That is, how do they do it? By what art, by what contrivances and by what instruments or drugs? Do they drive our mind by their own thoughts, so that, by thinking of those things, we too form images of them? Or do they make things in their own body or in their own imagination and present and display them to us? But if they make those things in their own body, it follows that we too must have other, inner bodily eyes while we sleep, with which we see the things that they have shaped in their own body.
But if, on the other hand, they are not aided in these matters by their own body, but arrange these things within their own phantasy, and so touch our phantasies, and a vision arises which is a dream — then I ask you, why do I not by my phantasy compel your phantasy to generate those dreams which I have first shaped within it for myself? Surely I too have a power of fancy and can fashion what I wish; yet I produce in you no dream at all. Rather I see that it is our very body that generates dreams within us. For when it is in poor condition, through the affection by which it is coupled to the soul, it compels us in wondrous ways to copy that very state through the phantasy.
Often, while asleep and thirsty, we dream that we are drinking, and being hungry we seem to be eating, and many such things, which are transferred phantasmally from the body into the soul by a kind of commerce, as it were. Because of the obscurity of the subject and our own inexperience, do not be surprised if these things have been explained with less elegance and less subtlety; you will labour to do it, as far as you can. IX. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS. Although you are well acquainted with my mind, perhaps you do not know how greatly I long to enjoy your presence. But this so great a blessing God will one day grant. I have read your most recent letter, in which you complained of solitude and of a certain abandonment by your intimate friends, with whom life is sweetest.
But what else should I say to you here, except what I do not doubt you are doing? Betake yourself to your own mind and lift it up to God, as much as you can. For there you hold us more surely — not by means of bodily images, which we must now use in our recollection, but by that thought whereby you understand that we are not together in place. When I was pondering your letters, in which I gave you, as you asked, great answers, I was vehemently terrified by that question in which you inquire how it comes about that certain thoughts and dreams are inserted into us by higher powers or by demons. For it is a great matter, to which you too in your prudence see that one must reply not by a letter, but either by a conversation in person or by some little treatise.
Nevertheless I shall try to sow beforehand certain glimmers of light upon this question for your shrewd intelligence, so that you may either weave together the rest by yourself, or at least not despair that one may arrive at a probable investigation of so great a matter. For I judge that every motion of the soul produces something in the body; and that this reaches even our senses — so dull and so sluggish — when the motions of the soul are greater, as when we are angry, or sad, or joyful. From this one may conjecture that, even when we think of something and it does not appear in our body to us, it can nevertheless appear to airy or ethereal living beings, whose sense is most keen, and in comparison with which our sense is not even to be reckoned a sense at all.
Therefore those things which, so to speak, the soul fixes in the body as traces of its own motion, can both remain and produce a kind of disposition, as it were; and when these are secretly agitated and handled, in accordance with the will of the one who agitates and handles them, they thrust upon us thoughts and dreams — and this happens with a wonderful ease.
For if it is manifest that the stirrings of our earthly and most sluggish bodies have, in the playing of musical instruments, in tightrope-walking, and in countless other spectacles of this kind, attained to certain incredible feats, it is by no means absurd that those who, with an airy or ethereal body, do something in bodies which by their natural order they penetrate, should use a far greater ease in moving whatever they wish — we not perceiving it, and yet undergoing something thereby. For we do not even perceive how an abundance of bile drives us to more frequent anger, and yet it does drive us; though this very abundance of which I spoke was itself produced while we were angry.
But if you are unwilling to accept this, in passing, as something analogous to ourselves, turn it over in your thought as much as you can. For if there continually arises in the soul some difficulty of doing and accomplishing what it desires, it is continually angry. Now anger, in my opinion, is a turbulent craving to remove the things that hinder the ease of one's action. And so for the most part we are angry not only at men, but at the pen in writing, and we dash it down and break it; and dice-players are angry at the dice, and painters at the brush, and anyone at whatever instrument from which he judges he is suffering difficulty. By this constant practice of being angry, even physicians affirm that bile increases. And by the increase of bile we again grow angry easily, and almost without any cause existing.
