(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all mistakes found.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing intially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.

TERTULLIAN

A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.(1)

[TRANSLATED BY PETER HOLMES, D.D.]

CHAP. I.--IT IS NOT TO THE PHILOSOPHERS THAT WE RESORT FOR INFORMATION
ABOUT THE SOUL BUT TO GOD.(2)

   HAVING discussed with Hermogenes the single point of the origin of the
soul, so far as his assumption led me, that the soul consisted rather in an
adaptation(3) of matter than of the inspiration(4) of God, I now turn to
the other questions incidental to the subject; and (in my treatment of
these) I shall evidently have mostly to contend with the philosophers. In
the very prison of Socrates they skirmished about the state of the soul. I
have my doubts at once whether the time was an opportune one for their
(great) master--(to say nothing of the place), although that perhaps does
not much matter. For what could the soul of Socrates then contemplate with
clearness and serenity? The sacred ship had returned (from Delos), the
hemlock draft to which he had been condemned had been drunk, death was now
present before him: (his mind) was,(5) as one may suppose,(6) naturally
excited(6) at every emotion; or if nature had lost her influence, it must
have been deprived of all power of thought.(7) Or let it have been as
placid and tranquil so you please, inflexible, in spite of the claims of
natural duty,(8) at the tears of her who was so soon to be his widow, and
at the sight of his thenceforward orphan children, yet his soul must have
been moved even by its very efforts to suppress emotion; and his constancy
itself must have been shaken, as he struggled against the disturbance of
the excitement around him. Besides, what other thoughts could any man
entertain who had been unjustly condemned to die, but such as should solace
him for the injury done to him? Especially would this be the case with that
glorious creature, the philosopher, to whom injurious treatment would not
suggest a craving for consolation, but rather the feeling of resentment and
indignation. Accordingly, after his sentence, when his wife came to him
with her effeminate cry, O Socrates, you are unjustly condemned! he seemed
already to find joy in answering, Would you then wish me justly condemned?
It is therefore not to be wondered at, if even in his prison, from a desire
to break the foul hands of Anytus and Melitus, he, in the face of death
itself, asserts the immortality of the soul by a strong assumption such as
was wanted to frustrate the wrong (they had inflicted upon him). So that
all the wisdom of Socrates, at that moment, proceeded from the affectation
of an assumed composure, rather than the firm conviction of ascertained
truth. For by whom has truth ever been discovered without God? By whom has
God ever been found without Christ? By whom has Christ ever been explored
without the Holy Spirit? By whom has the Holy Spirit ever been attained
without the mysterious gift of faith?(9) Socrates, as none can doubt, was
actuated by a different spirit. For they say that a demon clave to him from
his boyhood--the very worst teacher certainly, notwithstanding the high
place assigned to it by poets and philosophers--even next to, (nay, along
with) the gods themselves. The teachings of the power of Christ had not yet
been given--(that power) which alone can confute this most pernicious
influence of evil that has nothing good in it, but is rather the author of
all error, and the seducer from all truth. Now if Socrates was pronounced
the wisest of men by the oracle of the Pythian demon, which, you may be
sure, neatly managed the business for his friend, of how much greater
dignity and constancy is the assertion of the Christian wisdom, before the
very breath of which the whole host of demons is scattered! This wisdom of
the school of heaven frankly and without reserve denies the gods of this
world, and shows no such inconsistency as to order a "cock to be sacrificed
to AEsculapius:"(1) no new gods and demons does it introduce, but expels
the old ones; it corrupts not youth, but instructs them in all goodness and
moderation; and so it bears the unjust condemnation not of one city only,
but of all the world, in the cause of that truth which incurs indeed the
greater hatred in proportion to its fulness: so that it tastes death not
out of a (poisoned) cup almost in the way of jollity; but it exhausts it in
every kind of bitter cruelty, on gibbets and in holocausts.(2) Meanwhile,
in the still gloomier prison of the world amongst your Cebeses and Phaedos,
in every investigation concerning (man's) soul, it directs its inquiry
according to the rules of God. At all events, you can show us no more
powerful expounder of the soul than the Author thereof. From God you may
learn about that which you hold of God; but from none else will you get
this knowledge, if you get it not from God. For who is to reveal that which
God has hidden? To that quarter must we resort in our inquiries whence we
are most safe even in deriving our ignorance. For it is really better for
us not to know a thing, because He has not revealed it to us, than to know
it according to man's wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.

CHAP. II.--THE CHRISTIAN HAS SURE AND SIMPLE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE
SUBJECT BEFORE US.

   Of course we shall not deny that philosophers have sometimes thought
the same things as ourselves. The testimony of truth is the issue thereof.
It sometimes happens even in a storm, when the boundaries of sky and sea
are lost in confusion, that some harbour is stumbled on (by the labouring
ship) by some happy chance; and sometimes in the very shades of night,
through blind luck alone, one finds access to a spot, or egress from it. In
nature, however, most conclusions are suggested, as it were, by that common
intelligence wherewith God has been pleased to endow the soul of man. This
intelligence has been caught up by philosophy, and, with the view of
glorifying her own art, has been inflated (it is not to be wondered at that
I use this language) with straining after that facility of language which
is practised in the building up and pulling down of everything, and which
has greater aptitude for persuading men by speaking than by teaching. She
assigns to things their forms and conditions; sometimes makes them common
and public, sometimes appropriates them to private use; on certainties she
capriciously stamps the character of uncertainty; she appeals to
precedents, as if all things are capable of being compared together; she
describes all things by rule and definition, allotting diverse properties
even to similar objects; she attributes nothing to the divine permission,
but assumes as her principles the laws of nature. I could bear with her
pretensions, if only she were herself true to nature, and would prove to me
that she had a mastery over nature as being associated with its creation.
She thought, no doubt, that she was deriving her mysteries from sacred
sources, as men deem them, because in ancient times most authors were
supposed to be (I will not say godlike, but) actually gods: as, for
instance, the Egyptian Mercury,(3) to whom Plato paid very great
deference;(4) and the Phrygian Silenus, to whom Midas lent his long ears,
when the shepherds brought him to him; and Hermotimus, to whom the good
people of Clazomenae built a temple after his death; and Orpheus; and
Musaeus; and Pherecydes, the master of Pythagoras. But why need we care,
since these philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings
which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal,(5) certain as we
are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true
system of prophecy, which has arisen in this present age;(6) because we do
not forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them
fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the
world with cunning knowledge of this (philosophic) cast? It is, indeed, not
incredible that any man who is in quest of wisdom may have gone so far, as
a matter of curiosity, as to consult the very prophets; (but be this as it
may), if you take t he philosophers, you would find in them more diversity
than agreement, since even in their agreement their diversity is
discoverable. Whatever things are true in their systems, and agreeable to
prophetic wisdom, they either recommend as emanating from some other
source, or else perversely apply(1) in some other sense. This process is
attended with very great detriment to the truth, when they pretend that it
is either helped by falsehood, or else that falsehood derives support from
it. The following circumstance must needs have set ourselves and the
philosophers by the ears, especially in this present matter, that they
sometimes clothe sentiments which are common to both sides, in arguments
which are peculiar to themselves, but contrary in some points to our rule
and standard of faith; and at other times defend opinions which are
especially their, own, with arguments which both sides acknowledge to be
valid, and occasionally conformable to their system of belief. The truth
has, at this rate, been well-nigh excluded by the philosophers, through the
poisons with which they have infected it; and thus, if we regard both the
modes of coalition which we have now mentioned, and which are equally
hostile to the truth, we feel the urgent necessity of freeing, on the one
hand, the sentiments held by us in common with them from the arguments of
the philosophers, and of separating, on the other hand, the arguments which
both parties employ from the opinions of the same philosophers. And this we
may do by recalling all questions to God's inspired standard, with the
obvious exception of such simple cases as being free from the entanglement
of any preconceived conceits, one may fairly admit on mere human testimony;
because plain evidence of this sort we must sometimes borrow from
opponents, when our opponents have nothing to gain from it. Now I am not
unaware what a vast mass of literature the philosophers have accumulated
concerning the subject before us, in their own commentaries thereon--what
various schools of principles there are, what conflicts of opinion, what
prolific sources of questions, what perplexing methods of solution.
Moreover, I have looked into Medical Science also, the sister (as they say)
of Philosophy, which claims as her function to cure the body, and thereby
to have a special acquaintance with the soul. From this circumstance she
has great differences with her sister, pretending as the latter does to
know more about the soul, through the more obvious treatment, as it were,
of her in her domicile of the body. But never mind all this contention
between them for pre-eminence! For extending their several researches on
the soul, Philosophy, on the one hand, has enjoyed the full scope of her
genius; while Medicine, on the other hand, has possessed the stringent
demands of her art and practice. Wide are men's inquiries into
uncertainties; wider still are their disputes about conjectures. However
great the difficulty of adducing proofs, the labour of producing conviction
is not one whit less; so that the gloomy Heraclitus was quite right, when,
observing the thick darkness which obscured the researches of the inquirers
about the soul, and wearied with their interminable questions, he declared
that he had certainly not explored the limits of the soul, although he had
traversed every road in her domains. To the Christian, however, but few
words are necessary for the clear understanding of the whole subject. But
in the few words there always arises certainty to him; nor is he permitted
to give his inquiries a wider range than is compatible with their solution;
for "endless questions" the apostle forbids.(2) It must, however, be added,
that no solution may be found by any man, but such as is learned from God;
and that which is learned of God is the sum and substance of the whole
thing.

CHAP. III.--THE SOUL'S ORIGIN DEFINED OUT OF THE SIMPLE WORDS OF SCRIPTURE.

   Would to God that no "heresies had been ever necessary, in order that
they which are; approved may be made manifest!"(3) We should then be never
required to try our strength in contests about the soul with philosophers,
those patriarchs of heretics, as they may be fairly called.(4) The apostle,
so far back as his own time, foresaw, indeed, that philosophy would do
violent injury to the truth.(5) This admonition about false philosophy he
was induced to offer after he had been at Athens, had become acquainted
with that loquacious city,(6) and had there had a taste of its huckstering
wiseacres and talkers. In like manner is the treatment of the soul
according to the sophistical doctrines of men which "mix their wine with
water."(1) Some of them deny the immortality of the soul; others affirm
that it is immortal, and something more. Some raise disputes about its
substance; others about its form; others, again, respecting each of its
several faculties. One school of philosophers derives its state from
various sources, while another ascribes its departure to different
destinations. The various schools reflect the character of their masters,
according as they have received their impressions from the dignity(2) of
Plato, or the vigour(3) of Zeno, or the equanimity(4) of Aristotle, or the
stupidity(5) of Epicurus, or the sadness(6) of Heraclitus, or the
madness(7) of Empedocles. The fault, I suppose, of the divine doctrine lies
in its springing from Judaea(8) rather than from Greece. Christ made a
mistake, too, in sending forth fishermen to preach, rather than the
sophist. Whatever noxious vapours, accordingly, exhaled from philosophy,
obscure the clear and wholesome atmosphere of truth, it will be for
Christians to clear away, both by shattering to pieces the arguments which
are drawn from the principles of things--I mean those of the philosophers--
and by opposing to them the maxims of heavenly wisdom--that is, such as are
revealed by the Lord; in order that both the pitfalls wherewith philosophy
captivates the heathen may be removed, and the means employed by heresy to
shake the faith of Christians may be repressed. We have already decided one
point in our controversy with Hermogenes, as we said at the beginning of
this treatise, when we claimed the soul to be formed by the breathing(9) of
God, and not out of matter. We relied even there on the clear direction of
the inspired statement which informs us how that "the Lord God breathed on
man's face the breath of life, so that man became a living soul"(10)--by
that inspiration of God, of course. On this point, therefore, nothing
further need be investigated or advanced by us. It has its own
treatise,(11) and its own heretic. I shall regard it as my introduction to
the other branches of the subject.

CHAP. IV.--IN OPPOSITION TO PLATO, THE SOUL WAS CREATED AND ORIGINATED AT
BIRTH.

   After settling the origin of the soul, its condition or state comes up
next. For when we acknowledge that the soul originates in the breath of
God, it follows that we attribute a beginning to it. This Plato, indeed,
refuses to assign to it, for he will have the soul to be unborn and
unmade.(12) We, however, from the very fact of its having had a beginning,
as well as from the nature thereof, teach that it had both birth and
creation. And when we ascribe both birth and creation to it, we have made
no mistake: for being born, indeed, is one thing, and being made is
another,--the former being the term which is best suited to living beings.
When distinctions, however, have places and times of their own, they
occasionally possess also reciprocity of application among themselves.
Thus, the being made admits of being taken in the sense of being brought
forth;(13) inasmuch as everything which receives being or existence, in any
way whatever, is in fact generated. For the maker may really be called the
parent of the thing that is made: in this sense Plato also uses the
phraseology. So far, therefore, as concerns our belief in the souls being
made or born, the opinion of the philosopher is overthrown by the authority
of prophecy(14) even.

CHAP. V.--PROBABLE VIEW OF THE STOICS, THAT THE SOUL HAS A CORPOREAL
NATURE.

   Suppose one summons a Eubulus to his assistance, and a Critolaus, and a
Zenocrates, and on this occasion Plato's friend Aristotle. They may very
possibly hold themselves ready for stripping the soul of its corporeity,
unless they happen to see other philosophers opposed to them in their
purpose--and this, too, in greater numbers--asserting for the soul a
corporeal nature. Now I am not referring merely to those who mould the soul
out of manifest bodily substances, as Hipparchus and Heraclitus (do) out of
fire; as Hippon and Thales (do) out of water; as Empedocles and Critias
(do) out of blood; as Epicurus (does) out of atoms, since even atoms by
their coherence form corporeal masses; as Critolaus and his Peripatetics
(do) out of a certain indescribable quintessence,(15) if that may be called
a body which rather includes and embraces bodily substances;--but I call on
the Stoics also to help me, who, while declaring almost in our own terms
that the soul is a spiritual essence (inasmuch as breath and spirit are in
their nature very near akin to each other), will yet have no difficulty in
persuading (us) that the soul is a corporeal substance. Indeed, Zeno,
defining the soul to be a spirit generated with (the body,(1)) constructs
his argument in this way: That substance which by its departure causes the
living being to die is a corporeal one. Now it is by the departure of the
spirit, which is generated with (the body,) that the living being dies;
therefore the spirit which is generated with (the body) is a corporeal
substance. But this spirit which is generated with (the body) is the soul:
it follows, then, that the soul is a corporeal substance. Cleanthes, too,
will have it that family likeness passes from parents to their children not
merely in bodily features, but in characteristics of the soul; as if it
were out of a mirror of (a man's) manners, and faculties, and affections,
that bodily likeness and unlikeness are caught and reflected by the soul
also. It is therefore as being corporeal that it is susceptible of likeness
and unlikeness. Again, there is nothing in common between things corporeal
and things incorporeal as to their susceptibility. But the soul certainly
sympathizes with the body, and shares in its pain, whenever it is injured
by bruises, and wounds, and sores: the body, too, suffers with the soul,
and is united with it (whenever it is afflicted with anxiety, distress, or
love) in the loss of vigour which its companion sustains, whose shame and
fear it testifies by its own blushes and paleness. The soul, therefore, is
(proved to be) corporeal from this inter-communion of susceptibility.
Chrysippus also joins hands in fellowship with Cleanthes when he lays it
down that it is not at all possible for things which are endued with body
to be separated from things which have not body; because they have no such
relation as mutual contact or coherence. Accordingly Lucretius says:(2)

   "Tangere enim et tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res."
   "For nothing but body is capable of touching or of being touched."

(Such severance, however, is quite natural between the soul and the body);
for when the body is deserted by the soul, it is overcome by death. The
soul, therefore, is endued with a body; for if it were not corporeal, it
could not desert the body.

CHAP. VI.--THE ARGUMENTS OF THE PLATONISTS FOR THE SOUL'S INCORPOREALITY,
OPPOSED, PERHAPS FRIVOLOUSLY.

   These conclusions the Platonists disturb more by subtilty than by
truth. Every body, they say, has necessarily either an animate nature(3) or
an inanimate one.(4) If it has the inanimate nature, it receives motion
externally to itself; if the animate one, internally. Now the soul receives
motion neither externally nor internally: not externally, since it has not
the inanimate nature; nor internally, because it is itself rather the giver
of motion to the body. It evidently, then, is not a bodily substance,
inasmuch as it receives motion neither way, according to the nature and law
of corporeal substances. Now, what first surprises us here, is the
unsuitableness of a definition which appeals to objects which have no
affinity with the soul. For it is impossible for the soul to be called
either an animate body or an inanimate one, inasmuch as it is the soul
itself which makes the body either animate, if it be present to it, or else
inanimate, if it be absent from it. That, therefore, which produces a
result, cannot itself be the result, so as to be entitled to the
designation of an animate thing or an inanimate one. The soul is so called
in respect of its own substance. If, then, that which is the soul admits
not of being called an animate body or an inanimate one, how can it
challenge comparison with the nature and law of animate and inanimate
bodies? Furthermore, since it is characteristic of a body to be moved
externally by something else, and as we have already shown that the soul
receives motion from some other thing when it is swayed (from the outside,
of course, by something else) by prophetic influence or by madness,
therefore I must be right in regarding that as bodily substance which,
according to the examples we have quoted, is moved by some other object
from without. Now, if to receive motion from some other thing is
characteristic of a body, how much more is it so to impart motion to
something else! But the soul moves the body, all whose efforts are apparent
externally, and from without. It is the soul which gives motion to the feet
for walking, and to the hands for touching, and to the eyes for sight, and
to the tongue for speech--a sort of internal image which moves and animates
the surface. Whence could accrue such power to the soul, if it were
incorporeal? How could an unsubstantial thing propel solid objects? But in
what way do the senses in man seem to be divisible into the corporeal and
the intellectual classes? They tell is that the qualities of things
corporeal, such as earth and fire, are indicated by the bodily senses--of
touch and sight; whilst (the qualities) of incorporeal things--for
instance, benevolence and malignity--are discovered by the intellectual
faculties. And from this (they deduce what is to them) the manifest
conclusion, that the soul is incorporeal, its properties being comprehended
by the perception not of bodily organs, but of intellectual faculties.
Well, (I shall be much surprised) if I do not at once cut away the very
ground on which their argument stands. For I show them how incorporeal
things are commonly submitted to the bodily senses--sound, for instance, to
the organ of hearing; colour, to the organ of sight; smell, to the
olfactory organ. And, just as in these instances, the soul likewise has its
contact with(1) the body; not to say that the incorporeal objects are
reported to us through the bodily organs, for the express reason that they
come into contact with the said organs. Inasmuch, then, as it is evident
that even incorporeal objects are embraced and comprehended by corporeal
ones, why should not the soul, which is corporeal, be equally comprehended
and understood by incorporeal faculties? It is thus certain that their
argument fails. Among their more conspicuous arguments will be found this,
that in their judgment every bodily substance is nourished by bodily
substances; whereas the soul, as being an incorporeal essence, is nourished
by incorporeal aliments--for instance, by the studies of wisdom. But even
this ground has no stability in it, since Soranus, who is a most
accomplished authority in medical science, affords us as answer, when he
asserts that the soul is even nourished by corporeal aliments; that in fact
it is, when failing and weak, actually refreshed oftentimes by food.
Indeed, when deprived of all food, does not the soul entirely remove from
the body? Soranus, then, after discoursing about the soul in the amplest
manner, filling four volumes with his dissertations, and after weighing
well all the opinions of the philosophers, defends the corporeality of the
soul, although in the process he has robbed it of its immortality. For to
all men it is not given to believe the truth which Christians are
privileged to hold. As, therefore, Soranus has shown us from facts that the
soul is nourished by corporeal aliments, let the philosopher (adopt a
similar mode of proof, and) show that it is sustained by an incorporeal
food. But the fact is, that no one has even been able to quench this
man's(2) doubts and difficulties about the condition of the soul with the
honey-water of Plato's subtle eloquence, nor to surfeit them with the
crumbs from the minute nostrums of Aristotle. But what is to become of the
souls of all those robust barbarians, which have had no nurture of
philosopher's lore indeed, and yet are strong in untaught practical wisdom,
and which although very starvelings in philosophy, without your Athenian
academies and porches, and even the prison of Socrates, do yet contrive to
live? For it is not the soul's actual substance which is benefited by the
aliment of learned study, but only its conduct and discipline; such ailment
contributing nothing to increase its bulk, but only to enhance its grace.
It is, moreover, a happy circumstance that the Stoics affirm that even the
arts have corporeality; since at the rate the soul too must be corporeal,
since it is commonly supposed to be nourished by the arts. Such, however,
is the enormous preoccupation of the philosophic mind, that it is generally
unable to see straight before it. Hence (the story of) Thales falling into
the well.(3) It very commonly, too, through not understanding even its own
opinions, suspects a failure of its own health. Hence (the story of)
Chrysippus and the hellebore. Some such hallucination, I take it, must have
occurred to him, when he asserted that two bodies could not possibly be
contained in one: he must have kept out of mind and sight the case of those
pregnant women who, day after day, bear not one body, but even two and
three at a time, within the embrace of a single womb. One finds likewise,
in the records of the civil law, the instance of a certain Greek woman who
gave birth to a quint(4) of children, the mother of all these at one
parturition, the manifold parent of a single brood, the prolific produce
from a single womb, who, guarded by so many bodies--I had almost said, a
people--was herself no less then the sixth person! The whole creation
testifies how that those bodies which are naturally destined to issue from
bodies, are already (included) in that from which they proceed. Now that
which proceeds from some other thing must needs be second to it. Nothing,
however, proceeds out of another thing except by the process of generation;
but then they are two (things).

CHAP.VII. --THE SOUL'S CORPOREALITY DEMONSTRATED OUT OF THE GOSPELS.

   So far as the philosophers are concerned, we have said enough. As for
our own teachers, indeed, our reference to them is ex abundanti--a
surplusage of authority: in the Gospel itself they will be found to have
the clearest evidence for the corporeal nature of the soul. In hell the
soul of a certain man is in torment, punished in flames, suffering
excruciating thirst, and imploring from the finger of a happier soul, for
his tongue, the solace of a drop of water.(1) Do you suppose that this end
of the blessed poor man and the miserable rich man is only imaginary? Then
why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if the circumstance is not in
(the category of) a real occurrence? But even if it is to be regarded as
imaginary, it will still be a testimony to truth and reality. For unless
the soul possessed corporeality, the image of a soul could not possibly
contain a finger of a bodily substance; nor would the Scripture feign a
statement about the limbs of a body, if these had no existence. But what is
that which is removed to Hades(2) after the separation of the body; which
is there detained; which is reserved until the day of judgment; to which
Christ also, on dying, descended? I imagine it is the souls of the
patriarchs. But wherefore (all this), if the soul is nothing in its
subterranean abode? For nothing it certainly is, if it is not a bodily
substance. For whatever is incorporeal is incapable of being kept and
guarded in any way; it is also exempt from either punishment or
refreshment. That must be a body, by which punishment and refreshment can
be experienced. Of this I shall treat more fully in a more fitting place.
Therefore, whatever amount of punishment or refreshment the soul tastes in
Hades, in its prison or lodging,(3) in the fire or in Abraham's bosom, it
gives proof thereby of its own corporeality. For an incorporeal thing
suffers nothing, not having that which makes it capable of suffering; else,
if it has such capacity, it must be a bodily substance. For in as far as
every corporeal thing is capable of suffering, in so far is that which is
capable of suffering also corporeal.(4)

CHAP. VIII.--OTHER PLATONIST ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED.

   Besides, it would be a harsh and absurd proceeding to exempt anything
from the class cf corporeal beings, on the ground that it is not exactly
like the other constituents of that class. And where individual creature's
possess various properties, does not this variety in works of the same
class indicate the greatness of the Creator, in making them at the same
time different and yet like, amicable yet rivals? Indeed, the philosophers
themselves agree in saying that the universe consists of harmonious
oppositions, according to Empedocles' (theory of) friendship and enmity.
Thus, then, although corporeal essences are opposed to incorporeal ones,
they yet differ from each other in such sort as to amplify their species by
their variety, without changing their genus, remaining all alike corporeal;
contributing to God's glory in their manifold existence by reason of their
variety; so various, by reason of their differencs; so diverse, in that
some of them possess one kind of perception, others another; some feeding
on one kind of aliment, others on another; some, again, possessing
visibility,  while others are invisible; some being weighty, others light.
They are in the habit of saying that the soul must be pronounced
incorporeal on this account, because the bodies of the dead, after its
departure from them, become heavier, whereas they ought to be lighter,
being deprived of the weight of a body--since the soul is a bodily
substance. But what, says Soranus (in answer to this argument), if men
should deny that the sea is a bodily substance, because a ship out of the
water becomes a heavy and motionless mass? How much truer and stronger,
then, is the soul's corporeal essence, which carries about the body, which
eventually assumes so great a weight with the nimblest motion! Again, even
if the soul is invisible, it is only in strict accordance with the
condition of its own corporeality, and suitably to the property of its own
essence, as well as to the nature of even those beings to which its destiny
made it to be invisible. The eyes of the owl cannot endure the sun, whilst
the eagle is so well able to face his glory, that the noble character of
its young is determined by the unblinking strength of their gaze; while the
eaglet, which turns away its eye from the sun's ray, is expelled from the
nest as a degenerate creature! So true is it, therefore, than to one eye an
object is invisible, which may be quite plainly seen by another,--without
implying any incorporeality in that which is not endued with an equally
strong power (of vision). The sun is indeed a bodily substance, because it
is (composed of) fire; the object, however, which the eaglet at once admits
the existence of, the owl denies, without. any prejudice, nevertheless, to
the testimony of the eagle. There is the selfsame difference in respect of
the soul's corporeality, which is (perhaps) invisible to the flesh, but
perfectly visible to the spirit. Thus John, being "in the Spirit" of
God,(1) beheld plainly the souls of the martyrs.(2)

CHAP. IX.--PARTICULARS OF THE ALLEGED COMMUNICATION TO A MONTANIST SISTER.

