Come now, let us see where there may be, as it were, a certain boundary of the outer and the inner man. For whatever we have in our soul in common with the beast is rightly still said to belong to the outer man, but with a certain life of its own added, by which the frame of the body and all the senses flourish, with which it is equipped for perceiving external things. When the images of these senses, fixed in the memory, are revisited by recollecting, the matter is still carried on as pertaining to the outer man. And in all these things we differ nothing from the beast, except that in the figure of the body we are not prone but upright.
In which matter we are admonished by Him who made us not to be, in our better part—that is, in the soul—like the beasts, from which we differ by the uprightness of the body. It is not that we should cast our soul down onto those things which are lofty among bodies; for to seek the rest of the will even in such things is to prostrate the soul. But just as the body is naturally erect toward those things which are lofty among bodies—that is, toward the heavenly things—so the soul, which is a spiritual substance, is to be raised toward those things which are lofty among spiritual things, not by the elation of pride, but by the piety of righteousness. Now beasts too can perceive corporeal things externally through the senses of the body, and can recall those things fixed in the memory, and in them seek what is profitable and flee what is harmful.
But to note these things, and to retain them not only as naturally seized but also as deliberately committed to the memory, and by recollecting and thinking to impress again upon the mind those things now on the point of slipping into forgetfulness—so that just as thought is formed from what the memory bears, so also what is in the memory may be strengthened by thought—and to compose even feigned visions by taking from here and there whatever has been recalled and, as it were, stitching them together, and to examine how, in this kind of thing, the things that are probable may be distinguished from the true (not spiritual things, but these very corporeal ones)—these and things of this kind, although they are carried on and turned over among sensible things and among those things which the mind has drawn from them through the sense of the body, are nevertheless not devoid of reason, nor common to men and beasts.
But it belongs to a more sublime reason to judge of these corporeal things according to incorporeal and everlasting reasons which, unless they were above the human mind, would assuredly not be unchangeable; and yet, unless something of ours were joined to them, we could not judge of corporeal things according to them. Now we judge of corporeal things by the reason of dimensions and figures, which the mind knows to remain unchangeably.
But that part of ours which is so engaged in the action of handling corporeal and temporal things that it is not common to us with the beast is indeed rational; yet it is, as it were, drawn from that rational substance of our mind by which we cleave to the intelligible and unchangeable truth, and is deputed to the handling and governing of lower things. For just as among all the beasts there was not found for the man a helper like to him, unless one drawn from himself were formed into wedlock, so for our mind, by which we consult the supernal and inner truth, there is no helper suitable to the use of corporeal things—as far as suffices for the nature of man—from those parts of the soul which we have in common with the beasts.
And therefore something rational of ours, not separated so as to sever unity, but as it were derived into the assistance of fellowship, is apportioned in the office of its own work. And just as the flesh of the two in male and female is one, so one nature of the mind embraces our understanding and action, or counsel and execution, or reason and rational appetite, or however else they may be more significantly named—so that, as it was said of those: They shall be two in one flesh, so of these it may be said: 'Two in one mind.' When, therefore, we discourse about the nature of the human mind, we discourse about some one thing, nor do we double it into these two which I have mentioned except by the offices.
And so, when we seek in it a trinity, we seek it in the whole, not separating the rational action in temporal things from the contemplation of eternal things, so as to seek some third thing by which the trinity may be completed. Rather, a trinity must be found in the whole nature of the mind in such a way that, even if the action concerning temporal things be lacking—for which work a helper is necessary, on account of which something of the mind is derived for administering these lower things—the trinity may be found in the one mind nowhere divided; and, once this distribution has been made, in that alone which pertains to the contemplation of eternal things there is not only a trinity but also the image of God; but in that which is derived into the action of temporal things, even if a trinity can be found, yet the image of God cannot.
Accordingly, those do not seem to me to bring forward a probable opinion who so think that the trinity of the image of God in three persons, as concerns human nature, can be found so as to be completed in the wedlock of male and female and in their offspring—in that the man himself, as it were, intimates the person of the Father; and that which so proceeded from him as to be born intimates the person of the Son; and thus they say that the third person, as it were of the Spirit, is the woman, who so proceeded from the man as not herself to be a son or daughter, although the offspring was born of her conceiving. For the Lord said of the Holy Spirit that He proceeds from the Father, and yet He is not a Son.