Thus what the soul has made in the body by its own motion will in turn avail to stir the soul itself. These matters can be treated very fully and brought to a more certain and complete understanding by many testimonies drawn from things. But join to this letter the one I lately sent you about images and about memory, and handle it more carefully; for from your reply it appeared to me to have been less than fully understood by you. When, therefore, you have joined to this which you are now reading what was there said about a certain natural faculty of the soul that diminishes and increases anything by thought, perhaps it will no longer trouble you whence it comes about that even the forms of bodies which we have never seen are figured among us, whether in thinking or in dreaming. X. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS.
Never has any of your inquiries held me in such burning suspense while thinking as that which I read in your most recent letter, where you reproach us for neglecting to take counsel so that we might be permitted to live together. A grave charge — and, were it not false, a most perilous one. But since a very plausible reasoning seems to show that we can live according to our wish here, rather than at Carthage or even in the country, I am wholly uncertain, my Nebridius, what to do with you. Should a vehicle most suited to you be sent to you? For our friend Lucinianus assures me that you can be carried unharmed in a litter. But I think of my mother, who could not bear the absence of one in health, and will far less bear it of one infirm. Should I myself come to you?
But here are those who can neither come with me, and whom I should think it a sin to abandon. For you are able to dwell pleasantly even within your own mind; but for these, that they may be able to do the same, much effort is needed. Should I go and return frequently, and be now with you, now with them? But this is to live neither together nor according to our wish. For the road is not short, but altogether so long that to undertake the business of traversing it is often not to have arrived at the longed-for leisure. To this is added the weakness of the body, by which I too, as you know, am not strong enough to do what I wish, unless I cease altogether to wish for anything more than that for which I lack the strength.
To plan therefore, through one's whole life, journeys which you cannot have peaceful and easy, is not the part of a man who is thinking of that one last journey which is called death — of which alone you understand that one ought truly to think. God has indeed granted to a certain few, whom he willed to be governors of the churches, that they should not only await that journey bravely, but even eagerly desire it, and undertake the labours of accomplishing these other journeys without any anguish;
but neither to those who are dragged into administrations of this kind by love of temporal honour, nor again to those who, being private men, seek out a life full of business, do I think this so great a good is granted: that amid uproars and restless gatherings and to-ings and fro-ings they should form that familiarity with death which we seek. For both classes might have been deified in leisure. Or if this is false, then I am, not to say the most foolish, certainly the most slothful of all men, since unless some untroubled repose comes to me, I cannot taste and love that pure good. There is need, believe me, of a great withdrawal from the tumult of fleeting things, so that it may come about in a man to fear nothing — not through hardness, not through audacity, not through craving for empty glory, not through superstitious credulity.
For from this also arises that solid joy, in no way and in no smallest part to be compared with any other gladnesses. But if such a life does not fall within human nature, why does that security sometimes come to pass? Why does it come the more frequently, the more deeply each man adores God in the inmost recesses of his mind? Why does that tranquillity for the most part remain even in human action, if one proceeds from that inner sanctuary to action? Why do we sometimes, even while we are speaking, not dread death, yet when we are not speaking, even desire it?
To you I say it — for I would not say this to just anyone — to you, I say, whose journeyings into things above I know well: will you, who have so often experienced how sweetly the soul lives when it dies to bodily love, after all deny that the whole life of a man can become fearless, so that he may rightly be named wise? Or will you dare to assert that this affection, which reason strives after, has ever befallen you, except when you were engaged within your inmost self? Since these things are so, you see that one thing remains: that you too take counsel for the common good, that we may live together. For what must be done about your mother — whom assuredly brother Victor does not desert — you understand far better than I. I was unwilling to write other things, lest I should turn you away from this thought. XI. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS.
When the question, proposed by you some time ago with even a certain friendly rebuke — namely by what means we might live together — was vehemently agitating me, and I had resolved both to write back to you on this alone and to demand your answers, and not to turn my pen to anything else pertaining to our studies until this very matter should be settled between us, the most brief and most true reasoning of your recent letter quickly set me at ease: that, namely, we need not think about this from here, because either we, when we are able, shall necessarily come to you, or you, when you are able, to us. Set at ease therefore from this quarter, as I said, I have considered all your letters, to see of which answers I am the debtor.
