Collected Works 10

THE BOOK OF QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE, ON THE SOUL. ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. Whether the soul be a substance, and whether corporeal, and whether it have a shape; that the soul and the spirit are one thing; that the soul and the mind are not to be separated; whether there be, and where be, what is called the 'ruling faculty' (hegemonicon); concerning the five bodily senses; that the philosophers and heretics distinguish between things of sense and things of intellect. That intellect is always present in the soul. Of the other natural properties of the soul. Whence the soul is, against the heretics who bring it down from the heavens. Against the argument of Plato, that he calls what we learn 'recollections.' On the contempt of the soul, against those who introduce it into the body after birth. Against the Platonic dogma, that the living do not come to be from the dead.

Against the opinions of Pythagoras and Empedocles concerning metempsychosis and transmigration of bodies (metensomatosis). Against the opinion of the heretics Simon and Carpocrates. On the sex of the soul and of the flesh, that they are formed together in the womb, upon this subject. On the age of the flesh and the soul. On foods, in what way they seem to pertain to the soul. That almost no soul is without a demon. In what sense the flesh is called sinful. On the good and evil of the soul. On death. On sleep, as pertaining to the treatise on death. And on the soul of Hermotimus. On Hermotimus. On dreams, how the soul experiences them, and whence they arise. On the power of death, and on the heretic Menander. That nothing of the soul remains in the body after death, as it seems to some. On the departure of the soul; on its reception; on the lower regions, and whether all souls are driven thither.

Whether souls tarry here after death, or come and go from the lower regions; whether meanwhile souls suffer anything among the dead. I. Having engaged Hermogenes solely on the question of the soul's origin, inasmuch as he presumed that this too consisted rather from the supply of matter than from the breath of God, now, turning to the remaining questions, I shall appear for the most part destined to do battle with the philosophers. Even in the prison of Socrates the state of the soul was skirmished over; I know not now whether this was first or at a fitting time for the master, though it matters nothing as to place. For what could the soul of Socrates then savour clearly, when the sacred ship had now returned, when the hemlock of condemnation had now been drained, when death was now present—surely thrown into some agitation according to nature, or driven distraught, if not according to nature?

For however placid and tranquil that soul was—which neither the weeping of a wife soon to be widowed nor the sight of children thereafter to be orphaned had bent by the law of natural affection—yet even in this it was moved: namely, in order not to be moved; that very constancy was shaken in its stand against the shock of inconstancy. But what else would any man unjustly condemned savour, save the solace of his wrong—much less a philosopher, that creature of glory, for whom a wrong is not to be consoled but rather to be insulted? Finally, after the sentence, to his wife who met him and cried out in womanly fashion, 'You have been unjustly condemned, Socrates!' he had already replied, as though from gratitude:

'But did you wish me justly condemned?' At which one need not marvel, if even in prison, eager to break the birdlimed palms of Anytus and Meletus, he asserts before death itself the immortality of the soul by a presumption necessary for the frustration of the wrong. So entirely had all that wisdom of Socrates then come from a studied composure of mind, not from the confidence of a truth ascertained. For to whom is truth ascertained without God? To whom is God known without Christ? To whom is Christ explored without the Holy Spirit? To whom is the Holy Spirit imparted without the sacrament of faith?

To be sure, Socrates could the more easily be driven by an alien spirit, since they say a demon clung to him from boyhood—truly a most wicked tutor, even though among the poets and philosophers demons are reckoned after the gods and along with the gods. For the proofs of Christian power had not yet gone forth, which alone exposes that most pernicious force, never good but rather the artificer of all error and the enticer away from all truth. But if for this reason Socrates was the wisest of men according also to the verdict of the Pythian demon—who, forsooth, was doing business for his associate—how much worthier and more constant is the affirmation of Christian wisdom, to whose breath the whole force of demons yields?

This wisdom, from the school of heaven, is freer to deny the gods of the age—a wisdom which, bidding no cock to be paid to Aesculapius, would not play false, nor introducing new demons but expelling old ones, nor corrupting youth but shaping it with every good of modesty; and therefore, enduring the unjust sentence not of one city but of the whole world for the name of a truth so much the more hated as it is the fuller, so that it drinks in death not from a cup in a semblance of pleasantness, but drains it from the gibbet and the burning alive through every device of cruelty; meanwhile in this darker prison of the age, among its own Cebes-figures and its own Phaedo-figures, if anything is to be examined concerning the soul, it will direct itself to the rules of God, certain that there is no better demonstrator of the soul than its Author.

Let it learn from God what it has from God, or else from none, if not from God. For who shall reveal what God has veiled? From whom is it to be sought? And whence it is also safest to remain in ignorance. It is better through God to be ignorant, because He has not revealed it, than through man to know, because he himself has presumed. II. Plainly we shall not deny that the philosophers have sometimes thought in accord with us; the very outcome of truth is itself a testimony. Sometimes even in a storm, when the traces of sky and sea are confounded, some harbour is stumbled upon by a fortunate error; sometimes even in the dark certain entrances and exits are lit upon by a blind good fortune; but also very many things are supplied by nature, as it were from a common sense with which God has deigned to endow the soul.

Philosophy, having got hold of this, has puffed it up to the glory of its own art, in its zeal—no wonder, if I put it so—for eloquence, being skilled to build up and pull down anything whatever, and persuading more by speaking than by teaching. It imposes forms upon things, now makes them equal, now strips them; it prejudges the uncertain from the certain; it appeals to examples, as though all things were to be compared; it lays down rules for everything, with properties differing even among like things; it reserves nothing for the divine liberty; it has made the laws of nature its own opinions. I could bear it, if it were itself natural, so that it might be proved, as a partaker of nature, to share in the condition of that partnership.

It has indeed seemed to itself to have drawn also from what they think to be sacred writings, because antiquity reckoned very many authors even as gods—much more as divine beings—such as the Egyptian Mercury, to whom Plato especially attached himself; such as the Phrygian Silenus, whose huge ears Midas received when he was brought to him by shepherds; such as Hermotimus, to whom the people of Clazomenae, when he had died, dedicated a temple; such as Orpheus, such as Musaeus, such as Pherecydes the teacher of Pythagoras.

But what if the philosophers have also fallen upon those writings which among us are condemned under the confession of being apocryphal—since we are certain that nothing is to be received which does not accord with the genuine prophetic furnishing, already brought forth in that very age—seeing that we should also remember the false prophets, and much earlier the apostate spirits, who by the cunning of wits of this kind too have equipped the whole face of the age?

