論人的本性 第 1 章 第 3/9 段

If, then, souls come into being through mutual generation, they come into being by way of providence and are corruptible, just like the other things that come into being through the succession of their kind;

but if they are brought forth out of what does not exist, then what comes into being is a creation, and the saying of Moses is not true—namely, that "God rested from all His works."

Therefore souls do not now come into being.

For the saying "My Father is working" seems even to him to be spoken not of creating but of exercising providence.

Apollinaris, on the other hand, holds that souls are begotten from souls, just as bodies are begotten from bodies;

for he says that the soul proceeds by succession from the first man into all those descended from him, just like the bodily succession;

and that souls are neither held in store nor created now.

For those who say these things, he claims, make God an accomplice with adulterers;

for from these unions too children are begotten;

and he says it would be false that "God rested from all His works which He had begun to do," if He were even now still fashioning souls.

But—if it has been shown that all things begotten by succession through mutual generation are mortal

(for it is on this very account that a thing begets and is begotten: that the kind of corruptible things may persist),

then this man too is necessarily compelled either to say that the soul which comes into being through mutual generation is mortal, or else to deny that souls are begotten from one another by succession.

As for the case of those begotten of adultery, we leave it to the reasoning of providence, which is unknown to us.

But if one must indeed venture a conjecture even about providence, it surely knows that the one being born will prove useful either to life or to itself, and on this account permits the ensouling to take place.

And we take as sufficient proof of this Solomon, who was born of Uriah's wife and of David.

Next let us examine also the opinion which the Manichaeans hold concerning the soul.

For they say that it is immortal and incorporeal, but that there is only one single soul of all things, which is fragmented and cut up into the individual bodies, both inanimate and animate;

and that some things share in it to a greater degree, others to a lesser;

animate things to a greater degree, inanimate things to a lesser, and the heavenly bodies to a much greater degree;

so that the individual souls are parts of the universal soul.

And if indeed they had said that this soul is divided indivisibly—as the voice is in those who hear it—the evil would be moderate;

but as it is, they say that the very substance of the soul is parcelled out;

and, the hardest of all to accept, they will have it that the soul properly resides in the elements, and is divided up along with them in the coming-into-being of bodies, and again gathers back into one when the bodies are dissolved—like water that is parted and again brought together and mingled; and that the pure souls pass into the light, being themselves light, while those defiled by matter pass into the elements, and again from the elements into the plants and the animals.

And thus, while cutting up its substance, declaring it corporeal, and subjecting it to passions, they nonetheless call it immortal.

For they say that the defiled souls run back up to the elements and are commingled with one another, and that they are again punished in the transmigrations of souls, being united according to the magnitude of their sins and again separated according to their individual subsistence.

For they say that shadows too are separated when there is light, but are united when cloudiness comes on;

which is impossible to happen in the case of an intelligible nature.

For shadows belong to sensible things, even if one were to grant that they are separated and again united.

Plato, for his part, declares that souls are both one and many;

for he says that there is one soul of the universe, but that there are also others belonging to the parts, so that in one sense the whole is ensouled by the soul of the universe, while in another sense, again, the several parts are ensouled each by its own soul.

And he says that the soul of the universe extends from the centre of the earth to the bounds of heaven—asserting that it is extended not in a spatial sense but in an intelligible one;

and that this is the soul which carries the universe round in spherical fashion, and holds together and binds fast the corporeal frame of the world.

For it was shown in what preceded that bodies stand in need of that which holds them together;

and it is the form-giving soul that does this.

For each of the things that exist lives its own proper life and perishes by its own proper destruction.

For so long as the body is held together and bound fast, it is said to exist;

but when it is dissolved, it is said to perish.

And all things live, but not all things are animals.

For they distinguish plants from inanimate things by their growing and being nourished—that is, by the nutritive and vegetative faculty;

and the irrational animals from the plants by sense-perception;

and the rational creatures from the irrational by reason.