   When we aver that the soul has a body of a quality and kind peculiar to
itself, in this special condition of it we shall be already supplied with a
decision respecting all the other accidents of its corporeity; how that
they belong to it, because we have shown it to be a body, but that even
they have a quality peculiar to themselves, proportioned to the special
nature of the body (to which they belong); or else, if any accidents (of a
body) are remarkable in this instance for their absence, then this, too,
results from the peculiarity of the condition of the soul's corporeity,
from which are absent sundry qualities which are present to all other
corporeal beings. And yet, notwithstanding all this, we shall not be at all
inconsistent if we declare that the more usual characteristics of a body,
such as invariably accrue to the corporeal condition, belong also to the
soul--such as form(3) and limitation; and that triad of dimensions(4)--I
mean length, and breadth and height--by which philosophers gauge al bodies.
What now remains but for us to give the soul a figure?(5) Plato refuses to
do this, as if it endangered the soul's immortality.(6) For everything
which has figure is, according to him, compound, and composed of parts;(7)
whereas the soul is immortal; and being immortal, it is therefore
indissoluble; and being indissoluble, it is figureless: for if, on the
contrary, it had figure, it would be of a composite and structural
formation. He, however, in some other manner frames for the soul an effigy
of intellectual forms, beautiful for its just symmetry and tuitions of
philosophy, but misshapen by some contrary qualities. As for ourselves,
indeed, we inscribe on the soul the lineaments of corporeity, not simply
from the assurance which reasoning has taught us of its corporeal nature,
but also from the firm conviction which divine grace impresses on us by
revelation. For, seeing that we acknowledge spiritual charismata, or gifts,
we too have merited the attainment of the prophetic gift, although coming
after John (the Baptist). We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has
been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences
in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord's day
in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord;
she both sees and hears mysterious communications;(8) some men's hearts she
understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether
it be in the reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of psalms, or in the
preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, m all these
religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing
visions. It may possibly have happened to us, whilst this sister of ours
was rapt in the Spirit, that we had discoursed in some ineffable way about
the soul. After the people are dismissed at the conclusion of the sacred
services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things
she may have seen in vision (for all her communications are examined with
the most scrupulous care, in order that their truth may be probed).
"Amongst other things," says she, "there has been shown to me a soul in
bodily shape, and a spirit has been in the habit of appearing to me; not,
however, a void and empty illusion, but such as would offer itself to be
even grasped by the hand, soft and transparent and of an etherial colour,
and in form resembling that of a human being in every respect." This was
her vision, and for her witness there was God; and the apostle most
assuredly foretold that there were to be "spiritual gifts" in the
church.(9) Now, can you refuse to believe this, even if indubitable
evidence on every point is forthcoming for your conviction? Since, then,
the soul is a corporeal substance, no doubt it possesses qualities such as
those which we have just mentioned, amongst them the property of colour,
which is inherent in every bodily substance. Now what colour would you
attribute to the soul but an etherial transparent one? Not that its
substance is actually the ether or air (although this was the opinion of
Aenesidemus and Anaximenes, and I suppose of Heraclitus also, as some say
of him), nor transparent light (although Heraclides of Pontus held it to be
so). "Thunder-stones,"(10)indeed, are not of igne-ous substance, because
they shine with ruddy redness; nor are beryls composed of aqueous matter,
because they are of a pure wavy whiteness. How many things also besides
these are there which their colour would associate in the same class, but
which nature keeps widely apart! Since, however, everything which is very
attenuated and transparent bears a strong resemblance to the air, such
would be the case with the soul, since in its material nature(1) it is wind
and breath, (or spirit); whence it is that the belief of its corporeal
quality is endangered, in consequence of the extreme tenuity and subtilty
of its essence. Likewise, as regards the figure of the human soul from your
own conception, you can well imagine that it is none other than the human
form; indeed, none other than the shape of that body which each individual
soul animates and moves about. This we may at once be induced to admit from
contemplating man's original formation. For only carefully consider, after
God hath breathed upon the face of man the breath of life, and man had
consequently become a living soul, surely that breath must have passed
through the face at once into the interior structure, and have spread
itself throughout all the spaces of the body; and as soon as by the divine
inspiration it had become condensed, it must have impressed itself on each
internal feature, which the condensation had filled in, and so have been,
as it were, congealed in shape, (or stereotyped). Hence, by this densifying
process, there arose a fixing of the soul's corporeity; and by the
impression its figure was formed and moulded. This is the inner man,
different from the outer, but yet one in the twofold condition.(2) It, too,
has eyes and ears of its own, by means of which Paul must have heard and
seen the Lord;(3) it has, moreover all the other members of the body by the
help of which it effects all processes of thinking and all activity in
dreams. Thus it happens that the rich man in hell has a tongue and poor
(Lazarus) a finger and Abraham a bosom.(4) By these features also the souls
of the martyrs under the altar are distinguished and known. The soul indeed
which in the beginning was associated with Adam's body, which grew with its
growth and was moulded after its form proved to be the germ both of the
entire substance (of the human soul) and of that (part of) creation.

CHAP. X.--THE SIMPLE NATURE OF THE SOUL IS ASSERTED WITH PLATO. THE
IDENTITY OF SPIRIT AND SOUL.

   It is essential to a firm faith to declare with Plato(5) that the soul
is simple; in other words uniform and uncompounded; simply that is to say
in respect of its substance. Never mind men's artificial views and
theories, and away with the fabrications of heresy!(6) Some maintain that
there is within the soul a natural substance--the spirit--which is
different from it:(7) as if to have life--the function of the soul--were
one thing; and to emit breath--the alleged(8) function of the spirit--were
another thing. Now it is not in all animals that these two functions are
found; for there are many which only live but do not breathe in that they
do not possess the organs of respiration--lungs and windpipes.(9) But of
what use is it, in an examination of the soul of man, to borrow proofs from
a gnat or an ant, when the great Creator in His divine arrangements has
allotted to every animal organs of vitality suited to its own disposition
and nature, so that we ought not to catch at any conjectures from
comparisons of this sort? Man, indeed, although organically furnished with
lungs and windpipes, will not on that account be proved to breathe by one
process, and to live by another;(10) nor can the ant, although defective in
these organs, be on that account said to be without respiration, as if it
lived and that was all. For by whom has so clear an insight into the works
of God been really attained, as to entitle him to assume that these organic
resources are wanting to any living thing? There is that Herophilus, the
well-known surgeon, or (as I may almost call him) butcher, who cut up no
end of persons,(11) in order to investigate the secrets of nature, who
ruthlessly handled(12) human creatures to discover (their form and make): I
have my doubts whether he succeeded in clearly exploring all the internal
parts of their structure, since death itself changes and disturbs the
natural functions of life, especially when the death is not a natural one,
but such as must cause irregularity and error amidst the very processes of
dissection. Philosophers have affirmed it to be a certain fact, that gnats,
and ants, and moths have no pulmonary or arterial organs. Well, then, tell
me, you curious and elaborate investigator of these mysteries, have they
eyes for seeing withal? But yet they proceed to whatever point they wish,
and they both shun and aim at various objects by processes of sight: point
out their eyes to me, show me their pupils. Moths also gnaw and eat:
demonstrate to me their mandibles, reveal their jaw-teeth. Then, again,
gnats hum and buzz, nor even in the dark are they unable to find their way
to our ears:(1) point out to me, then, not only the noisy tube, but the
stinging lance of that mouth of theirs. Take any living thing whatever, be
it the tiniest you can find, it must needs be fed and sustained by some
food or other: show me, then, their organs for taking into their system,
digesting, and ejecting food. What must we say, therefore? If it is by such
instruments that life is maintained, these instrumental means must of
course exist in all things which are to live, even though they are not
apparent to the eye or to the apprehension by reason of their minuteness.
You can more readily believe this, if you remember that God manifests His
creative greatness quite as much in small objects as in the very largest.
If, however, you suppose that God's wisdom has no capacity for forming such
infinitesimal corpuscles, you can still recognise His greatness, in that He
has furnished even to the smallest animals the functions of life, although
in the absence of the suitable organs,--securing to them the power of
sight, even without eyes; of eating, even without teeth; and of digestion,
even without stomachs. Some animals also have the ability to move forward
without feet, as serpents, by a gliding motion; or as worms, by vertical
efforts; or as snails and slugs, by their slimy crawl. Why should you not
then believe that respiration likewise may be effected without the bellows
of the lungs, and without arterial canals? You would thus supply yourself
with a strong proof that the spirit or breath is an adjunct of the human
soul, for the very reason that some creatures lack breath, and that they
lack it because they are not furnished with organs of respiration. You
think it possible for a thing to live without breath; then why not suppose
that a thing might breathe without lungs? Pray, tell me, what is it to
breathe? I suppose it means to emit breath from yourself. What is it not to
live? I suppose it means not to emit breath from yourself. This is the
answer which I should have to make, if "to breathe" is not the same thing
as "to live." It must, however, be characteristic of a dead man not to
respire: to respire, therefore, is the characteristic of a living man. But
to respire is likewise the characteristic of a breathing man: therefore
also to breathe is the characteristic of a living man. Now, if both one and
the other could possibly have been accomplished without the soul, to
breathe might not be a function of the soul, but merely to live. But indeed
to live is to breathe, and to breathe is to live. Therefore this entire
process, both of breathing and living, belongs to that to which living
belongs--that is, to the soul. Well, then, since you separate the spirit
(or breath) and the soul, separate their operations also. Let both of them
accomplish some act apart from one another--the soul apart, the spirit
apart. Let the soul live without the spirit; let the spirit breathe without
the soul. Let one of them quit men's bodies, let the other remain; let
death and life meet and agree. If indeed the soul and the spirit are two,
they may be divided; and thus, by the separation of the one which departs
from the one which remains, there would accrue the union and meeting
together of life and of death. But such a union never will accrue:
therefore they are not two, and they cannot be divided; but divided they
might have been, if they had been (two). Still two things may surely
coalesce in growth. But the two in question never will coalesce, since to
live is one thing, and to breathe is another. Substances are distinguished
by their operations. How much firmer ground have you for believing that the
soul and the spirit are but one, since you assign to them no difference; so
that the soul is itself the spirit, respiration being the function of that
of which life also is! But what if you insist on supposing that the day is
one thing, and the light, which is incidental to the day, is another thing,
whereas day is only the light itself? There must, of course, be also
different kinds of light, as (appears) from the ministry of fires. So
likewise will there be different sorts of spirits, according as they
emanate from God or from the devil. Whenever, indeed, the question is about
soul and spirit, the soul will be (understood to be) itself the spirit,
just is the day is the light itself. For a thing is itself identical with
that by means of which itself exists.

CHAP. XI.--SPIRIT--A TERM EXPRESSIVE OF AN OPERATION OF THE SOUL, NOT OF
ITS NATURE. TO BE CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHED FROM THE SPIRIT OF GOD.

   But the nature of my present inquiry obliges me to call the soul spirit
or breath, because to breathe is ascribed to another substance. We,
however, claim this (operation) for the soul, which we acknowledge to be an
indivisible simple substance, and therefore we must call it spirit in a
definitive sense--not because of its condition, but of its action; not in
respect of its nature, but of its operation; because it respires, and not
because it is spirit in any especial sense.(1) For to blow or breathe is to
respire. So that we are driven to describe, by (the term which indicates
this respi-ration--that is to say) spirit--the soul which we hold to be, by
the propriety of its action, breath. Moreover, we properly and especially
insist on calling it breath (or spirit), in opposition to Hermogenes, who
derives the soul from matter instead of from the afflatus or breath of God.
He, to be sure, goes flatly against the testimony of Scripture, and with
this view converts breath into spirit, because he cannot believe that the
(creature on which was breathed the) Spirit of God fell into sin, and then
into condemnation; and therefore he would conclude that the soul came from
matter rather than from the Spirit or breath of God. For this reason, we on
our side even from that passage, maintain the soul to be breath and not the
spirit, in the scriptural and distinctive sense of the spirit; and here it
is with regret that we apply the term spirit at all in the lower sense, in
consequence of the identical action of respiring and breathing. In that
passage, the only question is about the natural substance; to respire being
an act of nature. I would not tarry a moment longer on this point, were it
not for those heretics who introduce into the soul some spiritual germ
which passes my comprehension: (they make it to have been) conferred upon
the soul by the secret liberality of her mother Sophia (Wisdom), without
the knowledge of the Creator.(2) But (Holy) Scripture, which has a better
knowledge of the soul's Maker, or rather God, has told us nothing more than
that God breathed on man's face the breath of life, and that man became a
living soul, by means of which he was both to live and breathe; at the same
time making a sufficiently clear distinction between the spirit and the
soul,(3) in such passages as the following, wherein God Himself declares:
"My Spirit went forth from me, and I made the breath of each. And the
breath of my Spirit became soul."(4) And again: "He giveth breath unto the
people that are on the earth, and Spirit to them that walk thereon."(5)
First of all there comes the (natural) soul, that is to say, the breath, to
the people that are on the earth,--in other words, to those who act
carnally in the flesh; then afterwards comes the Spirit to those who walk
thereon,--that is, who subdue the works of the flesh; because the apostle
also says, that "that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural, (or in possession of the natural soul,) and afterward that which
is spiritual."(6) For, inasmuch as Adam straightway predicted that "great
mystery of Christ and the church,"(7) when he said, "This now is bone of my
bones, and flesh of my flesh; therefore shall a man leave his father and
his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall become one
flesh,"(8) he experienced the influence of the Spirit. For there fell upon
him that ecstasy, which is the Holy Ghost's operative virtue of prophecy.
And even the evil spirit too is an influence which comes upon a man.
Indeed, the Spirit of God not more really "turned Saul into another
man,"(9) that is to say, into a prophet, when "people said one to another,
What is this which is come to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the
prophets?"(10) than did the evil spirit afterwards turn him into another
man--in other words, into an apostate. Judas likewise was for a long time
reckoned among the elect (apostles), and was even appointed to the office
of their treasurer; he was not yet the traitor, although he was become
fraudulent; but afterwards the devil entered into him. Consequently, as the
spirit neither of God nor of the devil is naturally planted with a man's
soul at his birth, this soul must evidently exist apart and alone, previous
to the accession to it of either spirit: if thus apart and alone, it must
also be simple and un-compounded as regards its substance; and therefore it
cannot respire from any other cause than from the actual condition of its
own substance.

CHAP. XII.--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MIND AND THE SOUL, AND THE RELATION
BETWEEN THEM.

   In like manner the mind also, or animus, which the Greeks designate
NOUS, is taken by us in no other sense than as indicating that faculty or
apparatus(11) which is inherent and implanted in the soul, and naturally
proper to it, whereby it acts, whereby it acquires knowledge, and by the
possession of which it is capable of a spontaneity of motion within itself,
and of thus appearing to be impelled by the mind, as if it were another
substance, as is maintained by those who determine the soul to be the
moving principle of the universe(12)--the god of Socrates, Valentinus'
"only-begotten" of his father(13) Bythus, and his mother Sige. How confused
is the opinion of Anaxagoras! For, having imagined the mind to be the
initiating principle of all things, and suspending on its axis the balance
of the universe; affirming, moreover, that the mind is a simple principle,
unmixed, and incapable of admixture, he mainly on this very consideration
separates it from all amalgamation with the soul; and yet in another
passage he actually incorporates it with(1) the soul. This (inconsistency)
Aristotle has also observed: but whether he meant his criticism to be
constructive, and to fill up a system of his own, rather than destructive
of the principles of others, I am hardly able to decide. As for himself,
indeed, although he postpones his definition of the mind, yet he begins by
mentioning, as one of the two natural constituents of the mind,(2) that
divine principle which he conjectures to be impassible, or incapable of
emotion, and thereby removes from all association with the soul. For
whereas it is evident that the soul is susceptible of those emotions which
it falls to it naturally to suffer, it must needs suffer either by the mind
or with the mind. Now if the soul is by nature associated with the mind, it
is impossible to draw the conclusion that the mind is impassible; or again,
if the soul suffers not either by the mind or with the mind, it cannot
possibly have a natural association with the mind, with which it suffers
nothing, and which suffers nothing itself. Moreover, if the soul suffers
nothing by the mind and with the mind, it will experience no sensation, nor
will it acquire any knowledge, nor will it undergo any emotion through the
agency of the mind, as they maintain it will. For Aristotle makes even the
senses passions, or states of emotion And rightly too. For to exercise the
senses is to suffer emotion, because to suffer is to feel. In like manner,
to acquire knowledge is to exercise the senses; and to undergo emotion is
to exercise the senses; and the whole of this is a state of suffering. But
we see that the soul experiences nothing of these things, in such a manner
as that the mind also is affected by the emotion, by which, indeed, and
with which, all is effected. It follows, therefore, that the mind is
capable of admixture, in opposition to Anaxagoras; and passible or
susceptible of emotion, contrary to the opinion of Aristotle. Besides, if a
separate condition between the soul and mind is to be admitted, so that
they be two things in substance, then of one of them, emotion and
sensation, and every sort of taste, and all action and motion, will be the
characteristics; whilst of the other the natural condition will be calm,
and repose, and stupor. There is therefore no alternative: either the mind
must be useless and void, or the soul. But if these affections may
certainly be all of them ascribed to both, then in that case the two will
be one and the same, and Democritus will carry his point when he suppresses
all distinction between the two. The question will arise how two can be
one--whether by the confusion of two substances, or by the disposition of
one? We, however, affirm that the mind coalesces with(3) the soul,--not
indeed as being distinct from it in substance, but as being its natural
function and agent.(4)

CHAP. XIII.--THE SOUL'S SUPREMACY.

   It next remains to examine where lies the supremacy; in other words,
which of the two is superior to the other, so that with which the supremacy
clearly lies shall be the essentially superior substance;(5) whilst that
over which this essentially superior substance shall have authority shall
be considered as the natural functionary of the superior substance. Now who
will hesitate to ascribe this entire authority to the soul, from the name
of which the whole man has received his own designation in common
phraseology? How many souls, says the rich man, do I maintain? not how many
minds. The pilot's desire, also, is to rescue so many souls from shipwreck,
not so many minds; the labourer, too, in his work, and the soldier on the
field of battle, affirms that he lays down his soul (or life), not his
mind. Which of the two has its perils or its vows and wishes more
frequently on men's lips--the mind or the soul? Which of the two are dying
persons, said to have to do with the mind or the soul? In short,
philosophers themselves, and medical men, even when it is their purpose to
discourse about the mind, do in every instance inscribe on their title-
page(6) and table of contents,(7) "De Anima" ("A treatise on the soul").
And that you may also have God's voucher on the subject, it is the soul
which He addresses; it is the soul which He exhorts and counsels, to turn
the mind and intellect to Him. It is the soul which Christ came to save; it
is the soul which He threatens to destroy in hell; it is the soul (or life)
which He forbids being made too much of; it is His soul, too (or life),
which the good Shepherd Himself lays down for His sheep. It is to the soul,
therefore, that you ascribe the supremacy; in it also you possess that
union of substance, of which you perceive the mind to be the instrument,
not the ruling power.

CHAP. XIV.--THE SOUL VARIOUSLY DIVIDED BY THE PHILOSOPHERS; THIS DIVISION
IS NOT A MATERIAL DISSECTION.

   Being thus single, simple, and entire in itself, it is as incapable of
being composed and put together from external constituents, as it is of
being divided in and of itself, inasmuch as it is indissoluble. For if it
had been possible to construct it and to destroy it, it would no longer be
immortal. Since, however, it is not mortal, it is also incapable of
dissolution and division. Now, to be divided means to be dissolved, and to
be dissolved means to die. Yet (philosophers) have divided the soul into
parts: Plato, for instance, into two; Zeno into three; Panaetius, into five
or six; Soranus, into seven; Chrysippus, into as many as eight; and
Apollophanes, into as many as nine; whilst certain of the Stoics have found
as many as twelve parts in the soul. Posidonius makes even two more than
these: he starts with two leading faculties of the soul,--the directing
faculty, which they designate hhgemoniko'n; and the rational faculty, which
they call logiko'n,--and ultimately subdivided these into seventeen(1)
parts. Thus variously is the soul dissected by the different schools. Such
divisions, however, ought not to be regarded so much as parts of the soul,
as powers, or faculties, or operations thereof, even as Aristotle himself
has regarded some of them as being. For they are not portions or organic
parts of the soul's substance, but functions of the soul--such as those of
motion, of action, of thought, and whatsoever others they divide in this
manner; such, likewise, as the five senses themselves, so well known to
all--seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. Now, although they have
allotted to the whole of these respectively certain parts of the body as
their special domiciles, it does not from that circumstance follow that a
like distribution will be suitable to the sections of the soul; for even
the body itself would not admit of such a partition as they would have the
soul undergo. But of the whole number of the limbs one body is made up, so
that the arrangement is rather a concretion than a division. Look at that
very wonderful piece of organic mechanism by Archimedes,--I mean his
hydraulic organ, with its many limbs, parts, bands, passages for the notes,
outlets for their sounds, combinations for their harmony, and the array of
its pipes; but yet the whole of these details constitute only one
instrument. In like manner the wind, which breathes throughout this organ
at the impulse of the hydraulic engine, is not divided into separate
portions from the fact of its dispersion through the instrument to make it
play: it is whole and entire in its substance, although divided in its
operation. This example is not remote from (the illustration) of Strato,
and AEnesidemus, and Heraclitus: for these philosophers maintain the unity
of the soul, as diffused over the entire body, and yet in every part the
same.(2) Precisely like the wind blown in the pipes throughout the organ,
the soul displays its energies in various ways by means of the senses,
being not indeed divided, but rather distributed in natural order. Now,
under what designations these energies are to be known, and by what
divisions of themselves they are to be classified, and to what special
offices and functions in the body they are to be severally confined, the
physicians and the philosophers must consider and decide: for ourselves, a
few remarks only will be proper.

CHAP. XV.--THE SOUL'S VITALITY AND INTELLIGENCE. ITS CHARACTER AND SEAT IN
MAN.

   In the first place, (we must determine) whether there be in the soul
some supreme principle of vitality and intelligence(3) which they call "the
ruling power of the soul"--to` hhgemoniko'n> for if this be not admitted,
the whole condition of the soul is put in jeopardy. Indeed, those men who
say that there is no such directing faculty, have begun by supposing that
the soul itself is simply a nonentity. One Dicaearchus, a Messenian, and
amongst the medical profession Andreas and Asclepiades, have thus destroyed
the (soul's) directing power, by actually placing in the mind the senses,
for which they claim the ruling faculty. Asclepiades rides rough-shod over
us with even this argument, that very many animals, after losing those
parts of their body in which the soul's principle of vitality and sensation
is thought mainly to exist, still retain life in a considerable degree, as
well as sensation: as in the case of flies, and wasps, and locusts, when
you have cut off their heads; and of she-goats, and tortoises, and eels,
when you have pulled out their hearts. (He concludes), therefore, that
there is no especial principle or power of the soul; for if there were, the
soul's vigour and strength could not continue when it was removed with its
domiciles (or corporeal organs). However, Dicaearchus has several
authorities against him--and philosophers too--Plato, Strato, Epicurus,
Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle; whilst in opposition to
Andreas and Asclepiades (may be placed their brother) physicians
Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself; and
better than all others, there are our Christian authorities. We are taught
by God concerning both these questions--viz. that there is a ruling power
in the soul, and that it is enshrined(3) in one particular recess of the
body. For, when one reads of God as being "the searcher and witness of the
heart;"(2) when His prophet is reproved by His discovering to him the
secrets of the heart;(3) when God Himself anticipates in His people the
thoughts of their heart,(4) "Why think ye evil in your hearts?"(5) when
David prays "Create in me a clean heart, O God,"(6) and Paul declares,
"With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,"(7) and John says, "By
his own heart is each man condemned;"(8) when, lastly, "he who looketh on a
woman so as to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in
his heart,"(9)--then both points are cleared fully up, that there is a
directing faculty of the soul, with which the purpose of God may agree; in
other words, a supreme principle of intelligence and vitality (for where
there is intelligence, there must be vitality), and that it resides in that
most precious part(10) of our body to which God especially looks: so that
you must not suppose, with Heraclitus, that this sovereign faculty of which
we are treating is moved by some external force; nor with Moschion,(11)
that it floats about through the whole body; nor with Plato, that it is
enclosed in the head; nor with Zenophanes, that it culminates in the crown
of the head; nor that it reposes in the brain, according to the opinion of
Hippocrates; nor around the basis of the brain, as Herophilus thought; nor
in the membranes thereof, as Strato and Erasistratus said; nor in the space
between the eyebrows, as Strato the physician held; nor within the
enclosure(12) of the breast, according to Epicurus: but rather, as the
Egyptians have always taught, especially such of them as were accounted the
expounders of sacred truths;(13) in accordance, too, with that verse of
Orpheus or Empedocles:

   "Namque homini sanguis circumcordialis est sensus."(14)
   "Man has his (supreme) sensation in the blood around his heart."

   Even Protagoras(15) likewise, and Apollodorus, and Chrysippus,
entertain this same view, so that (our friend) Asclepiades may go in quest
of his goats bleating without a heart, and hunt his flies without their
heads; and let all those (worthies), too, who have predetermined the
character of the human soul from the condition of brute animals, be quite
sure that it is themselves rather who are alive in a heartless and
brainless state.

CHAP. XVI.--THE SOUL'S PARTS. ELEMENTS

OF THE RATIONAL SOUL.

   That position of Plato's is also quite in keeping with the faith, in
which he divides  the soul into two parts--the rational and the irrational.
To this definition we take no exception, except that we would not ascribe
this twofold distinction to the nature (of the soul). It is the rational
element which we must believe to be its natural condition, impressed upon
it from its very first creation by its Author, who is Himself esentially
rational. For how should that be other than rational, which God produced on
His own prompting; nay more, which He expressly sent forth by His own
afflatus or breath? The irrational element, however, we must understand to
have accrued later, as having proceeded from the instigation of the
serpent--the very achievement of (the first) transgression--which
thenceforward became inherent in the soul, and grew with its growth,
assuming the manner by this time of a natural development, happening as it
did immediately at the beginning of nature. But, inasmuch as the same Plato
speaks of the rational element only as existing in the soul of God Himself,
if we were to ascribe the irrational element likewise to the nature which
our soul has received from God, then the irrational element will be equally
derived from God, as being a natural production, because God is the author
of nature. Now from the devil proceeds the incentive to sin. All sin,
however, is irrational: therefore the irrational proceeds from the devil,
from whom sin proceeds; and it is extraneous to God, to whom also the
irrational  is an alien principle. The diversity, then,  between these two
elements arises from the difference of their authors. When, therefore,
Plato reserves the rational element (of the soul) to God alone, and
subdivides it into two departments the irascible, which they call
thumiko'n, and the concupiscible, which they designate by the term
epithumhtiko'n (in such a way as to make the first common to us and lions,
and the second shared between ourselves and flies, whilst the rational
element is confined to us and God)--I see that this point will have to be
treated by us, owing to the facts which we find operating also in Christ.
For you may behold this triad of qualities in the Lord. There was the
rational element, by which He taught, by which--discoursed, by which He
prepared the way of salvation; there was moreover indignation in Him, by
which He inveighed against the scribes and the Pharisees; and there was the
principle of desire, by which He so earnestly desired to eat the pass over
with His disciples.(1) In our own cases, accordingly, the irascible and the
concupiscible elements of our soul must not invariably be put to the
account of the irrational (nature), since we are sure that in our Lord
these elements operated in entire accordance with reason. God will be
angry, with perfect reason, with all who deserve His wrath; and with
reason, too, will God desire whatever objects and claims are worthy of
Himself. For He will show indignation against the evil man, and for the
good man will He desire salvation. To ourselves even does the apostle allow
the concupiscible quality. "If any man," says he, "desireth the office of a
bishop, he desireth a good work."(2) Now, by saying "a good work," he shows
us that the desire is a reasonable one. He permits us likewise to feel
indignation. How should he not, when he himself experiences the same? "I
would," says he, "that they were even cut off which trouble you."(3) In
perfect agreement with reason was that indignation which resulted from his
desire to maintain discipline and order. When, however, he says, "We were
formerly the children of wrath,"(4) he censures an irrational irascibility,
such as proceeds not from that nature which is the production of God, but
from that which the devil brought in, who is himself styled the lord or
"master" of his own class, "Ye cannot serve two masters,"(5) and has the
actual designation of "father:" "Ye are of your father the devil."(6) So
that you need not be afraid to ascribe to him the mastery and dominion over
that second, later, and deteriorated nature (of which we have been
speaking), ,when you read of him as "the sewer of tares, and the nocturnal
spoiler of the crop of corn.(7)

CHAP. XVII.--THE FIDELITY OF THE SENSES, IMPUGNED BY PLATO, VINDICATED BY
CHRIST HIMSELF.