Finally, even if it is credible that every investigator of wisdom has, out of the business of curiosity, approached the very prophets, nevertheless you would find more diversity among the philosophers than fellowship; since even in that fellowship their diversity is detected, inasmuch as whatever things are true and consonant with the prophets they either commend from another source or divert to another purpose, with the greatest injury to the truth, which they cause either to be assisted by falsehoods or to give patronage to them.

This, then, is what may set us and the philosophers at variance, especially in this subject: that sometimes they clothe common opinions in their own argumentations, in some places contrary to our rule; sometimes they fortify their own opinions with common argumentations, in some places agreeable to their rule—so that truth is well-nigh shut out from philosophy by the sorceries it works upon her;

and therefore, being under pressure from an adversary of truth by both these titles of fellowship, we are constrained both to free common opinions from the argumentations of the philosophers and to separate common argumentations from their opinions, by recalling the questions to the writings of God—excepting plainly those which, without the snare of any prejudice, it will be permissible to take up for simple testimony, since from rivals too a necessary testimony is sometimes had, if it does not profit the rivals. Nor am I ignorant how great a forest of this material there is among the philosophers, in proportion also to the number of their very commentators: how many varieties of opinion, how many wrestling-schools of theories, how many offshoots of questions, how many entanglements of solutions.

But I have also inspected medicine, the sister, as they say, of philosophy, which claims this business for itself as well. Why not? seeing that the study of the soul might seem to pertain more to it, through the care of the body. Hence too it very greatly opposes its sister, in that, by handling the soul as it were face to face in its own dwelling, it knows it the better. But let the ambition of each for pre-eminence look to it. Philosophy has had the liberty of genius, and medicine the necessity of its craft, for prolonging discussions about the soul: things uncertain are widely inquired into, things presumed are still more widely disputed.

As great as is the difficulty of proving, so great is the labour of persuading; so that with good reason that gloomy Heraclitus, observing the vaster mists among the examiners of the soul, out of weariness of the questions declared that he had by no means found the boundaries of the soul, though he traversed every road. But for the Christian few things are needful for the knowledge of this matter. For things certain always lie in few, and it is not permitted him to inquire further than what it is permitted to find; for the apostle forbids endless questions. Moreover, it is not permitted to find more than what is learned from God; and what is learned from God is the whole. III. And would that it had been necessary for no heresies to exist, that thereby the approved might shine forth.

We should experience nothing at all with the philosophers concerning the soul either—those patriarchs, so to speak, of the heretics—since by the apostle too, already then, philosophy was foreseen as a shattering of truth; for at Athens, having made trial of that garrulous city, when he had tasted all the hucksters of wisdom and eloquence there, he thence conceived that forewarning edict. For accordingly the doctrine of the soul too has been shattered by the philosophizing teachings of men who mix water with wine: some deny that the soul is immortal, others affirm it more than immortal, some dispute about its substance, others about its form, others about each of its dispositions;

these derive its condition from one source, those carry off its end to another quarter, according as either the prestige of Plato or the vigour of Zeno or the tenor of Aristotle or the stupor of Epicurus or the sorrow of Heraclitus or the frenzy of Empedocles has persuaded them. Divine doctrine has failed, I suppose, in rising from Judaea rather than from Greece. And Christ erred, forsooth, in sending fishermen rather than a sophist to the proclamation.

If therefore any things in this manner darken the bright and pure air of truth with the fumes of philosophy, these must be cleared away by Christians, who both strike at the original—that is, philosophical—argumentations and set against them the heavenly—that is, the Lord's—definitions, so that both those things by which the heathen are captured by philosophy may be destroyed, and those by which the faithful are shaken from heresy may be beaten back. One encounter having now been decided against Hermogenes, as we said before—because we vindicate the soul as being from the breath of God, not from matter—being fortified there too by the ineffaceable rule of the divine determination:

'and God,' it says, 'breathed the breath of life into the face of man, and man became a living soul'—assuredly from the breath of God; concerning this nothing more need be revolved; it has its own heading and its own heretic. From the rest I shall bring in a beginning here. IV. ON THE INNATE. After the definition of its origin, the question of its condition presents itself. For it follows that, having professed the soul to be from the breath of God, we should reckon a beginning to it. This Plato excludes, wishing the soul to be innate and uncreated. But we teach that it is both born and made, from the constitution of its beginning. Nor shall we straightway err in saying both, because, namely, one thing is 'born' and another 'made'—the latter belonging as it were to inanimate things, the former to animate.

But distinctions, by having their own places and times, sometimes also have interchanges of passivity. So it admits that 'making' be put also for 'to be,' since everything that in any way receives being is generated. For even the maker himself can be called the parent of what is made; so too Plato uses the term. Therefore, as far as concerns our faith in the soul as made or born, the philosopher's opinion has been driven off, by the authority of prophecy also. V. Let them summon some Eubulus and Critolaus and Xenocrates, and in this place Plato's friend Aristotle. Perhaps they will be built up rather toward taking away the corporeality of the soul, if they do not, on the contrary, look at others—and indeed more of them—who vindicate a body for the soul.

Nor do I speak only of those who fashion it out of manifest corporeal elements—as Hipparchus and Heraclitus out of fire, as Hippo and Thales out of water, as Empedocles and Critias out of blood, as Epicurus out of atoms (if atoms too press corporeal masses together from their coming together), as Critolaus and his Peripatetics out of some fifth substance I know not what (if that too is body, because it encloses bodies)—but I adduce even the Stoics, who, by preaching a spirit, will readily persuade us that the soul, well-nigh with us, since breath and spirit are close to each other, is nonetheless a body. Finally Zeno, defining the soul as a spirit sown in, sets it out in this way. That, he says, on whose departure the animal dies is a body;

but on the departure of the in-sown spirit the animal dies; therefore the in-sown spirit is a body; therefore the soul is a body. Cleanthes too holds that the likeness to parents in their children answers not only in the lineaments of the body but also in the marks of the soul—in the mirror, that is, of manners and dispositions and affections; and that the soul takes on both likeness and unlikeness of body, and that the soul therefore is a body, being liable to likeness or unlikeness. Likewise that the passions of corporeal and incorporeal things do not communicate with one another;

moreover, that the soul suffers with the body, grieving together with it when it is injured by blows, wounds, ulcers; and the body with the soul, sickening together with it when it is afflicted by care, anguish, love, through the diminution of a shared vigour, whose shame and dread it attests by blushing and pallor. Therefore the soul is a body, from the communion of corporeal passions. But Chrysippus too extends his hand to it, laying down that corporeal things cannot be left behind at all by incorporeal, since they are not even touched by them (whence also Lucretius: 'for nothing can touch or be touched save body'); but that the body, when left behind by the soul, is affected by death. Therefore the soul is a body, which, unless corporeal, would not leave behind the body. VI. These things the Platonists confound with subtlety rather than truth.