In favour of the error of this opinion, then, only this one plausible argument is brought forward: that in the original creation of the woman it is sufficiently shown, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, that not everything which so proceeds from some person as to make it another person can be called a son; seeing that the person of the woman proceeded from the person of the man, and yet she was not called his daughter. The rest indeed is so absurd, nay rather so false, that it is most easily refuted. For I pass over what sort of thing it is to suppose the Holy Spirit to be the mother of the Son of God and the consort of the Father. For perhaps it might be answered that these notions give offence in carnal matters, so long as we think of bodily conceptions and births.
Yet those to whom, being pure, all things are pure, would think even these very things most chastely; whereas to the impure and unbelieving, whose mind and conscience are defiled, nothing is pure, so that even Christ, born of a virgin according to the flesh, gives offence to some of them. But nevertheless, in those highest spiritual realities, where there is nothing violable or corruptible, neither born in time nor formed out of the formless, if any such things are spoken of, to whose likeness even these lower kinds of creature, though set very far off indeed, have been made, they ought not to disturb anyone's sober prudence, lest, while he avoids an empty dread, he fall into a pernicious error.
Let the mind grow accustomed to finding, in bodily things, traces of things spiritual, so that when, thence upward, under reason's guidance, it begins to ascend, in order to arrive at that unchangeable Truth by which these things were made, it may not drag along with it to the heights what it despises in the lowest things. For no one has blushed to choose Wisdom as his wife, though the name of wife suggests to the mind that thinks of it a corruptible union in the begetting of offspring; nor is Wisdom herself of the female sex because she is expressed by a word of feminine gender in both the Greek and the Latin tongue.
[VI 6] It is not, therefore, for this reason that we reject that opinion — as though we were afraid to think of that holy and inviolable and unchangeable Charity as it were a consort of God the Father, existing from Him, yet not as offspring for the begetting of the Word by which all things were made. Rather, we reject it because divine Scripture plainly shows it to be false. For God said: Let us make man after our image and likeness; and a little later it is said: And God made man after the image of God. Assuredly, since 'our' is a plural number, it would not rightly be said if man were made after the image of one person, whether of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit; but because he was made after the image of the Trinity, therefore it was said, after our image.
But again, lest we should suppose that in the Trinity three gods are to be believed, since the same Trinity is one God, it says: And God made man after the image of God — just as if it said, after His own image. For such expressions are customary in those writings, which some, even though they profess the Catholic faith, do not carefully observe, so that they think it was said, 'God made man after the image of God,' as though it were said, 'The Father made man after the image of the Son,' thus wishing to maintain that in the Holy Scriptures the Son too was called God — as if there were lacking other most true and most manifest proofs where the Son is called not only God but even true God. For in this testimony, while they aim to resolve one difficulty, they so entangle themselves that they cannot get free.
For if the Father made man after the image of the Son, so that man is the image not of the Father but of the Son, then the Son is unlike the Father. But if pious faith teaches — as indeed it does teach — that the Son is like the Father in equality of essence, then what was made after the likeness of the Son must necessarily also have been made after the likeness of the Father. Furthermore, if the Father made man not after His own image but after the Son's, why does He not say: Let us make man after 'thy' image and likeness, but says, after ours — unless because the image of the Trinity was being made in man, so that in this way man might be the image of the one true God, since the Trinity itself is one true God? Now such expressions in the Scriptures are innumerable, but it will suffice to have brought forward these. It is thus said in the Psalms:
Salvation belongs to the Lord, and Thy blessing is upon Thy people — as though it were spoken to another, not to Him of whom it had said, Salvation belongs to the Lord. And again: By Thee, it says, shall I be rescued from temptation, and in my God I shall leap over a wall — as though it had spoken to another, By Thee shall I be rescued from temptation. And again: The peoples shall fall under Thee in the heart of the king's enemies — as if it said, in the heart of 'Thy' enemies; for it had said to that king, that is, to the Lord Jesus Christ, The peoples shall fall under Thee, whom it wished to be understood as king when it said, in the heart of the king's enemies. These occur more rarely in the writings of the New Testament, but nevertheless the Apostle says to the Romans:
Concerning His Son, he says, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection of the dead, of Jesus Christ our Lord — as though he were speaking above of another. For what is 'the Son of God predestined by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ,' except the same Jesus Christ who was predestined the Son of God?