   Then, again, when we encounter the question (as to the veracity of
those five senses which we learn with our alphabet; since from this source
even there arises some support for our heretics. They are the faculties of
seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and tasting, and touching. The fidelity
of these senses is impugned with too much severity by the Platonists,(8)
and according to some by Heraclitus also, and Diocles, and Empedocles; at
any rate, Plato, in the Timoeus, declares the operations of the senses to
be irrational, and vitiated(9) by our opinions or beliefs. Deception is
imputed to the sight, because it asserts  that oars, when immersed in the
water, are inclined or bent, notwithstanding the certainty that they are
straight; because, again, it is quite sure that distant tower with its
really quadrangular contour is round; because also it will discredit the
fact of the truly parallel fabric of yonder porch or arcade, by supposing
it to be narrower and narrower towards its end; and because it will join
with the sea the sky which hangs at so great a height above it. In the same
way, our hearing is charged with fallacy: we think, for instance, that is a
noise in the sky which is nothing else than the rumbling of a carriage; or,
if you prefer it(10) the other way, when the thunder rolled at a distance,
we were quite sure that it was a carriage which made the noise. Thus, too,
are our faculties of smell and taste at fault, because the selfsame
perfumes and wines lose their value after we have used them awhile. On the
same principle our touch is censured, when the identical pavement which
seemed rough to the hands is felt by the feet to be smooth enough; and in
the baths a stream of warm water is pronounced to be quite hot at first,
and beautifully temperate afterwards. Thus, according to them, our senses
deceive us, when all the while we are (the cause of the discrepancies, by)
changing our opinions. The Stoics are more moderate in their views; for
they do not load with the obloquy of deception every one of the senses, and
at all times. The Epicureans, again, show still greater consistency, in
maintaining that all the senses are equally true in their testimony,  and
always so--only in a different way. It is  not our organs of sensation that
are at fault, but our opinion. The senses only experience sensation, they
do not exercise opinion; it is the soul that opines. They separated opinion
from the senses, and sensation from the soul. Well, but whence comes
opinion, if not from the senses? Indeed, unless the eye had descried a
round shape in that tower, it could have had no idea that it possessed
roundness. Again, whence arises sensation if not from the soul? For if the
soul had no body, it would have no sensation. Accordingly, sensation comes
from the soul, and opinion from sensation; and the whole (process) is the
soul. But further, it may well be insisted on that there is a something
which causes the discrepancy between the report of the senses and the
reality of the facts. Now, since it is possible, (as we have seen), for
phenomena to be reported which exist not in the objects, why should it not
be equally possible for phenomena to be reported which are caused not by
the senses, but by reasons and conditions which intervene, in the very
nature of the case? If so, it will be only right that they should be duly
recognised. The truth is, that it was the water which was the cause of the
oar seeming to be inclined or bent: out of the water, it was perfectly
straight in appearance (as well as in fact). The delicacy of the substance
or medium which forms a mirror by means of its luminosity, according as it
is struck or shaken, by the vibration actually destroys the appearance of
the straightness of a right line. In like manner, the condition of the open
space which fills up the interval between it and us, necessarily causes the
true shape of the tower to escape our notice; for the uniform density of
the surrounding air covering its angles with a similar light obliterates
their outlines. So, again, the equal breadth of the arcade is sharpened or
narrowed off towards its termination, until its aspect, becoming more and
more contracted under its prolonged roof, comes to a vanishing point in the
direction of its farthest distance. So the sky blends itself with the sea,
the vision becoming spent at last, which had maintained duly the boundaries
of the two elements, so long as its vigorous glance lasted. As for the
(alleged cases of deceptive) hearing, what else could produce the illusion
but the similarity of the sounds? And if the perfume afterwards was less
strong to the smell, and the wine more flat to the taste, and the water not
so hot to the touch, their original strength was after all found in the
whole of them pretty well unimpaired. In the matter, however, of the
roughness and smoothness of the pavement, it was only natural and right
that limbs like the hands and the feet, so different in tenderness and
callousness, should have different impressions. In this way, then, there
cannot occur an illusion in our senses without an adequate cause. Now if
special causes, (such as we have indicated,) mislead our senses add
(through our senses) our opinions also, then we must no longer ascribe the
deception to the senses, which follow the specific causes of the illusion,
nor to the opinions we form; for these are occasioned and controlled by our
senses, which only follow the causes. Persons who are afflicted with
madness or insanity, mistake one object for another. Orestes in his sister
sees his mother; Ajax sees Ulysses in the slaughtered herd; Athamas and
Agave descry wild beasts in their children. Now is it their eyes or their
phrenzy which you must blame for so vast a fallacy? All things taste
bitter, in the redundancy of their bile, to those who have the jaundice. Is
it their taste which you will charge with the physical prevarication, or
their ill state of health? All the senses, therefore, are disordered
occasionally, or imposed upon, but only in such a way as to be quite free
of any fault in their own natural functions. But further still, not even
against the specific causes and conditions themselves must we lay an
indictment of deception. For, since these physical aberrations happen for
stated reasons, the reasons do not deserve to be regarded as deceptions.
Whatever ought to occur in a certain manner is not a deception. If, then,
even these circumstantial causes must be acquitted of all censure and
blame, how much more should we free from reproach the senses, over which
the said causes exercise a liberal sway! Hence we are bound most certainly
to claim for the senses truth, and fidelity, and integrity, seeing that
they never render any other account of their impressions than is enjoined
on them by the  specific causes or conditions which in all cases produce
that discrepancy which appears between the report of the senses and the
reality of the objects. What mean you, then, O most insolent Academy? You
overthrow the entire condition of human life; you disturb the whole order
of nature; you obscure the good providence of God Himself: for the senses
of man which God has appointed over all His works, that we might
understand, inhabit, dispense, and enjoy them, (you reproach) as fallacious
and treacherous tyrants! But is it not from these that all creation
receives our services? Is it not by their means that a second form is
impressed even upon the world?--so many arts, so many industrious
resources, so many pursuits, such business, such offices, such commerce,
such remedies, counsels, consolations, modes, civilizations, and
accomplishments of life! All these things have produced the very relish and
savour of human existence; whilst by these senses of man, he alone of all
animated nature has the distinction of being a rational animal, with a
capacity for intelligence and knowledge--nay, an ability to form the
Academy itself! But Plato, in order to disparage the testimony of the
senses, in the Phoedrus denies (in the person of Socrates) his own ability
to know even himself, according to the injunction of the Delphic oracle;
and in the Theoetetus he deprives himself of the faculties of knowledge and
sensation; and again, in the Phoedrus he postpones till after death the
posthumous knowledge, as he calls it, of the truth; and yet for all he went
on playing the philosopher even before he died. We may not, I say, we may
not call into question the truth of the (poor vilified) senses,(1) lest we
should even in Christ Himself, bring doubt upon(2) the truth of their
sensation; lest perchance it should be said that He did not really "behold
Satan as lightning fall from heaven;"(3) that He did not really hear the
Father's voice testifying of Himself;(4) or that He was deceived in
touching Peter's wife's mother;(5) or that the fragrance of the ointment
which He afterwards smelled was different from that which He accepted for
His burial;(6) and that the taste of the wine was different from that which
He consecrated in memory of His blood.(7) On this false principle it was
that Marcion actually chose to believe that He was a phantom, denying to
Him the reality of a perfect body. Now, not even to His apostles was His
nature ever a matter of deception. He was truly both seen and heard upon
the mount;(8) true and real was the draught of that wine at the marriage of
(Cana in) Galilee;(9) true and real also was the touch of the then
believing Thomas.(10) Read the testimony of John: "That which we have seen,
which we have heard, which we have looked upon with our eyes, and our hands
have handled, of the Word of life."(11) False, of course, and deceptive
must have been that testimony, if the witness of our eyes, and ears, and
hands be by nature a lie.

CHAP. XVIII.--PLATO SUGGESTED CERTAIN ERRORS TO THE GNOSTICS. FUNCTIONS OF
THE SOUL.

   I turn now to the department of our intellectual faculties, such as
Plato has handed it over to the heretics, distinct from our bodily
functions, having obtained the knowledge of them before death.(12) He asks
in the Phoedo, What, then, (do you think) concerning the actual possession
of knowledge? Will the body be a hindrance to it or not, if one shall admit
it as an associate in the search after knowledge? I have a similar question
to ask: Have the faculties of their sight and hearing any truth and reality
for human beings or not? Is it not the case, that even the poets are always
muttering against us, that we can never hear or see anything for certain?
He remembered, no doubt, what Epicharmus the comic poet had said: "It is
the mind which sees, the mind that hears--all else is blind and deaf." To
the same purport he says again, that man is the wisest whose mental power
is the clearest; who never applies the sense of sight, nor adds to his mind
the help of any such faculty, but employs the intellect itself in unmixed
serenity when he indulges in contemplation for the purpose of acquiring an
unalloyed insight into the nature of things; divorcing himself with all his
might from his eyes and ears and (as one must express himself) from the
whole of his body, on the ground of its disturbing the soul, and not
allowing it to possess either truth or wisdom, whenever it is brought into
communication with it. We see, then, that in opposition to the bodily
senses another faculty is provided of a much more serviceable character,
even the powers of the soul, which produce an understanding of that truth
whose realities are not palpable nor open to the bodily senses, but are
very remote from men's everyday knowledge, lying in secret--in the heights
above, and in the presence of God Himself. For Plato maintains that there
are certain invisible substances, incorporeal, celestial,(13) divine, and
eternal, which they call ideas, that is to say, (archetypal) forms, which
are the patterns and causes of those objects of nature which are manifest
to us, and lie under our corporeal senses: the former, (according to
Plato,) are the actual verities, and the latter the images and likenesses
of them. Well, now, are there not here gleams of the heretical principles
of the Gnostics and the Valentinians? It is from this philosophy that they
eagerly adopt the difference between the bodily senses and the intellectual
faculties,--a distinction which they actually apply to the parable of the
ten virgins: making the five foolish virgins to symbolize the five bodily
senses, seeing that these are so silly and so easy to be deceived; and the
wise virgin to express the meaning of the intellectual faculties, which are
so wise as to attain to that mysterious and supernal truth, which is placed
in the pleroma. (Here, then, we have) the mystic original of the ideas of
these heretics. For in this philosophy lie both their AEons and their
genealogies. Thus, too, do they divide sensation, both into the
intellectual powers from their spiritual seed, and the sensuous faculties
from the animal, which cannot by any means comprehend spiritual things.
From the former germ spring invisible things; from the latter, visible
things which are grovelling and temporary, and which are obvious to the
senses, placed as they are in palpable forms.(1) It is because of these
views that we have in a former passage stated as a preliminary fact, that
the mind is nothing else than an apparatus or instrument of the soul,(2)
and that the spirit is no other faculty, separate from the soul, but is the
soul itself exercised in respiration; although that influence which either
God on the one hand, or the devil on the other, has breathed upon it, must
be regarded in the light of an additional element.(3) And now, with respect
to the difference between the intellectual powers and the sensuous
faculties, we only admit it so far as the natural diversity between them
requires of us. (There is, of course, a difference) between things
corporeal and things spiritual, between visible and invisible beings,
between objects which are manifest to the view and those which are hidden
from it; because the one class are attributed to sensation, and the other
to the intellect. But yet both the one and the other must be regarded as
inherent in the soul, and as obedient to it, seeing that it embraces bodily
objects by means of the body, in exactly the same way that it conceives
incorporeal objects by help of the mind, except that it is even exercising
sensation when it is employing the intellect. For is it not true, that to
employ the senses is to use the intellect? And to employ the intellect
amounts to a use of the senses?(4) What indeed can sensation be, but the
understanding of that which is the object of the sensation? And what can
the intellect or understanding be, but the seeing of that which is the
object understood? Why adopt such excruciating means of torturing simple
knowledge and crucifying the truth? Who can show me the sense which does
not understand the object of its sensation, or the intellect which
perceives not the object which it understands, in so clear away as to prove
to me that the one can do without the other? If corporeal things are the
objects of sense, and incorporeal ones objects of the intellect, it is the
classes of the objects which are different, not the domicile or abode of
sense and intellect; in other words, not the soul (anima) and the mind
(animus). By what, in Short, are corporeal things perceived? If it is by
the soul,(5) then the mind is a sensuous faculty, and not merely an
intellectual power; for whilst it understands, it also perceives, because
without the perception there is no understanding. If, however, corporeal
things are perceived by the soul, then it follows that the soul's power is
an intellectual one, and not merely a sensuous faculty; for while it
perceives it also understands, because without understanding there is no
perceiving. And then, again, by what are incorporeal things understood? If
it is by the mind,(6) where will be the soul? If it is by the soul, where
will be the mind? For things which differ ought to be mutually absent from
each other, when they are occupied in their respective functions and
duties. It must be your opinion, indeed, that the mind is absent from the
soul on certain occasons; for (you suppose) that we are so made and
constituted as not to know that we have seen or heard something, on the
hypothesis(7) that the mind was absent at the time. I must therefore
maintain that the very soul itself neither saw nor heard, since it was at
the given moment absent with its active power--that is to say, the mind.
The truth is, that whenever a man is out of his mind,(8) it is his soul
that is demented--not because the mind is absent, but because it is a
fellow-sufferer (with the soul) at the time.(9) Indeed, it is the soul
which is principally affected by casualties of such a kind. Whence is this
fact confirmed? It is confirmed from the following consideration: that
after the soul's departure, the mind is no longer found in a man: it always
follows the soul; nor does it at last remain behind it alone, after death.
Now, since it follows the soul, it is also indissolubly attached to it;
just as the understanding is attached to the soul, which is followed by the
mind, with which the understanding is indissolubly connected. Granted now
that the understanding is superior to the senses, and a better discoverer
of mysteries, what matters it, so long as it is only a peculiar faculty of
the soul, just as the senses themselves are? It does not at all affect my
argument, unless the understanding were held to be superior to the senses,
for the purpose of deducing from the allegation of such superiority its
separate condition likewise. After thus combating their alleged difference,
I have also to refute this question of superiority, previous to my
approaching the belief (which heresy propounds) in a superior god. On this
point, however, of a (superior) god, we shall have to measure swords with
the heretics on their own ground.(1) Our present subject concerns the soul,
and the point is to prevent the insidious ascription of a superiority to
the intellect or understanding. Now, although the objects which are touched
by the intellect are of a higher nature, since they are spiritual, than
those which are embraced by the senses, since these are corporeal, it will
still be only a superiority in the objects--as of lofty ones contrasted
with humble--not in the faculties of the intellect against the senses. For
how can the intellect be superior to the senses, when it is these which
educate it for the discovery of various truths? It is a fact, that these
truths are learned by means of palpable forms; in other words, invisible
things are discovered by the help of visible ones, even as the apostle
tells us in his epistle: "For the invisible things of Him are clearly seen
from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are
made;"(2) and as Plato too might inform our heretics: "The things which
appear are the image(3) of the things which are concealed from view,"(4)
whence it must needs follow that this world is by all means an image of
some other: so that the intellect evidently uses the senses for its own
guidance, and authority, and mainstay; and without the senses truth could
not be attained. How, then, can a thing be superior to that which is
instrumental to its existence, which is also indispensable to it, and to
whose help it owes everything which it acquires? Two conclusions therefore
follow from what we have said:(1) That the intellect is not to be preferred
above the senses, on the (supposed) ground that the agent through which a
thing exists is inferior to the thing itself; and(2) that the intellect
must not be separated from the senses, since the instrument by which a
thing's existence is sustained is associated with the thing itself.

CHAP. XIX.--THE INTELLECT COEVAL WITH THE SOUL IN THE HUMAN BEING. AN
EXAMPLE FROM ARISTOTLE CONVERTED INTO EVIDENCE FAVOURABLE TO THESE VIEWS.

   Nor must we fail to notice those writers who deprive the soul of the
intellect even for a short period of time. They do this in order to prepare
the way of introducing the intellect--and the mind also--at a subsequent
time of life, even at the time when intelligence appears in a man. They
maintain that the stage of infancy is supported by the soul alone, simply
to promote vitality, without any intention of acquiring knowledge also,
because not all things have knowledge which possess life. Trees, for
instance, to quote Aristotle's example,(5) have vitality, but have not
knowledge; and with him agrees every one who gives a share to all animated
beings of the animal substance, which, according to our view, exists in man
alone as his special property,--not because it is the work of God, which
all other creatures are likewise, but because it is the breath of God,
which this (human soul) alone is, which we say is born with the full
equipment of its proper faculties. Well, let them meet us with the example
of the trees: we will accept their challenge, (nor shah we find in it any
detriment to our own argument;) for it is an undoubted fact, that whilst
trees are yet but twigs and sprouts, and before they even reach the sapling
stage, there is in them their own proper faculty of life, as soon as they
spring out of their native beds. But then, as time goes on, the vigour of
the tree slowly advances, as it grows and hardens into its woody trunk,
until its mature age completes the condition which nature destines for it.
Else what resources would trees possess in due course for the inoculation
of grafts, and the formation of leaves, and the swelling of their buds, and
the graceful shedding of their blossom, and the softening of their sap,
were there not in them the quiet growth of the full provision of their
nature, and the distribution of this life over all their branches for the
accomplishment of their maturity? Trees, therefore, have ability or
knowledge; and they derive it from whence they also derive vitality--that
is, from the one source of vitality and knowledge which is peculiar to
their nature, and that from the infancy which they, too, begin with. For I
observe that even the vine, although yet tender and immature, still
understands its own natural business, and strives to cling to some support,
that, leaning on it, and lacing through it,(1) it may so attain its growth.
Indeed, without waiting for the husbandman's training, without an espalier,
without a prop, whatever its tendrils catch, it will fondly cling to,(2)
and embrace with really greater tenacity and force by its own inclination
than by your volition. It longs and hastens to be secure. Take also ivy-
plants, never mind how young: I observe their attempts from the very first
to grasp, objects above them, and outrunning everything else, to hang on to
the highest thing, preferring as they do to spread over walls with their
leafy web and woof rather than creep on the ground and be trodden under by
every foot that likes to crush them. On the other hand, in the case of such
trees as receive injury from contact with a building, how do they hang off
as they grow and avoid what injures them! You can see that their branches
were naturally meant to take the opposite direction, and can very well
understand the vital instincts(3) of such a tree from its avoidance of the
wall. It is contented (if it be only a little shrub) with its own
insignificant destiny, which it has in its foreseeing instinct thoroughly
been aware of from its: infancy, only it still fears even a ruined
building. On my side, then, why should I not contend for these wise and
sagacious natures of trees? Let them have vitality, as the philosophers
permit it; but let them have knowledge too, although the philosophers
disavow it. Even the infancy of a log, then, may have an intellect
(suitable to it): how much more may that of a human being, whose soul
(which may be compared with the nascent sprout of a tree) has been derived
from Adam as its root, and has been propagated amongst his posterity by
means of woman, to whom it has been entrusted for transmission, and thus
has sprouted into life with all its natural apparatus, both of intellect
and of sense! I am much mistaken if the human person, even from his
infancy, when he saluted life with his infant cries, does not testify to
his actual possession of the faculties of sensation and intellect by the
fact of his birth, vindicating at one and the same time the use of all his
senses--that of seeing by the light, that of hearing by sounds, that of
taste by liquids, that of smell by the air, that of touch by the ground.
This earliest voice of infancy, then, is the first effort of the senses,
and the initial impulse of mental perceptions.(4) There is also the further
fact, that some persons understand this plaintive cry of the infant to be
an augury of affliction in the prospect of our tearful life, whereby from
the very moment of birth (the soul) has to be regarded as endued with
prescience, much more with intelligence. Accordingly by this intuition(5)
the babe knows his mother, discerns the nurse, and even recognises the
waiting-maid; refusing the breast of another woman, and the cradle that is
not his own, and longing only for the arms to which he is accustomed. Now
from what source does he acquire this discernment of novelty and custom, if
not from instinctive knowledge? Holy does it happen that he is irritated
and quieted, if not by help of his initial intellect? It would be very
strange indeed that infancy were naturally so lively, if it had not mental
power; and naturally so capable of impression and affection, if it had no
intellect. But (we hold the contrary): for Christ, by "accepting praise out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings,"(6) has declared that neither
childhood nor infancy is without sensibility,(7)--the former of which
states, when meeting Him with approving shouts, proved its ability to offer
Him testimony;(8) while the other, by being slaughtered, for His sake of
course, knew what violence meant.(9)

CHAP. XX.--THE SOUL, AS TO ITS NATURE UNIFORM, BUT ITS FACULTIES VARIOUSLY
DEVELOPED. VARIETIES ONLY ACCIDENTAL.

   And here, therefore, we draw our conclusion, that all the natural
properties of the soul are inherent in it as parts of its substance; and
that they grow and develope along with it, from the very moment of its own
origin at birth. Just as Seneca says, whom we so often find on our
side:(10) "There are implanted within us the seeds of all the arts and
periods of life. And God. our Master, secretly produces our mental
dispositions;" that is, from the germs which are implanted and hidden in us
by means of infancy, and these are the intellect: for from these our
natural dispositions are evolved. Now, even the seeds of plants have, one
form in each kind, but their development varies: some open and expand in a
healthy and perfect state, while others either improve or degenerate, owing
to the conditions of weather and soil, and from the appliance of labour and
care; also from the course of the  seasons, and from the occurrence of
casual circumstances. In like manner, the soul may well be(1) uniform in
its seminal origin, although multiform by the process of nativity.(2) And
here. local influences, too, must be taken into account. It has been said
that dull and brutish persons are born at Thebes; and the most accomplished
in wisdom and speech at  Athens, where in the district of Colythus(3)
children speak--such is the precocity of their tongue--before they are a
month old. Indeed, Plato himself tells us, in the Timoeus, that Minerva,
when preparing to found her great city, only regarded the nature of the
country which gave promise of mental dispositions of this kind; whence he
himself in Tree Laws instructs Megillus and Clinias to be careful in their
selection of a site for building a city. Empedocles, however, places the
cause of a subtle or an obtuse intellect in the quality of the blood, from
which he derives progress and perfection in learning and science. The
subject of national peculiarities has grown by this time into proverbial
notoriety. Comic poets deride the Phrygians for their cowardice; Sallust
reproaches the Moors for their levity, and the Dalmatians for their
cruelty; even the apostle brands the Cretans as "liars."(4) Very likely,
too, something must be set down to the score of bodily condition and the
state of the health. Stoutness hinders knowledge, but a spare form
stimulates it; paralysis prostrates the mind, a decline preserves it. How
much more will those accidental circumstances have to be noticed, which, in
addition to the state of one's body or one's health, tend to sharpen or to
dull the intellect! It is sharpened by learned pursuits, by the sciences,
the arts, by experimental knowledge, business habits, and studies; it is
blunted by ignorance, idle habits, inactivity, lust, inexperience,
listlessness, and vicious pursuits. Then, besides these influences, there
must perhaps(5) be added the supreme powers. Now these are the supreme
powers: according to our (Christian) notions, they are the Lord God and His
adversary the devil; but according to men's general opinion about
providence, they are fate and necessity; and about fortune, it is man's
freedom of will. Even the philosophers allow these distinctions; whilst on
our part we have already undertaken to treat of them, on the principles of
the (Christian) faith, in a separate work.(6) It is evident how great must
be the influences which so variously affect the one nature of the soul,
since they are commonly regarded as separate "natures." Still they are not
different species, but casual incidents of one nature and substance--even
of that which God conferred on Adam, and made the mould of all (subsequent
ones). Casual incidents will they always remain, but never will they
become!specific differences. However great, too, at present is the variety
of men's maunders, it was not so in Adam, the founder of their race. But
all these discordances ought to have existed in him as the fountainhead,
and thence to have descended to us in an unimpaired variety, if the variety
had been due to nature.

CHAP. XXI.--AS FREE-WILL ACTUATES AN INDIVIDUAL SO MAY HIS CHARACTER
CHANGE.