'Every body,' they say, 'must be either animate or inanimate. And if indeed it is inanimate, it will be moved from without; but if animate, from within. Now the soul will neither be moved from without, as being not inanimate, nor from within, as being itself rather that which moves the body. And so it does not appear to be a body, since it is not moved by the form of corporeal things from some quarter.' To this we shall marvel first at the incongruity of the definition, which appeals to things that do not apply to the soul. For the soul cannot be called an animate or inanimate body, since it is itself that which either makes a body animate, if it is present, or inanimate, if it is absent from it. And so what makes cannot be the thing itself, so as to be called animate or inanimate.

For the soul is named by the name of its own substance. (3.) But if it does not admit of being called an animate or inanimate body—that is, the soul—how shall it be summoned to the form of animate and inanimate bodies? Next, if it belongs to a body to be moved from without by something—but we have shown above that the soul too is moved by another, when it prophesies, when it raves, certainly from without, since by another—rightly shall I recognize as a body that which will be moved from without by another according to the proposition of the example. But indeed, if to be moved by another belongs to a body, how much more to move another? Now the soul moves the body, and its efforts appear outwardly, without.

For it is by the soul that the feet are driven into walking, the hands into contact, the eyes into gazing, the tongue into utterance—as it were by a signet-like motion agitating the surface from within. Whence this incorporeal force of the soul? Whence for an empty thing to propel solid things? But how do the corporeal and intellectual senses appear divided in man? They say that the qualities of corporeal things—as of earth, as of fire—are reported to the corporeal senses, as to touch, as to sight; but that incorporeal qualities are met by the intellectual senses, as of kindness, as of malice. Therefore it is established that the soul is incorporeal, whose qualities are apprehended not by the corporeal but by the intellectual senses. Plainly so, if I do not exclude this step of the definition.

For behold, I show that incorporeal things too are subjected to the corporeal senses—sound to hearing, colour to sight, odour to smell—by whose example the soul too approaches the body, lest you say that these are reported through the corporeal senses for the reason that they approach corporeal things. Therefore, if it is established that incorporeal things too are apprehended by corporeal things, why should not the soul also, which is corporeal, be reported by incorporeal things? Assuredly let the definition be excluded. Among the more notable argumentations there will also be this: that they judge every body to be nourished by corporeal things, but the soul, as incorporeal, by incorporeal things—namely by the pursuits of wisdom.

But not even this step will stand, when Soranus too, that most accomplished author of methodic medicine, replies that the soul is nourished by corporeal things as well—indeed that when failing from lack of food it is for the most part propped up thereby. Why not? seeing that, this being taken away, it slips wholly out of the body. So Soranus himself too, having most fully treated of the soul in four volumes, and having tried out all the opinions of the philosophers, vindicates a corporeal substance for the soul, even though he defrauded it of immortality. For it is not for all to believe what belongs to Christians. As therefore Soranus himself shows by facts that the soul is nourished by corporeal things, let the philosopher likewise exhibit it as fed by incorporeal things.

But no one ever poured honeyed water from the eloquence of Plato into a soul hesitating about its departure, or crammed in crumbs from the minute talk of Aristotle. And what will so many and so great souls of savages and barbarians do, to whom the nourishments of wisdom are lacking, and yet who, untaught, are strong in prudence, and who—without academies and Attic porticoes and the prison of Socrates, in short, fasting from philosophy—nonetheless live? For the nourishments of studies profit not the substance itself, but the discipline, because they do not make the soul fatter, but more adorned. But it is well too that the Stoics affirm the arts to be corporeal. So even thus the soul is corporeal, if it is believed to be nourished by the arts too.

But the excessive strain of philosophy is often wont not even to look out for what lies before its feet (so Thales into the well), and is wont, from not understanding its own opinions, to suspect a corruption of health (so Chrysippus turning to hellebore). Some such thing, I suppose, befell it when it denied that two bodies could be in one, being alienated from the observation and reconsideration of pregnant women, who bear not single bodies daily, but even two and three within the compass of one womb. There is found even in Greek civil law a certain woman who brought forth five, the mother of all her sons at once, the multiple parent of a single birth, the numerous mother of a single womb, who, packed with so many bodies—I might almost say a whole people—was herself the sixth body.

The whole condition of things will bear witness that bodies destined to proceed from bodies are already there whence they proceed. That which is from another must needs be a second thing. But nothing is from another, unless, while it is being begotten, there are two. VII. As far as concerns the philosophers, let these things suffice, since as far as concerns our own people they are more than enough; to whom the corporeality of the soul will shine forth in the Gospel itself. In the lower regions the soul of a certain man grieves and is punished in the flame and is tortured in the tongue, and from the finger of a happier soul implores the solace of dew. Do you deem that a mere image—that end of the rejoicing poor man and the mourning rich man? And why is the name of Eleazar there, if the matter is not in truth? But even if it is to be believed an image, it will be a testimony of truth.

For if the soul had no body, the image of the soul could not contain the image of a body, nor would Scripture speak falsely of bodily members, if there were none. But what is that which is carried down to the lower regions after its separation from the body, which is held fast there, which is reserved for the day of judgement, to which Christ also descended by dying (I suppose, to the souls of the patriarchs), if the soul is nothing beneath the earth? For it would be nothing, if it were not a body; since incorporeality is exempt from every kind of keeping, immune both from punishment and from comfort. For that by which one is punished or comforted must be a body; and I shall treat of this more fully and more fittingly.