In them I found so many questions that, even if they could be easily resolved, by their very heap they would overtax anyone's talent and leisure. Indeed they are so difficult that, even if only one of them had been laid upon me, I should not hesitate to confess myself most heavily burdened. But this preamble serves this end: that you may for a while cease to seek new questions, until we are freed from the whole debt, and that you may write back to me on your judgement alone. Although I know how much it is against me that I put off being, even for a while, a sharer in your divine reflections. Receive, then, what seems to me concerning the mystical assumption of manhood, which the religion in which we have been instructed commends as having been made for our salvation, to be believed and to be known.
This question, not the easiest of all, I chose as the one I would by preference answer; but it seemed to me worthier than the rest, the one on which I should expend the labour of thought. For those things which are asked about this world seem to me neither to pertain sufficiently to the attaining of the blessed life, and, if they bring some pleasure when investigated, it is nonetheless to be feared lest they occupy time that ought to be spent on better things. Wherefore, as regards this matter taken up for the present, I first wonder that you were moved as to why it is not said that the Father and the Son assumed manhood, but also the Holy Spirit.
For that Trinity is so commended and believed by the Catholic faith as inseparable, and is so understood by a few holy and blessed ones, that whatever is done by it must be thought to be done at once by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Spirit; and the Father does nothing which the Son and the Holy Spirit do not also do, nor the Son anything which the Father and the Holy Spirit do not, nor the Holy Spirit anything which the Father and the Son do not. From which it seems to follow that the whole Trinity assumed manhood; for if the Son assumed it, but the Father and the Holy Spirit did not, they do something apart from one another. Why then, in our mysteries and sacred rites, is the assumption of manhood celebrated as attributed to the Son?
This is a most full question, so difficult and concerning a matter so great, that neither can a sufficiently ready opinion be had here, nor can the proof of it be sufficiently secure. Yet I dare, since indeed I am writing to you, rather to signify what my mind holds than to expound it, so that you may conjecture the rest for yourself, according to your talent and our intimacy, by which it comes about that you know me very well. There is no nature, Nebridius, and altogether no substance, which does not have in itself and display these three things: first, that it is; next, that it is this or that; third, that, in that very thing which it is, it remains as far as it can. The first shows the very cause of the nature, from which all things are; the second, the form by which all things are fashioned and in a certain manner formed;
the third, a certain abidingness, so to speak, in which all things are. But if it can come about that something is, and is not this or that, and is for as long as it is and is itself, as long as it remains in its own genus; or that it is this or that, but neither is nor remains in its own genus as far as it can; or that it remains in its own genus, according to the powers of that very genus of its own, but nonetheless neither is nor is this or that — then it can also come about that, in that Trinity, some person should do something apart from the others. But if you discern that it is necessary that, whatever is, forthwith also is this or that and remains in its own genus as far as it can, then those three do nothing apart from one another. I see that thus far I have treated the part of this question by which its solution is made difficult.
But I wished briefly to lay open to you — if indeed I have accomplished what I wished — how subtly and with how great truth this inseparability of the Trinity is understood in the Catholic Church. Now receive in what manner that which moves the mind can fail to move it. The 'form,' which is properly attributed to the Son, pertains also to discipline and to a certain art — if we use this word well in these matters — and to that understanding by which the mind itself is formed by the contemplation of things. And so, since by that assumption of manhood it was brought about that a certain discipline of living and an example of precept should be instilled into us under the majesty and clarity of certain maxims, not without reason is this whole thing attributed to the Son.
For in many things which I commit to your thought and prudence, although many things are present, yet something stands out, and therefore not absurdly claims for itself a certain propriety. As in those three kinds of questions: even if it be asked whether a thing is, there too is also what it is — for it cannot exist unless it is something; there too, whether it is to be approved or disapproved, for whatever is, is worthy of some estimation; so when it is asked what it is, it is necessary both that it be and that it be weighed by some estimation; in this way too, when it is asked of what quality it is, it is certainly also something. Thus, although all these are inseparably joined to one another, the question nevertheless takes its name not from them all, but according as the intention of the inquirer is disposed.
Discipline, therefore, was necessary for men, by which they might be instructed and by which they might be formed to a measure. Yet can we say that this very thing, which is wrought in men through this discipline, either does not exist, or is not to be sought after? But we first aim to know both that through which we may infer something, and that in which we may abide. There was therefore first to be shown a certain norm and rule of discipline.