   Now, if the soul possessed this uniform and simple nature from the
beginning in Adam, previous to so many mental dispositions (being developed
out of it), it is not rendered multiform by suck various development, nor
by the triple(7) form predicated of it in "the Valentinian trinity" (that
we may still keep the condemnation of that heresy in view), for not even
this nature is discoverable in Adam. What had he that was spiritual? Is it
because he prophetically declared "the great mystery of Christ and the
church?"(8) "This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be
called Woman. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and he
shall cleave unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh."(9) But this
(gift of prophecy) only came on him afterwards, when God infused into him
the ecstasy, or spiritual quality, in which prophecy consists. If, again,
the evil of sin was developed in him, this must not be accounted as a
natural disposition: it was rather produced by the instigation of the (old)
serpent as far from being incidental to his nature as it was from being
material in him, for we have already excluded belief in "Matter."(10) Now,
if neither the spiritual element, nor what the heretics call the material
element, was properly inherent in him (since, if he had been created out of
matter, the germ of evil must have been an integral part of his
constitution), it remains that the one only original element of his nature
was what is called the animal (the principle of vitality, the soul), which
we maintain to be simple and uniform in its condition. Concerning this, it
remains for us to inquire whether, as being called natural, it ought to be
deemed subject to change. (The heretics whom we have referred to) deny that
nature is susceptible of any change,(1) in order that they may be able to
establish and settle their threefold theory, or "trinity," in all its
characteristics as to the several natures, because "a good tree cannot
produce evil fruit, nor a corrupt tree good fruit; and nobody gathers figs
of thorns, nor grapes of  brambles."(2) If so, then "God will not be able
any longer to raise up from the stones children unto Abraham; nor to make a
generation of vipers bring forth fruits of repentance."(3) And if so, the
apostle too was in error when he said in his epistle, "Ye were at one time
darkness, (but now are ye light in the Lord:)"(4) and, "We also were by
nature children of wrath;"(5) and, "Such were some of you, but ye are
washed."(6) The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be
discordant with truth. A corrupt tree will never yield good fruit, unless
the better nature be grafted into it; nor will a good tree produce evil
fruit, except by the same process of cultivation. Stones also will become
children of Abraham, if educated in Abraham's faith; and a generation of
vipers will bring forth the fruits of penitence, if they reject the poison
of their malignant nature. This will be the power of the grace of God, more
potent indeed than nature, exercising its sway over the faculty that
underlies itself within us--even the freedom of our will, which is
described as autexou'sios (of independent authority); and inasmuch as this
faculty is itself also natural and mutable, in whatsoever direction it
turns, it inclines of its own nature. Now, that there does exist within us
naturally this independent authority (to` autexou'sion), we have already
shown in opposition both to Marcion(7) and to Hermogenes.(8) if, then, the
natural condition has to be submitted to a definition, it must be
determined to be twofold--there being the category of the born and the
unborn, the made and not-made. Now that which has received its constitution
by being made or by being born, is by nature capable of being changed, for
it can be both born again and re-made; whereas that which is not-made and
unborn will remain for ever immoveable. Since, however, this state is
suited to God alone, as the only Being who is unborn and not-made (and
therefore immortal and unchangeable), it is absolutely certain that the
nature of all other existences which are born and created is subject to
modification and change; so that if the threefold state is to be ascribed
to the soul, it must be supposed to arise from the mutability of its
accidental circumstances, and not from the appointment of nature.

CHAP. XXII.--RECAPITULATION. DEFINITION OF THE SOUL.

   Hermogenes has already heard from us what are the other natural
faculties of the soul, as well as their vindication and proof; whence it
may be seen that the soul is rather the offspring of God than of matter.
The names of these faculties shall here be simply repeated, that they may
not seem to be forgotten and passed out of sight. We have assigned, then,
to the soul both that freedom of the will which we just now mentioned, and
its dominion over the works of nature, and its occasional gift of
divination, independently of that endowment of prophecy which accrues to it
expressly from the grace of God. We shall therefore now quit this subject
of the soul's disposition, in order to set out fully in order its various
qualities.(9) The soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of
God, immortal, possessing body, having form, simple in its substance,
intelligent in its own nature, developing its power in various ways, free
in its determinations, subject to be changes of accident, in its faculties
mutable, rational, supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment,
evolved out of one (archetypal soul). It remains for us now to consider how
it is developed out of this one original source; in other words, whence,
and when, and how it is produced.

CHAP. XXIII.--THE OPINIONS OF SUNDRY HERETICS WHICH ORIGINATE ULTIMATELY
WITH PLATO.

   Some suppose that they came down from heaven, with as firm a belief as
they are apt to entertain, when they indulge in the prospect of an
undoubted return thither. Saturninus, the disciple of Menander, who
belonged to Simon's sect, introduced this opinion: he affirmed that man was
made by angels. A futile, imperfect creation at first, weak and unable to
stand, he crawled upon the ground like a worm, because he wanted the
strength to maintain an erect posture; but afterwards having, by the
compassion of the Supreme Power (in whose image, which had not been fully
understood, he was clumsily formed), obtained a slender spark of life, this
roused and righted his imperfect form, and animated it with a higher
vitality, and provided for its return, on its relinquishment of life, to
its original principle. Carpocrates, indeed, claims for himself so extreme
an amount of the supernal qualities, that his disciples set their own souls
at once on an equality with Christ (not to mention the apostles); and
sometimes, when it suits their fancy, even give them the superiority--
deeming them, forsooth, to have partaken of that sublime virtue which looks
down upon the principalities that govern this world. Apelles tells us that
our souls were enticed by earthly baits down from their super-celestial
abodes by a fiery angel, Israel's God; and ours, who then enclosed them
firmly within our sinful flesh. The hive of Valentinus fortifies the soul
with the germ of Sophia, or Wisdom; by means of which germ they recognise,
in the images of visible objects, the stories and Milesian fables of their
own AEons. I am sorry from my heart that Plato has been the caterer to all
these heretics. For in the Phoedo he imagines that souls wander from this
world to that, and thence back again hither; whilst in the Timoeus he
supposes that the children of God, to whom had been assigned the production
of mortal creatures, having taken for the soul the germ of immortality,
congealed around it a mortal body,--thereby indicating that this world is
the figure of some other. Now, to procure belief in all this--that the soul
had formerly lived with God in the heavens above, sharing His ideas with
Him, and afterwards came down to live with us on earth, and whilst here
recollects the eternal patterns of things which it had learnt before--he
elaborated his new formula, mathh'seis anamnh'seis, which means that
"learning is reminiscence;" implying that the souls which come to us from
thence forget the things amongst which they formerly lived, but that they
afterwards recall them, instructed by the objects they see around them.
Forasmuch, therefore, as the doctrines which the heretics borrow from Plato
are cunningly defended by this kind of argument, I shall sufficiently
refute the heretics if I overthrow the argument of Plato.

CHAP. XXIV.--PLATO'S INCONSISTENCY. HE SUPPOSES THE SOUL SELF-EXISTENT, YET
CAPABLE OF FORGETTING WHAT PASSED IN A PREVIOUS STATE.

   In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a
failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of
divine quality as to put it on a par with God. He makes it unborn, which
single attribute I might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect
divinity; he then adds that the soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorpo-
real-since he believed God to be the same--invisible, incapable of
delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could
he attribute to the soul, if he wanted to call it God? We, however, who
allow no appendage to God(1) (in the sense of equality), by this very fact
reckon the soul as very far below God: for we suppose it to be born, and
hereby to possess something of a diluted divinity and an attenuated
felicity, as the breath (of God), though not His spirit; and although
immortal, as this is an attribute of divinity, yet for all that passible,
since this is an incident of a born condition, and consequently from the
first capable of deviation from perfection and right,(2) and by consequence
susceptible of a failure in memory. This point I have discussed sufficienly
with Hermogenes.(3) But it may be further observed, that if the soul is to
merit being accounted a god, by reason of all its qualities being equal to
the attributes of God, it must then be subject to no passion, and therefore
to no loss of memory; for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to
that of which you predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato
himself deems the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties,
and which Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. Now we
need not raise the doubt whether so divine a faculty as the soul was
capable of losing memory: the question rather is, whether it is able to
recover afresh that which it has lost. I could not decide whether that,
which ought to have lost memory, if it once incurred the loss, would be
powerful enough to recollect itself, Both alternatives, indeed, will agree
very well with my soul, but not with Plato's. In the second place, my
objection to him will stand thus: (Plato,) do you endow the soul with a
natural competency for understanding those well-known ideas of yours?
Certainly I do, will be your answer. Well, now, no one will concede to you
that the knowledge, (which you say is) the gift of nature, of the natural
sciences can fail. But the knowledge of the sciences fails; the knowledge
of the various fields of learning and of the arts of life fails; and so
perhaps the knowledge of the faculties and affections of our minds fails,
although they seem to be inherent in our nature, but really are not so:
because, as we have already said,(1) they are affected by accidents of
place, of manners and customs, of bodily condition, of the state of man's
health--by the influences of the Supreme Powers, and the changes of man's
free-will. Now the instinctive knowledge of natural objects never fails,
not even in the brute creation. The lion, no doubt, will forget his
ferocity, if surrounded by the softening influence of training; he may
become, with his beautiful mane, the plaything of some Queen Berenice, and
lick her cheeks with his tongue. A wild beast may lay aside his habits, but
his natural instincts will not be forgotten. He will not forget his proper
food, nor his natural resources, nor his natural alarms; and should the
queen offer him fishes or cakes, he will wish for flesh; and if, when he is
ill, any antidote be prepared for him, he will still require the ape; and
should no hunting-spear be presented against him, he will yet dread the
crow of the cock. In like manner with man, who is perhaps the most
forgetful of all creatures, the knowledge of everything natural to him will
remain in-eradicably fixed in him,--but this alone, as being alone a
natural instinct. He will never forget to eat when he is hungry; or to
drink when he is thirsty; or to use his eyes when he wants to see; or his
ears, to hear; or his nose, to smell; or his mouth, to taste; or his hand,
to touch. These are, to be sure, the senses, which philosophy depreciates
by her preference for the intellectual faculties. But if the natural
knowledge of the sensuous faculties is permanent, how happens it that the
knowledge of the intellectual faculties fails, to which the superiority is
ascribed? Whence, now, arises that power of forgetfulness itself which
precedes recollection? From long lapse of time, he says. But this is a
shortsighted answer. Length of time cannot be incidental to that which,
according to him, is unborn, and which therefore must be deemed most
certainly eternal. For that which is eternal, on the ground of its being
unborn, since it admits neither of beginning nor end of time, is subject to
no temporal criterion. And that which time does not measure, undergoes no
change in consequence of time; nor is long lapse of time at all influential
over it. If time is a cause of oblivion, why, from the time of the soul's
entrance into the body, does memory fail, as if thenceforth the soul were
to be affected by time? for the soul, being undoubtedly prior to the body,
was of course not irrespective of time. Is it, indeed, immediately on the
soul's entrance into the body that oblivion takes place, or some time
afterwards? If immediately, where will be the long lapse of the time which
is as yet inadmissible in the hypothesis?(2) Take, for instance, the case
of the infant. If some time afterwards, will not the soul, during the
interval previous to the moment of oblivion, Still exercise its powers of
memory? And how comes it to pass that the soul subsequently forgets, and
then afterwards again remembers? How long, too, must the lapse of the time
be regarded as having been, during which the oblivion oppressed the soul?
The whole course of one's life, I apprehend, will be insufficient to efface
the memory of an age which endured so long before the soul's assumption of
the body. But then, again, Plato throws the blame upon the body, as if it
were at all credible that a born substance could extinguish the power of
one that is unborn. There exist, however, among bodies a great many
differences, by reason of their rationality, their bulk, their condition,
their age, and their health. Will there then be supposed to exist similar
differences in obliviousness? Oblivion, however, is uniform and identical.
Therefore bodily peculiarity, with its manifold varieties, will not become
the cause of an effect which is an invariable one. There are likewise,
according to Plato's own testimony, many proofs to show that the soul has a
divining faculty, as we have already advanced against Hermogenes. But there
is not a man living, who does not himself feel his soul possessed with a
presage and augury of some omen, danger, or joy. Now, if the body is not
prejudicial to divination, it will not, I suppose, be injurious to memory.
One thing is certain, that souls in the same body both forget and remember.
If any corporeal condition engenders forgetfulness, how will it admit the
opposite state of recollection? Because recollection, after forgetfulness,
is actually the resurrection of the memory. Now, how should not that which
is hostile to the memory at first, be also prejudicial to it in the second
instance? Lastly, who have better memories than little children, with their
fresh, unworn souls, not yet immersed in domestic and public cares, but
devoted only to those studies the acquirement of which is itself a
reminiscence? Why, indeed, do we not all of us recollect in an equal
degree, since we are equal in our forgetfulness? But this is true only of
philosophers! But not even of the whole of them. Amongst so many nations,
in so great a crowd of sages, Plato, to be sure, is the only man who has
combined the oblivion and the recollection of ideas. Now, since this main
argument of his by no means keeps its ground, it follows that its entire
superstructure must fall with it,namely, that souls are supposed to be
unborn, and to live in the heavenly regions, and to be instructed in the
divine mysteries thereof; moreover, that they descend to this earth, and
here recall to memory their previous; existence, for the purpose, of
course, of supplying to our heretics the fitting materials for their
systems.

CHAP. XXV.--TERTULLIAN REFUTES, PHYSIOLOGICALLY, THE NOTION THAT THE SOUL
IS INTRODUCED AFTER BIRTH.

   I shall now return to the cause of this digression, in order that I may
explain how all souls are derived from one, when and where and in what
manner they are produced. Now, touching this subject, it matters not
whether the question be started by the philosopher, by the heretic, or by
the crowd. Those who profess the truth care nothing about their opponents,
especially such of them as begin by maintaining that the soul is not
conceived in the womb, nor is formed and produced at the time that the
flesh is moulded, but is impressed from without upon the infant before his
complete vitality, but after the process of parturition. They say,
moreover, that the human seed having been duly deposited ex concubiter in
the womb, and having been by natural impulse quickened, it becomes
condensed into the mere substance of the flesh, which is in due time born,
warm from the furnace of the womb, and then released from its heat. (This
flesh) resembles the case of hot iron, which is in that state plunged into
cold water; for, being smitten by the cold air (into which it is born), it
at once receives the power of animation, and utters vocal sound. This view
is entertained by the Stoics, along with AEnesidemus, and occasionally by
Plato himself, when he tells us that the soul, being quite a separate
formation, originating elsewhere and externally to the womb, is inhaled(1)
when the new-born infant first draws breath, and by and by exhaled(2) with
the man's latest breath. We shall see whether this view of his is merely
fictitious. Even the medical profession has not lacked its Hicesius, to
prove a traitor both to nature and his own calling. These gentlemen, I
suppose, were too modest to come to terms with women on the mysteries of
childbirth, so well known to the latter. But how much more is there for
them to blush at, when in the end they have the women to refute them,
instead of commending them. Now, in such a question as this, no one can be
so useful a teacher, judge, or witness, as the sex itself which is so
intimately concerned. Give us your testimony, then, ye mothers, whether yet
pregnant, or after delivery (let barren women and men keep silence),--the
truth of your own nature is in question, the reality of your own suffering
is the point to be decided. (Tell us, then,) whether you feel in the embryo
within you any vital force(3) other than your own, with which your bowels
tremble, your sides shake, your entire womb throbs, and the burden which
oppresses you constantly changes its position? Are these movements a joy to
you, and a positive removal of anxiety, as making you confident that your
infant both possesses vitality and enjoys it? Or, should his restlessness
cease, your first fear would be for him; and he would be aware of it within
you, since he is disturbed at the novel sound; and you would crave for
injurious diet,(4) or would even loathe your food--all on his account; and
then you and he, (in the closeness of your sympathy,) would share together
your common ailments--so far that with your contusions and bruises would he
actually become marked,--whilst within you, and even on the selfsame parts
of the body, taking to himself thus peremptorily(5) the injuries of his
mother! Now, whenever a livid hue and redness are incidents of the blood,
the blood will not be without the vital principle,(6) or soul; or when
disease attacks the soul or vitality, (it becomes a proof of its real
existence, since) there is no disease where there is no soul or principle
of life. Again, inasmuch as sustenance by food, and the want thereof,
growth and decay, fear and motion, are conditions of the soul or life, he
who experiences them must be alive. And, so, he at last ceases to live, who
ceases to experience them. And thus by and by infants are still-born; but
how so, unless they had life? For how could any die, who had not previously
lived? But sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb, an
infant is put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he
impedes parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die himself.
Accordingly, among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is
formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first
of all, and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular
blade,(1) by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with
anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered
hook, wherewith the entire foetus is extracted(2) by a violent delivery.
There is also (another instrument in the shape of) a copper needle or
spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of
life: they give it, from its infanticide function, the name of
embruospha'kths, the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such
apparatus was possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and
Erasistratus, and Herophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder
Soranus himself, who all knew well enough that a living being had been
conceived, and pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to
be put to death, to escape being tortured alive. Of the necessity of such
harsh treatment I have no doubt even Hicesius was convinced, although he
imported their soul into infants after birth from the stroke of the frigid
air, because the very term for soul, forsooth, in Greek answered to such a
refrigeration!(3) Well, then, have the barbarian and Roman nations received
souls by some other process, (I wonder;) for they have called the soul by
another name than psuchh'? How many nations are there who commence life(4)
under the broiling sun of the torrid zone, scorching their skin into its
swarthy hue? Whence do they get their souls, with no frosty air to help
them? I say not a word of those well-warmed bed-rooms, and all that
apparatus of heat which ladies in childbirth so greatly need, when a breath
of cold air might endanger their life. But in the very bath almost a babe
will slip into life, and at once his cry is heard! if, however, a good
frosty air is to the soul so indispensable a treasure, then beyond the
German and the Scythian tribes, and the Alpine and the Argaean heights,
nobody ought ever to be born! But the fact really is, that population is
greater within the temperate regions of the East and the West, and men's
minds are sharper; whilst there is not a Sarmatian whose wits are not dull
and humdrum. The minds of men, too, would grow keener by reason of the
cold, if their souls came into being amidst nipping frosts; for as the
substance is, so must be its active power. Now, after these preliminary
statements, we may also refer to the case of those who, having been cut out
of their mother's womb, have breathed and retained life--your Bacchuses(5)
and Scipios.(6) If, however, there be any one who, like Plato,(7) supposes
that two souls cannot, more than two bodies could, co-exist in the same
individual, I, on the contrary, could show him not merely the co-existence
of two souls in one person, as also of two bodies in the same womb, but
likewise the combination  of many other things in natural connection with
the soul--for instance, of demoniacal possession; and that not of one only,
as in the case of Socrates' own demon; but of seven spirits as in the case
of the Magdalene;(8) and of a legion in number, as in the Gadarene.(9) Now
one soul is naturally more susceptible of conjunction with another soul, by
reason of the identity of their substance, than an evil spirit is, owing to
their diverse natures. But when the same philosopher, in the sixth book of
The Laws, warns us to beware lest a vitiation of seed should infuse a soil
into both body and soul from an illicit or debased concubinage, I hardly
know whether he is more inconsistent with himself in respect of one of his
previous statements, or of that which he had just made. For he here shows
us that the soul proceeds from human seed (and warns us to be on our guard
about it), not, (as he had said before,) from the first breath of the new-
born child. Pray, whence comes it that from similarity of soul we resemble
our parents in disposition, according to the testimony of Cleanthes,(10) if
we are not produced from this seed of the soul? Why, too, used the old
astrologers to cast a man's nativity from his first conception, if his soul
also draws not its origin from that moment? To this (nativity) likewise
belongs the inbreathing of the soul, whatever that is.

CHAP. XXVI.--SCRIPTURE ALONE OFFERS CLEAR KNOWLEDGE ON THE QUESTIONS WE
HAVE BEEN CONTROVERTING.

   Now there is no end to the uncertainty and irregularity of human
opinion, until we come to the limits which God has prescribed. I shall at
last retire within our own lines and firmly hold my ground there, for the
purpose of proving to the Christian (the soundness of) my answers to the
Philosophers and the Physicians. Brother (in Christ), on your own
foundation(1) build up your faith. Consider the wombs of the most sainted
women instinct with the life within them, and their babes which not only
breathed therein, but were even endowed with prophetic intuition. See how
the bowels of Rebecca are disquieted,(2) though her child-bearing is as yet
remote, and there is no impulse of (vital) air. Behold, a twin offspring
chafes within the mother's womb, although she has no sign as yet of the
twofold nation. Possibly we might have regarded as a prodigy the contention
of this infant progeny, which struggled before it lived, which had
animosity previous to animation, if it had simply disturbed the mother by
its restlessness within her. But when her womb opens, and the number of her
offspring is seen, and their presaged condition known, we have presented to
us a proof not merely of the (separate) souls of the infants, but of their
hostile struggles too. He who was the first to be born was threatened with
detention by him who was anticipated in birth, who was not yet fully
brought forth, but whose hand only had been born. Now if he actually
imbibed life, and received his soul, in Platonic style, at his first
breath; or else, after the Stoic rule, had the earliest taste of animation
on touching the frosty air; what was the other about, who was so eagerly
looked for, who was still detained within the womb, and was trying to
detain (the other) outside? I suppose he had not yet breathed when he
seized his brother's heel;(3) and was still warm with his mother's warmth,
when he so strongly wished to be the first to quit the womb. What an
infant! so emulous, so strong, and already so contentious; and all this, I
suppose, because even now full of life! Consider, again, those
extraordinary conceptions, which were more wonderful still, of the barren
woman and the virgin: these women would only be able to produce imperfect
offspring against the course of nature, from the very fact that one of them
was too old to bear seed, and the other was pure from the contact of man.
If there was to be bearing at all in the case, it was only fitting that
they should be born without a soul, (as the philosopher would say,) who had
been irregularly conceived. However, even these have life, each of them in
his mother's womb. Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in her
womb;(4) Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had instigated her
within.(5) The mothers recognise each their own offspring, being moreover
each recognised by their infants, which were therefore of course alive, and
were not souls merely, but spirits also. Accordingly you read the word of
God which was spoken to Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly, I
knew thee."(6) Since God forms us in the womb, He also breathes upon us, as
He also did at the first creation, when "the Lord God formed man, and
breathed into him the breath of life."(7) Nor could God have known man in
the womb, except in his entire nature: "And before thou camest forth out of
the womb, I sanctified thee."(8) Well, was it then a dead body at that
early stage? Certainly not. For "God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living."

CHAP. XXVII.--SOUL AND BODY CONCEIVED, FORMED AND PERFECTED IN ELEMENT
SIMULTANEOUSLY.

   How, then, is a living being conceived? Is the substance of both body
and soul formed together at one and the same time? Or does one of them
precede the other in natural formation? We indeed maintain that both are
conceived, and formed, and perfectly simultaneously, as well as born
together; and that not a moment's interval occurs in their conception, so
that, a prior place can be assigned to either.(9) Judge, in fact, of the
incidents of man's earliest existence by those which occur to him at the
very last. As death is defined to be nothing else than the separation of
body and soul,(10) life, which is the opposite of death, is susceptible of
no other definition than the conjunction of body and soul. If the severance
happens at one and the same time to both substances by means of death, so
the law of their combination ought to assure us that it occurs
simultaneously to the two substances by means of life. Now we allow that
life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins
from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place
that the soul does. Thus, then, the processes which act together to produce
separation by death, also combine in a simultaneous action to produce life.
If we assign priority to (the formation of) one of the natures, and a
subsequent time to the other, we shall have further to determine the
precise times of the semination, according to the condition and rank of
each. And that being so, what time shall we give to the seed of the body,
and what to the seed of the soul? Besides, if different periods are to be
assigned to the seminations then arising out of this difference in time, we
shall also have different substances.(1) For although we shall allow that
there are two kinds of seed--that of the body and that of the soul--we
still declare that they are inseparable, and therefore contemporaneous and
simultaneous in origin. Now let no one take offence or feel ashamed at an
interpretation of the processes of nature which is rendered necessary (by
the defence of the truth). Nature should be to us an object of reverence,
not of blushes. It is lust, not natural usage, which has brought shame on
the intercourse of the sexes. It is the excess, not the normal state, which
is immodest and unchaste: the normal condition has received a blessing from
God, and is blest by Him: "Be fruitful, and multiply, (and replenish the
earth.)"(2) Excess, however, has He cursed, in adulteries, and wantonness,
and chambering.(3) Well, now, in this usual function of the sexes which
brings together the male and the female in their common intercourse, we
know that both the soul and the flesh discharge a duty together: the soul
supplies desire, the flesh contributes the gratification of it; the soul
furnishes the instigation, the flesh affords the realization. The entire
man being excited by the one effort of both natures, his seminal substance
is discharged, deriving its fluidity from the body, and its warmth from the
soul. Now if the soul in Greek is a word which is synonymous with cold,(4)
how does it come to pass that the body grows cold after the soul has
quitted it? Indeed (if I run the risk of offending modesty even, in my
desire to prove the truth), I cannot help asking, whether we do not, in
that very heat of extreme gratification when the generative fluid is
ejected, feel that somewhat of our soul has gone from us? And do we not
experience a faintness and prostration along with a dimness of sight? This,
then, must be the soul-producing seed, which arises at once from the out-
drip of the soul, just as that fluid is the body-producing seed which
proceeds from the drainage of the flesh. Most true are the examples of the
first creation. Adam's flesh was formed of clay. Now what is clay bug an
excellent moisture, whence should spring the generating fluid? From the
breath of God first came the soul. But what else is the breath of God than
the vapour of the spirit, whence should spring that which we breathe out
through the generative fluid? Forasmuch, therefore, as these two different
and separate substances, the clay and the breath, combined at the first
creation in forming the individual man, they then both amalgamated and
mixed their proper seminal rudiments in one, and ever afterwards
communicated to the human race the normal mode of its propagation, so that
even now the two substances, although diverse from each other, flow forth
simultaneously in a united channel; and finding their way together into
their appointed seed-plot, they fertilize with their combined vigour the
human fruit out of their respective natures. And inherent in this human
product is his own seed, according to the process which has been ordained
for every creature endowed with the functions of generation. Accordingly
from the one (primeval) man comes the entire outflow and redundance of
men's souls--nature proving herself true to the commandment of God, "Be
fruitful, and multiply."(5) For in the very preamble of this one
production, "Let us make man,"(6) man's whole posterity was declared and
described in a plural phrase, "Let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea," etc.(7) And no wonder: in the seed lies the promise and earnest of
the crop.

CHAP. XXVIII.--THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE OF TRANSMIGRATION SKETCHED AND
CENSURED.