Therefore, just as here, when we hear 'the Son of God in the power of Jesus Christ,' or 'the Son of God according to the Spirit of sanctification of Jesus Christ,' or 'the Son of God by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ' — although it could have been said in the customary way, 'in His own power,' or 'according to the Spirit of His own sanctification,' or 'by the resurrection of His dead' or 'of His own dead' — we are not compelled to understand another person, but one and the same, namely the Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ; so likewise, when we hear, God made man after the image of God, although it could more customarily have been said, after His own image, we are nevertheless not compelled to understand another person in the Trinity, but that same one and identical Trinity which is one God, after whose image man was made.
Since these things are so, if we were to take this image of the Trinity to be not in one man but in three human beings — father, mother, and son — then man was not made after the image of God before a wife was made for him and before they had propagated a son, since there was as yet no trinity. Or will someone say: 'There already was a trinity, because, though not yet in its own proper form, yet in original nature both the woman was in the side of the man and the son in the loins of the father'? Why then, when Scripture had said: God made man after the image of God, did it go on to say: He made him male and female; He made them, and blessed them (or, if it is to be punctuated thus:
And God made man, so that then may be added, after the image of God He made him, and the third clause be: male and female He made them — for some have feared to say, He made him male and female, lest something monstrous be understood, such as those whom they call hermaphrodites, although even so it can without falsehood be understood as both in the singular number, on account of what was said: Two in one flesh)? Why then, as I had begun to say, in the nature of man made after the image of God, does Scripture mention nothing besides male and female? For to complete the image of the Trinity it ought to have added the son as well, even though as yet established in the loins of the father, just as the woman was in the side.
Or perhaps the woman had already been made, and Scripture had bound up in a brief summary what it would afterwards explain more carefully as to how it was made; and for this reason the son could not be mentioned, because he had not yet been born? As if the Spirit could not have embraced this too in that same brevity, intending afterwards in its own place to relate the son as born, just as it afterwards related in its own place that the woman was taken from the man's side — and yet here did not fail to name her.
[VII 9] We ought not, therefore, so to understand man as made after the image of the supreme Trinity — that is, after the image of God — that this same image is to be understood in three human beings; especially since the Apostle says that the man is the image of God, and on that account removes from him the covering of the head which he admonishes must be applied to the woman, speaking thus: A man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. What then shall we say to this? If the woman fulfils the image of the Trinity in her own person, why is the man still called the image after she has been drawn from his side? Or if even one human person out of three can be called the image of God — just as in the supreme Trinity itself each single person is God — why is the woman also not the image of God?
For it is on this account that she is commanded to veil her head, whereas the man is forbidden to do so because he is the image of God. But we must see how what the Apostle says — that not the woman but the man is the image of God — is not contrary to what is written in Genesis: God made man after the image of God; He made him male and female; He made them, and blessed them. For it says that human nature itself was made after the image of God, which is completed by both sexes, and it does not separate the woman from the understanding of the image of God. For after saying that God made man after the image of God, it says, He made him male and female — or at least, by another punctuation, male and female He made them.
How then have we heard through the Apostle that the man is the image of God, and is therefore forbidden to veil his head, but that the woman is not, and is therefore commanded to do this — unless, I believe, it be what I have already said when I was treating of the nature of the human mind: that the woman together with her husband is the image of God, so that the whole of that substance is one image; but when she is assigned as a helper, which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God; whereas what pertains to the man alone is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him into one?
It is just as we said concerning the nature of the human mind: that if as a whole it contemplates the truth, it is the image of God; and when something is apportioned from it and by a certain intention is diverted to the action of temporal things, nevertheless in that part by which it beholds and consults the truth it is the image of God; but in that part by which it is directed toward the doing of lower things it is not the image of God. And since the more it extends itself toward that which is eternal, so much the more is it thereby formed after the image of God, and is therefore not to be restrained so as to hold itself back and check itself therein — for this reason the man ought not to veil his head.
