On the State of the Soul 1 part 4/11

But in that very Trinity of God we do not say that there are parts and intervals of such divisibility and locality—to whose likeness he who made us says that we are one and can be united with himself, just as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, that 'the mind of the believers was one and their will one, and their heart was one.' Yet I do not think that many souls were so joined together that some greater soul came to be out of many souls, because the Trinity—through whom and with whom all good souls become one—is neither less in any one person of that same Trinity than in three, nor greater in three than in any single one.

So too the substance of the human soul, after the likeness of him whose image it is, is neither greater in many according to any mass, nor lesser in single ones according to any mass—because, namely, those are powers, not bodies. But the creating power surely rightly transcends created powers, by this very fact and above all by the fact that it created them. For we both experience and have learned that one soul is often more excellent than another soul; yet we do not believe that the same soul which we have learned to be more excellent according to power is greater according to mass—of which it has none. And I do not think that even you would deny that, however much:

many perfectly wise souls do not know more than that single perfectly wise soul; nor that what one soul wills in every way, many souls, by their unwillingness in every way, will the more; nor that whatever a single soul best remembers, many souls remember better by the tenacity of their memory. But a body indeed has more weight if large than if small, and a multitude of bodies is stronger than a few, and many hands hold or sustain or push something more strongly than single ones. Now let us inquire into what follows. CHAPTER XVI: THAT SOULS ARE INCORPOREAL. 'Souls,' you say, 'have in themselves a body in which they subsist, although much and incomparably more subtle than our bodies are.' Let it be granted thus, if it is so.

I would wish you to answer this: who is it that says, 'The soul has a body incomparably more subtle than our bodies are'? If these are the words of the soul, what does it call its own body—that which it itself is, or that fleshly thing which it endows with sense and quickens? For the soul itself says: 'The body of the soul is more subtle than my body.' What is the body which the soul calls its own, except that which it itself is, if the soul is a body? Either, then, the soul is a body and does not rightly call this fleshly body its own—because rather that which it itself is, is its own—or, if this body of the soul is a body, the soul itself, as is given to be understood, is not a body. After this, likewise, it speaks thus to its own counsellor:

'You object to me that the soul is not corporeal because it is neither local nor subsists in quality or quantity.' How perilous it is to believe thus, we shall demonstrate in what follows. But now, in this state of our treatise, the matter will hang upon the discussion held: that if the soul is neither local nor subject to quantity, you should believe it to be undoubtedly incorporeal. But if we shall demonstrate that it is determined by quantity or enclosed by place, then consequently you yourself should no longer doubt that it is also contained by a body.

You have indeed placed the state of your treatise upon the condition of this very point: that if the soul could be proved to be local and subject to quantity, it would consequently also be believed corporeal—yet you pronounce that a little later, within the workshop of the breast, it fashions the varieties of its thoughts and stirs up motions. CHAPTER XVII: CONCERNING LIFE, THAT THE SOUL QUICKENS THE BODY NON-LOCALLY. And first, I ask you to answer: in what place of the body is the soul itself—is it in the whole or in a part? If it is in a part, in what way does it move and endow with sense the whole body everywhere? If it is in the whole, how does it fashion its thoughts and exercise its motions only within the workshop of the breast?

Or is it perhaps not only in the breast, but also in the head; nor in the head only, but in the sole of the foot and in the bones? And wherever you believe the soul to be locally, there too you will confess it to be wise locally and to think locally; and since, if it is corporeal, it is present in the body to such an extent that—like water in a wineskin—it fills the smaller parts of it with a smaller part of itself and the greater with a greater, it necessarily follows that there is a greater thought in it in the breast and a lesser in the finger. And thus, whatever portion of the living body anyone cuts off, he also cuts off just as great a portion of the soul that quickens it; and through this there will not be in the soul—now indeed weakened—so great a power of thinking or faculty of remembering.

For no one doubts that air—from which, or like which, you declare the soul to be—is divisible and capable of being cut; for both when we breathe out and breathe in, we draw in and give back particles of it, which those veins, which the Greeks call arteries, take up for the nourishment of the whole body, and through which the same air is dispersed by tireless agitation into the tempering of the three elements of the lungs as well. But if the air drawn in, according to your opinion, pertains to the nourishment of the soul—because, namely, an airy thing is fittingly nourished by air—then, as was said above, it receives cutting along with the body that it quickens. The power of memory, certainly, without question pertains to the whole soul.