   What, then, by this time means that ancient saying, mentioned by
Plato,(8) concerning the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove
hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and
then again depart from this life, and afterwards become alive from the
dead? Some will have it that this is a saying of Pythagoras; Albinus
supposes it to be a divine announcement, perhaps of the Egyptian
Mercury.(9) But there is no divine saying, except of the one true God, by
whom the prophets, and the apostles, and Christ Himself declared their
grand message. More ancient than Saturn a good deal (by some nine hundred
years or so), and even than his grandchildren, is Moses; and he is
certainly much more divine, recounting and tracing out, as he does, the
course of the human race from the very beginning of the world, indicating
the several births (of the fathers of mankind) according to their names and
their epochs; giving thus plain proof of the divine character of his work,
from its divine authority and word. If, indeed, the sophist of Samos is
Plato's authority for the eternally revolving migration of souls out of a
constant alternation of the dead and the living states, then no doubt did
the famous Pythagoras, however excellent in other respects, for the purpose
of fabricating such an opinion as this, rely on a falsehood, which was not
only shameful, but also hazardous. Consider it, you that are ignorant of
it, and believe with us. He feigns death, he conceals himself underground,
he condemns himself to that endurance for some seven years, during which he
learns from his mother, who was his sole accomplice and attendant, what he
was to relate for the belief of the world concerning those who had died
since his seclusion;(1) and when he thought that he had succeeded in
reducing the frame of his body to the horrid appearance of a dead old man,
he comes forth from the place of his concealment and deceit, and pretends
to have returned from the dead. Who would hesitate about believing that the
man, whom he had supposed to have died, was come back again to life?
especially after hearing from him facts about the recently dead,(1) which
he evidently could only have discovered in Hades itself! Thus, that men are
made alive after death, is rather an old statement. But what if it be
rather a recent one also? The truth does not desire antiquity, nor does
falsehood shun novelty. This notable saying I hold to be plainly false,
though ennobled by antiquity. How should that not be false, which depends
for its evidence on a falsehood?--How can I help believing Pythagoras to be
a deceiver, who practises deceit to win my belief? How will he convince me
that, before he was Pythagoras, he had been AEthalides, and Euphorbus, and
the fisherman Pyrrhus, and Hermotimus, to make us believe that men live
again after they have died, when he actually perjured himself afterwards as
Pythagoras. In proportion as it would be easier for me to believe that he
had returned once to life in his own person, than so often in the person of
this man and that, in the same degree has he deceived me in things which
are too hard to be credited, because he has played the impostor in matters
which might be readily believed. Well, but he recognised the shield of
Euphorbus, which had been formerly consecrated at Delphi, and claimed it as
his own, and proved his claim by signs which were generally unknown. Now,
look again at his subterranean lurking-place, and believe his story, if you
can. For, as to the man who devised such a tricksty scheme, to the injury
of his health, fraudulently wasting his life, and torturing it for seven
years underground, amidst hunger, idleness, and darkness--with a profound
disgust for the mighty sky--what reckless effort would he not make, what
curious contrivance would he not attempt, to arrive at the discovery of
this famous shield? Suppose now, that he found it in some of those hidden
researches; suppose that he recovered some slight breath of report which
survived the now obsolete tradition; suppose him to have come to the
knowledge of it by an inspection which he had bribed the beadle to let him
have,--we know very well what are the resources of magic skill for
exploring hidden secrets: there are the catabolic spirits, which floor
their victims;(2) and the paredral spirits, which are ever at their side(3)
to haunt them; and the pythonic spirits, which entrance them by their
divination and ventriloquistic(4) arts. For was is not likely that
Pherecydes also, the master of our Pythagoras, used to divine, or I would
rather say rave and dream, by such arts and contrivances as these? Might
not the self-same demon have been in him, who, whilst in Euphorbus,
transacted deeds of blood? But lastly, why is it that the man, who proved
himself to have been uphorbus by the evidence of the shield, did not also
recognise any of his former Trojan comrades? For they, too, must by this
time have recovered life, since men were rising again from the dead:

CHAP, XXIX.--THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE REFUTED BY ITS OWN FIRST PRINCIPLE,
THAT LIVING MEN ARE FORMED FROM THE DEAD.

   It is indeed, manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but
it does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones.
For from the beginning the living came first in the order of things, and
therefore also from the beginning the dead came afterwards in order. But
these proceeded from no other source except from the living. The living had
their origin in any other source (you please) than in the dead; whilst the
dead had no source whence to derive their beginning, except from the
living. If, then, from the very first the living came not from the dead,
why should they afterwards (be said to) come from the dead? Had that
original source, whatever it was, come to an end? Was the form or law
thereof a matter for regret? Then why was it preserved in the case of the
dead? Does it not follow that, because the dead came from the living at the
first, therefore they always came from the living? For either the law which
obtained at the beginning must have continued in both of its relations, or
else it must have changed in both; so that, if it had become necessary for
the living afterwards to proceed from the dead, it would be necessary, in
like manner, for the dead also not to proceed from the living. For if a
faithful adherence to the institution was not meant to be perpetuated in
each respect, then contraries cannot in due alternation continue to be re-
formed from contraries. We, too, will on our side adduce against you
certain contraries, of the born and the unborn, of vision(1) and blindness,
of youth and old age, of wisdom and folly. Now it does not follow that the
unborn proceeds from the born, on the ground that a contrary issues from a
contrary; nor, again, that vision proceeds from blindness, because
blindness happens to vision; nor, again, that youth revives from old age,
because after youth comes the decrepitude of senility; nor that folly(2) is
born with its obtuseness from wisdom, because wisdom may possibly be
sometimes sharpened out of folly. Albinus has some fears for his (master
and friend) Plato in these points, and labours with much ingenuity to
distinguish different kinds of contraries; as if these instances did not as
absolutely partake of the nature of contrariety as those which are
expounded by him to illustrate his great master's principle--I mean, life
and death. Nor is it, for the matter of that, true that life is restored
out of death, because it happens that death succeeds(3) life.

CHAP. XXX.--FURTHER REFUTATION OF THE PYTHAGOREAN THEORY. THE STATE OF
CONTEMPORARY CIVILISATION.

   But what must we say in reply to what follows? For, in the first place,
if the living come from the dead, just as the dead proceed from the living,
then there must always remain unchanged one and the selfsame number of
mankind, even the number which originally introduced (human) life. The
living preceded the dead, afterwards the dead issued from the living, and
then again the living from the dead. Now, since this process was  evermore
going on with the same persons, therefore they, issuing from the same, must
always have remained in number the same. For they who emerged (into life)
could never have become more nor fewer than they who disappeared (in
death). We find, however, in the records of the Antiquities of Man,(4) that
the human race has progressed with a gradual growth of population, either
occupying different portions of the earth as aborigines, or as nomade
tribes, or as exiles, or as conquerors--as the Scythians in Parthia, the
Temenidae in Peloponnesus, the Athenians in Asia, the Phrygians in Italy,
and the Phoenicians in Africa; or by the more ordinary methods of
emigration, which they call apoiki'ai or colonies,  for the purpose of
throwing off redundant population, disgorging into other abodes their
overcrowded masses. The aborigines remain still in their old settlements,
and have also enriched other districts with loans of even larger
populations. Surely it is obvious enough, if one looks at the whole world,
that it is becoming daily better cultivated and more fully peopled than
anciently. All places are now accessible, all are well known, all open to
commerce; most pleasant farms have obliterated all traces of what were once
dreary and dangerous wastes; cultivated fields have subdued forests; flocks
and herds have expelled wild beasts; sandy deserts are sown; rocks are
planted; marshes are drained; and where once were hardly solitary cottages,
there are now large cities. No longer are (savage) islands dreaded, nor
their rocky shores feared; everywhere are houses, and inhabitants, and
settled government, and civilised life. What most frequently meets our view
(and occasions complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are
burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural
elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter
in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In
very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be
regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of
the human race; and yet, when the hatchet has once felled large masses of
men, the world has hitherto never once been alarmed at the sight of a
restitution of its dead coming back to life after their millennial
exile.(5) But such a spectacle would have become quite obvious by the
balance of mortal loss and vital recovery, if it were true that the dead
came back again to life. Why, however, is it after a thousand years, and
not at the moment, that this return from death is to take place, when,
supposing that the loss is not at once supplied, there must be a risk of an
utter extinction, as the failure precedes the compensation? Indeed, this
furlough of our present life would be quite disproportioned to the period
of a thousand years; so much briefer is it, and on that account so much
more easily is its torch extinguished than rekindled. Inasmuch, then, as
the period which, on the hypothesis we have discussed, ought to intervene,
if the living are to be formed from the dead, has not actually occurred, it
will follow that we must not believe that men come back to life from the
dead (in the way surmised in this philosophy).

CHAP. XXXI.--FURTHER EXPOSURE OF TRANSMIGRATION, ITS INEXTRICABLE
EMBARRASSMENT.

   Again, if this recovery of life from the dead take place at all,
individuals must of course resume their own individuality. Therefore the
souls which animated each several body must needs have returned separately
to their several bodies. Now, whenever two, or three, or five souls are re-
enclosed (as they constantly are) in one womb, it will not amount in such
cases to life from the dead, because there is not the separate restitution
which individuals ought to have; although at this rate, (no doubt,) the law
of the primeval creation is signally kept,(1) by the production still of
several souls out of only one! Then, again, if souls depart at different
ages of human life, how is it that they come back again at one uniform age?
For all men are imbued with an infant soul at their birth. But how happens
it that a man who dies in old age returns to life as an infant? If the
soul, whilst disembodied, decreases thus by retrogression of its age, how
much more reasonable would it be, that it should resume its life with a
richer progress in all attainments of life after the lapse of a thousand
years! At all events, it should return with the age it had attained at its
death, that it might resume the precise life which it had relinquished. But
even if, at this rate, they should reappear the same evermore in their
revolving cycles, it would be proper for them to bring back with them, if
not the selfsame forms of body, at least their original peculiarities of
character, taste, and disposition, because it would be hardly possible(2)
for them to be regarded as the same, if they were deficient in those
characteristics by means of which their identity should be proved. (You,
however, meet me with this question): How can you possibly know, you ask,
whether all is not a secret process? may not the work of a thousand years
take from you the power of recognition, since they return unknown to you?
But I am quite certain that such is not the case, for you yourself present
Pythagoras to me as (the restored) Euphorbus. Now look at Euphorbus: he was
evidently possessed of a military and warlike soul, as is proved by the
very renown of the sacred shields. As for Pythagoras, however, he was such
a recluse, and so unwarlike, that he shrank from the military exploits of
which Greece was then so full, and preferred to devote himself, in the
quiet retreat of Italy, to the study of geometry, and astrology, and music-
-the very opposite to Euphorbus in taste and disposition. Then, again, the
Pyrrhus (whom he represented) spent his time in catching fish; but
Pythagoras, on the contrary, would never touch fish, abstaining from even
the taste of them as from animal food. Moreover, AEthalides and Hermotimus
had included the bean amongst the common esculents at meals, while
Pythagoras taught his disciples not even to pass through a plot which was
cultivated with beans. I ask, then, how the same souls are resumed, which
can offer no proof of their identity, either by their disposition, or
habits, or living? And now, after all, (we find that) only four souls are
mentioned as recovering life(3) out of all the multitudes of Greece. But
limiting ourselves merely to Greece, as if no transmigrations of souls and
resumptions of bodies occurred, and that every day, in every nation, and
amongst all ages, ranks, and sexes, how is it that Pythagoras alone
experiences these changes into one personality and another? Why should not
I too undergo them? Or if it be a privilege monopolized by philosophers--
and Greek philosophers only, as if Scythians and Indians had no
philosophers--how is it that Epicurus had no recollection that he had been
once another man, nor Chrysippus, nor Zeno, nor indeed Plato himself, whom
we might perhaps have supposed to have been Nestor, from his honeyed
eloquence?

CHAP. XXXII.--EMPEDOCLES INCREASED THE ABSURDITY OF PYTHAGORAS BY
DEVELOPING THE POSTHUMOUS CHANGE OF MEN INTO VARIOUS ANIMALS.

   But the fact is, Empedocles, who used to dream that he was a god, and
on that account, I suppose, disdained to have it thought that he had ever
before been merely some hero, declares in so many words: "I once was
Thamnus, and a fish." Why not rather a melon, seeing that he was such a
fool; or a cameleon, for his inflated brag? It was, no doubt, as a fish
(and a queer one too!) that he escaped the corruption of some obscure
grave, when he preferred being roasted by a plunge into AEtna; after which
accomplishment there was an end for ever to his metenswma'twsis or putting
himself into another body--(fit only now for) a light dish after the roast-
meat. At this point, therefore, we must likewise contend against that still
more monstrous presumption, that in the course of the transmigration beasts
pass from human beings, and human beings from beasts. Let (Empedocles')
Thamnuses alone. Our slight notice of them in passing will be quite enough:
(to dwell on them longer will inconvenience us,) lest we should be obliged
to nave recourse to raillery and laughter instead of serious instruction.
Now our position is this: that the human soul cannot by any means at all be
transferred to beasts, even when they are supposed to originate, according
to the philosophers, out of the substances of the elements. Now let us
suppose that the soul is either fire, or water, or blood, or spirit, or
air, or light; we must not forget that all the animals in their several
kinds have properties which are opposed to the respective elements. There
are the cold animals which are opposed to fire--water-snakes, lizards,
salamanders, and what things soever are produced out of the rival element
of water. In like manner, those creatures are opposite to water which are
in their nature dry and sapless; indeed, locusts, butterflies, and
chameleons rejoice in droughts. So, again, such creatures are opposed to
blood which have none of its purple hue, such as snails, worms, and most of
the fishy tribes. Then opposed to spirit are those creatures which seem to
have no respiration, being unfurnished with lungs and windpipes, such as
gnats, ants, moths, and minute things of this sort. Opposed, moreover, to
air are those creatures which always live under ground and under water, and
never imbibe air--things of which you are more acquainted with the
existence than with the names. Then opposed to light are those things which
are either wholly blind, or possess eyes for the darkness only, such as
moles, bats, and owls. These examples (have I adduced), that I might
illustrate my subject from clear and palpable natures. But even if I could
take in my hand the "atoms" of Epicurus, or if my eye could see the
"numbers" of Pythagoras, or if my foot could stumble against the "ideas" of
Plato, or if I could lay hold of the "entelechies" of Aristotle, the
chances would be, that even in these (impalpable) classes I should find
such animals as I must oppose to one another on the ground of their
contrariety. For I maintain that, of whichsoever of the before-mentioned
natures the human soul is composed, it would not have been possible for it
to pass for new forms into animals so contrary to each of the separate
natures, and to bestow an origin by its passage on those beings, from which
it would have to be excluded and rejected rather than to be admitted and
received, by reason of that original contrariety which we have supposed it
to possess,(1) and which commits the bodily substance receiving it to an
interminable strife; and then again by reason of the subsequent
contrariety, which results from the development inseparable from each
several nature. Now it is on quite different conditions(2) that the soul of
man has had assigned to it (in individual bodies(3) ) its abode, and
aliment, and order, and sensation, and affection, and sexual intercourse,
and procreation of children; also (on different conditions has it, in
individual bodies, received especial) dispositions, as well as duties to
fulfil, likings, dislikes, vices, desires, pleasures, maladies, remedies--
in short, its own modes of living, its own outlets of death. How, then,
shall that (human) soul which cleaves to the earth, and is unable without
alarm to survey any great height, or any considerable depth, and which is
also fatigued if it mounts many steps, and is suffocated if it is submerged
in a fish-pond,--(how, I say, shall a soul which is beset with such
weaknesses) mount up at some future stage into the air in an eagle, or
plunge into the sea in an eel? How, again, shall it, after being nourished
with generous and delicate as well as exquisite viands, feed deliberately
on, I will not say husks, but even on thorns, and the wild fare of bitter
leaves, and beasts of the dung-hill, and poisonous worms, if it has to
migrate into a goat or into a quail?--nay, it may be, feed on carrion, even
on human corpses in some bear or lion? But how indeed (shall it stoop to
this), when it remembers its own (nature and dignity)? In the same way, you
may submit all other instances to this criterion of incongruity, and so
save us from lingering over the distinct consideration of each of them in
turn. Now, whatever may be the measure and whatever the mode of the human
soul, (the question is forced upon us,) what it will do in far larger
animals, or in very diminutive ones? It must needs be, that every
individual body of whatever size is filled up by the soul, and that the
soul is entirely covered by the body. How, therefore, shall a man's soul
fill an elephant? How, likewise, shall it be contracted within a gnat? If
it be so enormously extended or contracted, it will no doubt be exposed to
peril. And this induces me to ask another question: If the soul is by no
means capable of this kind of migration into animals, which are not fitted
for its reception, either by the habits of their bodies or the other laws
of their being, will it then undergo a change according to the properties
of various animals, and be adapted to their life, notwithstanding its
contrariety to human life--having, in fact, become contrary to its human
self by reason of its utter change? Now the truth is, if it undergoes such
a transformation, and loses what it once was, the human soul will not be
what it was; and if it ceases to be its former self, the metensomatosis, or
adaptation of some other body, comes to nought, and is not of course to be
ascribed to the soul which will cease to exist, on the supposition of its
complete change. For only then can a soul be said to experience this
process of the metensomatosis, when it undergoes it by remaining unchanged
in its own (primitive) condition. Since, therefore, the soul does not admit
of change, lest it should cease to retain its identity; and yet is unable
to remain unchanged in its original state, because it fails then to receive
contrary (bodies),--I still want to know some credible reason to justify
such a transformation as we are discussing. For although some men are
compared to the beasts because of their character, disposition, and
pursuits (since even God says, "Man is like the beasts that perish"(1)), it
does not on this account follow that rapacious persons become kites, lewd
persons dogs, ill-tempered ones panthers, good men sheep, talkative ones
swallows, and chaste men doves, as if the selfsame substance of the soul
everywhere repeated its own nature in the properties of the animals (into
which it passed). Besides, a substance is one thing, and the nature of that
substance is another thing; inasmuch as the substance is the special
property of one given thing, whereas the nature thereof may possibly belong
to many things. Take an example or two. A stone or a piece of iron is the
substance: the hardness of the stone and the iron is the nature of the
substance. Their hardness combines objects by a common quality; their
substances keep them separate. Then, again, there is softness in wool, and
softness in a feather: their natural qualities are alike, (and put them on
a par;) their substantial qualities are not alike, (and keep them
distinct.) Thus, if a man likewise be designated a wild beast or a harmless
one, there is not for all that an identity of soul. Now the similarity of
nature is even then observed, when dissimilarity of substance is most
conspicuous: for, by the very fact of your judging that a man resembles a
beast, you confess that their soul is not identical; for you say that they
resemble each other, not that they are the same. This is also the meaning
of the word of God (which we have just quoted): it likens man to the beasts
in nature, but not in substance. Besides, God would not have actually made
such a comment as this concerning man, if He had known him to be in
substance only bestial.

CHAP. XXXIII.--THE JUDICIAL RETRIBUTION OF THESE MIGRATIONS REFUTED WITH
RAILLERY.

   Forasmuch as this doctrine is vindicated even on the principle of
judicial retribution, on the pretence that the souls of men obtain as their
partners the kind of animals which are suited to their life and deserts,--
as if they ought to be, according to their several characters, either slain
in criminals destined to execution, or reduced to hard work in menials, or
fatigued and wearied in labourers, or foully disgraced in the unclean; or,
again, on the same principle, reserved for honour, and love, and care, and
attentive regard in characters most eminent in, rank and virtue,
usefulness, and tender sensibility,--I must here also remark, that if souls
undergo a transformation, they will actually not be able to accomplish and
experience the destinies which they shall deserve; and the aim and purpose
of judicial recompense will be brought to nought, as there will be wanting
the sense and consciousness of merit and retribution. And there must be
this want of consciousness, if souls lose their condition; and there must
ensue this loss, if they do not continue in one stay. But even if they
should have permanency enough to remain unchanged until the judgment,--a
point which Mercurius AEgyptius recognised, when he said that the soul,
after its separation from the body, was not dissipated back into the soul
of the universe, but retained permanently its distinct individuality, "in
order that it might render," to use his own words, "an account to the
Father of those things which it has done in the body;" --(even supposing
all this, I say,) I still want to examine the justice, the solemnity, the
majesty, and the dignity of this reputed judgment of God, and see whether
human judgment has not too elevated a throne in it--exaggerated in both
directions, in its office both of punishments and rewards, too severe in
dealing out its vengeance, and too lavish in bestowing its favour. What do
you suppose will become of the soul of the murderer? (It will animate), I
suppose, some cattle destined for the slaughter-house and the shambles,
that it may itself be killed, even as it has killed; and be itself flayed,
since it has fleeced others; and be itself used for food, since it has cast
to the wild beasts the ill-fated victims whom it once slew in woods and
lonely roads. Now, if such be the judicial retribution which it is to
receive, is not such a soul likely to find more of consolation than of
punishment, in the fact that it receives its coup de grace from the hands
of most expert practitioners--is buried with condiments served in the most
piquant styles of an Apicius or a Lurco, is introduced to the tables of
your exquisite Ciceros, is brought up on the most splendid dishes of a
Sylla, finds its obsequies in a banquet, is devoured by respectable
(mouths) on a par with itself, rather than by kites and wolves, so that all
may see how it has got a man's body for its tomb, and has risen again after
returning to its own kindred race--exulting in the face of human judgments,
if it has experienced them? For these barbarous sentences of death consign
to various wild beasts, which are selected and trained even against their
nature for their horrible office the criminal who has committed murder,
even while yet alive; nay, hindered from too easily dying, by a contrivance
which retards his last moment in order to aggravate his punishment. But
even if his soul should have anticipated by its departure the sword's last
stroke, his body at all events must not escape the weapon: retribution for
his own crime is yet exacted by stabbing his throat and stomach, and
piercing his side. After that he is flung into the fire, that his very
grave may be cheated.(1) In no other way, indeed, is a sepulture allowed
him. Not that any great care, after all, is bestowed on his pyre, so that
other animals light upon his remains. At any rate, no mercy is shown to his
bones, no indulgence to his ashes, which must be punished with exposure and
nakedness. The vengeance which is inflicted among men upon the homicide is
really as great as that which is imposed by nature. Who would not prefer
the justice of the world, which, as the apostle himself testifies, "beareth
not the sword in vain,"(2) and which is an institute of religion when it
severely avenges in defence of human life? When we contemplate, too, the
penalties awarded to other crimes--gibbets, and holocausts, and sacks, and
harpoons, and precipices--who would not think it better to receive his
sentence in the courts of Pythagoras and Empedocles? For even the wretches
whom they will send into the bodies of asses and mules to be punished by
drudgery and slavery, how will they congratulate themselves on the mild
labour of the mill and the water-wheel, when they recollect the mines, and
the convict-gangs, and the public works, and even the prisons and black-
holes, terrible in their idle, do-nothing routine? Then, again, in the case
of those who, after a course of integrity, have surrendered their life to
the Judge, I likewise look for rewards, but I rather discover punishments.
To be sure, it must be a handsome gain for good men to be restored to life
in any animals whatsoever! Homer, so dreamt Ennius, remembered that he was
once a peacock; however, I cannot for my part believe poets, even when wide
awake. A peacock, no doubt, is a very pretty bird, pluming itself, at will,
on its splendid feathers; Jut then its wings do not make amends for its
voice, which is harsh and unpleasant; and there is nothing that poets like
better than a good song. His transformation, therefore, into a peacock was
to Homer a penalty, not an honour. The world's remuneration will bring him
a much greater joy, when it lauds him as the father of the liberal
sciences; and he will prefer the ornaments of his fame to the graces of his
tail! But never mind! let poets migrate into peacocks, or into swans, if
you like, especially as swans have a respectable voice: in what animal will
you invest that righteous hero AEacus? In what beast will you clothe the
chaste and excellent Dido? What bird shall fall to the lot of Patience?
what animal to the lot of Holiness? what fish to that of Innocence? Now all
creatures are the servants of man; all are his subjects, all his
dependants. If by and by he is to become one of these creatures, he is by
such a change debased and degraded he to whom, for his virtues, images,
statues, and titles are freely awarded as public honours and distinguished
privileges, he to Whom the senate and the people vote even sacrifices! Oh,
what judicial sentences for gods to pronounce, as men's recompense after
death! They are more mendacious than any human judgments; they are
contemptible as punishments, disgusting as rewards; such as the worst of
men could never fear, nor the best desire; such indeed, as criminals will
aspire to, rather than saints,--the former, that they may escape more
speedily the world's stern sentence,--the latter that they may more tardily
incur it. How well, (forsooth), O ye philosophers do you teach us, and how
usefully do you advise us, that after death rewards and punishments fall
with lighter weight! whereas, if any judgment awaits souls at all, it ought
rather to be supposed that it will be heavier at the conclusion of life
than in the conduct(1) thereof, since nothing is more complete than that
which comes at the very last--nothing, moreover, is more complete than that
which is especially divine. Accordingly, God's judgment will be more full
and complete, because it will be pronounced at the very last, in an eternal
irrevocable sentence, both of punishment and of consolation, (on men whose)
souls are not to transmigrate into beasts, but are to return into their own
proper bodies. And all this once for all, and on "that day, too, of which
the Father only knoweth;"(2) (only knoweth,) in order that by her trembling
expectation faith may make full trial of her anxious sincerity, keeping her
gaze ever fixed on that day, in her perpetual ignorance of it, daily
fearing that for which she yet daily hopes.

CHAP. XXXIV.--THESE VAGARIES STIMULATED SOME PROFANE CORRUPTIONS OF
CHRISTIANITY. THE PROFANITY OF SIMON MAGUS CONDEMNED.

   No tenet, indeed, under cover of any heresy has as yet burst upon us,
embodying any such extravagant fiction as that the souls of human beings
pass into the bodies of wild beasts; but yet we have deemed it necessary to
attack and refute this conceit, as a consistent sequel to the preceding
opinions, in order that Homer in the peacock might be got rid of as
effectually as Pythagoras in Euphorbus; and in order that, by the
demolition of the metempsychosis and metensomatosis by the same blow, the
Found might be cut away which has furnished no inconsiderable support to
our heretics. There is the (infamous) Simon of Samaria in the Acts of the
Apostles, who chaffered for the Holy Ghost: after his condemnation by Him,
and a vain remorse that he and his money must perish together,(3) he
applied his energies to the destruction of the truth, as if to console
himself with revenge. Besides the support with which his own magic arts
furnished him, he had recourse to imposture, and purchased a Tyrian woman
of the name of Helen out of a brothel, with the same money which he had
offered for the Holy Spirit,--a traffic worthy of the wretched man. He
actually reigned himself to be the Supreme Father, and further pretended
that the woman was his own primary conception, wherewith he had purposed
the creation of the angels and the archangels; that after she was possessed
of this purpose she sprang forth from the Father and descended to the lower
spaces, and there anticipating the Father's design had produced the angelic
powers, which knew nothing of the Father, the Creator of this world; that
she was detained a prisoner by  these from a (rebellious) motive very like
her own, lest after her departure from them they should appear to be the
offspring of another being; and that, after being on this account exposed
to every insult, to prevent her leaving them anywhere after her dishonour,
she was degraded even to the form of man, to be confined, as it were, in
the bonds of the flesh. Having during many ages wallowed about in one
female shape and another, she became the notorious Helen who was so ruinous
to Priam, and afterwards to the eyes of Stesichorus, whom, she blinded in
revenge for his lampoons, and then restored to sight to reward him for his
eulogies. After wandering about in this way from body to body, she, in her
final disgrace, turned out a viler Helen still as a professional
prostitute. This wench, therefore, was the lost sheep, upon whom the
Supreme Father, even Simon, descended, who, after he had recovered her and
brought her back--whether on his shoulders or loins I cannot tell--cast an
eye on the salvation of man, in order to gratify his spleen by liberating
them from the angelic powers. Moreover, to deceive these he also himself
assumed a visible shape; and reigning the appearance of a man amongst men,
he acted the part of the Son in Judea, and of the Father in Samaria. O
hapless Helen, what a hard fate is yours between the poets and the
heretics, who have blackened your fame sometimes with adultery, sometimes
with prostitution! Only her rescue from Troy is a more glorious affair than
her extrication from the brothel. There were a thousand ships to remove her
from Troy; a thousand pence were probably more than enough to withdraw her
from the stews. Fie on you, Simon, to be so tardy in seeking her out, and
so inconstant in ransoming her! How different from Menelaus! As soon as he
has lost her, he goes in pursuit of her; she is no sooner ravished than he
begins his search; after a ten years' conflict he boldly rescues her: there
is no lurking, no deceiving, no cavilling. I am really afraid that he was a
much better "Father," who laboured so much more vigilantly, bravely, and
perseveringly, about the recovery of his Helen.

