論人的受造 第 1 章 第 2/7 段

But the perfect bodily life is seen in the rational nature—I mean the human—which is nourished, perceives, partakes of reason, and is governed by mind.

And the division of our subject by reason might be made by us somewhat as follows:

Of existing things, one part is altogether intelligible, the other corporeal.

But let us now set aside the subdivision of the intelligible into its proper kinds;

of the corporeal, one part is wholly without share in life, while the other partakes of vital activity.

Again, of the living body, one part lives together with sensation, while the other has no share in sensation.

Then the sensitive is again divided into rational and irrational.

And so in this way he introduces the genesis of the beings that are governed by sensation.

And since, according to this same sequence, among the things that have received life through the flesh the sensitive ones are able to exist by themselves even apart from the intellectual nature, whereas the rational could not otherwise come to be in a body unless it were blended with the sensitive,

for this reason man was fashioned last, after the plants and the cattle, since nature was advancing by a certain ordered path toward perfection.

For he is nourished according to the natural (vegetative) form of the soul;

and to the augmentative power the sensitive was joined, holding by its own nature a middle place between the intellectual and the more material substance,

being as much grosser than the latter as it is purer than the former.

Then there comes about a certain kinship and commingling of the intellectual substance with the subtle and luminous element of the sensitive nature, so that man has his constitution in these three;

even as we have learned this very thing from the Apostle, where he says to the Ephesians, praying for them that the complete grace of body, of soul, and of spirit might be preserved at the coming of the Lord—calling the body the nutritive part, indicating the sensitive by the soul, and the intellectual by the spirit.

In like manner the Lord also, in the Gospel, instructs the scribe to set before every commandment the love toward God, which is wrought out of the whole heart and soul and mind.

For here too the text seems to me to interpret the same distinction, calling the more bodily condition the heart, the soul the intermediate, and the mind the higher nature—the intellectual and creative power. Hence the Apostle too knows of three differences of disposition: he names the one carnal, which is occupied with the belly and the pleasures connected with it;

the other psychical (animate), which stands midway between virtue and vice, being raised above the latter, yet not purely partaking of the former;

and the third spiritual, which beholds the perfection of life lived according to God.

And in another place, making a certain comparison of the intermediate with the perfect, he says:

"The natural (psychical) man receives not the things of the Spirit;

but the spiritual man judges all things, while he himself is judged of no one." As, then, the psychical man has risen above the carnal, so by the same analogy the spiritual man stands above the latter.

If, then, Scripture says that man was made last, after every living creature, the lawgiver is doing nothing else than philosophizing to us concerning the soul, beholding the perfect among the last by a certain necessary consequence of order.

For in the rational the other parts also are comprehended;

and in the sensitive the natural (vegetative) form is altogether present.

But that latter is observed only in connection with the material.

Rightly, therefore, as if by steps—I mean the properties of life—nature makes its ascent from the lower to the perfect.

Since, then, man is a rational living being, the instrument of his body had to be fashioned in a manner suitable to the use of reason (speech).

Just as one may see musicians practicing their music in accordance with the kind of instrument, neither playing the flute on lyres nor strumming the strings on flutes;

in the same way the construction of the organs had to be suited to reason (speech), so that, being shaped by the vocal parts, it might fittingly resound for the use of words.

For even if one could enumerate countless uses in life for which these well-contrived and versatile instruments, the hands, are serviceable in every art and every activity—for one who handles deftly the affairs of war and of peace—

yet above all the rest it was especially for the sake of reason (speech) that nature added them to the body.

For if man had been without hands, the parts of his face would certainly have been arranged, like those of the quadrupeds, to suit the need of feeding—so that the shape would be elongated, tapering toward the nostrils, and the lips of the mouth would project, being callous, firm, and thick, well fitted for cropping the grass; and a different tongue would lie among the teeth,

some such tongue—fleshy, resistant, and rough—working together with the teeth on whatever comes under the tooth;

or else moist and spread out along the sides, such as is that of dogs and of the other carnivores, flowing in between the gaps of their jagged teeth.

If, then, the hands had not been present to the body, how could articulate speech have been impressed upon it, when the structure of the parts of the mouth was not shaped to suit the need of utterance? So that man would necessarily either bleat outright, or bray, or bark, or neigh, or cry like oxen or asses, or emit some beast-like bellowing.