This was done through that dispensation of the manhood assumed, which is properly to be attributed to the Son, so that there should follow also the knowledge of the Father himself — that is, of the one Principle from whom are all things — through the Son, and a certain inner and ineffable pleasantness and sweetness of abiding in that knowledge and of despising all mortal things; which gift and bounty is properly attributed to the Holy Spirit. Therefore, although all things are done in the highest communion and inseparability, they nevertheless had to be shown distinctly because of our weakness, who have fallen from unity into variety. For no one raises another up to that in which he himself is, unless he descends somewhat to that in which the other is.
You have a letter — not one that has put an end to your concern about this matter, but one that has, with perhaps some certain foundation, begun your reflections, so that you may pursue the rest by that talent which is most well known to me, and attain it by that piety on which above all one must stand. XII. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS. You write that you have sent more letters than we have received; but I can neither disbelieve you, nor you me. For although I am not strong enough to be your equal in writing back, yet your letters are kept by me with no less diligence than they are sent frequently by you. But that you have received no more than two of our longer letters is agreed between us; for we did not send a third.
Indeed, on reviewing the copies, I noticed that about five of your questions have been answered, except that one question was there touched upon as if in passing, and although it was not rashly entrusted to your talent, yet perhaps it did not satisfy your greed. This you must rein in somewhat, and willingly bear with certain abridgements — yet plainly in such a way that, if I defraud the understanding at all while I am sparing in words, you should spare me in nothing; but by that right by which something might perhaps be more potent to me, if anything could be more agreeable, demand the whole of what is owed: this letter therefore you shall reckon among my lesser letters, which to you, not to itself, takes away nothing from the heap as regards me. For do not you too send lesser ones, which do not increase that same heap?
Wherefore, that which you ask about the Son of God — why he rather than the Father is said to have assumed manhood, since both are at once — you will discern most easily, if you recall, from our conversations (by which, as far as we could — for it is something ineffable — ...) who the Son of God is, to whom we are joined. To touch on this briefly here: discipline itself, and the form of God through which all things were made that were made, is named the Son. But whatever was wrought through that assumed manhood was wrought for our instruction and formation. XIII. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS. To write to you customary things does not please me, new things is not permitted. For the one I see does not suit you, the other I have no leisure for.
For from the time I departed from you, no opportunity, no leisure has been given me for agitating and turning over those things which we are wont to inquire into between ourselves. There are indeed the winter nights, exceedingly long, nor are they wholly slept away by me; but things to be thought of present themselves rather when there is leisure — things necessary for breaking up that very leisure. What then shall I do? Shall I be dumb toward you, or silent? You wish neither, neither do I wish it.
Wherefore come, and receive what the last part of the night, while it was being passed through, in which this letter was written, was able to hammer out from me. You must needs remember what was often tossed about between us in conversation, and tossed us about as we panted and burned over it — namely concerning the soul's having, as it were, a kind of perpetual body, or quasi-body, which, as you recall, is even called by some a 'vehicle.' This matter certainly, if indeed it is moved from place to place, is clearly not intelligible. But whatever is not intelligible cannot be understood. Yet what escapes the understanding, if at least it does not escape the senses, is not altogether denied the power of estimating something thence with probability.
But that which can neither be understood nor perceived by sense begets an opinion too rash and trifling. And this matter we are dealing with is of such a kind — if indeed it exists at all. Why then, I ask you, do we not declare a holiday for ourselves from this little question, and, having invoked God, lift our whole selves up into the highest serenity of the highest living Nature? Here perhaps you may say: although corporeal things cannot be perceived, yet we can intelligibly perceive many things pertaining to body — as, for instance, that we know body to exist. For who would deny, or who would confess this to be merely probable rather than true? Thus, although body itself is a probable thing, that nevertheless there exists in nature some such thing is most true. Therefore a body is judged to be sensible, but that a body exists, intelligible;
for otherwise it could not be perceived. Thus that body, I know not what, about which we inquire — by which the soul is thought to lean, so as to pass from place to place — although even if it be sensible not to our senses, yet to certain far more vigorous ones, whether it nevertheless exists can be known intelligibly. If you say this, let there come to mind that what we call 'to understand' happens in us in two ways: either by the mind and reason themselves inwardly, as when we understand that understanding itself exists; or by an admonition from the senses, as in what has just been said, when we understand that body exists. In which two kinds, the first is through ourselves — that is, by consulting God about that which is within us;
but the second, concerning that which is announced by the body and the sense, we nonetheless understand by consulting God. If these things hold good, no one can understand, concerning that body, whether it exists, unless some sense has announced something about it to him. And since we perceive that we are not among the number of living beings — if there is any such — to whom any sense announces such a thing, I think that also to be settled which I had begun to say above: that this question does not pertain to us. These things I would have you think over again and again, and take care that I may come to know what you may beget by thinking. XIV. AUGUSTINE TO NEBRIDIUS. I have preferred to answer your most recent letter, not because I despised your preceding inquiries, or because they delighted me less, but because in answering I labour at things greater than you suppose.