CHAP. XXXV.--THE OPINIONS OF CARPOCRATES, ANOTHER OFFSET FROM THE
PYTHAGOREAN DOGMAS, STATED AND CONFUTED.

   However, it is not for you alone, (Simon), that the transmigration
philosophy has fabricated this story. Carpocrates also makes equally good
use of it, who was a magician and a fornicator like yourself, only he had
not a Helen.(1) And why should he not? since he asserted that souls are
reinvested with bodies, in order to ensure the overthrow by all means of
divine and human truth. For, (according to his miserable doctrine,) this
life became consummated to no man until all those blemishes which are held
to disfigure it have been fully displayed in its conduct; because there is
nothing which is accounted evil by nature, but simply as men think of it.
The transmigration of human souls, therefore, into any kind of
heterogeneous bodies, he thought by all means indispensable, whenever any
depravity whatever had not been fully perpetrated in the early stage of
life's passage. Evil deeds (one may be sure) appertain to life. Moreover,
as often as the soul has fallen short as a defaulter in sin, it has to be
recalled to existence, until it "pays the utmost farthing,"(2) thrust out
from time to time into the prison of the body. To this effect does he
tamper with the whole of that allegory of the Lord which is extremely clear
and simple in its meaning, and ought to be from the first understood in its
plain and natural sense. Thus our "adversary" (therein mentioned(3) ) is
the heathen man, who is walking with us along the same road of life which
is common to him and ourselves. Now "we must needs go out of the world,"(4)
if it be not allowed us to have conversation with them. He bids us,
therefore, show a kindly disposition to such a man. "Love your enemies,"
says He, "pray for them that curse you,"(5) lest such a man in any
transaction of business be irritated by any unjust conduct of yours, and
"deliver thee to the judge" of his own (nation(6)), and you be thrown into
prison, and be detained in its close and narrow cell until you have
liquidated all your debt against him.(7) Then, again, should you be
disposed to apply the term "adversary" to the devil, you are advised by the
(Lord's) injunction, while you are in the way with him," to make even with
him such a compact as may be deemed compatible with the requirements of
your true faith. Now the compact you have made respecting him is to
renounce him, and his pomp, and his angels. Such is your agreement in this
matter. Now the friendly understanding you will have to carry out must
arise from your observance of the compact: you must never think of getting
back any of the things which you have abjured, and have restored to him,
lest he should summon you as a fraudulent man, and a transgressor of your
agreement, before God the Judge (for in this light do we read of him, in
another passage, as "the accuser of the brethren,"(8) or saints, where
reference is made to the actual practice of legal prosecution); and lest
this Judge deliver you over to the angel who is to execute the sentence,
and he commit you to the prison of hell, out of which there will be no
dismissal until the smallest even of your delinquencies be paid off in the
period before the resurrection.(9) What can be a more fitting sense than
this? What a truer interpretation? If, however, according to Carpocrates,
the soul is bound to the commission of all sorts of crime and evil conduct,
what must we from his system understand to be its "adversary" and foe? I
suppose it must be that better mind which shall compel it by force to the
performance of some act of virtue, that it may be driven from body to body,
until it be found in none a debtor to the claims of a virtuous life. This
means, that a good tree is known by its bad fruit--in other words, that the
doctrine of truth is understood from the worst possible precepts. I
apprehend(10) that heretics of this school seize with especial avidity the
example of Elias, whom they assume to have been so reproduced in John (the
Baptist) as to make our Lord's statement sponsor for their theory of
transmigration, when He said, "Elias is come already, and they knew him
not;"(11) and again, in another passage, "And if ye will receive it, this
is Elias, which was for to come."(12) Well, then, was it really in a
Pythagorean sense that the Jews approached John with the inquiry, "Art thou
Elias?"(13) and not rather in the sense of the divine prediction, "Behold,
I will send you Elijah" the Tisbite?(1) The fact, however, is, that their
metempsychosis, or transmigration theory, signifies the recall of the soul
which had died long before, and its return to some other body. But Elias is
to come again, not after quitting life (in the way of dying), but after his
translation (or removal without dying); not for the purpose of being
restored to the body, from which he had not departed, but for the purpose
of revisiting the world from which he was translated; not by way of
resuming a life which he had laid aside, but of fulfilling prophecy,--
really and truly the same man, both in respect of his name and designation,
as well as of his unchanged humanity. How, therefore could John be Elias?
You have your answer in the angel's announcement: "And he shall go before
the people," says he, "in the spirit and power of Elias"--not (observe) in
his soul and his body. These substances are, in fact, the natural property
of each individual; whilst "the spirit and power" are bestowed as external
gifts by the grace of God and so may be transferred to another person
according to the purpose and will of the Almighty, as was anciently the
case with respect to the spirit of Moses.(2)

CHAP. XXXVI.--THE MAIN POINTS OF OUR AUTHOR'S SUBJECT. ON THE SEXES OF THE
HUMAN RACE.

   For the discussion of these questions we abandoned, if I remember
rightly, ground to which we must now return. We had established the
position that the soul is seminally placed in man, and by human agency, and
that its seed from the very beginning is uniform, as is that of the soul
also, to the race of man; (and this we settled) owing to the rival opinions
of the philosophers and the heretics, and that ancient saying mentioned by
Plato (to which we referred above).(3) We now pursue in their order the
points which follow from them. The soul, being sown in the womb at the same
time as the body, receives likewise along with it its sex; and this indeed
so simultaneously, that neither of the two substances can be alone regarded
as the cause of the sex. Now, if in the semination of these substances any
interval were admissible in their conception, in such wise that either the
flesh or the soul should be the first to be conceived, one might then
ascribe an especial sex to one of the substances, owing to the difference
in the time of the impregnations, so that either the flesh would impress
its sex upon the soul, or the soul upon the sex; even as Apelles (the
heretic, not the painter(4)) gives the priority over their bodies to the
souls of men and women, as he had been taught by Philumena, and in
consequence makes the flesh, as the later, receive its sex from the soul.
They also who make the soul supervene after birth on the flesh
predetermine, of course, the sex of the previously formed soul to be male
or female, according to (the sex of) the flesh. But the truth is, the
seminations of the two substances are inseparable in point of time, and
their effusion is also one and the same, in consequence of which a
community of  gender is secured to them; so that the course of nature,
whatever that be, shall draw the line (for the distinct sexes). Certainly
in this view we have an attestation of the method of the first two
formations, when the male was moulded and tempered in a completer way, for
Adam was first formed; and the woman came far behind him, for Eve was the
later formed. So that her flesh was for a long time without specific form
(such as she afterwards assumed when taken out of Adam s side); but she was
even then herself a living being, because I should regard her at that time
in soul as even a portion of Adam. Besides, God's afflatus would have
animated her too, if there had not been in the woman a transmission from
Adam of his soul also as well as of his flesh.

CHAP. XXXVII.--ON THE FORMATION AND STATE OF THE EMBRYO. ITS RELATION WITH
THE SUBJECT OF THIS TREATISE.

   Now the entire process of sowing, forming, and completing the human
embryo in the womb is no doubt regulated by some power, which ministers
herein to the will of God, whatever may be the method which it is appointed
to employ. Even the superstition of Rome, by carefully attending to these
points, imagined the goddess Alemona to nourish the foetus in the womb; as
well as (the goddesses) Nona and Decima, called after the most critical
months of gestation; and Partula, to manage and direct parturition; and
Lucina,  to bring the child to the birth and light of day. We, on our part,
believe the angels to officiate herein for God. The embryo therefore
becomes a human being in the womb from the moment that its form is
completed. The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man
who shall cause abortion, inasmuch as there exists already the rudiment of
a human being,(5) which has imputed to it even now the condition of life
and death, since it is already liable to the issues of both, although, by
living still in the mother, it for the most part shares its own state with
the mother. I must also say something about the period of the soul's birth,
that I may omit nothing incidental in the whole process. A mature and
regular birth takes place, as a general rule, at the commencement of the
tenth month. They who theorize respecting numbers, honour the number ten as
the parent of all the others, and as imparting perfection to the human
nativity. For my own part, I prefer viewing this measure of time in
reference to God, as if implying that the ten months rather initiated man
into the ten commandments; so that the numerical estimate of the time
needed to consummate our natural birth should correspond to the numerical
classification of the rules of our regenerate life. But inasmuch as birth
is also completed with the seventh month, I more readily recognize in this
number than in the eighth the honour of a numerical agreement with the
sabbatical period; so that the month in which God's image is sometimes
produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which
God's creation was completed and hallowed. Human nativity has sometimes
been allowed to be premature, and yet to occur in fit and perfect
accordance with an hebdomad sevenfold number, as an auspice of our
resurrection, and rest, and kingdom. The ogdoad, or eightfold number,
therefore, is not concerned in our formation;(1) for in the time it
represents there will be no more marriage.(2) We have already demonstrated
the conjunction of the body and the soul, from the concretion of their very
seminations to the complete formation of the foetus. We now maintain their
conjunction likewise from the birth onwards; in the first place, because
they both grow together, only each in a different manner suited to the
diversity of their nature--the flesh in magnitude, the soul in
intelligence--the flesh in material condition, the soul in sensibility. We
are, however, forbidden to suppose that the soul increases in substance,
lest it should be said also to be capable of diminution in substance, and
so its extinction even should be believed to be possible; but its inherent
power, in which are contained all its natural peculiarities, as originally
implanted in its being, is gradually developed along with the flesh,
without impairing the germinal basis of the substance, which it received
when breathed at first into man. Take a certain quantity of gold or of
silver--a rough mass as yet: it has indeed a compact condition, and one
that is more compressed at the moment than it will be; yet it contains
within its contour what is throughout a mass of gold or of silver. When
this mass is afterwards extended by beating it into leaf, it becomes larger
than it was before by the elongation of the original mass, but not by any
addition thereto, because it is extended in space, not increased in bulk;
although in a way it is even increased when it is extended: for it may be
increased in form, but not in state. Then, again, the sheen of the gold or
the silver, which when the metal was any in block was Inherent in it no
doubt really, but yet only obscurely, shines out in developed lustre.
Afterwards various modifications of shape accrue, according to the
feasibility in the material which makes it yield to the manipulation of the
artisan, who yet adds nothing to the condition of the mass but its
configuration. In like manner, the growth and developments of the soul are
to be estimated, not as enlarging its substance, but as calling forth Its
powers.

CHAP. XXXVIII.--ON THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. ITS MATURITY COINCIDENT WITH THE
MATURITY OF THE FLESH IN MAN.

   Now we have already(3) laid down the principle, that all the natural
properties of the soul which relate to sense and intelligence are inherent
in its very substance, and spring from its native constitution, but that
they advance by a gradual growth through the stages of life and develope
themselves in different ways by accidental circumstances, according to
men's means and arts, their manners and customs their local situations, and
the influences of the Supreme Powers;(4) but in pursuance of that aspect of
the association of body and soul which We have now to consider, we maintain
that the puberty of the soul coincides with that of the body, and that they
attain both together to this full growth at about the fourteenth year of
life, speaking generally,--the former by the suggestion of the senses, and
the latter by the growth of the bodily members; and (we fix on this age)
not because, as Asclepiades supposes, reflection then begins, nor because
the civil laws date the commencement of the real business of life from this
period, but because this was the appointed order from the very first. For
as Adam and Eve felt that they must cover their nakedness after their
knowledge of good and evil so we profess to have the same discernment of
good and evil from the time that we experience the same sensation of shame.
Now from the before-mentioned age (of fourteen years) sex is suffused and
clothed with an especial sensibility, and concupiscence employs the
ministry of the eye, and communicates its pleasure to another, and
understands the natural relations between male and female, and wears the
fig-tree apron to cover the shame which it still excites, and drives man
out of the paradise of innocence and chastity, and in its wild pruriency
falls upon sins and unnatural incentives to delinquency; for its impulse
has by this time surpassed the appointment of nature, and springs from its
vicious abuse. But the strictly natural concupiscence is simply confined to
the desire of those aliments which God at the beginning conferred upon
than. "Of every tree of the garden" He says, "ye shall freely eat;"(1) and
then again to the generation which followed next after the flood He
enlarged the grant: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you;
behold, as the green herb have I given you all these things,"(2)--where He
has regard rather to the body than to the soul, although it be in the
interest of the soul also. For we must remove all occasion from the
caviller, who, because the soul apparently wants ailments, would insist on
the soul's being from this circumstance deemed mortal,  since it is
sustained by meat and drink and after a time loses its rigour when they are
withheld, and on their complete removal ultimately droops and dies. Now the
point we must keep in view is not merely which particular faculty it is
which desires these (aliments), but also for what end; and even if it be
for its own sake, still the question remains, Why this desire, and when
felt, and how long? Then again there is the consideration, that it is one
thing to desire by natural instinct, and another thing to desire through
necessity; one thing to desire as a property of being, another thing to
desire for a special object. The soul, therefore, will desire meat and
drink--for itself indeed, because of a special necessity; for the flesh,
however, from the nature of its properties. For the flesh is no doubt the
house of the soul, and the soul is the temporary inhabitant of the flesh.
The desire, then, of the lodger will arise from the temporary cause and the
special necessity which his very designation suggests,--with a view to
benefit and improve the place of his temporary abode, while sojourning in
it; not with the view, certainly, of being himself the foundation of the
house, or himself its walls, or himself its support and roof, but simply
and solely with the view of being accommodated and housed, since he could
not receive such accommodation except in a sound and well-built house.
(Now, applying this imagery to the soul,) if it be not provided with this
accommodation, it will not be in its power to quit its dwelling-place, and
for want of fit and proper resources, to depart safe and sound, in
possession, too, of its own supports, and the aliments which belong to its
own proper condition,--namely immortality, rationality, sensibility,
intelligence, and freedom of the will.

CHAP. XXXIX.--THE EVIL SPIRIT HAS MARRED THE PURITY OF THE SOUL FROM THE
VERY BIRTH.

   All these endowments of the soul which are bestowed on it at birth are
still obscured and depraved by the malignant being who, in the beginning,
regarded them with envious eye, so that they are never seen in their
spontaneous action, nor are they administered as they ought to be. For to
what individual of the human race will not the evil spirit cleave, ready to
entrap their souls from the very portal of their birth, at which he is
invited to be present in all those superstitious processes which accompany
childbearing? Thus it comes to pass that all men are brought to the birth
with idolatry for the midwife, whilst the very wombs that bear them, still
bound with the fillets that have been wreathed before the idols, declare
their offspring to be consecrated to demons: for in parturition they invoke
the aid of Lucina and Diana; for a whole week a table is spread in honour
of Juno; on the last day the fates of the horoscope(3) are invoked; and
then the infant's first step on the ground is sacred to the goddess
Statina. After this does any one fail to devote to idolatrous service the
entire head of his son, or to take out a hair, or to shave off the whole
with a razor, or to bind it up for an offering, or seal it for sacred use--
in behalf of the clan, of the ancestry, or for public devotion? On this
principle of early possession it was that Socrates, while yet a boy, was
found by the spirit of the demon. Thus, too, is it that to all persons
their genii are assigned, which is only another name for demons. Hence in
no case (I mean of the heathen, of course) is there any nativity which is
pure of idolatrous superstition. It was from this circumstance that the
apostle said, that when either of the parents was sanctified, the children
were holy;(1) and this as much by the prerogative of the (Christian) seed
as by the discipline of the institution (by baptism, and Christian
education). "Else," says he, "were the children unclean" by birth:(1) as if
he meant us to understand that the children of believers were designed for
holiness, and thereby for salvation; in order that he might by the pledge
of such a hope give his support to matrimony, which he had determined to
maintain in its integrity. Besides, he had certainly not forgotten what the
Lord had so definitively stated: "Except a man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God;"(2) in other words, he
cannot be holy.

CHAP. XL.--THE BODY OF MAN ONLY ANCILLARY TO THE SOUL IN THE COMMISSION OF
EVIL.

   Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until
it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it
remains without this regeneration;(3) and because unclean, it is actively
sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with
its own shame. Now although the flesh is sinful, and we are forbidden to
walk in accordance with it,(4) and its works are condemned as lusting
against the spirit,(5) and men on its account are censured as carnal,(6)
yet the flesh has not such ignominy on its own account. For it is not of
itself that it thinks anything or feels anything for the purpose of
advising or commanding sin. How should it, indeed? It is only a ministering
thing, and its ministration is not like that of a servant or familiar
friend--animated and human beings; but rather that of a vessel, or
something of that kind: it is body, not soul. Now a cup may minister to a
thirsty man;  and yet, if the thirsty man will not apply the cup to his
mouth, the cup will yield no ministering service. Therefore the
differentia, or distinguishing property, of man by no means lies in his
earthy element; nor is the flesh the human person, as being some faculty of
his soul, and a personal quality; but it is a thing of quite a different
substance and different condition, although annexed to the soul as a
chattel or as an instrument for the offices  of life. Accordingly the flesh
is blamed in the Scriptures, because nothing is done by the soul without
the flesh in operations of concupiscence, appetite, drunkenness, cruelty,
idolatry, and other works of the flesh,--operations, I mean, which are not
confined to sensations, but result in effects. The emotions of sin, indeed,
when not resulting in effects, are usually imputed to the soul: "Whosoever
looketh on a woman to lust after, hath already in his heart committed
adultery with her."(7) But what has the flesh alone, without the soul, ever
done in operations of virtue, righteousness, endurance, or chastity? What
absurdity, however, it is to attribute sin and crime to that substance to
which you do not assign any good actions or character of its own! Now the
party which aids in the commission of a crime is brought to trial, only in
such a way that the principal offender who actually committed the crime may
bear the weight of the penalty, although the abettor too does not escape
indictment. Greater is the odium which falls on the principal, when his
officials are punished through his fault. He is beaten with more stripes
who instigates and orders the crime, whilst at the same time he who obeys
such an evil command is not acquitted.

CHAP. XLI.--NOTWITHSTANDING THE DEPRAVITY OF MAN'S SOUL BY ORIGINAL SIN,
THERE IS YET LEFT A BASIS WHEREON DIVINE GRACE CAN WORK FOR ITS RECOVERY BY
SPIRITUAL REGENERATION.

   There is, then, besides the evil which supervenes on the soul from the
intervention of the evil spirit, an antecedent, and in a certain sense
natural, evil which arises from its corrupt origin. For, as we have said
before, the corruption of our nature is another nature having a god and
father of its own, namely the author of (that) corruption. Still there is a
portion of good in the soul, of that original, divine, and genuine good,
which is its proper nature. For that which is derived from God is rather
obscured than extinguished. It can be obscured, indeed, because it is not
God; extinguished, however, it cannot be, because it comes from God. As
therefore light, when intercepted by an opaque body, still remains,
although it is not apparent, by reason of the interposition of so dense a
body; so likewise the good in the soul, being weighed down by the evil, is,
owing to the obscuring character thereof, either not seen at all, its light
being wholly hidden, or else only a stray beam is there visible where it
struggles through by an accidental outlet. Thus some men are very bad, and
some very good; but yet the souls of all form but one genus: even in the
worst there is something good, and in the best there is something bad. For
God alone is without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since
Christ is also God. Thus the divinity of the soul bursts forth in prophetic
forecasts in consequence of its primeval good; and being conscious of its
origin, it bears testimony to God (its author) in exclamations such as:
Good God! God knows! and Good-bye!(1)  Just as no soul is without sin, so
neither is any soul without seeds of good. Therefore, when the soul
embraces the faith, being renewed in its second birth by water and the
power from above, then the veil of its former corruption being taken away,
it beholds the light in all its brightness. It is also taker up (in its
second birth) by the Holy Spirit, just as in its first birth it is embraced
by the unholy spirit. The flesh follows the soul now wedded to the Spirit,
as a part of the bridal portion--no longer the servant of the soul, but of
the Spirit. O happy marriage, if in it there is committed no violation of
the nuptial vow!

CHAP. XLII.--SLEEP, THE MIRROR OF DEATH, AS INTRODUCTORY TO THE
CONSIDERATION OF DEATH.

   It now remains (that we discuss the subject) of death, in order that
our subject-matter may terminate where the soul itself completes it;
although Epicurus, indeed, in his pretty widely known doctrine, has
asserted that death does not appertain to us. That, says he, which is
dissolved lacks sensation; and that which is without sensation is nothing
to us. Well, but it is not actually death which suffers dissolution and
lacks sensation, but the human person who experiences death. Yet even he
has admitted suffering to be incidental  to the being to whom action
belongs. Now, if it is in man to suffer death, which dissolves the body and
destroys the senses, how absurd to say that so great a susceptibility
belongs not to man! With much greater precision does Seneca say: "After
death all comes to an end, even (death) itself." From which position of his
it must needs follow that death will appertain to its own self, since
itself comes to an end; and much more to man, in the ending of whom amongst
the "all," itself also ends. Death, (says Epicurus) belongs not to us; then
at that rate, life belongs not to us. For certainly, if that which causes
our dissolution have no relation to us, that also which compacts and
composes us must be unconnected with us. If the deprivation of our
sensation be nothing to us, neither can the acquisition of sensation have
anything to do with us. The fact, however, is, he who destroys the very
soul, (as Epicurus does), cannot help destroying death also. As for
ourselves, indeed, (Christians as we are), we must treat of death just as
we should of the posthumous life and of some other province of the soul,
(assuming) that we at all events belong to death, if it. does not pertain
to us. And on the same principle, even sleep, which is the very mirror  of
death, is not alien from our subject-matter.

CHAP. XLIII.--SLEEP A NATURAL FUNCTION AS SHOWN BY OTHER CONSIDERATIONS,
AND BY THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE.

   Let us therefore first discuss the question of sleep, and afterwards in
what way the soul encounters(2) death. Now sleep is certainly not a
supernatural thing, as some philosophers will have it be, when they suppose
it to be the result of causes which appear to be above nature. The Stoics
affirm sleep to be "a temporary suspension of the activity of the
senses;"(3) the Epicureans define it as an intermission of the animal
spirit; Anaxagoras and Xenophanes as a weariness of the same; Empedocles
and Parmenides as a cooling down thereof; Strato as a separation of the
(soul's) connatural spirit; Democritus as the soul's indigence; Aristotle
as the interruption(4) of the heat around the heart. As for myself, I can
safely say that i have never slept in such a way as to discover even a
single one of these conditions. Indeed, we cannot possibly believe that
sleep is a weariness; it is rather the opposite, for it undoubtedly removes
weariness, and a person is refreshed by sleep instead of being fatigued.
Besides, sleep is not always the result of fatigue; and even when it is,
the fatigue continues no longer. Nor can I allow that sleep is a cooling or
decaying of the animal heat, for our bodies derive warmth from sleep in
such a way that the regular dispersion of the food by means of sleep could
not so easily go on if there were too much heat to accelerate it unduly, or
cold to retard it, if sleep had the alleged refrigerating influence. There
is also the further fact that perspiration indicates an over-heated
digestion; and digestion is predicated of us as a process of concoction,
which is an operation concerned with heat and not with cold. In like
manner, the immortality of the soul precludes belief in the theory that
sleep is an intermission of the animal spirit, or an indigence of the
spirit, or a separation of the (soul's) connatural spirit. The soul
perishes if it undergoes diminution or intermission. Our only resource,
indeed, is to agree with the Stoics, by determining the soul to be a
temporary suspension of the activity of the senses, procuring rest for the
body only, not for the soul also. For the soul, as being always in motion,
and always active, never succumbs to rest,--a condition which is alien to
immortality: for nothing immortal admits ,any end to its operation; but
sleep is an end of operation. It is indeed on the body, which is subject to
mortality, and on the body alone, that sleep graciously bestows(1) a
cessation from work. He, therefore, who shall doubt whether sleep is a
natural function, has the dialectical experts calling in question the whole
difference between things natural and supernatural--so that what things he
supposed to be beyond nature he may, (if he likes,) be safe in assigning to
nature, which indeed has made such a disposition of things, that they may
seemingly be accounted as beyond it; and so, of course, all things are
natural or none are natural, (as occasion requires.) With us (Christians),
however, only that can receive a hearing which is suggested by
contemplating God, the Author of all the things which we are now
discussing. For we believe that nature, if it is anything, is a reasonable
work of God. Now reason presides over sleep; for sleep is so fit for man,
so useful, so necessary, that were it not for it, not  a soul could provide
agency for recruiting the body, for restoring its energies, for ensuring
its health, for supplying suspension from work and remedy against labour,
and for the legitimate enjoyment of which day departs, and night provides
an ordinance by taking from all objects their very colour. Since, then,
sleep is indispensable to our life, and health, and succour, there can be
nothing pertaining to it which is not reasonable, and which is not natural.
Hence it is that physicians banish beyond the gateway of nature everything
which is contrary to what is vital healthful, and helpful to nature; for
those maladies which are inimical to sleep--maladies of the mind and of the
stomach--they have decided to be contrariant to nature, and  by such
decision have determined as its corollary that sleep is perfectly natural.
Moreover, when they declare that sleep is not natural in the lethargic
state, they derive their conclusion from the fact that it is natural when
it is in its due and regular exercise. For every natural state is impaired
either by defect or by excess, whilst it is maintained by its proper
measure and amount. That, therefore, will be natural in its condition which
may be rendered non-natural by defect or by excess. Well, now, what if you
were to remove eating and drinking from the conditions of nature? if in
them lies the chief incentive to sleep. It is certain that, from the very
beginning of his nature, man was impressed with these instincts (of
sleep).(2) If you receive your instruction from God, (you will find) that
the fountain of the human race, Adam, had a taste of drowsiness before
having a draught of repose; slept before he laboured, or even before he
ate, nay, even before he spoke; in Order that men may see that sleep is a
natural feature and function, and one which has actually precedence over
all the natural faculties. From this primary instance also we are led to
trace even then the image of death in sleep. For as Adam was a figure of
Christ, Adam's sleep shadowed out the death of Christ, who was to sleep a
mortal slumber, that from the wound inflicted on His side might, in like
manner (as Eve was formed), be typified the church, the true mother of the
living. This is why sleep is so salutary, so rational, and is actually
formed into the model of that death which is general and common to the race
of man. God, indeed, has willed (and it may be said in passing that He has,
generally, in His dispensations brought nothing to pass without such types
and shadows) to set before us, in a manner more fully and completely than
Plato's example, by daily recurrence the outlines of man's state,
especially concerning the beginning and the termination thereof; thus
stretching out the hand to help our faith more readily by types and
parables, not in words only, but also in things. He accordingly sets before
your view the human body stricken by the friendly power of slumber,
prostrated by the kindly necessity of repose immoveable in position, just
as it lay previous to life, and just as it will lie after life is past:
there it lies as an attestation of its form when first moulded, and of its
condition when at last buried--awaiting the soul in both stages, in the
former previous to its bestowal, in the latter after its recent withdrawal.
Meanwhile the soul is circumstanced in such a manner as to seem to be
elsewhere active, learning to bear future absence by a dissembling of its
presence for the moment. We shall soon know the case of Hermotimus. But yet
it dreams in the interval. Whence then its dreams? The fact is, it cannot
rest or be idle altogether, nor does it confine to the still hours of sleep
the nature of its immortality. It proves itself to possess a constant
motion; it travels over land and sea, it trades, it is excited, it labours,
it plays, it grieves, it rejoices, it follows pursuits lawful and unlawful;
it shows what very great power it has even without the body, how well
equipped it is with members of its own, although betraying at the same time
the need it has of impressing on some body its activity again. Accordingly,
when the body shakes off its slumber, it asserts before your eye the
resurrection of the dead by its own resumption of its natural functions.
Such, therefore, must be both the natural reason and the reasonable nature
of sleep. If you only regard it as the image of death, you initiate faith,
you nourish hope, you learn both how to die and how to live, you learn
watchfulness, even while you sleep.