And thus, while saying that all things live, they distinguish the nature of each.

They say, then, that even the wholly inanimate things possess a cohesive kind of life, in respect of which they are held together by the soul of the universe, merely so as to exist and not be dissolved.

And this soul, they say, is the one that governs the universe and sends forth the particular souls—those previously brought into being by the Creator; that is to say, the Creator Himself, who has also given it laws by which it must direct this universe (laws which he also calls destiny), and who supplies it with power sufficient to administer us.

These matters have also been treated in the discussions concerning destiny.

In general, then, all the Greeks who have declared the soul to be immortal lay down as doctrine the transmigration of souls;

but they differ concerning the kinds of souls.

For some say that there is one kind, the rational, and that this passes even into plants and into the bodies of irrational animals—some holding that it does so at certain fixed periodic intervals of time, others that it does so at random.

Others say that there is not one kind of soul but two, the rational and the irrational.

And some say there are many—as many as there are kinds of animals.

It was especially the followers of Plato who became divided over this doctrine.

For when Plato had said that souls which are spirited, prone to anger, and rapacious are clothed afresh in the bodies of wolves and lions, while those that are occupied with licentiousness take on the bodies of asses and the like,

some understood the wolves and the lions and the asses in a literal sense;

but others judged that he had spoken figuratively, indicating dispositions of character by means of the animals.

For Cronius, in his work On Rebirth (for this is what he calls transmigration), holds that all souls are rational; and similarly Theodorus the Platonist, in his treatise that the soul is all the Forms; and likewise Porphyry.

But Iamblichus, taking the contrary view to these, says that for each species of animal there is a corresponding species of soul—that is, different kinds of soul.

At any rate, he wrote a single-volume treatise entitled to the effect that transmigrations do not occur from human beings into irrational animals, nor from irrational animals into human beings, but from animals into animals and from human beings into human beings.

And it seems to me that, on this account, he hit the mark well—not only with respect to Plato's opinion, but also with respect to the truth itself, as can be shown from many other considerations, but most of all from the following.

For none of the rational activities is found to appear in the irrational animals.

For there are in them neither arts nor learning nor deliberations nor virtues nor any other of the things belonging to discursive thought.

From which it is clear that they have no share in a rational soul.

For indeed it is absurd to call the irrational animals rational.

When infants are very young, only the irrational motion is present in them; yet we say that they possess a rational soul, since as they grow they manifest the rational activity.

But the irrational animal, which at no age displays the rational, would possess a rational soul to no purpose, since its rational faculty would be destined to remain entirely useless.

And indeed it is agreed by all in concord that nothing superfluous has been made by God.

And if this is so, then the rational soul would have been implanted in cattle and wild beasts to no purpose, since it could never display its own proper work.

And it would amount to a charge against the Giver, that He fitted a soul unsuited to the body—

for that would not be the work of a craftsman, nor of one who knows order or harmony.

But if someone were to say that the animals do indeed move rationally according to disposition, yet that their bodily structure is incapable of skilled action, confirming his argument by appeal to human beings—

namely, that if merely the fingers of the hands be removed, most of the arts are utterly lost—

yet the same absurdity still remains: that God did not fit a suitable soul to the body, but a superfluous, useless, and inoperative one, hindered throughout the whole of their lifetime from its proper activities; in addition to which they construct their argument from things uncertain and not agreed upon.

For whence does it follow that the animals move rationally according to disposition? It is therefore better to hold that a soul suited to each body has been fitted to it, and that the animals possess nothing more, by way of disposition, than the simplicity naturally evident in their works.

For each species of irrational animal moves according to its own proper impulse, toward the use and activity for which it was made from the beginning.

And for these ends it has also been given a bodily structure suited to them.

Yet the Creator has not left them altogether without aid, but has implanted in each a natural—not a rational—understanding.

In some he has even placed cunning, as a kind of image and shadow of art, mimicking reason, for these two purposes: both to avoid present plots and to guard against future ones, and to bind the whole creation together with itself, as has already been said.

