(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors. If you
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Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
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.


ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA

ON THE MAKING OF MAN

[Translated by the Rev. Henry Austin Wilson, M.A., Fellow and Librarian of
Magdalen College, Oxford.]


Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, to his brother Peter, THE SERVANT OF GOD.

   If we had to honour with rewards of money those who excel in virtue,
the whole world of money, as Solomon says(1), would seem but small to be
made equal to your virtue in the balance. Since, however, the debt of
gratitude due to your Reverence is greater than can be valued in money, and
the holy Eastertide demands the accustomed gift of love, we offer to your
greatness of mind, O man of God, a gift too small indeed to be worthy of
presentation to you, yet not falling short of the extent of our power. The
gift is a discourse, like a mean garment, woven not without toil from our
poor wit, and the subject of the discourse, while it will perhaps be
generally thought audacious, yet seemed not unfitting. For he alone has
worthily considered the creation of God who truly was created after God,
and whose soul was fashioned in the image of Him Who created him,--Basil,
our common father and teacher,--who by his own speculation made the sublime
ordering of the universe generally intelligible, making the world as
established by God in the true Wisdom known to those who by means of his
understanding are led to such contemplation: but we, who fall short even of
worthily admiring him, yet intend to add to the great writer's speculations
that which is lacking in them, not so as to interpolate his work by
insertion(2) (for it is not to be thought of that that lofty mouth should
suffer the insult of being given as authority for our discourses), but so
that the glory of the teacher may not seem to be failing among his
disciples.

   For if, the consideration of man being lacking in his Hexaemeron, none
of those who had been his disciples contributed any earnest effort to
supply the defect, the scoffer would perhaps have had a handle against his
great fame, on the ground that he had not cared to produce in his hearers
any habit of intelligence. But now that we venture according to our powers
upon the exposition of what was lacking, if anything should be found in our
work such as to be not unworthy of his teaching, it will surely be referred
to our teacher: while if our discourse does not reach the height of his
sublime speculation, he will be free from this charge and escape the blame
of seeming not to wish that his disciples should have any skill at all,
though we perhaps may he answerable to our censurers as being unable to
contain in the littleness of our hear the wisdom of our instructor.

   The scope of our proposed enquiry is not small: it is second to none of
the wonders of the world,--perhaps even greater than any of those known to
us, because no other existing thing, save the human creation, has been made
like to God: thus we shall readily find that allowance will be made for
what we say by kindly readers, even if our discourse is far behind the
merits of the subject. For it is our business, I suppose, to leave nothing
unexamined of all that concerns man,--of what we believe to have taken
place previously, of what we now see, and of the results which are expected
afterwards to appear (for surely our effort would be convicted of failing
of its promise, if, when man is proposed for contemplation, any of the
questions which bear upon the subject were to be omitted); and, moreover,
we must fit together, according to the explanation of Scripture and to that
derived from reasoning, those statements concerning him which seem, by a
kind of necessary sequence, to be opposed, so that our whole subject may be
consistent in train of thought and in order, as the Statements that seem to
be contrary are brought (if the Divine power so discovers a hope for what
is beyond hope, and a way for what is inextricable) to one and the same
end: and for clearness' sake I think it well to set forth to you the
discourse by chapters, that you may be able briefly to know the force of
the several arguments of the whole work.

   1. Wherein is a partial inquiry into the nature of the world, and a
more minute exposition of the things which preceded the genesis of man.

   2. Why man appeared last, after the creation.

   3. That the nature of man is more precious than all the visible
creation.

   4. That the construction of man throughout signifies his ruling power.

   5. That man is a likeness of the Divine sovereignty.

   6. An examination of the kindred of mind to nature: wherein by way of
digression is refuted the doctrine of the Anomoeans.

   7. Why man is destitute of natural weapons and covering.

   8. Why man's form is upright, and that hands were given him because of
reason; wherein also is a speculation on the difference of souls.

   9. That the form of man was framed to serve as an instrument for the
use of reason.

   10. That the mind works by means of the senses.

   11. That the nature of mind is invisible.

   12. An examination of the question where the ruling principle is to be
considered to reside; wherein also is a discussion of tears and laughter,
and a physiological speculation as to the interrelation of matter, nature,
and mind.