Therefore, if the soul in the prison or lodging of the lower world enjoys beforehand any torment or solace, in fire or in Abraham's bosom, the corporeality of the soul will be proved. For that which is incorporeal suffers nothing, having nothing through which it can suffer; or if it has, that will be a body. For inasmuch as everything corporeal is capable of suffering, to that extent whatever is capable of suffering is corporeal. VIII. It is, moreover, abrupt and absurd to exclude anything from the reckoning of corporeal things merely because it does not correspond to the other examples of corporeal things. And where then are the distinct properties peculiar to each, by which the magnificence of the Author is marked out in the very diversity of His works, so that they are as separate as they are alike, as friendly as they are also rivals?

Indeed, the philosophers themselves declare that the universe is composed of contraries, according to the friendship and enmity of Empedocles. So then, even though corporeal things stand over against incorporeal, they too differ so among themselves that the difference enlarges their species without changing their genus, so that they remain corporeal, thus manifold in the glory of God while varied, thus varied while diverse, thus diverse while to some belongs one sense of qualities, to others another, while to some belong these foods, to others those, while some are invisible, others visible, while some are heavy, others light. For they say that on this very ground the soul must be pronounced incorporeal, because when it has departed the bodies of the dead become heavier, whereas they ought to be lighter, once the weight of one body has been removed, if the soul were a body.

"For what," says Soranus, "if they should deny that the sea is a body, because out of the sea a ship is rendered motionless and heavy?" How much stronger, then, is the body of the soul, which afterwards carries about with the lightest mobility a body of such great weight! But even though the soul is invisible, it is so both according to the condition of its body, and the property of its substance, and also according to the nature of those to whom it has been allotted to be invisible. Owls do not know the sun with their eyes; eagles so bear it that they judge the nobility of their offspring by the boldness of their pupils; otherwise they will not rear as degenerate the one whom the ray of the sun has turned away. Thus a thing is invisible to one and not to another, which is not on that account incorporeal, because its power does not prevail equally over all. For the sun is a body, since it is fire;

but that which the eagle acknowledges, the owl denies, yet without prejudice to the eagle. In the same degree also the body of the soul is invisible to the flesh, but perhaps visible to the spirit itself. Thus John, made to be in the Spirit of God, beheld the souls of the martyrs. IX. ON ITS SHAPE. Since we assert that the soul has a body of its own quality and of its own kind, this very condition of its property will already prejudge, concerning the other accidents of corporeity, either that these are present, which we have shown to be a body—but themselves of their own kind, according to the property of the body—or that even if they are not present, it belongs to its property that there should not be present in the body of the soul what is present in other bodies.

And yet we shall profess, not inconsistently, that all the more solemn attributes, and those in every way owed to corporeity, belong to the soul also: such as habit, such as limit, and that threefold dimension, I mean length and breadth and height, by which the philosophers measure bodies. What now, that we also ascribe a shape to the soul, though Plato is unwilling, as though the immortality of the soul were thereby endangered? For he asserts that everything shaped is composite and structured; and everything composite and structured is dissoluble;

but the soul is immortal, therefore indissoluble, inasmuch as it is immortal, and unshaped, inasmuch as it is indissoluble; but on the other hand composite and structured, if it is shaped—as though shaping it in another manner by intellectual forms, beautiful through justice and the disciplines of philosophy, but deformed through the contrary arts. But we inscribe upon it bodily outlines as well, not only from confidence in its corporeity by estimation, but also from the constancy of grace by revelation. For since we acknowledge spiritual gifts, after John we too have merited to attain to prophecy. There is today among us a sister who has been allotted the charismata of revelations, which she experiences in church during the Lord's solemnities through ecstasy in the Spirit;

she converses with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and she sees and hears mysteries, and discerns the hearts of some, and receives remedies for those who desire them. Now, according as the Scriptures are read, or psalms are sung, or addresses are delivered, or petitions are offered, so from thence are materials supplied for her visions. It happened that we were discoursing about something concerning the soul, when that sister was in the Spirit.

After the solemnities were over and the congregation dismissed, as she is accustomed to report to us what she has seen (for these things are also most diligently examined, that they may be tested), she said, "Among other things, a soul was shown to me in bodily form, and a spirit was seen, but not of an empty and void quality, rather one that even promised to be grasped, tender and shining and of an aerial colour, and in form altogether human." This was the vision. And God is witness, and the Apostle a competent surety of the charismata that were to be in the church; then too, if the matter itself shall have persuaded you concerning particulars, you may believe. For if the soul is a body, without doubt, among those things which we professed above, likewise the property of colour will belong to every body. What other colour, then, will you reckon for the soul than one aerial and shining?

Not that air is its very substance—although this seemed so to Aenesidemus and to Anaximenes, and, I suppose, according to some, to Heraclitus—nor that light is, although this pleased Heraclides of Pontus. For neither is the substance of thunder-stones fiery merely because they gleam with a ruddy glow, nor is the material of beryls watery merely because they ripple with a strained brightness (for how many other things does colour associate that nature dissociates!). But because everything fine and translucent is a rival of air, this the soul will be, inasmuch as breath and spirit are its offshoot, since indeed by the very fineness of its subtlety it is endangered as regards the certainty of its corporeity.

So conceive also of its shape, now from your own perception, that no shape is to be assigned to the human soul except the human, and indeed that of the very body which each one has carried about. Let the contemplation of our origin lead us to understand this for the present. For recall that, when God had breathed the breath of life into man's face, and man had become a living soul, the whole man indeed—straightway through the face that breath was transmitted into the inward parts and diffused throughout all the spaces of the body, and at the same time, condensed by the divine inbreathing, it was expressed in every inner line which, being condensed, it had filled, and, as it were, congealed into a shape. Hence, therefore, both the corporeity of the soul was made solid by the condensation, and its shape formed by the impression.

This will be the inner man, another the outer, twofold yet one, that inner one also having its own eyes and ears, by which the people ought to have heard and seen the Lord, having also the other members, by which it both makes use of them in thoughts and functions in dreams. Thus the rich man in the lower world has a tongue, and the poor man a finger, and there is Abraham's bosom. By these outlines the souls of the martyrs also beneath the altar are understood. For from the beginning the soul, formed together and configured with the body in Adam, made it, as of its whole substance, so also the seed of this condition. X. ON THE SIMPLICITY OF THE SUBSTANCE, AND THAT IT IS ITSELF ALSO SPIRIT. It pertains to the state of faith to determine the soul to be simple, according to Plato—that is, uniform—only, however, with respect to the name of substance.