That it does these things not rationally is clear from the fact that each animal of a given species does the same things in the same way, and does not vary its activities in the multitude of its kind—except in degree of more and less—but the whole species moves according to one single impulse.

For every hare contrives in the same way, and every wolf is cunning in the same way, and every ape imitates in the same way—which is not the case with man.

For the ways of human actions are countless.

For the rational element is something free and self-determining.

Hence there is not one and the same work for all human beings, as there is for each species of the irrational animals.

For these latter are moved by nature alone;

and the things that are by nature are alike in all.

But rational actions are different in different people, and are not necessarily the same in all.

And if they should say that the soul is sent down into such bodies as a punishment for sins previously committed in human life, they base their proof on subsequent considerations.

For why were rational souls implanted into the very first bodies of animals that came into being? For surely it cannot be because they had sinned while in human bodies, before they had ever come into a human body at all.

Galen, the admirable physician, also seems to subscribe to this opinion and to hold that for each species of animal there is a different species of soul as well.

For he says, right at the beginning of the first book of his treatise On the Usefulness of the Parts, as follows:

"And if this is so, the parts of animals will be many—some greater, some smaller, and some altogether incapable of being divided off into another species;

and all of them serve the use of the soul;

for the body is the soul's instrument, and for this reason the parts of animals differ greatly from one another—because their souls also differ."

And again, proceeding further in the same book, he adds this concerning the ape:

"And indeed, O most wise accuser, Nature might say to you: it was fitting that to a ridiculous animal a ridiculous bodily structure should be given for its soul."

Thus he knows that in bodies differing according to species there are different souls present.

And so much for these matters.

Now if we have demonstrated that the soul is neither a body, nor a harmony, nor a mixture, nor any other quality, it is clear from these considerations that the soul is some incorporeal substance.

For that it exists is agreed upon by all;

and that it is neither a body nor an accident makes it clear that it is an incorporeal substance, and not one of those things whose being is in another.

For such things both come into being and pass away apart from the destruction of the substrate;

but when the soul is separated, the body is utterly destroyed.

And by these same arguments it is possible to demonstrate that the soul is immortal.

For if it is neither a body—which was shown to be by nature dissoluble and corruptible—nor a quality, nor a quantity, nor any other of the things that perish, it is clear that it is immortal.

Now there are indeed many demonstrations of its immortality, both in Plato and in others;

but those are intricate and hard to understand, and scarcely intelligible even to those reared in those sciences.

For us, however, the teaching of the divine oracles suffices for the demonstration of its immortality, since it possesses its credibility from itself by virtue of being God-inspired;

but against those who do not accept the writings of the Christians, it suffices to demonstrate that the soul is none of the things that perish.

For if it is none of the things that perish, but is incorruptible, then it is also immortal; so that this point, being sufficiently established, may be passed over.

On the Union of Soul and Body. We must now inquire how the union of soul and lifeless body comes about;

and if man is composed not only of these, but also of intellect, as some have maintained, the matter becomes still more perplexing.

For all things that come together into the subsistence of a single substance are entirely united;

but all things that are united are altered and do not remain what they previously were, as will be shown in the case of the elements;

for once united, they have become something else.

How then does the body, once united with the soul, still remain a body? Or again, how does the soul—being incorporeal and substantial in its own right—become united with a body and become a part of the living being, while preserving its own substance unconfused and incorruptible? For of necessity either the soul and the body must be united, and both altered together and destroyed together, as the elements are;

or else they are not united—because of the absurdities mentioned above—but lie side by side, like dancers in a chorus or one pebble beside another; or else they are mixed, like wine and water.

But that the soul cannot lie merely juxtaposed to the body has been demonstrated in the treatise On the Soul.

For then only that part of the body which was adjacent to the soul would be ensouled, while the part not joined to it would be soulless;

besides the fact that things lying in juxtaposition cannot be called one—like, say, pieces of wood, or iron, or something of that sort.