CHAP. XLIV.--THE STORY OF HERMOTIMUS, AND THE SLEEPLESSNESS OF THE EMPEROR
NERO. NO SEPARATION OF THE SOUL FROM THE BODY UNTIL DEATH.

   With regard to the case of Hermotimus, they say that he used to be
deprived of his soul in his sleep, as if it wandered away from his body
like a person on a holiday trip. His wife betrayed the strange peculiarity.
His enemies, finding him asleep, burnt his body, as if it were a corpse:
when his soul returned too late, it appropriated (I suppose) to itself. the
guilt of the murder. However the good citizens of Clazomenae consoled poor
Hermotimus with a temple, into which no woman ever enters, because of the
infamy of this wife. Now why this story? In order that, since the vulgar
belief so readily holds sleep to be the separation of the soul from the
body, credulity should not be encouraged by this case of Hermotimus. It
must certainly have been a much heavier sort of slumber: one would presume
it was the nightmare, or perhaps that diseased languor which Soranus
suggests in opposition to the nightmare, or else some such malady as that
which the fable has fastened upon Epimenides, who slept on some fifty years
or so. Suetonius, however, informs us that Nero never dreamt, and
Theopompus says the same thing about Thrasymedes; but Nero at the close of
his life did with some difficulty dream after some excessive alarm. What
indeed would be said, if the case of Hermotimus were believed to be such
that the repose of his soul was a state of actual idleness during sleep,
and a positive separation from his body? You may conjecture it to be
anything but such a licence of the soul as admits of flights away from the
body without death, and that by continual recurrence, as if habitual to its
state and constitution. If indeed such a thing were told me to have
happened at any time to the soul--resembling a total eclipse of the sun or
the moon--I should verily suppose that the occurrence had been caused by
God's own interposition, for it would not be unreasonable for a man to
receive admonition from the Divine Being either in the way of warning or of
alarm, as by a flash of lightning, or by a sudden stroke of death; only it
would be much the more natural conclusion to believe that this process
should be by a dream, because if it must be supposed to be, (as the
hypothesis we are resisting assumes it to be,) not a dream, the occurrence
ought rather to happen to a man whilst he is wide awake.

CHAP. XLV.--DREAMS, AN INCIDENTAL EFFECT OF THE SOUL'S ACTIVITY. ECSTASY.

   We are bound to expound at this point what is the opinion of Christians
respecting dreams, as incidents of sleep, and as no slight or trifling
excitements of the soul, which we have declared to be always occupied and
active owing to its perpetual movement, which again is a proof and evidence
of its divine quality and immortality. When, therefore, rest accrues to
human bodies, it being their own especial comfort, the soul, disdaining a
repose which is not natural to it, never rests; and since it receives no
help from the limbs of the body, it uses its own. Imagine a gladiator
without his instruments or arms, and a charioteer without his team, but
still gesticulating the entire course and exertion of their respective
employments: there is the fight, there is the struggle; but the effort is a
vain one. Nevertheless the whole procedure seems to be gone through,
although it evidently has not been really effected. There is the act, but
not the effect. This power we call ecstasy, in which the sensuous soul
stands out of itself, in a way which even resembles madness.(1) Thus in the
very beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: "And God sent an ecstasy
upon Adam, and he slept."(2) The sleep came on his body to cause it to
rest, but the ecstasy fell on his soul to remove rest: from that very
circumstance it still happens ordinarily (and from the order results the
nature of the case) that sleep is combined with ecstasy. In fact, with what
real feeling, and anxiety, and suffering do we experience joy, and sorrow,
and alarm in our dreams! Whereas we should not be moved by any such
emotions, by what would be the merest fantasies of course, if when we dream
we were masters of ourselves, (unaffected by ecstasy.) In these dreams,
indeed, good actions are useless, and crimes harmless; for we shall no more
be condemned for visionary acts of sin,  than we shall be crowned for
imaginary martyrdom. But how, you will ask, can the soul remember its
dreams, when it is said to be without any mastery over its own operations?
This memory must be an especial gift of the ecstatic condition of which we
are treating, since it arises not from any failure of healthy action, but
entirely from natural process; nor does it expel mental function--it
withdraws it for a time. It is one thing to shake, it is another thing to
move; one thing to destroy, another thing to agitate. That, therefore,
which memory supplies betokens soundness of mind; and that which a sound
mind ecstatically experiences whilst the memory remains unchecked, is a
kind of madness. We are accordingly not said to be mad, but to dream, in
that state; to be in the full possession also of our mental faculties,(1)
if we are at any time. For although the power to exercise these
faculties(2) may be dimmed in us, it is still not extinguished; except that
it may seem to be itself absent at the very time that the ecstasy is
energizing in us in its special manner, in such wise as to bring before us
images of a sound mind and of wisdom, even as it does those of aberration.

CHAP. XLVI.--DIVERSITY OF DREAMS AND VISIONS. EPICURUS THOUGHT LIGHTLY OF
THEM, THOUGH GENERALLY MOST HIGHLY VALUED. INSTANCES OF DREAMS,

   We now find ourselves constrained to express an opinion about the
character of the dreams by which the soul is excited. And when shall we
arrive at the subject of death? And on such a question I would say, When
God shall permit: that admits of no long delay which must needs happen at
all events. Epicurus has given it as his opinion that dreams are altogether
vain things; (but he says this) when liberating the Deity from all sort of
care, and dissolving the entire order of the world, and giving to all
things the aspect of merest chance, casual in their issues, fortuitous in
their nature. Well, now, if such be the nature of things, there must be
some chance even for truth, because it is impossible for it to be the only
thing to be exempted from the fortune which is due to all things. Homer has
assigned two gates to dreams,(3)--the horny one of truth, the ivory one of
error and delusion. For, they say, it is possible to see through horn,
whereas ivory is untransparent. Aristotle, while expressing his opinion
that dreams are in most cases untrue, yet acknowledges that there is some
truth in them. The people of Telmessus will not admit that dreams are in
any case unmeaning, but they blame their own weakness when unable to
conjecture their signification. Now, who is such a stranger to human
experience as not sometimes to have perceived some truth in dreams? I shall
force a blush from Epicurus, If I only glance at some few of the more
remarkable instances. Herodotus(4) relates how that Astyages, king of the
Medes, saw in a dream issuing from the womb of his virgin daughter a flood
which inundated Asia; and again, in the year which followed her marriage,
he saw a vine growing out from the same part of her person, which
overspread the whole of Asia. The same story is told prior to Herodotus by
Charon of Lampsacus. Now they who interpreted these visions did not deceive
the mother when they destined her son for so great an enterprise, for Cyrus
both inundated and overspread Asia. Philip of Macedon, before he became a
father, had seen imprinted on the pudenda of his consort Olympias the form
of a small ring, with a lion as a seal. He had concluded that an offspring
from her was out of the question (I suppose because the lion only becomes
once a father), when Aristodemus or Aristophon happened to conjecture that
nothing of an unmeaning or empty import lay under that seal, but that  a
son of very illustrious character was portended. They who know anything of
Alexander recognise in him the lion of that small ring. Ephorus writes to
this effect. Again, Heraclides has told us, that a certain woman of Himera
beheld in a dream Dionysius' tyranny over Sicily. Euphorion has publicly
recorded as a fact, that, previous to giving birth to Seleucus, his mother
Laodice foresaw that he was destined for the empire of Asia. I find again
from Strabo, that it was owing to a dream that even Mithridates took
possession of Pontus; and I further learn from Callisthenes that it was
from the indication of a dream that Baraliris the Illyrian stretched his
dominion from the Molossi to the frontiers of Macedon. The Romans, too,
were acquainted with dreams of this kind. From a dream Marcus Tullius
(Cicero) had learnt how that one, who was yet only a little boy, and in a
private station, who was also plain Julius Octavius, and personally unknown
to (Cicero) himself, was the destined Augustus, and the suppressor and
destroyer of (Rome's) civil discords. This is recorded in the Commentaries
of Vitellius. But visions of this prophetic kind were not confined to
predictions  of supreme power; for they indicated perils also, and
catastrophes: as, for instance, when Caesar was absent from the battle of
Philippi through illness, and thereby escaped the  sword of Brutus and
Cassius, and then although he expected to encounter greater danger still
from the enemy in the field, he quitted his tent for it, in obedience to a
vision of Artorius, and so escaped (the capture by the enemy, who shortly
after took possession of the tent); as, again, when the daughter of
Polycrates of Samos foresaw the crucifixion which awaited him from the
anointing of the sun and the bath of Jupiter.(1) So likewise in sleep
revelations are made of high honours and eminent talents; remedies are also
discovered, thefts brought to light, and treasures indicated. Thus Cicero's
eminence, whilst he was still a little boy, was foreseen by his nurse. The
swan from the breast of Socrates soothing men, is his disciple Plato. The
boxer Leonymus is cured by Achilles in his dreams. Sophocles the tragic
poet discovers, as he was dreaming, the golden crown, which had been lost
from the citadel of Athens. Neoptolemus the tragic actor, through
intimations in his sleep from Ajax himself, saves from destruction the
hero's tomb on the Rhoetean shore before Troy; and as he removes the
decayed stones, he returns enriched with gold. How many commentators and
chroniclers vouch for this phenomenon? There are Artemon, Antiphon, Strato,
Philochorus, Epi- charmus, Serapion, Cratippus, and Dionysius of Rhodes,
and Hermippus--the entire literature of the age. I shall only laugh at all,
if indeed I ought to laugh at the man who fancied that he was going to
persuade us that Saturn dreamt before anybody else; which we can only
believe if Aristotle, (who would fain help us to such an opinion,) lived
prior to any other person. Pray forgive me for laughing. Epicharmus,
indeed, as well as Philochorus the Athenian, assigned the very highest
place among divinations to dreams. The whole world is full of oracles of
this description: there are the oracles of Amphiaraus at Oropus, of Amphi-
lochus at Mallus, of Sarpedon in the Troad, of Trophonius in Boeotia, of
Mopsus in Cilicia, of Hermione in Macedon, of Pasiphae in Laconia. Then,
again, there are others, which with their original foundations, rites, and
historians, together with the entire literature of dreams, Hermippus of
Berytus in five portly volumes will give you all the account of, even to
satiety. But the Stoics are very fond of saying that God, in His most
watchful providence over every institution, gave us dreams amongst other
preservatives of the arts and sciences of divination, as the especial
support of the natural oracle. So much for the dreams to which credit has
to be ascribed even by ourselves, although we must interpret them in
another sense. As for all other oracles, at which no one ever dreams, what
else must we declare concerning them, than that they are the diabolical
contrivance of those spirits who even at that time dwelt in the eminent
persons themselves, or aimed at reviving the memory of them as the mere
stage of their evil purposes, going so far as to counterfeit a divine power
under their shape and form, and, with equal persistence in evil, deceiving
men by their very boons of remedies, warnings, and forecasts,--the only
effect of which was to injure their victims the more they helped them;
while the means whereby they rendered the help withdrew them from all
search after the true God, by insinuating into their minds ideas of the
false one? And of course so pernicious an influence as this is not shut up
nor limited within the boundaries of shrines and temples: it roams abroad,
it flies through the air, and all the while is free and unchecked. So that
nobody can doubt that our very homes lie open to these diabolical spirits,
who beset their human prey with their fantasies not only in their chapels
but also in their chambers.

CHAP. XLVII.--DREAMS VARIOUSLY CLASSIFIED. SOME ARE GOD-SENT, AS THE DREAMS
OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR; OTHERS SIMPLY PRODUCTS OF NATURE.

   We declare, then, that dreams are inflicted on us mainly by demons,
although they sometimes turn out true and favourable to us. When, however,
with the deliberate aim after evil, of which we have just spoken, they
assume a flattering and captivating style, they show themselves
proportionately vain, and deceitful, and obscure, and wanton, and impure.
And no wonder that the images partake  of the character of the realities.
But from God--who has promised, indeed, "to pour out the grace of the Holy
Spirit upon all flesh, and has ordained that His servants and His handmaids
should see visions as well as utter prophecies"(2)--must all those visions
be regarded as emanating, which may be compared to the actual grace of God,
as being honest, holy, prophetic, inspired, instructive, inviting to
virtue, the bountiful nature of which causes them to overflow even to the
profane, since God, with grand impartiality, "sends His showers and
sunshine on the just and on the unjust."(1) It was, indeed by an
inspiration from God that Nebuchadnezzar dreamt his dreams;(2) and almost
the greater part of mankind get their knowledge of God from dreams. Thus it
is that, as the mercy of God super-abounds to the heathen, so the
temptation of the evil one encounters the saints, from whom he never
withdraws his malignant efforts to steal over them as best he may in their
very sleep, if unable to assault them when they are awake. The third class
of dreams will consist of those which the soul itself apparently creates
for itself from an intense application to special circumstances. Now,
inasmuch as the soul cannot dream of its own accord (for  even Epicharmus
is of this opinion), how can it become to itself the cause of any vision?
Then must this class of dreams be abandoned to the action of nature,
reserving for the soul, even when in the ecstatic condition, the power of
enduring whatever incidents befall it? Those, moreover, which evidently
proceed neither from God, nor from diabolical inspiration, nor from the
soul, being beyond the reach as well of ordinary expectation, usual
interpretation, or the possibility of being intelligibly related, will have
to be ascribed in a separate category to what is purely and simply the
ecstatic state and its peculiar conditions.

CHAP. XLVIII.--CAUSES AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF DREAMS. WHAT BEST CONTRIBUTES TO
EFFICIENT DREAMING.

   They say that dreams are more sure and clear when they happen towards
the end of the night, because then the vigour of the soul emerges, and
heavy sleep departs. As to the seasons of the year, dreams are calmer in
spring, since summer relaxes, and winter somehow hardens, the soul; while
autumn, which in other respects is trying to health, is apt to enervate the
soul by the lusciosness of its fruits. Then, again, as regards the position
of one's body during sleep, one ought not to lie on his back, nor on his
right side, nor so as to wrench(3) his intestines, as if their cavity were
reversely stretched: a palpitation of the heart would ensue, or else a
pressure on the liver would produce a painful disturbance of the mind. But
however this be, I take it that it all amounts to ingenious conjecture
rather than certain proof (although the author of the conjecture be no less
a man than Plato);(4) and possibly all may be no other than the result of
chance. But, generally speaking, dreams will be under control of a man's
will, if they be capable of direction at all; for we must not examine what
opinion on the one hand, and superstition on the other,  have to prescribe
for the treatment of dreams, in the matter of distinguishing and modifying
different sorts of food. As for the superstition, we have an instance when
fasting is prescribed for such persons as mean to submit to the sleep which
is necessary for receiving the oracle, in order that such abstinence may
produce the required purity; while we find an instance of the opinion when
the disciples of Pythagoras, in order to attain the same end, reject the
bean as an aliment which would load the stomach, and produce indigestion.
But the three brethren, who were the companions of Daniel, being content
with pulse alone, to escape the contamination of the royal dishes,(5)
received from God, besides other wisdom, the gift especially of penetrating
and explaining the sense of dreams. For my own part, I hardly know whether
fasting would not simply make me dream so profoundly, that I should not be
aware whether I had in fact dreamt at all. Well, then, you ask, has not
sobriety something to do in this matter? certainly it is as much concerned
in this as it is in the entire subject: if it contributes some good service
to superstition, much more does it to religion. For even demons require
such discipline from their dreamers as a gratification to their divinity,
because they know that it is acceptable to God, since Daniel (to quote him
again) "ate no pleasant bread" for the space of three weeks.(6) This
abstinence, however, he used in order to please God by humiliation, and not
for the purpose of producing a sensibility and wisdom for his soul previous
to receiving communication by dreams and visions, as if it were not rather
to effect such action in an ecstatic state. This sobriety, then, (in which
our question arises,) will have nothing to do with exciting ecstasy, but
will rather serve to recommend its being wrought by God.

CHAP. XLIX.--NO SOUL NATURALLY EXEMPT FROM DREAMS.

   As for those persons who suppose that infants do not dream, on the
ground that all the functions of the soul throughout life are accomplished
according to the capacity of age, they ought to observe attentively their
tremors, and nods, and bright smiles as they sleep, and from such facts
understand that they are the emotions of their soul as it dreams, which so
readily escape to the surface through the delicate tenderness of their
infantine body. The fact, however, that the African nation of the Atlantes
are said to pass through the night in a deep lethargic sleep, brings down
on them the censure that something is wrong in the constitution of their
soul. Now either report, which is occasionally calumnious against
barbarians, deceived Herodotus,(1) or else a large force of demons of this
sort domineers in those barbarous regions. Since, indeed, Aristotle remarks
of a certain hero of Sardinia that he used to withhold the power of visions
and dreams from such as resorted to his shrine for inspiration, it must lie
at the will and caprice of the demons to take away as well as to confer the
faculty of dreams; and from this circumstance may have arisen the
remarkable fact (which we have mentioned(2) ) of Nero and Thrasymedes only
dreaming so late in life. We, however, derive dreams from God. Why, then,
did not the Atlantes receive the dreaming faculty from God, because there
is really no nation which is now a stranger to God, since the gospel
flashes its glorious light through the world to the ends of the earth?
Could it then be that rumour deceived Aristotle, or is this caprice still
the way of demons? (Let us take any view of the case), only do not let it
be imagined that any soul is by its natural constitution exempt from
dreams.

CHAP. L.--THE ABSURD OPINION OF EPICURUS AND THE PROFANE CONCEITS OF THE
HERETIC MENANDER ON DEATH, EVEN ENOCH AND ELIJAH RESERVED FOR DEATH.

   We have by this time said enough about sleep, the mirror and image of
death; and likewise about the occupations of sleep, even dreams. Let us now
go on to consider the cause of our departure hence--that is, the
appointment and course of death--because we must not leave even it
unquestioned and unexamined, although it is itself the very end of all
questions and investigations. According to the general sentiment of the
human race, we declare death to be "the debt of nature." So much has been
settled by the voice of God;(3) such is the contract with everything which
is born: so that even from this the frigid conceit of Epicurus is refuted,
who says that no such debt is due from us; and not only so, but the insane
opinion of the Samaritan heretic Menander is also rejected, who will have
it that death has not only nothing to do with his disciples, but in fact
never reaches them. He pretends to have received such a commission from the
secret power of One above, that all who partake of his baptism become
immortal, incorruptible and instantaneously invested with resurrection-
life. We read, no doubt, of very many wonderful kinds of waters: how, for
instance, the vinous quality of the stream intoxicates people who drink of
the Lyncestis; how at Colophon the waters of an oracle-inspiring
fountain(4) affect men with madness; how Alexander was killed by the
poisonous water from Mount Nonacris in Arcadia. Then, again, there was in
Judea before the time of Christ a pool of medicinal virtue. It is well
known how the poet has commemorated the marshy Styx as preserving men from
death; although Thetis had, in spite of the preservative, to lament her
son. And for the matter of that, were Menander himself to take a plunge
into this famous Styx, he would certainly have to die after all; for you
must come to the Styx, placed as it is by all accounts in the regions of
the dead. Well, but what and where are those blessed and charming waters
which not even John Baptist ever used in his preministrations, nor Christ
after him ever revealed to His disciples? What was this wondrous bath of
Menander? He is a comical fellow, I ween.(5) But why (was such a font) so
seldom in request, so obscure, one to which so very few ever resorted for
their cleansing? I really see something to suspect in so rare an occurrence
of a sacrament to which is attached so very much security and safety, and
which dispenses with the ordinary law of dying even in the service of God
Himself, when, on the contrary, all nations have "to ascend to the mount of
the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob," who demands of His saints
in martyrdom that death which He exacted even of His Christ. No one will
ascribe to magic such influence as shall exempt from death, or which shall
refresh and vivify life, like the vine by the renewal of its condition.
Such power was not accorded to the great Medea herself--over a human being
at any rate, if allowed her over a silly sheep. Enoch no doubt was
translated,(6) and so was Elijah;(7) nor did they experience death: it was
postponed, (and only postponed,) most certainly: they are reserved for the
suffering of death, that by their blood they may extinguish Antichrist.(1)
Even John underwent death, although concerning him there had prevailed an
ungrounded expectation that he would remain alive until the coming of the
Lord.(2) Heresies, indeed, for the most pan spring hurriedly into
existence, from examples furnished by ourselves: they procure their
defensive armour from the very place which they attack. The whole question
resolves itself, in short, into this challenge: Where are to be found the
men whom Menander himself has baptized? whom he has plunged into his Styx?
Let them come forth and stand before us--those apostles of his whom he has
made immortal? Let my (doubting) Thomas see them, let him hear them, let
him handle them--and he is convinced.

CHAP. LI.--DEATH ENTIRELY SEPARATES THE SOUL FROM THE BODY.

   But the operation of death is plain and obvious: it is the separation
of body and soul. Some, however, in reference to the soul's immortality, on
which they have so feeble a hold through not being taught of God, maintain
it with such beggarly arguments, that they would fain have it supposed that
certain souls cleave to the body even after death. It is indeed in this
sense that Plato, although he despatches at once to heaven such souls as he
pleases,(3) yet in his Republic(4) exhibits to us the corpse of an unburied
person, which was preserved a long time without corruption, by reason of
the soul remaining, as he says, unseparated from the body. To the same
purport also Democritus remarks on the growth for a considerable while of
the human nails and hair in the grave. Now, it is quite possible that the
nature of the atmosphere tended to the preservation of the above-mentioned
corpse. What if the air were particularly dry, and the ground of a saline
nature? What, too, if the substance of the body itself were unusually dry
and arid? What, moreover, if the mode of the death had already eliminated
from the corpse all corrupting matter? As for the nails, since they are the
commencement of the nerves, they may well seem to be prolonged, owing to
the nerves themselves being relaxed and extended, and to be protruded more
and more as the flesh fails. The hair, again, is nourished from the brain,
which would cause it endure for a long time as its secret aliment and
defence. Indeed, in the case of living persons themselves, the whole head
of hair is copious or scanty in proportion to the exuberance of the brain.
You have medical men (to attest the fact). But not a particle of the soul
can possibly remain in the body, which is itself destined to disappear when
time shall have abolished the entire scene on which the body has played its
part. And yet even this partial survival of the soul finds a place in the
opinions of some men; and on this account they will not have the body
consumed at its funeral by fire, because they would spare the small residue
of the soul. There is, however, another way of accounting for this pious
treatment, not as if it meant to favour the relics of the soul, but as if
it would avert a cruel custom in the interest even of the body; since,
being human, it is itself undeserving of an end which is also inflicted
upon murderers. The truth is, the soul is indivisible, because it is
immortal; (and this fact) compels us to believe that death itself is an
indivisible process, accruing indivisibly to the soul, not indeed because
it is immortal, but because it is indivisible. Death, however, would have
to be divided in its operation, if the soul were divisible into particles,
any one of which has to be reserved for a later stage of death. At this
rate, a part of death will have to stay behind for a portion of the soul. I
am not ignorant that some vestige of this opinion still exists. I have
found it out from one of my own people. I am acquainted with the case of a
woman, the daughter of Christian parents,(5) who in the very flower of her
age and beauty slept peacefully (in Jesus), after a singularly happy though
brief married life. Before they laid her in her grave, and when the priest
began the appointed office, at the very first breath of his prayer she
withdrew her hands from her side, placed them in an attitude of devotion,
and after the holy service was concluded restored them to their lateral
position. Then, again, there is that well-known story among our own people,
that a body voluntarily made way in a certain cemetery, to afford room for
another body to be placed near to it. If, as is the case, similar stories
are told amongst the heathen, (we can only conclude that) God everywhere
manifests signs of His own power--to His own people for their comfort, to
strangers for a testimony unto them. I would indeed much rather suppose
that a portent of this kind happened form the direct agency of God than
from any relics of the soul: for if there were a residue of these, they
would be certain to move the other limbs; and even if they moved the hands,
this still would not have been for the purpose of a prayer. Nor would the
corpse hav been simply content to have made way for its neighbour: it
would, besides, have benefited its own self also by the change of its
position. But from whatever cause proceeded these phenomena, which you must
put down amongst signs and portents, it is impossible that they should
regulate nature. Death, if it once falls short of totality in operation, is
not death. If any fraction of the soul remain, it makes a living state.
Death will no more mix with life, than will night with day.

CHAP. LII.--ALL KINDS OF DEATH A VIOLENCE TO NATURE, ARISING FROM SIN.--SIN
AN INTRUSION UPON NATURE AS GOD CREATED IT.