But because for that rational action which is occupied with bodily and temporal things an excessive progress into lower things is dangerous, it ought to have authority over its head, which the veil indicates, by which is signified that it is to be restrained. For the sacred and pious signification is pleasing to the holy angels. For God does not see in time, nor does anything new arise in His seeing and knowing when something is done temporally and transiently, as thereby the senses are affected, whether the carnal senses of animals and men, or even the heavenly senses of the angels.
That in this manifest distinction of the male and female sex the Apostle Paul figured the mystery of some more hidden thing can be understood from this too: that whereas in another place he says that a true widow is one left desolate without children and grandchildren, and yet that she ought to hope in the Lord and to persist in prayers night and day, here he says that the woman, seduced and made in transgression, shall be saved through the bearing of children, and added: If they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety. As though it could really harm a good widow if either she had no children, or those she had were unwilling to persevere in good morals.
But because those things which are called good works are as it were the children of our life — according to which it is asked of what sort each one's life may be, that is, how he conducts these temporal affairs, which life the Greeks call not zoe but bios — and because these good works are wont to be especially frequented in the offices of mercy (whereas works of mercy profit nothing, whether to pagans, or to Jews who do not believe in Christ, or to any heretics or schismatics whatever, where faith and love and sober sanctification are not found), it is manifest what the Apostle wished to signify, and why figuratively and mystically, since he was speaking of the veiling of the woman's head, which, unless it be referred to some secret of the sacrament, will remain empty.
For, as not only most true reason but also the authority of the Apostle himself declares, man was made after the image of God not according to the form of the body but according to the rational mind. For that thought is basely vain which supposes God to be circumscribed and bounded by the lineaments of bodily members. Furthermore, does not the same blessed Apostle say: Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who was created according to God — and elsewhere more openly: Putting off, he says, the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed unto the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him?
If therefore we are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and it is the new man who is renewed unto the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him, no one doubts that man was made after the image of Him who created him not according to the body, nor according to any part whatever of the soul, but according to the rational mind, where the knowledge of God can be. And it is according to this renewal that we are also made sons of God through the baptism of Christ; and putting on the new man, we assuredly put on Christ through faith. Who then is there who would exclude women from this fellowship, since they are with us fellow-heirs of grace, and in another place the same Apostle says: For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus?
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Have believing women, then, lost the sex of their body? But because they are there renewed after the image of God, where there is no sex, there was man made after the image of God, where there is no sex — that is, in the spirit of his mind. Why then ought the man not to veil his head, because he is the image and glory of God, while the woman ought to, because she is the glory of the man — as though the woman were not renewed in the spirit of her mind, which is renewed unto the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created it?
But because in the sex of her body she differs from the man, that part of reason which is turned aside to the governing of temporal things could rightly be figured by her bodily veil, so that the image of God does not remain except in that part by which the mind of man cleaves to the beholding or consulting of the eternal reasons — a part which it is manifest that not only males but also females possess. Therefore in their minds a common nature is recognized; but in their bodies the distribution of that one and the same mind is figured. [VIII] And so, as we ascend inward by certain steps of consideration through the parts of the soul, from the point where something begins to present itself which we do not have in common with the beasts, thence reason begins, where already the inner man can be recognized.
And this man himself, if through that reason to which the administration of temporal things is delegated he slides too far into outward things by immoderate progress — with his own head consenting to him, that is, with that which presides in the watch-tower of counsel, as it were the man's portion, not restraining and reining it in — then he grows old among his enemies, the demons envious of virtue, together with their prince the devil; and the vision of eternal things is withdrawn from that very head as well, together with his consort eating the forbidden thing, so that the light of his eyes is no longer with him. And thus both, stripped of that illumination of truth, and with the eyes of conscience opened to see how dishonoured and unseemly they have remained, weave together, as it were, leaves of sweet fruits but without the fruits themselves; so, without the fruit of good work, they weave good words together, that, living evilly, they may as it were by speaking well cover their own baseness.