And the mixture of wine and water, again, destroys both together, for the resulting blend is neither pure water nor pure wine—even though such a mixture comes about by juxtaposition, escaping the senses because of the fineness of the particles of the things mixed;

and this is clear from the fact that they can again be separated from one another.

For instance, an oiled sponge draws up the pure water, and so does papyrus.

But to separate by sensation things that are precisely united is altogether impossible.

But if it is neither united, nor juxtaposed, nor mixed, what is the reason for the living being's being called one? Plato, therefore, on account of this very difficulty, refuses to hold that the living being consists of soul and body;

but rather a soul making use of a body, and, as it were, clothed in the body.

But this account too has something perplexing.

For how can the soul be one together with its garment? For the tunic is not one with the person wearing it.

Ammonius, the teacher of Plotinus, resolved the question under inquiry in the following manner.

He said that the intelligibles have such a nature that they are both united with the things capable of receiving them—just as things destroyed together are—and yet, when united, they remain unconfused and incorruptible, like things lying side by side.

For in the case of bodies, union altogether produces an alteration of the things that come together, since they are changed into other bodies—as the elements are changed into compounds, and nourishment into blood, and blood into flesh and the remaining parts of the body;

but in the case of the intelligibles, union does indeed take place, yet alteration does not follow upon it.

For an intelligible reality is not by nature subject to alteration in its substance; rather, it either departs from existence or perishes into non-being, but it does not admit of change.

Yet they do not perish into non-being, for otherwise they would not be immortal.

And the soul, being life itself, if it were changed in the mixture, would have been altered and would no longer be life.

Does the soul, then, undergo alteration in the union?

This having been demonstrated—that intelligible things are unalterable in their substance—it necessarily follows that, even when united, they are not destroyed together with the things to which they are united.

And so the soul is indeed united to the body, and is united to it without confusion.

That it is united is shown by their mutual sympathy;

for the whole living being shares feeling with itself, as being one.

And that it remains unconfused is clear from this: that the soul, in a certain manner separating itself from the body in sleep and leaving it lying as though dead—merely exhaling the breath of life upon it so that it does not utterly perish—acts by itself in dreams, foretelling the future and drawing near to intelligible realities.

The same thing happens also whenever it considers by itself some one of the things that exist.

For then, too, it separates itself from the body as far as it can and comes to be by itself, so that it may thus apply itself to the things that are.

For being incorporeal, it has pervaded the body wholly, as do things that perish together with it, yet it remains incorruptible and unconfused, preserving its own unity, and transforming those things in which it comes to be according to its own life, while not being itself transformed by them.

For just as the sun by its presence changes the air into light, making it luminous, and the light is united to the air, being diffused throughout it together with it yet without confusion—in the same way the soul too, being united to the body, remains entirely unconfused, differing only in this respect: that the sun, being a body and circumscribed by place, is not present everywhere that its light is (just as neither is fire,

for fire too remains bound in the wood or in the wick as in a place);

but the soul, being incorporeal and not circumscribed by place, pervades the whole both of its own light and of the body, and there is no part illumined by it in which it is not present in its entirety.

For it is not held fast by the body, but it itself masters the body; nor is it in the body as in a vessel or a wineskin, but rather the body is in it.

For intelligible things, not being hindered by bodies but passing through, ranging across, and traversing every body, cannot be confined by any corporeal place.

For being intelligible, they are in intelligible 'places' as well: either in themselves or in the intelligible realities that lie above them—just as the soul is at one time in itself, when it reasons, and at another time in the intellect, when it exercises intellection.

So whenever it is said to be in a body, it is not said to be in the body as in a place, but as in a relation, and by way of presence, just as God is said to be in us.

For it is by relation, by an inclination and disposition toward something, that we say the soul is bound by the body—just as we say the lover is bound by the beloved: not bodily nor by location, but according to relation.