Let the arts and disciplines look to it, let the shapes also look to it. For some wish that another natural substance, the spirit, is inherent in it, as though it were one thing to live, which comes from the soul, and another to breathe, which is done by the spirit. For not all animals have both; for most only live, but do not also breathe, in that they do not have the organs of the spirit, lungs and arteries. But what sort of thing is it, in the examination of the human soul, to look to the arguments of the gnat and the ant, when God the Craftsman has tempered the vital functions proper to all animals according to the disposition of each kind, so that no conjecture is to be seized from thence?

For neither will man, if he is constructed with lungs and arteries, breathe from one source and live from another on that account, nor will the ant, if it lacks members of this kind, on that account be denied to breathe, as though it were merely living. But to whom has it been so open to inspect the works of God, that he might presume these to be lacking to anything? That Herophilus, physician or butcher, who dissected six hundred bodies to scrutinize nature, who hated man in order to know him—I do not know whether he clearly explored all his internal parts, since death itself altered what had been alive, and by a death not simple, but itself erring amid the artifices of dissection. The philosophers have assuredly declared that gnats and ants and moths lack lungs and arteries. Tell me, most curious inspector, do they have eyes for seeing?

And yet they go where they wish, and avoid and seek out what they know by seeing: designate the eyes, mark out the pupils. But moths also gnaw: point out the mandibles, produce the molars. But gnats also make a shrill sound, not blind even in the darkness of hearing: show likewise the trumpet and the lance of that mouth of theirs. Whatever animal, though of a single point in size, must necessarily be nourished by something: exhibit the members for transmitting, digesting, and voiding the food. What then shall we say? If life is sustained through these, these will surely be present in all things that live, even if they are not seen, even if they are not apprehended, because of their smallness. This you would believe the more, if you would recall that God is as great a Craftsman in the least things as in the greatest.

But if you do not think that God's genius can be contained in such minute little bodies, in this way too acknowledge His magnificence, in that He has instructed small animals to live nonetheless without the necessary members, with sight preserved even without eyes, and eating without little teeth, and digestion without bowels; just as certain creatures even move without feet by a flowing impulse, as snakes, and by a rising effort, as worms, and by a foaming creep, as slugs. So then, why do you not think that breathing too takes place without the bellows of lungs and without the pipes of arteries, so that you should embrace as a great argument the notion that spirit is added to the human soul on this ground: that there are things which lack spirit, and that they lack spirit for this reason, that they are not constructed with breathing organs?

Do you think that something lives without spirit, yet do not think it breathes without lungs? What is it, I ask you, to breathe? To drive breath out of oneself, I suppose. What is it to live? Not to drive breath out of oneself, I suppose. For this I shall have to answer, if to breathe is not the same as to live. But it will belong to the dead not to drive breath: therefore it belongs to the living to drive breath. But it belongs also to the one breathing to drive breath: therefore to breathe also belongs to the living. If either could have run its course without the soul, breathing would not have belonged to the soul, but only being moist. But in fact to live is to breathe, and to breathe is to live. Therefore this whole thing, both to breathe and to live, belongs to that to which living also belongs, that is, to the soul. Finally, if you separate the spirit by nature, separate also its operations:

let both act separately in a divided way, the soul apart, the spirit apart; let the soul live without the spirit, let the spirit breathe without the soul; let one abandon bodies, let the other remain, let death and life come together. For if soul and spirit are two, they can be divided, so that by their division—one departing, the other abiding—a concurrence of death and life may occur. But it will by no means occur; therefore they will not be two which cannot be divided, though they could be divided if they had existed as two. "But it is permissible for two things also to be combined." But they will not be combined, if to live is one thing and to breathe another: their operations distinguish the substances.

And how much more firm is it now that you should believe them one, since you allow no distance between them, so that the soul itself is spirit, since to breathe belongs to the very same to which living also belongs? For what, if you should wish that day be reckoned one thing, and light another, which is added to the day, when the day itself is light? Plainly there will be also other kinds of light, as from the service of fires. For there will be also other species of spirit, as from God, as from the devil. So, when soul and spirit are treated of, the soul itself will be spirit, just as the day itself is light. For that very thing is something, through which something is.

XI. But that I should call the soul spirit, the reasoning of the present question compels me, because breathing is ascribed to another substance. While we claim this for the soul, which we acknowledge to be uniform and simple, we must under a certain condition call it spirit, not by the name of a state, but of an act, nor under the title of substance, but of an operation, because it breathes, not because it is properly a spirit. For to blow is also to breathe. So the soul, which we defend as breath by its property, we now pronounce spirit out of necessity; but against Hermogenes, who contends that it is from matter, not from the breath of God, we defend it as breath properly. For he, against the very faith of Scripture, turns breath into spirit, so that—since it is incredible that the Spirit of God should come into transgression and presently into judgement—the soul may rather be believed to be from matter than from the Spirit of God.

For this reason we, both there defend it as breath, not spirit, according to Scripture and according to the distinction of the spirit, and here pronounce it spirit, however reluctantly, according to the community of breathing and blowing. There the question is about substance; for breathing is an act of substance.

Nor need I say more about this, except on account of the heretics, who cram into the soul some spiritual seed, conferred from the hidden bounty of the mother Sophia without the Maker's knowledge, whereas Scripture, more conscious of its own Maker God, has promulgated nothing further than that God breathed into man's face the breath of life, and man was made into a living soul, through which he thereafter both lives and breathes—the difference of spirit and soul being sufficiently declared in the following writings, God Himself pronouncing: "The spirit went forth from Me, and every breath I made." For the soul also is breath made from spirit. And again: "Who gave breath to the people upon the earth, and spirit to those who tread it."

For first the soul, that is, breath, to the people walking on the earth, that is, acting carnally in the flesh; afterwards the spirit to those who tread the earth, that is, who subdue the works of the flesh, because the Apostle also says that not first is that which is spiritual, but that which is animal, afterwards the spiritual. For even though Adam straightway prophesied that great mystery concerning Christ and the church: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh"—he underwent an accession of the spirit: for an ecstasy fell upon him, the power of the Holy Spirit that works prophecy. For an evil spirit too is an accidental thing.