Furthermore, every body, however great, however small, can certainly be cut; and this befalls it for this reason, that it consists of parts. For whatever has a part can surely be divided, because a part can be torn away from a part. Wherefore, if the soul is a body, it surely receives cutting; if it receives cutting, it receives diminution; if it receives diminution, then whoever loses a part of the living body loses also a part of the soul. But with a part of the soul perishes a part of the memory; therefore the soul, whose substance has been diminished, must surely remember less. And through this, if the soul is local, it can be broken up by manifold cutting and abolished by frequent fragmentation.

But since a sound mind—not to say a learned one—does not accept this, in order that the non-locality of the soul may, as far as we have been able to set it forth with divine aid, appear more clearly, let us discourse about motions; for there will be no doubt that, just as it is a body which is moved locally, so that is not a body which is not moved locally. CHAPTER XVIII: THAT THERE ARE THREE MOTIONS. That there are, then, three motions—the stable, the non-local, and the local—is now known. The stable motion is God's, the non-local the soul's, the local the body's. It is a stable motion that God did not always make the creature, yet did not will to create it then by a new will when he created it, because he always willed to create it then when he made it. 'Then' is the signification of time; 'always' does not pertain to time.

'Then,' therefore, pertains to the beginning of time, not to time, because the stability of the eternal will includes the temporal motion; and through this, 'always to will then' is a stable motion. Here you ought to grasp that nothing can be moved except by something unmoved; and, that we may teach this by example, we certainly cannot move a finger unless the hand stands still, while the motion of the arm comes from the stability of the shoulder. And, that we may not linger longer, in walking one foot must surely be fixed so that the other can be moved forward. Hold to this while we distinguish for a little the motion of the mind from the motion of the body. For just as, as was said above, God is moved stably, so the soul is moved temporally.

But it is temporal that, a little before proud, it is now humble; before glad, now sad; it loved before, now hates; before having forgotten something, now remembers it. But the body does not share in motions of this kind of the soul, by which the soul is moved while the body is nonetheless unmoved; whence it is given to understand that the soul is moved non-locally through time, and that the body is moved by it both temporally and locally, but that the soul itself is not moved locally by the body. And, that I may make this very thing plain by words, if in any way I can, I need a more attentive reader. Behold: for the writing or fashioning of something, the beck of the soul is directed so that the hand may be moved.

The soul beholds non-locally the incorporeal forms, to which it is joined indissociably—whether superimposed upon the subjects or subjected beneath the superimposed—and it wholly moves the limb, and wholly beholds the truth of the forms, and besides this wholly endows the whole body everywhere with sense. When therefore, as has been said, intent upon those eternal and ever-the-same forms, it strives to produce through the body a corporeal square or hexagon or circle according to the examples of those same forms—surely, if it should turn its mind, that is, its eye, elsewhere, as for instance, wishing to make a square, it thinks of a circle, or wishing to write the name of Paul, it thinks of the name of Simon—is not the motion of the limb immediately driven toward expressing or shaping that to which the beck of the mind has passed over in thought?

Therefore the soul will stand in the contemplation of the forms in order to move the body in the shaping of things capable of being formed—which truth of the forms is not perceptible except to the rational faculty. For every soul stands in the appetite of the rational and in deliberation. But it is not credible that, when by the beck of the soul the writer's hand is moved to write, the soul too is moved by the agitation of the hand—the soul which, unless it gazed immovably and non-locally upon the forms of the letters, could not locally form those same letters by the motion of the fingers. But perhaps you say: that part of the soul which is in the fingers of the writer is moved, and the rest is not moved.

This, moreover, those contend who think the soul to be divisible into parts—although, by an indissociable consequence, if it were corporeal, it would be divisible into parts, because both that which is corporeal is divisible into parts, and everything that is divisible into parts is corporeal. Let us therefore inquire whether the mind can be divided into parts, so that it may be moved by a part of itself in respect to a part of the body, or not—let us see. And first, the foremost thing for us in clearing up this question must be: that, if the mind has parts, it can be cut into parts. Let us therefore notice in our mind that no body can either be touched all at once as a whole, or touch the whole all at once, and that the soul, in each of its motions or acts, is whole all at once.

For, as we disputed above, every body, however greatest, however least, has length, breadth, and height. And it is subject, according to the number of its parts, to six motions. For every body is moved up, down, to the right and to the left, forward and backward. But it is moved also by a seventh motion, such as that of a wheel and of a sphere, which perfect motion is carried out by itself and through itself and in itself as a token of eternity. Every body therefore, as we said, having six parts and subject to six motions, surely has also, on account of its thickness, something in the middle as well. For there would be nothing at all exterior in bodies if there were not internal things also.