   13. A rationale of sleep, of yawning, and of dreams.

   14. That the mind is not in a part of the body; wherein also is a
distinction of the movements of the body and of the soul.

   15. That the soul proper, in fact and name, is the rational soul, while
the others are called so equivocally: wherein also is this statement, that
the power of the mind extends throughout the whole body in fitting contact
with every part.

   16. A contemplation of the Divine utterance which said,--"Let us make
man after our image and likeness;" wherein is examined what is the
definition of the image, and how the passible and mortal is like to the
Blessed and Impassible, and how in the image there are male and female,
seeing these are not in the Prototype.

   17. What we must answer to those who raise the question--"If
procreation is after sin, how would souls have come into being if the first
of mankind had remained sinless?"

   18. That our irrational passions have their rise from kindred with
irrational nature.

   19. To those who say that the enjoyment of the good things we look for
will again consist in meat and drink, because it is written that by these
means man at first lived in Paradise.

   20. What was the life in Paradise, and what was the forbidden tree.

   21. That the resurrection is looked for as a consequence, not so much
from the declaration of Scripture as from the very necessity of things.

   22. To those who say, "If the resurrection is a thing excellent and
good, how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some
periods of time?"

   23. That he who confesses the beginning of the world's existence must
necessarily agree also as to its end.

   24. An argument against those who say that matter is co-eternal with
God.

   25. How one even of those who are without may be brought to believe the
Scripture when teaching of the resurrection.

   26. That the resurrection is not beyond probability.

   27. That it is possible, when the human body is dissolved into the
elements of the universe, that each should have his own body restored from
the common source.

   28. To those who say that souls existed before bodies, or that bodies
were formed before souls: wherein there is also a refutation of the fables
concerning transmigrations of souls.

   29. An establishment of the doctrine that the cause of existence of
soul and body is one and the same.

   30. A brief consideration of the construction of our bodies from a
medical point of view.

I. Wherein is a partial inquiry into the nature of the world, and a more
minute exposition of the things which preceded the genesis of man(3).

   1. "This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth(4)," saith
the Scripture, when all that is seen was finished, and each of the things
that are betook itself to its own separate place, when the body of heaven
compassed all things round, and those bodies which are heavy and of
downward tendency, the earth and the water, holding each other in, took the
middle place of the universe; while, as a sort of bond and stability for
the things that were made, the Divine power and skill was implanted in the
growth of things, guiding all things with the reins of a double operation
(for it was by rest and motion that it devised the genesis of the things
that were not, and the continuance of the things that are), driving around,
about the heavy and changeless element contributed by the creation that
does not move, as about some fixed path, the exceedingly rapid motion of
the sphere, like a wheel, and preserving the indissolubility of both by
their mutual action, as the circling substance by its rapid motion
compresses the compact body of the earth round about, while that which is
firm and unyielding, by reason of its unchanging fixedness, continually
augments the whirling motion of those things which revolve round it, and
intensity s is produced in equal measure in each of the natures which thus
differ in their operation, in the stationary nature, I mean, and in the
mobile revolution; for neither is the earth shifted from its own base, nor
does the heaven ever relax in its vehemence, or slacken its motion.

   2. These, moreover, were first framed before other things, according to
the Divine wisdom, to be as it were a beginning of the whole machine, the
great Moses indicating, I suppose, where he says that the heaven and the
earth were made by God "in the beginning(6)" that all things that are seen
in the creation are the offspring of rest and motion, brought into being by
the Divine will. Now the heaven and the earth being diametrically opposed
to each other in their operations, the creation which lies between the
opposites, and has in part a share in what is adjacent to it, itself acts
as a mean between the extremes, so that there is manifestly a mutual
contact of the opposites through the mean; for air in a manner imitates the
perpetual motion and subtlety of the fiery substance, both in the lightness
of its nature, and in its suitableness for motion; yet it is not such as to
be alienated from the solid substance, for it is no more in a state of
continual flux and dispersion than in a permanent state of immobility, but
becomes, in its affinity to each, a kind of borderland of the opposition
between operations, at once uniting in itself and dividing things which are
naturally distinct.