Finally, just as the Spirit of God afterwards turned Saul into another man, that is, into a prophet, when it was said, "What is this to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?"—so also the evil spirit afterwards turned him into another man, namely into an apostate. Judas too, for some time reckoned among the elect even to the office of the money-bag, though already a defrauder, yet not yet a betrayer—afterwards the devil entered into him. Therefore, if neither the spirit of God nor of the devil is sown together with the soul from birth, it is established that the soul alone exists before the coming of either spirit; and if alone, then also simple and uniform in respect of the name of substance, and thus breathing from no other source than from the lot of its own substance. XII. ON THE MIND.

Accordingly, by the mind, or whether it is what the Greeks call nous, we understand nothing else than a faculty of the soul, inborn and implanted and proper by birth, whereby it acts, whereby it is wise, which, having it with itself out of itself, it moves with itself within itself; and so it seems to be moved by that faculty as by another substance—as those wish who even decree the mind to be the mover of the universe, that god of Socrates, that Only-begotten of Valentinus, from the father Bythos and the mother Sige. How confused is the opinion of Anaxagoras!

For having devised the mind as the beginning of all things, and hanging the pivot of the universe upon its axle, and affirming it to be pure and simple and unmixable, by this very title above all he sets it apart from any mixture with the soul, and yet elsewhere he declares the same to be the soul. This also Aristotle noted, though I do not know whether he was more ready to fill up his own views than to empty out those of others. Finally, he too, while deferring the definition of the mind, meanwhile pronounced there to be another kind of mind, that divine one, which again, showing it to be impassible, he too took away and removed from fellowship with the soul.

For since it is established that the soul is capable of suffering those things which it has been allotted to suffer, either it will suffer through the mind and with the mind, if it is combined with the mind—then the mind cannot be introduced as impassible—or if the soul suffers neither through the mind nor with the mind, it will not be combined with it, with which and to which it suffers nothing. Furthermore, if the soul suffers nothing through it and with it, then it will neither perceive nor be wise nor be moved through it, as they wish. For Aristotle too makes the senses passions. Why not? For to perceive is also to suffer, because to suffer is to perceive. Likewise to be wise is to perceive, and to be moved is to perceive. Thus the whole is to suffer. But we see the soul experiencing none of these things but that it is reckoned also to the mind, because through it and with it the thing is transacted.

Now therefore the mind is both mixable, against Anaxagoras, and passible, against Aristotle. But if a distinction is admitted, so that in substance the mind and the soul are two things, to the one will belong passion and sensation and all discernment and act and motion, but to the other leisure and rest and torpor and no cause at all—and either the mind will be idle or the soul. But if it is established that all these things are attributed to both, then both will be one, and Democritus will prevail, removing the difference; and it will be asked how both are one—whether from the confusion of two substances, or from the disposition of one. But we say that the mind is so combined with the soul, not as another in substance, but as an office of the substance. XIII.

In addition to this, it remains to consider where the principality lies, that is, what presides over what; so that the one whose principality shall have appeared may be the mass of the substance, but that over which the mass of the substance presides may be reckoned into the natural office of the substance. Indeed, who will not grant to the soul the whole sum, by whose name the mention of the whole man has been entitled? "How many souls do I feed," says the rich man—he does not say "minds"; and the pilot wishes the souls saved, not the minds; and the peasant at his work and the soldier in battle affirms that he stakes his soul, not his mind. Whose perils or vows are more renowned, the mind's or the soul's? And what are the dying said to be doing—their mind or their soul?

Finally, the philosophers themselves and the physicians themselves, however much they are also going to dispute about the mind, nevertheless each one has inscribed the very face of his work and the forehead of his subject-matter as "On the Soul." And that you may learn also from God, God always addresses the soul, He calls upon and summons the soul, that it may turn its mind to Him. It is the soul that Christ came to save; it is the soul He threatens to destroy in Gehenna; it is the soul He forbids to be valued too highly; it is the soul that He, the good Shepherd, also lays down for His sheep. You have the principality of the soul; you have in it also the union of substance, of which understand that the mind is the instrument, not the patron. XIV. Otherwise it is singular and simple and wholly of its own, no more built up from another source than divisible from itself, because it is not even dissoluble.

For if it is built up and dissoluble, it is already not immortal. And so, because it is not mortal, it is neither dissoluble nor divisible. For to be divided is to be dissolved, and to be dissolved is to die. But it is divided into parts—now into two by Plato, now into three by Zeno, now into five by Aristotle, and into six by Panaetius, into seven by Soranus, even into eight in Chrysippus, even into nine in Apollophanes, but also into twelve among certain of the Stoics, and into two more than that in Posidonius, who, beginning from two titles—the principal, which they call hegemonikon, and the rational, which they call logikon—thence carried it on to seventeen; thus one set of species after another divide the soul.

But things of this kind will be held to be not so much parts of the soul as powers and faculties and operations, just as Aristotle also judged concerning certain of them. For they are not members of the animal substance, but capacities: such as the motive, the active, the cogitative, and whatever they distinguish in this manner, as also those five most well-known senses themselves—sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. And although they have assigned to all these certain dwelling-places, individually, in the body, not on that account will this distribution of the soul pertain to sections of the soul, since not even the body itself is so divided into members as those wish the soul to be. On the contrary, from a multitude of members one body is produced, so that this very division is rather a combination.

Behold the most prodigious munificence of Archimedes—I mean the hydraulic organ—so many members, so many parts, so many joints, so many passages for voices, so many contrivances of sounds, so many combinations of modes, so many ranks of pipes, and yet all will be one mass. So too the spirit, which there pants from the pressure of water, will not on that account be separated into parts because it is administered through parts—solid indeed in substance, but divided in operation. This example is not far from Strato and Aenesidemus and Heraclitus; for they too maintain the unity of the soul, which, diffused throughout the whole body and everywhere itself, like breath in a pipe through hollow passages, thus flashes forth through the organs of sense in various ways, not so much cut up as dispensed.

By what titles all these are to be named, and by what divisions arising from itself they are to be held, and by what measurements in the body they are set apart, the physicians together with the philosophers will rather consider; for us a few things will suffice. XV. ON THE RULING PART. First of all, whether there is some highest vital and sapiential degree in the soul, which they call hegemonikon, that is, the principal—because, if it be denied, the whole state of the soul is imperilled. Finally, those who deny the principal have first reckoned the soul itself to be nothing. A certain Messenian, Dicaearchus, and among the physicians Andreas and Asclepiades, thus took away the principal, while they wish the senses to be in the mind itself, to which the principal is vindicated.