Therefore any body whatsoever, even if enclosed in the hand, is touched throughout in its exterior parts, but in its interior parts certainly is not touched. Hence it is plain that no body can be touched whole all at once, nor can any body, however smallest, be whole in one place—as for instance a grain of poppy, or whatever part you please of that very grain—which there does not have its lower parts where its upper are, nor there its right where its left, nor its anterior parts there where its posterior; this is certain.

But the soul both wholly sees through the body and wholly recollects the things seen, and wholly hears and wholly remembers sounds, and wholly smells and wholly remembers odors, and wholly through the tongue—or, as others would have it, through the palate—perceives tastes and discerns them, and wholly touches all things smooth and rough, wholly approves and disapproves.

But it seems wonderful, in view of the necessity of locality and of times, as I discoursed above, that the soul wholly quickens the whole body, and—while the whole body is nonetheless living and the whole sensing—through the smallest part of the body, which is sight, it wholly and all at once receives forms; and through that part of the same body which is hearing, it wholly and all at once receives voices; and through the tiny member of the nostrils it wholly perceives fragrances; and through the sense of tasting it wholly distinguishes the differences of flavors; and it wholly discerns hot or cold by the mere tip of the finger.

If therefore it is wholly present locally to the eye in order to see, in what way is it not wholly absent from all the senses at once, so that it might sense everywhere as a whole and quicken the individual parts of the body, not with its own parts, but with its whole self, and at the same time wholly endow with sense throughout diverse places? When therefore you shall have persuaded me that the soul performs these things locally, then you will persuade me that it is local or divisible into parts. And yet all these things are still common to man and beast alike. CHAPTER XIX: CONCERNING THE SOUL, THAT IT IS NOT SUBJECT TO QUANTITY. Therefore, if the non-locality of the soul has at least to some degree appeared—though I have not yet disputed about the principal part, that is, about our rational part—in any case the incorporeality and non-locality have appeared more clearly:

let us discourse as to how the soul is not subject to quantity—although, where there is no locality, there cannot be quantity, because these two are so mutually bound to each other that either both can be in something, or neither. Of those Aristotelian categories, the divine essence is subject to absolutely none; again, the human soul is not subject to all; and furthermore, any body whatsoever is subject to all. For of God we do not say of what quality he is, because he cannot be compared as to another, so that it might be said: 'He is such-and-such.'

Nor do we say how great he is, because he is not great in mass; nor what he has, because there is nothing he does not have; nor in what manner he is, because he himself is the manner; nor do we inquire into his condition, because he contains all things; nor place, because only a body is in a place; nor time, because he is everlastingness; nor act, because he acts at rest; nor passion, because he does not suffer. Now the tenth—nay rather the first—is that very substance, concerning which these predicaments are woven. CHAPTER XX: THAT THE SOUL RECEIVES QUALITY. But the human soul, just as it does not receive quantity, so is it subject to quality. For if we inquire concerning anyone of what quality his body is, the quality of the body is indicated thus: 'That man is fair, he is ruddy, that one is pale or black.'

But if we inquire concerning the soul, its quality is thus shown to us: 'It is proud, it is humble, irascible, it is tranquil, it remembers strongly or forgets quickly.' Likewise, if the quantity of the body be asked, it is rightly told us: 'His length extends to five feet, he is two feet broad, he has as much in thickness.' Is the quantity of the soul marked by these signs, or is anything long or broad or thick found in it? But if it were so, each person would be of a soul so much the greater the greater his body; and we would never truly call a man of a very small body great-souled, while we very often call those of huge corpulence faint-hearted.

Just as we call Moses great-souled, when as an intrepid leader he entered the paths of the Red Sea, and call the people faint-souled, who did not believe that this very thing would be most easy to do, though God promised it. Behold, the soul of one man is, without ambiguity, greater than the soul of a whole people—greater, namely, in virtue, not in mass; for if in mass, then the mass of two souls, not to say of many, would be greater than that of one. There is therefore quality in the soul, but not quantity, because that which is subject to the mutability of the affections receives quality, but that which has no mass has no quantity. Hence it is that every living body, when it dies, does not lose the soul but lets it go, because that does not depart which is not enclosed, nor is that lost which is not held.

For if it is held, it is not lost; and if it were not lost, it would not die. Whence not poetically, but philosophically, Papinius says: '...I hate these limbs and this frail use of the body, the deserter of the spirit.' And that this may be the more apparent, let us ventilate this very thing more diligently, and from the lowest kind of living things let us come, in order and by degrees, also to the rational life, so that we may be able to see those three things—memory, deliberation, will—by which the unity of the human soul is constituted, although to remember be common to the rational and the irrational. CHAPTER XXI: THAT MEMORY IS COMMON TO THE RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL SOUL, AND THAT MAN IS EVERY CREATURE. Whence it is not said without truth that in the memory there is a common border of man and beast.