For being without magnitude, without bulk, and without parts, it is superior to circumscription by parts within a place.

For that which has no part—by what place can it be circumscribed? For place comes into being together with bulk.

For place is the limit of that which contains, in respect of which it contains what is contained.

"Is my soul, then, in Alexandria and in Rome and everywhere?" Once again the objector unwittingly speaks of place.

For "in Alexandria" and, in general, "in such-and-such a place" denotes place.

But it is not in a place at all; rather, it is in a relation.

For it has been shown that it cannot be encompassed by place.

So whenever an intelligible reality comes to be in relation to some place, or to some thing that is in a place, we say—more loosely—that it is 'there,' on account of its activity there, taking the place in lieu of the relation and the activity.

For though we ought to say "it is active there," we say "it is there."

But this account would apply still more purely, and most of all, to the union of the Word of God with man—a union in which, being united, He remained unconfused and uncircumscribed, not after the manner of the soul.

For the soul, belonging to things subject to multiplicity, seems in a way to share suffering with the body because of its affinity to it, and at times both to master and to be mastered;

but the Word of God, being Himself in no way altered by the communion concerning the body and the soul, nor partaking of their weakness, but rather imparting to them His own divinity, becomes one together with them, while remaining the one thing that He was even before the union;

this mode of mixture, or of union, is altogether more novel;

for He merely co-operates, neither perishing together with them nor being altered together with them, but rather causing them to increase while He Himself is in no way diminished by them, besides remaining unchangeable and unconfused, since He is purely without any share in alteration whatsoever.

A witness to these things is Porphyry, who set his own tongue in motion against Christ.

And strong are the testimonies of enemies given on our behalf, and ones that admit of no contradiction.

This Porphyry, then, in the second book of his Miscellaneous Inquiries, writes verbatim as follows:

"One must not, then, deny the possibility that some substance may be taken up to complete another substance, and be a part of that substance, while remaining according to its own nature even after completing the other substance—both having come to be one with the other and yet preserving its own unity, and, what is more, not being itself transformed, but transforming those things in which it comes to be, by its presence, into conformity with its own activity."

And he says these things concerning the union of soul and body.

But if this account is true in the case of the soul on account of its incorporeality, it is much more so in the case of the Word of God, who is incorporeal in a far more incomparable manner and in truth.

And this directly stops the mouths of those who attempt to bring accusation against the union of God with man.

For the majority of the Greeks make a mockery of this, asserting that it is impossible, incredible, and unfitting that the divine should associate with mortal nature by way of mixture and union;

but we, employing their own esteemed witnesses, divest ourselves of the charge.

It is said by some, and most of all by the Eunomians, that the Word of God is united to the body not according to substance but according to the powers of each.

For they say that it is not the substances that have been united or mixed, but that the powers of the body have been blended with the divine powers;

and by 'powers of the body'—of the organic body, of course—they mean, following Aristotle, the senses.

These, then, blended with the divine powers, brought about the union, according to them.

But no one, I think, would concede to them, when they declare the senses to be corporeal powers.

For it has been clearly distinguished in what precedes which things are proper to the body, which to the soul, and which to the two together;

and among the things proper to the two together we placed the senses that operate through organs.

And these very things we call the organs (instruments) of the body.

It is therefore better, as has been said before, that the union of the substances should come about without confusion, according to the proper nature of incorporeal things, the more divine nature being in no way harmed by the inferior one;

rather, the inferior is only benefited by the more divine.

For the purely incorporeal nature passes unimpeded through all things, yet nothing passes through it;

so that by passing through all things it is united with them,

while by nothing passing through it, it remains unmixed and unconfused.

The manner of the union, then, is not by good pleasure (consent), as some of the renowned men suppose, but nature is the cause.

For one might reasonably say that the assuming of a body came about by good pleasure;

but that what is united should not be confounded, in accordance with the proper nature of God, does not come about by good pleasure.