Asclepiades is also carried along by that argument, that most animals, when those parts of the body in which the principal is thought chiefly to reside have been removed, still both live to some extent and are wise nonetheless—as flies and wasps and locusts, if you cut off their heads; as goats and tortoises and eels, if you remove their hearts. And therefore, he says, there is no principal, since, if there had been one, once it was lost along with its seats, the vigour of the soul would not persist.

But more philosophers also stand against Dicaearchus—Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle—and more physicians against Andreas and Asclepiades—Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself—and now more than all of them the Christians, who by God's teaching are led concerning both points, that there is a principal in the soul, and that it is consecrated in a certain recess of the body. For if we read that God is the searcher and inspector of the heart; if His prophet too is proved by discerning the secrets of the heart; if God Himself, considering the heart, forestalls it in the people: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?"; if David also:

"Create in me a clean heart, O God"; and Paul says that with the heart one believes unto righteousness; and John says that each one is reproached by his own heart; if finally he who shall have looked upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart—then both things become clear at once: both that there is a principal in the soul, which the divine intention addresses, that is, the sapiential and vital power (for that which is wise is alive), and that it is held in that treasure-house of the body upon which God looks. So that you should think that this principal is neither agitated from without, according to Heraclitus; nor fanned throughout the whole body, according to Moschion; nor enclosed in the head, according to Plato; nor rather presiding in the crown, according to Xenocrates; nor lodged in the brain, according to Hippocrates; but not either around the base of the brain, as Herophilus holds, nor in the little membranes, as Strato and Erasistratus, nor in the middle of the eyebrows, as Strato the Physicist, nor in the whole cuirass of the breast, as Epicurus; but where both the Egyptians declared, and those who seemed to be commentators on things divine, as also that verse of Orpheus or Empedocles:

"for the blood around the heart in man is his perception." Protagoras too, Apollodorus too, and Chrysippus think these things—so that, refuted even by these, Asclepiades may go seek his goats that bleat without a heart, and drive off his flies that flit about without a head; and let all now know that they themselves rather live without heart and brain who have prejudged the disposition of the human soul from the condition of beasts. XVI. There is also that which pertains to faith, that Plato divides the soul in two ways, into rational and irrational. To which definition we too indeed give our applause, but not so that both should be reckoned to nature. For the rational is to be believed natural, which is inborn in the soul from the beginning, namely from a rational Author.

For what is not rational, which God produced even by His command, much less that which He specifically sent forth by His own inbreathing? But the irrational is to be understood as later, as that which came about from the serpent's instigation—that very admission of transgression—and thereafter grew ingrained and grew up together in the soul after the likeness now of naturalness, because it befell straightway in the first beginning of nature. But since the same Plato calls the rational alone natural, as in the soul of God Himself, if we too ascribe the irrational to nature, which our soul obtained from God, the irrational will equally be of God, inasmuch as it is natural, because God is the Author of nature. But in fact the injection of fault is from the devil, and every fault is irrational;

therefore the irrational is from the devil, from whom fault also comes, being foreign to God, from whom the irrational is alien. Accordingly, the diversity of fault in these things arises from the distinction of their authors. Accordingly, when Plato, setting apart the rational for God alone, subdivides two kinds from the irrational—the irascible, which they call thymikon, and the concupiscible, which they call epithymetikon—so that the former indeed is common to us and to lions, but the latter to us and to flies, while the rational, moreover, is common with God: I see that I must reconsider concerning this too, on account of those things which are found in Christ. For behold, this whole triad exists also in the Lord:

There is also the rational faculty, by which He teaches, by which He discourses, by which He lays out the ways of salvation; and the faculty of indignation, by which He inveighs against the scribes and Pharisees; and the faculty of desire, by which He longs to eat the Passover with His disciples. Therefore among us indignation and desire are not always to be reckoned as springing from the irrational, since we are certain that in the Lord they ran their course rationally. God will be indignant rationally, that is, with those with whom He ought; and God will desire rationally, that is, the things worthy of Himself. For He is indignant at evil and desires the good, namely salvation. The Apostle too grants us desire: 'If any man desires the office of a bishop, he desires a good work'; and in calling it a good work he shows the desire to be rational. He also concedes indignation.

And why not, since he himself took it up? 'Would that they were even cut off,' he says, 'who unsettle you.' Rational too is that indignation which arises from zeal for discipline. But when he says, 'We too were once by nature children of wrath,' he brands the irrational sort of indignation, as being not of that nature which is from God, but of that which the devil introduced—he too being called a lord of his own order: 'You cannot serve two masters'; and he too surnamed a father: 'You are of your father the devil.' Do not be afraid to ascribe to him too a property of another nature, a later and adulterous one, since you read of him as the over-sower of wild oats and the nocturnal corrupter of the crop of grain. XVII. ON THE FIVE SENSES.

There touches upon us also that question of the five senses, which we learn in our first schooling, since from this too the heretics contrive something. There is sight and hearing and smell and taste and touch. The trustworthiness of these the Academics condemn rather harshly; and according to some, so did Heraclitus and Diocles and Empedocles, and certainly Plato in the Timaeus, when he pronounces the faculty of sensation irrational and entangled with mere opinion. And so falsehood is charged against sight, because it asserts that oars in water are bent or broken, contrary to the true knowledge of their soundness; because it persuades us that a square tower at a distance is round; because it slanders a perfectly even portico as narrower at its far end; because it joins the sky, suspended at so great a height, to the sea.

Likewise hearing is accused of deception, as when we take a rumbling for something heavenly and it is a cart; or when, while a thunderstorm threatens, we believe for certain that the sound comes from a cart. So too smell and taste are impeached, seeing that the same perfumes and the same wines are depreciated by later use. So too touch is reproached, seeing that the same pavements are believed rougher to the hands, smoother to the feet; and in the baths the same pool of warm water is reported as scalding at first, then as most temperate. 'To such a degree,' they say, 'are we thus deceived even by the senses, while we change our verdicts.' The Stoics more moderately do not burden every sense, nor at all times, with the charge of lying. The Epicureans more consistently defend a truthfulness equal in all and perpetual, but by another road.

For it is not the sense that lies, they say, but the opinion. For the sense undergoes an impression, it does not form an opinion; it is the soul that forms opinion. They have thus cut off both opinion from sense and sense from soul. But whence comes opinion, if not from sense? In short, unless sight had perceived the tower as round, there would be no opinion of roundness. And whence comes sense, if not from the soul? In short, a body lacking soul will lack sense also. Thus sense is from the soul, and opinion from sense, and the soul is the whole. But it will be far better proposed that there is assuredly something which causes anything to be reported by the senses otherwise than it is in reality. Now if that which is not in reality can be reported, why should it not likewise be possible for something to be reported through that which is not in the senses, but in those causes which intervene under their own name?