For storks too revisit their nests after a year, and swallows do likewise; horses return to their stables, and dogs recognize their masters. But since the souls of beasts, though they naturally retain images of places, nevertheless have no knowledge of their own substance, they necessarily remain in the remembrance of bodily things, which they have drawn in through the senses of the body, and, lacking the eye of reasoning, they cannot — I will not say see anything above themselves — but cannot even see themselves.

Let the whole man therefore render thanks to his Creator — if not as great as he ought, yet as great as he can — to him who by the bounty of his unspeakable kindness gave him being together with the stones, seminal life together with herbs and trees, sensual and likewise animal life together with the beasts, and rational life together with the angels. Now then, that it may be plain that the life of herbs and shrubs is also incorporeal, and that the same is not lost by the body but released from it, I ask of you: do you deny that herbs and bushes live, or do you perhaps say that there are souls present in these very living things, by which they live? But if they were animate, they would not lack motion of their own, for there are things that are moved by a motion not their own. They would also feel a wound inflicted upon them.

But we know that such things are not present in them, even from the cutting of bones and the trimming of hair and nails, which we cut off without any sense of pain. There is therefore life also where there is no soul. Observe now that, to fashion this very life of a tree, the seeds of all the elements have come together piece by piece. There is in it, namely, earth in its thickness, water in its moisture, air in its growth, fire in its sprouting. But if the soul is of air or like to air, as you declare, then you will not deny that the tree is animate, since it is evident that a nature like to air is present in it. For indeed lower things, by the fixed order of things, are affected by higher things:

that is to say, when the cold of winter has passed, through the revolution of the heavens at the return of the stars, the warmth coming from above first affects the air, which is nearest to it in place and in nature. And since this air yields to fire by as great a degree as it itself rises above the waters, it draws up water from the inmost parts of the earth through the roots of trees or of any sprouting things, because the element of fire, naturally seizing all things, draws the warmed air to itself; and through the marrow of the tree, just as fire itself draws up the air, so the air draws the water, and the water draws the earth. Whence it is that we too, through a pipe or a tube of any sort, by drawing the air, draw up water without difficulty; and from the depths of wells, by a contrivance skillfully assembled, the wave is drawn upward.

The wave, being heavier by nature, is forced upward and, driven by force into the narrow passages of the little tubes with the help of the air, pressed up above the very top of the well, slips over as far as the rim. This discord, therefore, of bodies contrary to one another, so that any living body may come to exist, is forced into a certain harmony by the nod of the Creator. But out of these four elements, which sound together moderately and musically in the life of the tree, if anything has chanced to be in excess or in defect beyond due measure, the tree itself first sickens and then dies, as though overcome by faintness. You discern here that, when the parts of the body are out of tune with the harmony of unity, life is rather forsaken by the body than the body released by life.

It is established, therefore, that all life neither departs locally from the body, nor is in the body as in a place, nor draws near to the body locally. Here, if you search out the secrets of causal principles, you may observe that soul is wanting to fixed living things, but that incorporeal life is not wanting to them. And, to select some one thing out of every kind of seed: we surely know how great is the size of a grain of wheat, and we measure its bulk pretty much by its capacity. But if we wish to see anything corporeal within it, when it is split open we behold nothing but so much of white grain as the small capacity of the thinnest skin encloses. Behold, in this bodily span you have the whole of a grain of wheat.

Now then, give me bodily, within this same little grain, the swellings of sprouts, the greenness of blades, the stalks of straw, the bristling of ears, the smoothness of chaff, the richness of crops, and out of these the seeds of seeds to be multiplied without ceasing — all of which are stored in that little grain, laid up in causal secrets. So now either show all the things that come forth from seeds as present bodily within those same seeds, or else confess that the life of herbs too is incorporeal, and declare, if it please you, that the soul of man is corporeal and the life of a shrub is corporeal. But since no man of sound judgment can bear to say this, let us pass on to animate living things, which not only live but also feel.

There is, therefore, in a beast a corruptible body and a mortal soul, which neither precedes nor outlasts the life of the body. You see, then, that to the seminal life, which we found in herbs and shrubs, there is added in the body of the beast, through the soul's appetite, sense and motion — yet only in such a way that, if the body itself, in due proportion to the elements harmonizing analogically, is sound and strong, it may accord by a fitting obedience of motion with the nods of the soul. But how does it come about that the soul, by one and the same nod, moves a sound and an infirm limb differently? Behold, that man is strong with the vigor of his left hand, but has lost the use of his right by a stroke of humor, as is wont to happen: the hand, still cleaving to the rest of the body, even if not in the same vigor, remains in the same form, yet does not serve the nods of the soul.