For although you have prescribed that I should send you a letter longer than the longest, yet we do not have so much leisure as you suppose, and as you know we have always wished for and still wish. Do not ask why this is so; for I could more easily set forth the things by which I am hindered than why I am hindered. You write, asking the cause why I and you, since we are individuals, do many of the same things, while the sun does not do the same as the other stars. For if we do the same things, he too does many things with the rest; if not he, then not we either. I walk and you walk, he is moved and they are moved; I am awake and you are awake, it shines and they shine; I dispute and you dispute, it goes around and they go around. Although the act of the mind is in no way to be compared with these things which we see.
But if you compare mind with mind, as is fair, the stars rather than men are to be considered as thinking the same, or contemplating, or whatever else may be more fittingly said — if any mind is in them. As for the rest, in the motions of bodies, if you attend carefully, as is your wont, nothing whatever can be done identically by two things. Or do you, when we walk about together, suppose that we are doing the same thing closely enough? Far be that from your prudence! For whichever of us walks nearer to the north must necessarily either precede the other with an equal motion, or step more slowly; yet neither can be perceived. But you, if I am not mistaken, await what we may understand, not what we may perceive.
But if from the pole we head toward the south, joined to one another and clinging together as much as we can, and lean upon smooth and even marble or even ivory, the motion of us both can no more be the same than the beat of our pulse, than our form, than our face. Take us away and set Glaucia's offspring in our place, you will have achieved nothing. For even in these most similar twins there is as great a necessity that they be moved each in their own way, as there was that they should be born singly. 'But this,' you will say, 'pertains only to reason; whereas the fact that the sun differs from the stars is plain and manifest even to the senses.' If you compel me to consider its magnitude, you know how many things are said about distances, and to how great an uncertainty that perspicuity is reduced.
But, to grant that it is as it appears — for so indeed I believe — whose sense, after all, did that tallness of Naevius escape, who was longer by a foot than the tallest man at six feet? I believe you have sought too eagerly a man equal to him, and, when you had by no means found one, wished to stretch our letter even to the length of his stature. Wherefore, since on earth too something of this kind exists, I think nothing in heaven is to be wondered at. But if it moves you that, besides the sun, the light of no star fills the day — who, I ask you, ever appeared among men so great as that Man whom God assumed, far otherwise than the rest of the saints and the wise? Whom, if you compare with other men, they are held apart by a greater distance than the other stars are by comparison with the sun.
This likeness, indeed, examine diligently. For it can come about, by that mind in which you excel, that in passing we may have resolved a certain question proposed by you about the man Christ. Likewise you ask whether that highest Truth and highest Wisdom, the Form of things through which all things were made, whom our sacred faith professes to be the only Son of God, contains the rational principle (ratio) of man in general, or also of each one of us. A great question. But it seems to me that, as regards the making of man, there is there only the rational principle of man, not of me or of you; whereas, as regards the cycle of time, the various rational principles of men live in that sincerity.
But since this is most obscure, by what likeness it may be illustrated I do not know, unless perhaps one must take refuge in those arts which are within our mind. For in the discipline of measuring there is one rational principle of an angle, one of a square. And so, as often as I wish to demonstrate an angle, no rational principle but the one of an angle occurs to me; but I would by no means draw a square unless I beheld at once the rational principle of four angles. Thus any man whatsoever is made by the one rational principle by which man is understood; but in order that a people may come to be, although that too is one rational principle, yet it is not the principle of a man, but of men. If therefore Nebridius is a part of this universe, as indeed he is, and the whole universe is composed of its parts, the Creator God of the universe could not but have the rational principle of the parts.