But as it is, since the hand has been set in the body, the mouth is at leisure for the service of reason (speech).

Thus the hands have shown themselves to be proper to the rational nature, the Maker having through them devised facility for reason (speech).

That the form of man was fashioned as an instrument for the use of reason (speech).

Since, then, our Maker has bestowed upon our formation a certain godlike grace, implanting in the image the likenesses of His own good things;

For this reason He gave the remaining good things to human nature out of His bountiful liberality.

But of mind and understanding it cannot properly be said that He gave them, but rather that He imparted them, bestowing upon the image the proper adornment of His own nature.

Now since the mind is something intellectual and incorporeal, its grace would have remained incommunicable and unmingled, were its motion not made manifest by some contrivance.

For this cause it stood in need of this instrumental apparatus, so that—touching the vocal organs after the manner of a plectrum—it might, by the particular shaping of the sounds, interpret the inward motion.

And just as a man skilled in music, if through some affliction he should have no voice of his own, yet wishing to make his knowledge manifest, might make melody with the voices of others, publishing his art by means of flutes or the lyre,

even so the human mind, being the discoverer of all manner of thoughts, since it cannot show the impulses of its reasoning to the soul (which perceives through the bodily senses) except thus, like a skilled performer lays hold of these living instruments and, through the sound produced in them, makes manifest its hidden thoughts.

The music about the human instrument is a kind of blend of flute and lyre, as though in a single concord both sounded together in unison with one another.

For the breath, driven up through the windpipe from the vessels that receive the air, whenever the impulse of the speaker tenses that part for utterance, striking against the inward projections that encircle this flute-like passage, in some way imitates the sound made by the flute, being whirled round in a circle by the membranous ridges.

The palate receives the sound from below in the hollow at its place, by means of the twin channels that reach to the nostrils; and, splitting the voice as it were upon the scale-like projections of the cartilages about the sieve-bone, it renders the sound more resonant.

The cheek, the tongue, and the whole arrangement about the throat—whereby the chin is relaxed and hollowed, or tensed and raised to a higher pitch—

all these mimic, in varied and manifold ways, the motion of the plectrum upon the strings, adjusting the tones to the need at the right moment with great swiftness.

The opening and closing of the lips does the same thing as those who with their fingers stop the breath of the flute and produce the harmony of the melody.

That the mind operates by means of the senses.

Thus, then, since the mind, by means of this instrumental construction within us, makes music of speech, we have become rational beings—though we should not, I think, have had the gift of reason, had we provided to the lips, for the body's need, the heavy and laborious service of taking in food.

But as it is, the hands, having taken over such service to themselves, have left the mouth free and well-suited for the ministry of speech.

The one is for the production of sound, the other for the reception of thoughts from without; and the one function is not mixed up with the other, but each abides at the activity to which it was appointed by nature, not interfering with its neighbor—neither does the hearing speak, nor the voice hear.

For the one is always pouring something forth, while the hearing, continually receiving, is never filled, as Solomon says somewhere: "The ear is not satisfied with hearing."

And this seems to me to be one of the things in us most worthy to be marveled at.

Whither flows together all that is poured in through the hearing? Who are the recorders of the words introduced into it? What are the receptacles of the thoughts deposited in the hearing? And how is it that, when many and varied things are thrown in one upon another, no confusion or error arises from the successive lodging of what is stored within? One might marvel equally at the activity of the eyes.

For likewise through these too the mind lays hold of the things outside the body, and draws to itself the images of what appears, inscribing within itself the characters of visible things.

And just as if there were some spacious city receiving from its various entrances those who throng to it, who do not all converge upon one and the same spot within the city, but some betake themselves to the marketplace, others to dwellings, others to the assemblies, or the broad streets, or the lanes, or the theatres, each moving off according to his own inclination—

such, in some way, do I behold the city of the mind also, settled within us, which the various entrances through the senses fill up.

And the mind, sifting and thoroughly examining each of the things that enter, deposits them in the places of knowledge that correspond to them.

And just as in the illustration of the city, it is often the case that some who are of the same race and kindred do not even come within the same gate, one running in by one entrance, another by another as it chances; yet nonetheless, once within the circuit of the wall, they are again together, being on familiar terms with one another—

and one may find the reverse also happening:

for those who are strangers and unknown to one another often use one and the same entrance into the city, yet the common entry does not join these to one another;

for even after coming within, they are able to be separated according to their kinship.