[IX 14] For the soul, loving its own power, slides away from the common universal to a private part; and by that apostatic pride which is called the beginning of sin, whereas, following God the ruler in the universality of creation, it might have been most excellently governed by His laws, it seeks something more than the universal and strives to govern it by its own law; and because there is nothing more than the universality, it is thrust down into anxiety for a part, and thus, by coveting something more, it is diminished — whence also avarice is called the root of all evils;
and the whole of that endeavour, whereby it strives to do something of its own against the laws by which the universe is administered, it carries out through its own body, which it possesses in part; and thus, delighting in bodily forms and motions, because it does not have these within itself with it, it becomes entangled with the images of them which it has fixed in the memory, and is basely defiled by fantastic fornication, referring all its offices to those ends by which it curiously seeks bodily and temporal things through the body's senses — either, with swollen pride, it aspires to be more exalted than other souls given over to the bodily senses, or it is immersed in the muddy whirlpool of carnal pleasure.
[X 15] When, therefore, with good will, the soul takes thought — whether for itself or for others — for the perceiving of those inner and higher things which are possessed not privately but in common by all who love such things, in a chaste embrace without any straitness or envy; even if it be deceived in some matter through ignorance of temporal things (since it conducts this too temporally), and does not keep the measure of acting which it ought, this is human temptation. And it is a great thing so to pass through this life, which we traverse as it were as a way of return, that temptation may not lay hold of us except such as is human. For this sin is outside the body, and is not reckoned as fornication, and is therefore most easily pardoned.
But when, for the sake of attaining those things which are perceived through the body, out of the desire of experiencing or of excelling or of handling, so as to place in these the end of its good, the soul does something, whatever it does it does basely, and it fornicates while sinning against its own body — snatching inward the deceptive images of bodily things and composing them in vain meditation, so that nothing even divine seems to it except such things — being privately avaricious it is teemed full of errors, and being privately prodigal it is emptied of its strength. Yet it would not from the outset leap forth to so base and wretched a fornication, but, as it is written: He who despises small things falls little by little.
[XI 16] For just as the serpent creeps not with open steps but by the tiniest efforts of its scales, so the slippery motion of falling away seizes the negligent little by little; and, beginning from a perverse appetite for likeness to God, it arrives at likeness to the beasts. Hence it is that, stripped of the first robe, they merited by their mortality garments of skin. For the true honour of man is the image and likeness of God, which is not preserved except toward Him from whom it is imprinted. The less, therefore, one's own is loved, the more is one made to cleave to God. But out of a desire to experience its own power, by a certain nod of its own it rushes forth toward itself as toward a midpoint.
Thus, when it wishes to be like Him who is under no one, it is by way of penalty thrust down from its very middle position to the lowest things — that is, to those things in which the beasts take delight; and thus, whereas its honour is the likeness of God, but its disgrace is the likeness of the beast: Man being placed in honour did not understand; he is compared to the senseless beasts, and is made like unto them. By what path, then, would it pass so far from the highest things to the lowest, except through its own middle? For when, love of wisdom being neglected — wisdom which ever abides in the same manner — knowledge is coveted out of the experience of changeable and temporal things, it puffs up, it does not build up;
thus the mind, overburdened as it were by its own weight, is expelled from blessedness, and through that experience of its middle position it learns by its own penalty what a difference there is between the good it deserted and the evil it committed; nor can it return, its strength poured out and lost, except by the grace of its Maker, calling it to repentance and forgiving its sins. For who shall free the unhappy soul from the body of this death, except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? Concerning which grace we shall discourse in its own place, when He Himself shall have granted it. [XII 17] Now, as the Lord aids us, let us carry through the consideration we have undertaken concerning that part of reason to which knowledge pertains — that is, the cognition of temporal and changeable things, necessary for the transactions of this life which must be carried on.
For just as in that manifest marriage of the two human beings who were first made, the serpent did not eat of the forbidden tree but only persuaded that it should be eaten, and the woman did not eat alone but gave to her husband, and they ate together — although she alone spoke with the serpent and was alone seduced by it — so also in this which is transacted and discerned even in a single man, by a certain hidden and secret marriage the carnal, or, so to speak, the sensual motion of the soul which is directed toward the body's senses (which motion is common to us and to the beasts) is cut off from the reason of wisdom. For by the sense of the body bodily things are perceived; but eternal and unchangeable spiritual things are understood by the reason of wisdom.