And so it will be allowed to review these causes. For that an oar should appear bent or broken in water, the water is the cause; for outside the water the oar is whole to the sight. And the softness of that substance from which a mirror is formed out of light—according as it is struck or moved—thus, by quivering the image, distorts the straight line. Likewise, that the appearance of a tower should deceive, the condition of distance forces it into the open; for the uniformity of the surrounding air, clothing the angles with equal light, obliterates the lines. So too the even shape of a portico is sharpened at its end, while the line of vision, crowded together in the confined space, is there attenuated, even as it is extended. So too the sky is united to the sea where the vision is used up—which, so long as it is strong, keeps them divided. But what else deceives hearing than the resemblance of sounds?

And if afterwards the perfume breathes less, and the wine tastes less, and the pool is less hot, in almost all cases the first force is the whole. As for the rough and the smooth, it is with reason that the hands and feet disagree—the one being tender members, the other calloused. Therefore in this way no deception of the senses will be without a cause. But if causes deceive the senses, and opinions through the senses, then falsehood is to be placed neither in the senses, which follow the causes, nor in the opinions, which are guided by the senses that follow the causes. Those who are mad see one thing for another, as Orestes saw his mother in his sister, and Ajax saw Ulysses in the herd, and Athamas and Agave saw beasts in their children. Will you charge this falsehood upon the eyes, or upon the furies? Those who are jaundiced by an overflow of bile find all things bitter.

Will you then charge the sin upon taste, or upon the state of health? All the senses, therefore, are overthrown or circumvented only for a time, so that they are free from the intrinsic property of deceit. Nay, not even to the causes themselves is the reproach of deceit to be ascribed. For if these things happen by reason, reason does not deserve to be branded as deceitful. What ought to happen in this way is no lie. And so, if even the causes themselves are freed from disgrace, how much more the senses, before which the causes now freely go, since from this very fact truth and trustworthiness and integrity are especially to be vindicated for the senses—namely that they report nothing otherwise than as that reason has dictated which brings it about that anything is reported by the senses otherwise than it is in reality! What are you doing, most impudent Academy?

You overthrow the whole condition of life, you disturb the entire order of nature, you blind the very providence of God, who has set over all His works, to be understood, inhabited, administered, and enjoyed, deceitful and lying masters—the senses! Is not the whole created order ministered to us by these? Is it not through these that the second furnishing was added to the world—so many arts, so many talents, so many pursuits, occupations, offices, dealings, remedies, counsels, comforts, ways of living, culture, adornment—all of which have seasoned the whole savor of life, while through these senses alone of all creatures man is discerned to be a rational animal, capable of intelligence and knowledge, and of the Academy itself?

But indeed Plato, lest he should set any seal of testimony upon the senses, for that reason in the Phaedrus, in the person of Socrates, denies that he is able to know himself, as the Delphic inscription admonishes; and in the Theaetetus he takes from himself the power to know and to perceive; and in the Phaedrus he postpones the verdict of truth till after death—a posthumous verdict, that is—and yet, not yet dead, he was philosophizing.

It is not lawful, it is not lawful for us to call these senses into doubt, lest their trustworthiness should also be debated in the case of Christ, lest perchance it be said that He falsely beheld Satan cast down from heaven, or falsely heard the Father's voice testifying concerning Him, or was deceived when He touched Peter's mother-in-law; or that He perceived afterwards a different scent of the ointment which He accepted for His burial, or a different taste of the wine which He consecrated in memory of His own blood. For in this way even Marcion preferred to believe Him a phantom, disdaining in Him the truth of an entire body. And yet not even in His apostles was His nature made a mockery;

trustworthy was both the sight and the hearing on the mount; trustworthy also the taste of that wine, though it was water before, at the wedding in Galilee; trustworthy also the touch thereafter of the once-doubting Thomas. Recite John's attestation: 'That which we have seen,' he says, 'that which we have heard, we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.' False indeed would be the testimony, if the senses of eyes and ears and hands lie by nature. XVIII. ON THINGS INTELLIGIBLE. I turn to the topic of the intelligibles, seeing how Plato, having attained their knowledge before death, has commended to the heretics that recognition of them as separate from things corporeal. For he says in the Phaedo: 'What then as regards the very possession of wisdom?

Will the body be a hindrance, or not, if one takes it along as a partner in the inquiry? Something of this kind I mean: have sight and hearing any truth for men? Or do not even the poets forever murmur to us that we hear nothing certain nor see anything certain?' He had in mind, of course, also Epicharmus the comic poet: 'The mind sees, the mind hears; the rest are deaf and blind.'

Therefore he says again that he most excels in wisdom who is wise chiefly by the mind, neither setting before himself vision nor drawing to his soul any sense of that kind, but using the pure mind itself in reflection, so as to grasp each pure reality—especially if he has departed from eyes and ears and, so to speak, from the whole body, as disturbing it and not allowing the soul to possess truth and wisdom whenever it associates with it. We see, then, that against the corporeal senses another equipment is held out as far more suitable—namely the powers of the soul, working out the intelligence of that truth whose objects are not present, nor lie beneath the corporeal senses, but are far absent from common awareness, in the secret and in the higher regions, and with God Himself.

For Plato holds that there exist certain substances, invisible, incorporeal, supramundane, divine and eternal, which he calls Ideas, that is, forms, patterns, and causes of these natural things which are manifest and subject to the corporeal senses; and that those Ideas are the truths, while these are their images. Do the heretical seeds of the Gnostics and Valentinians not already shine forth here?

For from this they seize upon the distinction between the corporeal senses and the intellectual powers, which they even fit to the parable of the ten virgins: so that the five foolish ones figured the corporeal senses—foolish, that is, because easily deceived—while the wise ones expressed the mark of the intellectual powers—wise, that is, because they attain to that hidden and heavenly truth, established with the Pleroma, the mysteries of the heretical Ideas; for such are their aeons and genealogies. And so they divide sense itself, assigning the intellectual things to their spiritual seed, but the sensible things to the animal—because the animal in no way grasps the spiritual;