What shall we say — has the soul, driven thence, locally departed? And whither has it gone, whither has it withdrawn from there? But perhaps it has betaken itself to the remaining part of itself: yet the soul already filled the whole body, and can anything be added to what is full without overflowing? So perhaps something of the soul must be breathed out, or belched forth, or in some manner discharged, on the ground that a body not whole cannot contain a soul not whole. These things, surely, must without doubt follow, if the soul is body. But since this can by no means happen, behold rather this: that the soul did not lose its power of commanding, but the hand lost its strength of serving.

For when, by some rush of blood, the harmony of the conspiring elements is disturbed, the body's capacity for serving is taken away, and a difficulty of ruling befalls the mind, and that which had been of use begins to be a burden. Yet the soul did not lose its power of moving; rather, the limb did not fittingly offer itself to the necessary motion. And in anyone deprived of his eyes, so far as concerns the soul, the power of seeing bodily things through the body remains, but the organic members are wanting through which it might put forth its powers to perceive corporeal things. Just as, then, it is clearly evident by manifest reason that the soul is not locally driven from a feeble limb, but that the limb, growing numb with weakness, as though by a certain nearness to death, is parted from the soul's living intention:

so, when the body of any animal has fallen apart through its own discord, with the elemental particles returning to their own regions, the soul, having nothing whereby to unfold its intentions, in the case of a beast perishes, while the human soul rests — yet only from those motions by which it moved the body through places, moved without place yet through time. Let not now certain little bodies, as it were, present themselves to the eyes of the mind, so that we should believe souls, when bodies are laid aside, to occupy certain spaces of air or of any element. Understand your own understanding, if you can — to which alone, with the angel, it has been granted to see these things. Do you see anything in your understanding that is long, broad, or high?

Does the splendor of any bodily light glow red there? Does any measured melody, flowing through time, sound therein? Or does the sweetness of an evanescent fragrance breathe forth, or does anything there taste of body, or does anything soft or hard touch it locally? Its sight grows bright with prudence, grows dark with folly. Its hearing is offended by falsehood, soothed by truth. Without place, equity is fragrant to it, iniquity stinks; it wastes away with vanity, it grows fat with virtue. It is wretched in fellowship with foolishness, blessed in the embrace of wisdom. It is therefore wholly eye, because it wholly sees, and it sees the whole of what it beholds; but any body whatever is neither wholly seen nor wholly sees.

It is wholly hearing, because the whole of what it hears it wholly hears; but the body hears nothing wholly. And it wholly smells, tastes, and touches, since such unity and power cannot be in a body. But this belongs to it by its own nature for this reason: that there to see is the same as to hear, to hear the same as to smell, to smell the same as to taste, to taste the same as to touch. But there meet the soul the phantasms of bodies, by which, being affected through the senses of the body, it is circumscribed not by places but by deceptions; and because it remembers only those things whose appearances it received through the body, it believes that whatever has not been such is nothing, nor can it sigh for that fatherland from which it has been deservedly cast down into this pilgrimage, since it does not know that it is in pilgrimage.

But it cannot know that it is a pilgrim in the body, if it believes itself to be body; whence that man, to whom his own substance was no longer hidden, said: 'While we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord; but we are confident, and have a good will rather to be pilgrims from the body and to be present with the Lord.' What, I ask, can be said more clearly? All bodies — whether dense or heavy, as is water or earth, or thin and light, as is fire and air, or those that are formed out of these by seminal combination — are without doubt included under the name of body. But whatever is a body of whatever kind may be called a lighter body, a thinner body, a more nimble body, a more sublime body, a clearer body — yet it cannot be called anything but body.

But the apostle, who says, 'While we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord,' seems to me that he would by no means say the soul to be a pilgrim in the body, if he reckoned the soul to be that very body. For if the soul is a body and is a pilgrim in the body, then it is a pilgrim in its own substance, and that which cannot exist apart from itself could never not be a pilgrim. But no thing in any way loses its own self, because nothing can exist after itself. For it is easier for something to be utterly abolished so as to be nothing at all, than for it both to lose itself and yet survive to itself. Either, therefore, the soul is a body and the apostle was deceived, or, if it is a pilgrim in the body, the soul is not a body. XXII. A QUESTION RAISED AS TO HOW THE SOUL IS A PILGRIM IN THE BODY.