Now to the reason of knowledge appetite is a near neighbour, inasmuch as concerning those very bodily things which are perceived by the body's sense it reasons out that which is called the knowledge of action — well, if it refers that acquaintance to the end of the supreme good; but ill, if it enjoys them as good things of the kind in which it may rest in a false blessedness. When, therefore, to this intention of the mind, which is occupied with liveliness of reasoning among temporal and bodily things for the office of action, that carnal or animal sense presents a certain allurement of enjoying itself — that is, as it were a certain private and proper good, not as a public and common good which is the unchangeable good — then, as it were, the serpent addresses the woman.
But to consent to this allurement is to eat of the forbidden tree. Yet if this consent is content with the mere delight of thought, while the members are so held in check by the authority of the higher counsel that they are not presented as weapons of iniquity to sin, then, I judge, it is to be held that the woman alone has eaten the forbidden food. But if, in the consent to make evil use of the things which are perceived through the body's sense, whatever sin is so decreed that, if there be the power, it should be completed even in the body, then that woman is to be understood as having given to her husband to eat with her at the same time the unlawful food.
For sin cannot be decreed in the mind — not only as sweetly to be thought of, but even as effectively to be perpetrated — unless that intention of the mind also, in whose keeping is the supreme power of moving the members to the deed or of restraining them from the deed, yield and become a servant to the evil action. Nor indeed, when the mind is delighted with unlawful things in thought alone — not decreeing that they are to be done, yet holding and willingly turning over things which, the moment they touched the mind, ought to have been spurned — is it to be denied that this is sin; but it is far less than if it were also resolved to be fulfilled in deed. And therefore for such thoughts too pardon must be sought, and the breast must be smitten, and it must be said: Forgive us our debts; and what follows must be done and joined in the prayer:
as we also forgive our debtors. For not as in those two first human beings, where each one bore his own person — and therefore, if the woman alone had eaten the unlawful food, she alone assuredly would have been punished with the penalty of death — can it in like manner be said, in the case of a single man, that if the thought alone willingly feeds upon unlawful delights, from which it ought at once to turn itself away, while evil things are not decreed to be done but are only sweetly held in remembrance, that the woman, as it were, can be condemned without the man. Far be it from us to believe this.
For this is one person, one man, and the whole will be condemned, unless these things — which, though without the will to do them, yet with the will of delighting the soul in such things, are felt to be sins of thought alone — are remitted through the grace of the Mediator.
This discussion, therefore, by which we have sought in the mind of each individual human being a certain rational marriage of contemplation and action, with the offices distributed through certain particulars, yet with the unity of the mind preserved in both — while the historical truth is kept intact which divine authority delivers concerning the two first human beings, namely the man and his wife, from whom the human race was propagated — is to be heard only for this end: that it may be understood that the Apostle, in attributing the image of God to the man only and not also to the woman, nevertheless wished, in the different sex of the two human beings, to signify something which was to be sought in the one man.
[XIII 20] Nor does it escape me that certain men who were before us, distinguished defenders of the Catholic faith and expounders of the divine eloquence, when they sought these two things in one man — whose whole good soul they held to be a certain paradise — said that the man is the mind, but the woman the sense of the body. And according to this distribution, by which the man is set down as the mind, but the sense of the body as the woman, all things seem fitly to agree if they be treated with consideration — except that it is written that among all the beasts and birds there was not found for the man a helper like unto him, and then the woman was made for him from his side.
On which account I did not think that the sense of the body ought to be set down for the woman, since we see it to be common to us and to the beasts; but I wished for something which the beasts do not have; and I judged that the sense of the body was rather to be understood as the serpent, who is read to be more cunning than all the beasts of the earth.
For in those natural goods which we see to be common to us and to the irrational animals, he excels by a certain liveliness of sense — not that sense of which it is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where we read that solid food belongs to the perfect, who by habit have their senses trained to distinguish good from evil (for those are the senses of a rational nature and pertain to the understanding), but that sense which is fivefold in the body, through which not only by us but also by the beasts the appearance and motion of bodies is perceived.
