in them can be known, in whatever way they can; or those which are seen by the spirit as like bodies, of which we have already said much; or when things are understood by the mind which are neither bodies nor likenesses of bodies—they have assuredly their own order, and one is more excellent than another. For spiritual vision is more excellent than corporeal, and again intellectual more excellent than spiritual. For corporeal vision cannot exist without spiritual, since in the very moment in which a body is touched by the sense of the body, there also comes to be in the soul something of the sort—not that this is the thing, but that it is like it:

and if this did not come to pass, neither would there be that sense by which those things which lie adjacent outside are perceived. For it is not the body that perceives, but the soul through the body, which it uses as a messenger, as it were, for forming in itself what is announced from outside. And so corporeal vision cannot come to pass unless spiritual also comes to pass at the same time; but it is not distinguished except when the sense has been taken away from the body, so that that which was seen through the body is found in the spirit. But indeed spiritual vision can come to pass even without corporeal, when likenesses of absent bodies appear in the spirit and many are feigned at will or shown apart from the will.