Such a thing do I behold also in the spaciousness of the mind.

For often a single piece of knowledge is gathered for us from different sense-organs, the same object being distributed in manifold ways to the senses.

And again, conversely, it is possible to learn many and varied things from some one of the senses, things in no way akin to one another in nature.

For instance (since it is better to make the argument clear by an example), let it be proposed that something be inquired concerning the property of flavors—what is pleasant to the sense, and what is to be shunned by those who taste.

Now there has been discovered through experience both the bitterness of gall and the agreeableness of the quality belonging to honey.

For one who has seen the honey, and heard its name, and taken it by taste, and recognized its scent through the sense of smell, and tested it by touch, has come to know the same object through each of the sense-organs.

And again, we are taught varied and manifold things through some single sense:

the hearing receiving sounds of every kind, and the apprehension through the eyes having an undifferentiated activity in the contemplation of things of diverse kinds.

For it falls alike upon white and upon black, and upon all things that stand opposed to one another in color.

So too the taste, so the smell, so the apprehension through touch—each implants the knowledge of all manner of things by means of its proper mode of apprehension.

That the nature of man is not to be contemplated (comprehended).

What then, according to its own nature, is the mind—which distributes itself among the sensory faculties, and through each fittingly takes up the knowledge of the things that are? For that it is something other than the senses, I do not think any thoughtful person would doubt.

that it is itself, and that nothing manifold is to be contemplated in that which is simple.

But as it is, since all things are compounded—touch being one thing, smell another, and the rest likewise standing toward one another without communion and unmingled—since the mind is present in equal and corresponding measure to each, one must by all means suppose it to be something other than the sensible nature, lest any manifoldness be mingled with that which is intelligible.

"Who has known the mind of the Lord?" says the Apostle.

But I, going beyond this, say: Who has comprehended his own mind? Let those who include the nature of God within the grasp of their own comprehension say whether they have comprehended themselves—whether they have come to know the nature of their own mind. Is it something manifold and much-compounded?

And how can the intelligible be in composition? Or what is the manner of the blending of things of diverse kinds? But it is simple and uncompounded;

and how then is it scattered into the manifoldness of the senses? How is the manifold in unity? How is the one in manifoldness? But I have found the solution of these perplexities by running back to the very voice of God:

"Let us make man," He says, "according to Our image and according to Our likeness." For the image, so long as it is lacking in none of the things conceived to belong to the archetype, is properly an image;

but in whatever respect it falls short of the likeness to the prototype, in that part it is not an image.

Therefore, since one of the things contemplated concerning the divine nature is the incomprehensibility of its essence,

it is of all necessity that in this respect also the image should have its imitation of the archetype.

For if the nature of the image were comprehended, while the prototype were beyond comprehension,

the contrariety of the things observed in it exposed the failure of the image.

But since the nature of our mind, which is according to the image of its Creator, eludes knowledge, in this very respect it bears an exact resemblance to the One who transcends it, since by its own incomprehensibility it represents the character of that incomprehensible Nature.

An inquiry into where the ruling faculty is to be located; with which is also included a physiological account concerning tears and laughter, and a certain natural speculation concerning the communion of matter, nature, and mind.

Let there be silence, then, from all the conjectural idle talk of those who shut up the intellectual activity within certain bodily parts; of whom some place the ruling faculty in the heart, while others say that the mind dwells in the brain, supporting such notions with certain superficial plausibilities.

For he who assigns the supremacy to the heart makes its central position in the body the evidence of his argument, since the heart seems somehow to occupy the middle region of the whole body, as though the movement that proceeds from deliberate choice were easily distributed from the center to the entire body, and so passed into action.

And he makes the sorrowful and the angry disposition of man a witness to his argument, because such passions seem somehow to stir this part into sympathetic motion.

But those who consecrate the brain to the reasoning faculty say that the head has been built up by nature as a kind of citadel of the whole body;

and that the mind dwells in it like a king, guarded round about by the senses as by messengers or armor-bearers.

And these too make a sign of such a supposition the fact that the reasoning of those whose meninges are injured is driven from its normal state, and that those whose heads are made heavy by drunkenness fall into ignorance of what is fitting.

Each of those who maintain these opinions also adds certain more physical causes for such a supposition concerning the ruling faculty.