But whether it be understood in this way, or that, or in some other manner that the Apostle called the man the image and glory of God, but the woman the glory of the man, it is nevertheless clear that when we live according to God, our mind, intent upon His invisible things, ought to be progressively formed out of His eternity, truth, and love; while a certain portion of our rational attention — that is, of the same mind — must be directed to the use of mutable and bodily things, without which this life is not carried on: not that it should be conformed to this world by setting its end in such goods and by wrenching aside toward them the appetite for blessedness, but that whatever we do reasonably in the use of temporal things we may do with a view to the contemplation of eternal things, passing through the former, cleaving to the latter.
For knowledge too has its own good measure, if that in it which puffs up, or is wont to puff up, be overcome by the love of eternal things — that love which does not puff up but, as we know, builds up. For without knowledge not even the very virtues by which one lives rightly can be possessed, virtues by which this wretched life is so governed that we may attain to that life which is truly blessed and eternal. Yet the action by which we make good use of temporal things differs from the contemplation of eternal things: the latter is reckoned to wisdom, the former to knowledge. For although that which is wisdom can also be named knowledge — as the Apostle also speaks when he says:
Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known — by which knowledge he certainly means to be understood the contemplation of God, which shall be the supreme reward of the saints. Nevertheless, where he says: To one indeed is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, he assuredly distinguishes these two without any doubt, although he does not there explain what the difference is, nor whence each may be told apart. But having searched the manifold abundance of the Holy Scriptures, I find it written in the book of Job, that same holy man speaking: Behold, piety is wisdom; but to abstain from evils is knowledge. In this distinction it is to be understood that wisdom pertains to contemplation, knowledge to action.
For by 'piety' in this place he set down 'the worship of God,' which in Greek is called *theosebeia; for this is the very word that this sentence has in the Greek codices. And what among things eternal is more excellent than God, whose nature alone is unchangeable? And what is His worship but the love of Him, by which we now desire to see Him, and believe and hope that we shall see Him? And insofar as we advance, we now see through a glass in an enigma, but then in manifestation. For this is what the Apostle Paul says, face to face; and this too is what John says: Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
Concerning these and such like things, this discourse itself seems to me to be the discourse of wisdom. But to abstain from evils, which Job said to be knowledge, is beyond doubt a matter of temporal things, since it is according to time that we are amid evils, from which we ought to abstain that we may come to those eternal goods. Wherefore whatever we do prudently, bravely, temperately, and justly pertains to that knowledge or discipline by which our action is occupied in avoiding evils and seeking goods; and so likewise whatever we gather by historical knowledge for the sake of examples either to be shunned or to be imitated, and for the sake of the necessary proofs concerning any matters that are suited to our uses.
When, therefore, discourse is made concerning these things, I hold that it is a discourse of knowledge, to be distinguished from the discourse of wisdom, to which pertain those things which neither have been nor shall be, but are; and which, on account of that eternity in which they are, are said both to have been and to be and to be about to be, without any mutability of times. For they have not so been that they should cease to be, nor are they so to be as though they now were not; but they have ever had, and ever shall have, that very selfsame being. Yet they abide, not as things fixed in spaces of places, like bodies, but in an incorporeal nature they are thus present, as intelligible, to the gaze of the mind, just as those visible or tangible things are present in places to the senses of the body.
Not only, however, do the intelligible and incorporeal reasons of sensible things placed in space abide without spatial locations, but even the reasons of motions passing away in time stand fast — themselves also indeed intelligible, not sensible — without any temporal passing. To reach these with the mind's keen edge is the lot of few; and when one does reach them, so far as it can be done, the reacher himself does not abide in them, but, as it were, the very edge of vision, beaten back, is repelled, and there comes to be a passing thought of a non-passing thing.
Yet this passing thought, through the disciplines by which the mind is instructed, is committed to memory, so that there may be somewhere to which that which is compelled to pass away thence can return — although, if the thought did not return to memory and there find what it had committed to it, it would be led, untrained as it were to this, just as it had been led before, and would find it there where it first found it, in that incorporeal truth whence again, as if copied out, it would be fixed in the memory. For not in the same way as, for example, the incorporeal and immutable reason of a square body abides, does the thought of man abide in it — if indeed it could reach it without any phantasm of spatial place.