For the grades of souls and the ascents and descents which Origen introduces, being in no way fitting to the divine Scriptures nor in harmony with the doctrines of the Christians, must be set aside.

On the body. Every body is a compound of the four elements and has come to be from them;

and immediately the bodies of blooded animals are made from the four humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black;

while those of bloodless animals are made from the other humors and from that which in them is analogous to blood.

And a thing is said to be made "immediately" when it comes to be directly out of those very things.

So that the compound of the four elements is the four humors,

and the compound of the humors is the homoeomerous (uniform) parts, which are the parts of the body.

They liken black bile to earth,

and yellow bile to fire.

Every compound of elements is either solid, or liquid, or breath (spirit).

Aristotle holds that the bodies of animals are made immediately from blood alone;

for from this all the parts of the animal are both immediately nourished and grow;

and the seed too has its origin from blood.

But since it did not seem right to him that the hardest bones and the softest flesh and fat should come to be from this alone, Hippocrates was the first to be of the view that the bodies of animals are immediately compounded from the four humors;

so that from the more earthy and coarser humors the more solid parts come to be, and from the softer ones the soft parts.

The four humors are often found in the blood, as one may see in bloodlettings, at one time the serous phlegm abounding in it, at another the black or yellow bile;

whence the men (Aristotle and Hippocrates) seem in a way to agree with one another.

Now of the parts in animals some are homoeomerous (uniform), others anhomoeomerous (non-uniform);

homoeomerous, for instance, are the brain, the meninges, nerve, marrow, bone, tooth, cartilage, glands, ligament, membranes, fibers, hairs, nails, flesh, veins, arteries, ducts, fat, skin, and as it were the immediate elements of these—blood insofar as it is pure blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile.

For the tendon is composite, made of ligament and nerve-like fibers.

Thorax, hands, feet, and the other members of man (are anhomoeomerous).

For a head is not divided into a head, as a nerve is divided into nerve, a vein into vein, and flesh into flesh;

but every anhomoeomerous part is composed of homoeomerous ones, as the head is composed of nerves and flesh and bones and the like;

and these they also call organic (instrumental).

And the definition of homoeomerous parts is this:

those whose portions are similar both to the whole and to one another;

and "similar" here must be taken in the sense of "the same."

Not every animal possesses all the parts of the body;

for some are footless, like fishes and serpents;

others are headless, like crabs and crayfish and some of the swimming creatures;

for they have their sense-organs in the chest, because they have no head;

others are deprived of a lung, namely all those that do not breathe the air;

others have no bladder, like birds and all creatures that do not pass urine;

and the shell-covered creatures are deprived of most of the members;

for in these the being of an animal is present only in a small degree.

And some seem not to have a part, even though they do have it;

as deer seem not to have yellow bile, since they have it scattered and unseen throughout the intestines.

But man has all the parts, and complete ones, and has everything well, in such a way that it could not be otherwise.

And so too in respect of the position of the parts there is great variety among animals.

For some have their breasts on the chest;

and some have two, others four, and others more.

For nature has more or less proportioned the number of breasts to the number of offspring.

But if anyone wishes to examine these matters precisely, let him read Aristotle's History of Animals.

For it does not belong to the present treatise to treat these things exactly, but rather to set them forth as mere sketches and outlines.

Let us then proceed to the discussion of the elements, which is the next subject our argument requires.

On the Elements. The cosmic element is the smallest part of the composition of bodies.

There are four elements—earth, water, air, fire—arranged in the said order from the lower to the higher; and these too are bodies, being first and simple in relation to all other bodies.

For every element is of the same kind as the things of which it is the element.

For a first principle is not of the same kind as the things derived from it,

whereas an element is in every respect of the same kind.

Now that the elements are earth and water, air and fire, is clear.

For in these the qualities appear in their extreme form, both potentially and actually.

Yet none of these perceptible elements is pure and unmixed with another element;

for all of them have been adulterated somewhat in a gentle way, and they share in one another to a greater or lesser degree.