For the one says that the motion arising from the understanding is akin to the fiery element, on the ground that both fire and the understanding are ever in motion;

and since it is agreed that heat has its source in the region of the heart,

saying that they are blended together, he declares that the heart is the receptacle of the intellectual nature, in which the heat is contained.

But the other says that the meninx (for so they name the membrane that encloses the brain) is, as it were, a foundation and root for all the sense-organs;

and by this they confirm their own argument, namely that the intellectual activity is seated nowhere else but in that part, to which also the ear is fitted, dashing against it the sounds that fall upon it.

And the sight, growing together at the base of the seat of the eyes, makes its impression inward by means of the images that fall upon the pupils.

And the qualities of vapors are discerned in it through the drawing-in of the smelling.

And the sense of taste is tested by the judgment of the meninx, since from close by it has intermingled certain sinewy outgrowths of its own, sensory in kind, by way of the cervical vertebrae onto the sieve-like passage among the muscles there.

For my part, I affirm it to be true that the reasoning part of the soul is often thrown into disorder when the passions prevail, and that the reasoning faculty is dulled in its natural activity by some bodily circumstance;

and that the heart is a kind of source of the fiery element in the body, being stirred along with the angry impulses.

And further, that the meninx is spread out beneath the sense-organs, according to the account of those who give such physiological explanations, enfolding the brain within itself and being moistened by the vapors that arise from there—hearing this from those who have devoted themselves to anatomical investigations, I do not reject what is said.

Yet I do not make this a proof that the incorporeal nature is enclosed within certain local boundaries.

For we have learned that delusions arise not from heaviness of the head alone, but the practitioners of medical science declare that, when the membranes lining the ribs are affected by disease, the reasoning faculty is likewise impaired, calling this affliction phrenitis, since these membranes bear the name phrenes.

And the sensation that, in grief, is referred to the heart is mistakenly supposed.

For it is not the heart, but the mouth of the stomach that is irritated, and out of inexperience they attribute the affliction to the heart.

And those who have examined the affections with accuracy say something of this kind: that since a collapse and closing of the passages naturally occurs throughout the whole body in conditions of grief, all that is hindered from being exhaled is forced together toward the deep-lying cavities;

whence also, when the organs of respiration are constricted by what surrounds them, the drawing-in of breath is often made more forcible by nature, which dilates the constricted part so as to expand what has collapsed.

Such labored breathing we make a symptom of grief, calling it a sigh and a sobbing lament.

But also that which seems to press upon the region about the heart is not a distress of the heart, but of the mouth of the stomach, arising from the same cause—I mean, that of the collapse of the passages—when the gall-bladder, under the constriction, pours out that bitter and biting humor into the mouth of the stomach.

A proof of this is that the complexion of those who grieve becomes sallow and jaundiced, since from the excessive constriction the gall scatters its own humor over the veins.

But also the affection that arises from the opposite condition—I mean that which accompanies cheerfulness and laughter—rather establishes the argument.

For just as there, through grief, the fine and imperceptible exhalations of the passages are closed, and, compressing the inner disposition of the inward parts, force the moist vapor up toward the head and the meninges, which vapor, being taken up in great quantity in the cavities of the brain, is thrust out through the passages at its base onto the eyes—the contraction of the brows drawing forth the moisture in drops (and the drop is called a tear);

[from the depth,] thence again it is thrust out by nature through the passage at the mouth, all the inward parts—and especially the liver, as they say—by a certain agitation and seething motion forcing out together this breath.

Whence nature, contriving a certain ease for the passage of the breath, widens the opening about the mouth, drawing apart the cheeks on either side of the panting breath.

And the name for what thus comes about is laughter.

Neither, therefore, on this account is the ruling faculty to be reckoned to the liver, nor, because of the seething of the blood about the heart in angry conditions, is the seat of the mind to be supposed to be in the heart; rather, these things are to be referred to the particular constitutions of bodies.

But the mind is to be considered as in equal honor in contact with each of the parts, according to the ineffable principle of its commingling.

And even if some bring forward the Scripture against this, as testifying the ruling faculty to the heart, we shall not receive the statement without examination.

For he who made mention of the heart also remembered the kidneys, saying:

"God who searches hearts and kidneys"; so that they must either confine the intellectual faculty to both, or to neither.