Or if the numerical measure of some artful and musical sound be grasped through the intervals of passing time — a measure that stands without time in a certain hidden and lofty silence — it can at least be thought about so long as that song can be heard; yet what the mind's gaze, though passing, has snatched from it and, as it were, swallowing into the belly, has stored in memory, one will be able in a certain way to ruminate by recollection, and to transfer into a discipline what one has thus learned. But if it has been wholly wiped out by utter forgetfulness, then once more, with teaching for a guide, one will arrive at that which had entirely dropped away, and it will be found just as it was.
[XV 24] Hence that noble philosopher Plato tried to persuade men that the souls of men had lived here even before they bore these bodies, and that from this it comes about that the things which are learned are remembered as things previously known rather than known as new. For he related that a certain boy, questioned about I know not what points of geometry, answered as though he were most skilled in that discipline. For being questioned step by step and skillfully, he saw what was to be seen and said what he had seen. But if this were a recollection of things previously known, surely not all, or nearly all, would be able to do this when questioned in that manner; for not all were geometers in a former life, since they are so rare in the human race that one can scarcely be found.
But rather it is to be believed that the nature of the intellectual mind has been so constituted that, being joined by a natural order — the Creator so disposing — to intelligible things, it sees these in a certain light of its own peculiar and incorporeal kind, just as the eye of flesh sees the things that lie about it in this bodily light, of which light it was created capable and to which it is suited. For neither does the eye itself, therefore, discern white and black without a teacher because it already knew these before it was created in this flesh. Finally, why is it possible with regard to intelligible things alone that anyone well questioned should answer what pertains to any given discipline, even if he is ignorant of it?
Why can no one do this with regard to sensible things, except those which he has seen while established in this body, or which he has believed on the report of those who knew them, whether by anyone's writings or words? For we must not yield to those who allege that Pythagoras of Samos recalled some such things which he had experienced when he had already been here in another body; and others relate that certain others suffered something of this kind in their minds.
That these were false memories — such as we for the most part experience in dreams, when we seem to ourselves to recollect as though we had done or seen what we neither did at all nor saw — and that the minds of those men, even while awake, were so affected by the instigation of malignant and deceitful spirits, whose care it is to establish or to sow a false opinion about the transmigrations of souls in order to deceive men: this can be inferred from the fact that, if they truly remembered those things which they had here seen while formerly placed in other bodies, it would happen to many, indeed to almost all, seeing that they suppose it to come to pass without ceasing that from the living the dead, and thus from the dead the living, are made — as it were, the sleeping from the waking and the waking from the sleeping.
If, therefore, this is the right distinction between wisdom and knowledge — that to wisdom pertains the intellectual cognition of eternal things, but to knowledge the rational cognition of temporal things — it is not difficult to judge which is to be preferred and which postponed. But if some other discrimination is to be employed by which these two are to be told apart, which the Apostle without doubt teaches to differ when he says: To one indeed is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit — nevertheless the difference of these two that we have set down is most evident: namely, that one is the intellectual cognition of eternal things, the other the rational cognition of temporal things; and that the former is to be preferred to the latter no one doubts.
Since, then, we are leaving behind those things which belong to the outer man, and desiring to ascend inward from those things which we have in common with the beasts, before we come to the cognition of intelligible and supreme things which are everlasting, the rational cognition of temporal things meets us on the way.
Therefore in this too let us find, if we can, some trinity, just as we found one in the senses of the body and in those things which through them entered imaginally into our soul or spirit — so that, in place of the bodily things which we touch by bodily sense as placed outside, we had within the likenesses of bodies impressed upon the memory, out of which thought was formed, with the will as a third joining both together; even as, without, the edge of the eyes' vision was formed, which the will, that seeing might come to be, applied to the visible thing and joined both together, itself there too moving in to bring itself as a third. But this is not to be crowded into this book, so that in the one which follows, if God shall help, it may be fittingly inquired into, and whatever shall be found may be set forth.