   Such, then, is the work of death--the separation of the soul from the
body. Putting out of the question fates and fortuitous circumstances, it
has been, according to men's views, distinguished in a twofold form--the
ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary they ascribe to nature,
exercising its quiet influence in the case of each individual decease; the
extraordinary is said to be contrary to nature, happening in every violent
death. As for our own views, indeed, we know what was man's origin, and we
boldly assert and persistently maintain that death happens not by way of
natural consequence to man, but owing to a fault and defect which is not
itself natural; although it is easy enough, no doubt, to apply the term
natural to faults and circumstances which seem to have been (though from
the emergence of an external cause(1) ) inseparable to us from our very
birth. If man had been directly appointed to die as the condition of his
creation,(2) then of course death must be imputed to nature. Now, that he
was not thus appointed to die, is proved by the very law which made his
condition depend on a warning, and death result from man's arbitrary
choice. Indeed, if he had not sinned, he certainly would not have died.
That cannot be nature which happens by the exercise of volition after an
alternative has been proposed to it, and not by necessity--the result of an
inflexible and unalterable condition. Consequently, although death has
various issues, inasmuch as its causes are manifold, we cannot say that the
easiest death is so gentle as not to happen by violence (to our nature).
The very law which produces death, simple though it be, is yet violence.
How can it be otherwise, when so close a companionship of soul and body, so
inseparable a growth together from their very conception of two sister
substances, is sundered and divided? For although a man may breathe his
last for joy, like the Spartan Chilon, while embracing his son who had just
conquered in the Olympic games; or for glory, like the Athenian Clidemus,
while receiving a crown of gold for the excellence of his historical
writings; or in a dream, like Plato; or in a fit of laughter, like Publius
Crassus,--yet death is much too violent, coming as it does upon us by
strange and alien means, expelling the soul by a method all its own,
calling on us to die at a moment when one might live a jocund life in joy
and honour, in peace and pleasure. That is still a violence to ships:
although far away from the Capharean rocks, assailed by no storms, without
a billow to shatter them, with favouring gale, in gliding course, with
merry crews, they founder amidst entire security, suddenly, owing to some
internal shock. Not dissimilar are the shipwrecks of life,--the issues of
even a tranquil death. It matters not whether the vessel of the human body
goes with unbroken timbers or shattered with storms, if the navigation of
the soul be overthrown.

CHAP. LIII.--THE ENTIRE SOUL BEING INDIVISIBLE REMAINS TO THE LAST ACT OF
VITALITY; NEVER PARTIALLY OR FRACTIONALLY WITHDRAWN FROM THE BODY.

   But where at last will the soul have to lodge, when it is bare and
divested of the body? We must certainly not hesitate to follow it thither,
in the order of our inquiry. We must, however, first of all fully state
what belongs to the topic before us, in order that no one, because we have
mentioned the various issues of death, may expect from us a special
description of these, which ought rather to be left to medical men, who are
the proper judges of the incidents which appertain to death, or its causes,
and the actual conditions of the human body. Of course, with the view of
preserving the truth of the soul's immortality, whilst treating this topic,
I shall have, on mentioning death, to introduce phrases about dissolution
of such a purport as seems to intimate that the soul escapes by degrees,
and piece by piece; for it withdraws (from the body) with all the
circumstances of a decline, seeming to suffer consumption, and suggests to
us the idea of being annihilated by the slow process of its departure. But
the entire reason of this phenomenon is in the body, and arises from the
body. For whatever be the kind of death (which operates on man), it
undoubtedly produces the destruction either of the matter, or of the
region, or of the passages of vitality: of the matter, such as the gall and
the blood; of the region, such as the heart and the liver; of the passages,
such as the veins and the arteries. Inasmuch, then, as these parts of the
body are severally devastated by an injury proper to each of them, even to
the very last ruin and annulling of the vital powers--in other words, of
the ends, the sites, and the functions of nature--it must needs come to
pass, amidst the gradual decay of its instruments, domiciles, and spaces,
that the soul also itself, being driven to abandon each successive part,
assumes the appearance of being lessened to nothing; in some such manner as
a charioteer is assumed to have himself failed, when his horses, through
fatigue, withdraw from him their energies. But this assumption applies only
to the circumstances of the despoiled person, not to any real condition of
suffering. Likewise the body's charioteer, the animal spirit, fails on
account of the failure of its vehicle, not of itself--abandoning its work,
but not its vigour--languishing in operation, but not in essential
condition--bankrupt in solvency, not in substance--be-cause ceasing to put
in an appearance, but not ceasing to exist. Thus every rapid death--such as
a decapitation, or a breaking of the neck,(1) which opens at once a vast
outlet for the soul; or a sudden ruin, which at a stroke crushes every
vital action, like that inner ruin apoplexy--retards not the soul's escape,
nor painfully separates its departure into successive moments. Where,
however, the death is a lingering one, the soul abandons its position in
the way in which it is itself abandoned. And yet it is not by this process
severed in fractions: it is slowly drawn out; and whilst thus extracted, it
causes the last remnant to seem to be but a part of itself. No portion,
however, must be deemed separable, because it is the last; nor, because it
is a small one, must it be regarded as susceptible of dissolution.
Accordant with a series is its end, and the middle is prolonged to the
extremes; and the remnants cohere to the mass, and are waited for, but
never abandoned by it. And I will even venture to say, that the last of a
whole is the whole; because while it is less, and the latest, it yet
belongs to the whole, and completes it. Hence, indeed, many times it
happens that the soul in its actual separation is more powerfully agitated
with a more anxious gaze, and a quickened loquacity; whilst from the
loftier and freer position in which it is now placed, it enunciates, by
means of its last remnant still lingering in the flesh, what it sees, what
it hears, and what it: is beginning to know. In Platonic phrase, indeed,
the body is a prison,(2) but in the apostle's it is "the temple of God,"(3)
because it is in Christ. Still, (as must be admitted,) by reason of its
enclosure it obstructs and obscures the soul, and sullies it by the
concretion of the flesh; whence it happens that the light which illumines
objects comes in upon the soul in a more confused manner, as if through a
window of horn. Undoubtedly, when the soul, by the power of death, is
released from its concretion with the flesh, it is by the very release
cleansed and purified: it Is, moreover, certain that it escapes from the
veil of the flesh into open space, to its clear, and pure, and intrinsic
light; and then finds itself enjoying its enfranchisement from matter, and
by virtue of its liberty it recovers its divinity, as one who awakes out of
sleep passes from images to verities. Then it tells out what it sees; then
it exults or it fears, according as it finds what lodging is prepared for
it, as soon as it sees the very angel's face, that arraigner of souls, the
Mercury of the poets.

CHAP. LIV.--WHITHER DOES THE SOUL RETIRE WHEN IT QUITS THE BODY? OPINIONS
OF PHILOSOPHERS ALL MORE OR LESS ABSURD. THE HADES OF PLATO.

   To the question, therefore, whither the soul is withdrawn, we now give
an answer. Almost all the philosophers, who hold the soul's immortality,
notwithstanding their special views on the subject, still claim for it this
(eternal condition), as Pythagoras, and Empedocles, and Plato, and as they
who indulge it with some delay from the time of its quitting the flesh to
the conflagration of all things, and as the Stoics, who place only their
own souls, that is, the souls of the wise, in the mansions above. Plato, it
is true, does not allow this destination to all the souls,
indiscriminately, of even all the philosophers, but only of those who have
cultivated their philosophy out of love to boys. So great is the privilege
which impurity obtains at the hands of philosophers! In his system, then,
the souls of the wise are carried up on high into the ether: according to
Arius,(4) into the, air; according to the Stoics, into the moon. I wonder,
indeed, that they abandon to the earth the souls of the unwise, when they
affirm that even these are instructed by the wise, so much their superiors.
For where is the school where they can have been instructed in the vast
space which divides them? By what means can the pupil-souls have resorted
to their teachers, when they are parted from each other by so distant an
interval? What profit, too, can any instruction afford them at all in their
posthumous state, when they are on the brink of perdition by the universal
fire? All other souls they thrust down to Hades, which Plato, in his
Phoedo,(1) describes: as the bosom of the earth, where all the filth of the
world accumulates, settles, and exhales, and where every separate draught
of air only renders denser still the impurities of the seething mass.

CHAP. LV.--THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE POSITION OF HADES; THE BLESSEDNESS OF
PARADISE IMMEDIATELY AFTER DEATH. THE PRIVILEGE OF THE MARTYRS.

   By ourselves the lower regions (of Hades) are not supposed to be a bare
cavity, nor some subterranean sewer of the world, but a vast deep space in
the interior of the earth, and a concealed recess in its very bowels;
inasmuch as we read that Christ in His death spent three days in the heart
of the earth,(2) that is, in the secret inner recess which is hidden in the
earth, and enclosed by the earth, and superimposed on the abysmal depths
which lie still lower down. Now although Christ is God, yet, being also
man, "He died according to the Scriptures,"(3) and "according to the same
Scriptures was buried."(4) With the same law of His being He fully
complied, by remaining in Hades in the form and condition of a dead man;
nor did He ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the
lower parts of the earth, that He might there make the patriarchs and
prophets partakers of Himself.(5) (This being the case), you must suppose
Hades to be a subterranean region, and keep at arm's length those who are
too proud to believe that the souls of the faithful deserve a place in the
lower regions.(6) These persons, who are "servants above their Lord, and
disciples above their Master,"(7) would no doubt spurn to receive the
comfort of the resurrection, if they must expect it in Abraham's bosom. But
it was for this purpose, say they, that Christ descended into hell, that we
might not ourselves have to descend thither. Well, then, what difference is
there between heathens and Christians, if the same prison awaits them all
when dead? How, indeed, shall the soul mount up to heaven, where Christ is
already sitting at the Father's right hand, when as yet the archangel's
trumpet has not been heard by the command of God,(8)--when as yet those
whom the coming of the Lord is to find on the earth, have not been caught
up into the air to meet Him at His coming,(9) in company with the dead in
Christ, who shall be the first to arise?(10) To no one is heaven opened;
the earth is still safe for him, I would not say it is shut against him.
When the world, indeed, shall pass away, then the kingdom of heaven shall
be opened. Shall we then have to sleep high up in ether, with the boy-
loving worthies of Plato; or in the air with Arius; or around the moon with
the Endymions of the Stoics? No, but in Paradise, you tell me, whither
already the patriarchs and prophets have removed from Hades in the retinue
of the Lord's resurrection. How is it, then, that the region of Paradise,
which as revealed to John in the Spirit lay under the altar,(11) displays
no other souls as in it besides the souls of the martyrs? How is it that
the most heroic martyr Perpetua on the day of her passion saw only her
fellow-martyrs there, in the revelation which she received of Paradise, if
it were not that the sword which guarded the entrance permitted none to go
in thereat, except those who had died in Christ and not in Adam? A new
death for God, even the extraordinary one for Christ, is admitted into the
reception-room of mortality, specially altered and adapted to receive the
new-comer. Observe, then, the difference between a heathen and a Christian
in their death: if you have to lay down your life for God, as the
Comforter(12) counsels, it is not in gentle fevers and on soft beds, but in
the sharp pains of martyrdom: you must take up the cross and bear it after
your Master, as He has Himself instructed you.(13) The sole key to unlock
Paradise is your own life's blood.(14) You have a treatise by us,(15) (on
Paradise), in which we have established the position that every soul is
detained in safe keeping in Hades until the day of the Lord.

CHAP.LVI.--REFUTATION OF THE HOMERIC VIEW OF THE SOUL'S DETENTION FROM
HADES OWING TO THE BODY'S BEING UNBURIED. THAT SOULS PREMATURELY SEPARATED
FROM THE BODY HAD TO WAIT FOR ADMISSION INTO HADES ALSO REFUTED.

   There arises the question, whether this takes place immediately after
the soul's departure from the body; whether some souls are detained for
special reasons in the meantime here on earth; and whether it is permitted
them of their own accord, or by the intervention of authority, to be
removed from Hades(1) at some subsequent time? Even such opinions as these
are not by any means lacking persons to advance them with confidence. It
was believed that the unburied dead were not admitted into the infernal
regions before they had received a proper sepulture; as in the case of
Homer's Patroclus, who earnestly asks for a burial of Achilles in a dream,
on the ground that he could not enter Hades through any other portal, since
the souls of the sepulchred dead kept thrusting him away.(2) We know that
Homer exhibited more than a poetic licence here; he had in view the fights
of the dead. Proportioned, indeed, to his care for the just honours of the
tomb, was his censure of that delay of burial which was injurious to souls.
(It was also his purpose to add a warning), that no man should, by
detaining in his house the corpse of a friend, only expose himself, along
with the deceased, to increased injury and trouble, by the irregularity(3)
of the consolation which he nourishes with pain and grief. He has
accordingly kept a twofold object in view in picturing the complaints of an
unburied soul: he wished to maintain honour to the dead by promptly
attending to their funeral, as well as to moderate the feelings of grief
which their memory excited. But, after all, how vain is it to suppose that
the soul could bear the rites and requirements of the body, or carry any of
them away to the infernal regions! And how much vainer still is it, if
injury be supposed to accrue to the soul from that neglect of burial which
it ought to receive rather as a favour! For surely the soul which had no
willingness to die might well prefer as tardy a removal to Hades as
possible. It will love the undutiful heir, by whose means it still enjoys
the light. If, however, it is certain that injury accrues to the soul from
a tardy interment of the body--and the gist of the injury lies in the
neglect of the burial--it is yet in the highest degree unfair, that should
receive all the injury to which the faulty delay could not possibly be
imputed, for of course all the fault rests on the nearest relations of the
dead. They also say that those souls which are taken away by a premature
death wander about hither and thither until they have completed the residue
of the years which they would have lived through, had it not been for their
untimely fate. Now either their days are appointed to all men severally,
and if so appointed, I cannot suppose them capable of being shortened; or
if, notwithstanding such appointment, they may be shortened by the will of
God, or some other powerful influence, then (I say) such shortening is of
no validity, if they still may be accomplished in some other way. If, on
the other hand, they are not appointed, there cannot be any residue to be
fulfilled for unappointed periods. I have another remark to make. Suppose
it be an infant that dies yet hanging on the breast; or it may be an
immature boy; or it may be, once more, a youth arrived at puberty: suppose,
moreover, that the life in each case ought to have reached full eighty
years, how is it possible that the soul of either could spend the whole of
the shortened years here on earth after losing the body by death? One's age
cannot be passed without one's body, it being by help of the body that the
period of life has its duties and labours transacted. Let our own people,
moreover, bear this in mind, that souls are to receive back at the
resurrection the self-same bodies in which they died. Therefore our bodies
must be expected to resume the same conditions and the same ages, for it is
these particulars which impart to bodies their especial modes. By what
means, then, can the soul of an infant so spend on earth its residue of
years, that it should be able at the resurrection to assume the state of an
octogenarian, although it had barely lived a month? Or if it shall be
necessary that the appointed days of life be fulfilled here on earth, must
the same course of life in all its vicissitudes, which has been itself
ordained to accompany the appointed days, be also passed through by the
soul along with the days? Must it employ itself in school studies in its
passage from infancy to boyhood; play the soldier in the excitement and
vigour of youth and earlier manhood; and encounter serious and judicial
responsibilities in the graver years between ripe manhood and old age? Must
it ply trade for profit, turn up the soil with hoe and plough, go to sea,
bring actions at law, get married, toil and labour, undergo illnesses, and
whatever casualties of weal and woe await it in the lapse of years? Well,
but how are all these transactions to be managed without one's body? Life
(spent) without life? But (you will tell me) the destined period in
question is to be bare of all incident whatever, only to be accomplished by
merely elapsing. What, then, is to prevent its being fulfilled in Hades,
where there is absolutely no use to which you can apply it? We therefore
maintain that every soul, whatever be its age on quitting the body, remains
unchanged in the same, until the time shall come when the promised
perfection shall be realized in a state duly tempered to the measure of the
peerless angels. Hence those souls must be accounted as passing an exile in
Hades, which people are apt to regard as carried off by violence,
especially by cruel tortures, such as those of the cross, and the axe, and
the sword, and the lion; but we do not account those to be violent deaths
which justice awards, that avenger of violence. So then, you will say, it
is all the wicked souls that are banished in Hades. (Not quite so fast, is
my answer.) I must compel you to determine (what you mean by Hades), which
of its two regions, the region of the good or of the bad. If you mean the
bad, (all I can say is, that) even now the souls of the wicked deserve to
be consigned W those abodes; if you mean the good why should you judge to
be unworthy of such a resting-place the souls of infants and of virgins,
and(1) those which, by reason of their condition in life were pure and
innocent?

CHAP. LVII.--MAGIC AND SORCERY ONLY APPARENT IN THEIR EFFECTS. GOD ALONE
CAN RAISE THE DEAD.

   It is either a very fine thing to be detained in these infernal regions
with the Aori, or souls which were prematurely hurried away; or else a very
bad thing indeed to be there associated with the Biaeothanati, who suffered
violent deaths. I may be permitted to use the actual words and terms with
which magic rings again, that inventor of all these odd opinions--with its
Ostanes, and Typhon, and   Dardanus, and Damigeron, and Nectabis, and
Berenice. There is a well-known popular bit of writing,(2) which undertakes
to summon up from the abode of Hades the souls which have actually slept
out their full age, and had passed away by an honourable death, and had
even been buried with full rites and proper ceremony. What after this shall
we say about magic? Say, to be sure, what almost everybody says of it--that
it is an imposture. But it is not we Christians only whose notice this
system of imposture does not escape. We, it is true, have discovered these
spirits of evil, not, to be sure, by a complicity with them, but by a
certain knowledge which is hostile to  them; nor is it by any procedure
which is attractive to them, but by a power which subjugates them that we
handle (their wretched system)--that manifold pest of the mind of man, that
artificer of all error, that destroyer of our salvation and our soul at one
swoop.(3) In this way, even by magic, which is indeed only a second
idolatry, wherein they pretend that after death they become demons, just as
they were supposed in the first and literal idolatry to become gods (and
why not? since the gods are but dead things), the before-mentioned Aori
Biaeothanati are actually invoked,--and not unfairly,(4) if one grounds his
faith on this principle, that it is clearly credible for those souls to be
beyond all others addicted to violence and wrong, which with violence and
wrong have been hurried away by a cruel and premature death and which would
have a keen appetite for reprisals. Under cover, however, of these souls,
demons operate, especially such as used to dwell in them when they were in
life, and who had driven them, in fact, to the fate which had at last
carried them off. For, as we have already suggested,(5) there is hardly a
human being who is unattended by a demon; and it is well known to many,
that premature   and violent deaths, which men ascribe to accidents, are in
fact brought about by demons. This imposture of the evil spirit lying
concealed in the persons of the dead, we are able, if I mistake not, to
prove by actual facts, when in cases of exorcism (the evil spirit) affirms
himself sometimes to be one of the relatives(6) of the person possessed by
him, sometimes a gladiator or a bestiarius,(7) and sometimes even a god;
always making it one of his chief cares to extinguish the very truth which
we are proclaiming, that men may not readily believe that all souls remove
to Hades, and that they may overthrow faith in the resurrection and the
judgment. And yet for all that, the demon, after trying to circumvent the
bystanders, is vanquished by the pressure of divine grace, and sorely
against his will confesses all the truth. So also in that other kind of
magic, which is supposed to bring up from Hades the souls now resting
there, and to exhibit them to public view, there is no other expedient of
imposture ever resorted to which operates more powerfully. Of course, why a
phantom becomes visible, is because a body is also attached to it; and it
is no difficult matter to delude the external vision of a man whose mental
eye it is so easy to blind. The serpents which emerged from the magicians'
rods, certainly appeared to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians as bodily
substances. It is true that the verity of Moses swallowed up their lying
deceit.(1) Many attempts were also wrought against the apostles by the
sorcerers Simon and Elymas,(2) but the blindness which struck (them) was no
enchanter's trick. What novelty is there in the effort of an unclean spirit
to counterfeit the truth? At this very time, even, the heretical dupes of
this same Simon (Magus) are so much elated by the extravagant pretensions
of their art, that they undertake to bring up from Hades the souls of the
prophets themselves. And I suppose that they can do so under cover of a
lying wonder. For, indeed, it was no less than this that was anciently
permitted to the Pythonic (or ventriloquistic) spirit(3)--even to represent
the soul of Samuel, when Saul consulted the dead, after (losing the living)
God.(3) God forbid, however, that we should suppose that the soul of any
saint, much less of a prophet, can be dragged out of (its resting-place in
Hades) by a demon. We know that "Satan himself is transformed into an angel
of light"(5)--much more into a man of light--and that at last he will "show
himself to be even God,"(6) and will exhibit "great signs and wonders,
insomuch that, if it were possible, he shall deceive the very elect."(7) He
hardly(8) hesitated on the before-mentioned occasion to affirm himself to
be a prophet of God, and especially to Saul, in whom he was then actually
dwelling. You must not imagine that he who produced the phantom was one,
and he who consulted it was another; but that it was one and the same
spirit, both in the sorceress and in the apostate (king), which easily
pretended an apparition of that which it had already prepared them to
believe as real--(even the spirit) through whose evil influence Saul's
heart was fixed where his treasure was, and where certainly God was not.
Therefore it came about, that he saw him through whose aid he believed that
he was going to see, because he believed him through whose help he saw. But
we are met with the objection, that in visions of the night dead persons
are not unfrequently seen, and that for a set purpose.(9) For instance, the
Nasamones consult private oracles by frequent and lengthened visits to the
sepulchres of their relatives, as one may find in Heraclides, or
Nymphodorus, or Herodotus;(10) and the Celts, for the game purpose, stay
away all night at the tombs of their brave chieftains, as Nicander affirms.
Well, we admit apparitions of dead persons in dreams to be not more really
true than those of living persons; but we apply the same estimate to all
alike--to the dead and to the living, and indeed to all the phenomena which
are seen. Now things are not true because they appear to be so, but because
they are fully proved to be so. The truth of dreams is declared from the
realization, not the aspect. Moreover, the fact that Hades is not in any
case opened for (the escape of) any soul, has been firmly established by
the Lord in the person of Abraham, in His representation of the poor man at
rest and the rich man in torment.(11) No one, (he said,) could possibly be
despatched from those abodes to report to us how matters went in the nether
regions,--a purpose which, (if any could be,) might have been allowable on
such an occasion, to persuade a belief in Moses and the prophets. The power
of God has, no doubt, sometimes recalled men's souls to their bodies, as a
proof of His own transcendent rights; but there must never be, because of
this fact, any agreement supposed to be possible between the divine faith
and the arrogant pretensions of sorcerers, and the imposture of dreams, and
the licence of poets. But yet in all cases of a true resurrection, when the
power of God recalls souls to their bodies, either by the agency of
prophets, or of Christ, or of apostles, a complete presumption is afforded
us, by the solid, palpable, and ascertained reality (of the revived body),
that its true form must be such as to compel one's belief of the
fraudulence of every incorporeal apparition of dead persons.

CHAP. LVIII.--CONCLUSION. POINTS POSTPONED. ALL SOULS ARE KEPT IN HADES
UNTIL THE RESURRECTION, ANTICIPATING THEIR ULTIMATE MISERY OR BLISS.

   All souls, therefore; are shut up within Hades: do you admit this? (It
is true, whether) you say yes or no: moreover, there are already
experienced there punishments and consolations; and there you have a poor
man and a rich. And now, having postponed some stray questions(12) for this
part of my work, I will notice them in this suitable place, and then come
to a close. Why, then, cannot you suppose that the soul undergoes
punishment and consolation in Hades in the interval, while it awaits its
alternative of judgment, in a certain anticipation either of gloom or of
glory? You reply: Because in the judgment of God its matter ought to be
sure and safe, nor should there be any inkling beforehand of the award of
His sentence; and also because (the soul) ought to be covered first by its
vestment(1) of the restored flesh, which, as the partner of its actions,
should be also a sharer in its recompense. What, then, is to take place in
that interval? Shall we sleep? But souls do not sleep even when men are
alive: it is indeed the business of bodies to sleep, to which also belongs
death itself, no less than its mirror and counterfeit sleep. Or will you
have it, that nothing is there done whither the whole human race is
attracted, and whither all man's expectation is postponed for safe keeping?
Do you think this state is a foretaste of judgment, or its actual
commencement? a premature encroachment on it, or the first course in its
full ministration? Now really, would it not be the highest possible
injustice, even(2) in Hades, if all were to be still well with the guilty
even there, and not well with the righteous even yet? What, would you have
hope be still more confused after death? would you have it mock us still
more with uncertain expectation? or shall it now become a review of past
life, and an arranging of judgment, with the inevitable feeling of a
trembling fear? But, again, must the soul always tarry for the body, in
order to experience sorrow or joy? Is it not sufficient, even of itself, to
suffer both one and the other of these sensations? How often, without any
pain to the body, is the soul alone tortured by ill-temper, and anger, and
fatigue, and very often unconsciously, even to itself? How often, too, on
the other hand, amidst bodily suffering, does the soul seek out for itself
some furtive joy, and withdraw for the moment from the body's importunate
society? I am mistaken if the soul is not in the habit, indeed, solitary
and alone, of rejoicing and glorifying over the very tortures of the body.
Look for instance, at the soul of Mutius Scoevola as he melts his right
hand over the fire; look also at Zeno's, as the torments of Dionysius pass
over it.(3) The bites of wild beasts are a glory to young heroes, as on
Cyrus were the scars of the bear.(4) Full well, then, does the soul even in
Hades know how to joy and to sorrow even without the body; since when in
the flesh it feels pain when it likes, though the body is unhurt; and when
it likes it feels joy though the body is in pain. Now if such sensations
occur at its will during life, how much rather may they not happen after
death by the judicial appointment of God! Moreover, the soul executes not
all its operations with the ministration of the flesh; for the judgment of
God pursues even simple cogitations and the merest volitions. "Whosoever
looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her
already in his heart."(5) Therefore, even for this cause it is most fitting
that the soul, without at all waiting for the flesh, should be punished for
what it has done without the partnership of the flesh. So, on the same
principle, in return for the pious and kindly thoughts in which it shared
not the help of the flesh, shall it without the flesh receive its
consolation. Nay more,(6) even in matters done through the flesh the soul
is the first to conceive them, the first to arrange them, the first to
authorize them, the first to precipitate them into acts. And even if it is
sometimes unwilling to act, it is still the first to treat the object which
it means to effect by help of the body. In no case, indeed, can an
accomplished fact be prior to the mental conception(7) thereof. It is
therefore quite in keeping with this order of things, that that part of our
nature should be the first to have the recompense and reward to which they
are due on account of its priority. In short, inasmuch as we understand
"the prison" pointed out in the Gospel to be Hades,(8) and as we also
interpret "the uttermost farthing"(9) to mean the very smallest offence
which has to be recompensed there before the resurrection,(10) no one will
hesitate to believe that the soul undergoes in Hades some compensatory
discipline, without prejudice to the full process of the resurrection, when
the recompense will be administered through the flesh besides. This point
the Paraclete has also pressed home on our attention in most frequent
admonitions, whenever any of us has admitted the force of His words from a
knowledge of His promised spiritual disclosures.(11) And now at last
having, as I believe, encountered every human opinion concerning the soul,
and tried its character by the teaching of (our holy faith,) we have
satisfied the curiosity which is simply a reasonable and necessary one. As
for that which is extravagant and idle, there will evermore be as great a
defect in its information, as there has been exaggeration and self-will in
its researches.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 3, Roberts and Donaldson.) The original digital version was by
The Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-
WORD.

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