And though I have been taught that the intellectual activities are blunted, or even rendered wholly inactive, in a particular condition of the body, I do not make this a sufficient proof that the power of the mind is confined to some place, as though it were shut out from its proper space by the inflammations that arise in the parts.

For such an opinion is materialistic—that, when the vessel has been pre-occupied by some of the things put into it, nothing else can find room within it.

For the intellectual nature neither delights to dwell in the empty spaces of bodies, nor is thrust out by an excess of flesh.

But since the whole body has been fashioned like some musical instrument, just as it often happens with those who know how to make melody but are unable to display their skill, the uselessness of the instruments not admitting of the art (for whatever is destroyed by time, or shattered by a fall, or rendered useless by rust and mold, remains voiceless and inert, even if it be breathed into by one who seems to excel in the flute-player's art);

so also the mind, pervading the whole instrument and touching each of the parts in a manner suited to the intellectual activities, according to its nature, in those that are in a natural condition has worked its proper effect, but in those too weak to receive its skillful motion has remained ineffective and inert.

For the mind is so constituted that it is at home with that which is disposed according to nature, but becomes estranged from that which has deviated from this.

And it seems to me that there is in this regard a certain more natural speculation, through which it is possible to learn something of the more elegant doctrines.

For since the fairest of all things and the most surpassing Good is the Divine itself, toward which all things incline that have a longing for the beautiful, for this reason we say that the mind also, inasmuch as it has come to be according to the image of the Fairest, so long as it partakes of likeness to its Archetype, as far as is possible, itself also abides in the beautiful; but if somehow it should come to be outside of this, it is stripped of the beauty in which it was.

And just as we said that the mind is adorned by likeness to the primal beauty, being formed like some mirror by the impress of that which is reflected in it;

by the same analogy, we reckon that the nature which is administered by it also depends upon the mind, and is itself adorned by the beauty that lies beside it, becoming, as it were, a mirror of a mirror.

and that the material element of the substance, around which nature is contemplated, is held together and bound fast by it.

So long, then, as the one holds to the other, the communion of true beauty passes proportionally through all things, beautifying that which is adjacent by means of that which lies above it.

But when there occurs a tearing apart of this good cohesion, or rather when, conversely, the superior follows after the inferior,

then there comes about, through nature, a transmission of the deformity that belongs to matter, reaching even to the mind itself, so that the image of God is no longer beheld in the stamp of the formed creature.

For the mind, making the form of good things as it were a mirror at its back, casts out the reflections of the radiance of the good, and takes into itself the formlessness of matter;

and in this manner comes the genesis of evil, which subsists parasitically through the removal of the good.

Now everything is good which happens to be kindred to the primal Good;

but whatever comes to be outside of relation and likeness to this is altogether destitute of the good.

If, therefore, according to the account we have contemplated, the truly Good is one,

and the mind, by having come into being according to the image of the Good, itself also possesses the quality of being good,

while the nature held together by the mind is, as it were, an image of an image,

it is shown through these things that the material part of us subsists and is mastered when it is governed by nature,

but it is dissolved and falls apart again when it is separated from that which masters and holds it together, and is torn away from its union with the good.

And such a thing comes about in no other way than when the turning of nature is toward the opposite direction, the desire inclining not toward the good, but toward that which has need of being beautified.

For there is every necessity that what is being made like to matter—which is impoverished of its own proper form—should be transformed along with it into what is shapeless and unbeautiful. But these matters have been examined by us as a kind of consequence, having entered in through our contemplation of the subject before us.

For the question being investigated was whether the intellectual faculty is established in some particular part of those things within us, or pervades all of them equally.

For against those who confine the mind within local parts, and who, to establish such a supposition of theirs, adduce the fact that the understanding does not function properly in those whose meninges are in an unnatural condition—

the argument has demonstrated that in every part of the human compound, in respect of which each is naturally fitted to act, the power of the soul likewise remains inactive when that part does not abide in its natural condition.

And for this reason there fell into the discussion, by way of consequence, the theorem we set before us, through which we learn that in the human compound the mind is governed by God, and our material life by the mind so long as it abides in its nature; but if it be diverted from its nature, it is also estranged from the activity that is according to the mind.

But let us return again to the point from which we digressed: that in those who have not been diverted from their natural condition by some passion, the mind exercises its proper power, and is vigorous in those parts that are sound, but again is powerless in those that cannot receive its activity.