   3. In the same way, liquid substance also is attached by double
qualities to each of the opposites; for in so far as it is heavy and of
downward tendency it is closely akin to the earthy; but in so far as it
partakes of a certain fluid and mobile energy it is not altogether alien
from the nature which is in motion; and by means of this also there is
effected a kind of mixture and concurrence of the opposites, weight being
transferred to motion, and motion finding no hindrance in weight, so that
things most extremely opposite in nature combine with one another, and are
mutually joined by those which act as means between them.

   4. But to speak strictly, one should rather say that the very nature of
the contraries themselves is not entirely without mixture of properties,
each with the other, so that, as I think, all that we see in the world
mutually agree, and the creation, though discovered in properties of
contrary natures, is yet at union with itself. For as motion is not
conceived merely as local shifting, but is also contemplated in change and
alteration, and on the other hand the immovable nature does not admit
motion by way of alteration, the wisdom of God has transposed these
properties, and wrought unchangeableness in that which is ever moving, and
change in that which is immovable; doing this, it may be, by a providential
dispensation, so that that property of nature which constitutes its
immutability and immobility might not, when viewed in any created object,
cause the creature to be accounted as God; for that which may happen to
move or change would cease to admit of the conception of Godhead. Hence the
earth is stable without being immutable, while the heaven, on the contrary,
as it has no mutability, so has not stability either, that the Divine
power, by interweaving change in the stable nature and motion with that
which is not subject to change, might, by the interchange of attributes, at
once join them both closely to each other, and make them alien from the
conception of Deity; for as has been said, neither of these (neither that
which is unstable, nor that which is mutable) can be considered to belong
to the more Divine nature.

   5. Now all things were already arrived at their own end: "the heaven
and the earth(7)," as Moses says, "were finished," and all things that lie
between them, and the particular things were adorned with their appropriate
beauty; the heaven with the rays of the stars, the sea and air with the
living creatures that swim and fly, and the earth with all varieties of
plants and animals, to all which, empowered by the Divine will, it gave
birth together; the earth was full, too, of her produce, bringing forth
fruits at the same time with flowers; the meadows were full of all that
grows therein, and all the mountain ridges, and summits, and every
hillside, and slope, and hollow, were crowned with young grass, and with
the varied produce of the trees, just risen from the ground, yet shot up at
once into their perfect beauty; and all the beasts that had come into life
at God's command were rejoicing, we may suppose, and skipping about,
running to and for in the thickets in herds according to their kind, while
every sheltered and shady spot was ringing with the chants of the
songbirds. And at sea, we may suppose, the sight to be seen was of the like
kind, as it had just settled to quiet and calm in the gathering together of
its depths, where havens and harbours spontaneously hollowed out on the
coasts made the sea reconciled with the land; and the gentle motion of the
waves vied in beauty with the meadows, rippling delicately with light and
harmless breezes that skimmed the surface; and all the wealth of creation
by land and sea was ready, and none was there to share it.

II. Why man appeared last, after the creation

   1. For not as yet had that great and precious thing, man, come into the
world of being; it was not to be looked for that the ruler should appear
before the subjects of his rule; but when his dominion was prepared, the
next step was that the king should be manifested. When, then the Maker of
all had prepared beforehand, as it were, a royal lodging for the future
king (and this was the land, and islands, and sea, and the heaven arching
like a roof over them), and when all kinds of wealth had been stored in
this palace (and by wealth I mean the whole creation, all that is in plants
and trees, and all that has sense, and breath, and life; and--if we are to
account materials also as wealth--all that for their beauty are reckoned
precious in the eyes of men, as gold and silver, and the substances of your
jewels which men delight in--having concealed, I say, abundance of all
these also in the bosom of the earth as in a royal treasure-house), he thus
manifests man in the world, to be the beholder of some of the wonders
therein, and the lord of others; that by his enjoyment he might have
knowledge of the Giver, and by the beauty and majesty of the things he saw
might trace out that power of the Maker which is beyond speech and
language.

   2. For this reason man was brought into the world last after the
creation, not being rejected to the last as worthless, but as one whom it
behoved to be king over his subjects at his very birth. And as a good host
does not bring his guest to his house before the preparation of his feast,
but, when he has made all due preparation, and decked with their proper
adornments his house, his couches, his table, brings his guest home when
things suitable for  his refreshment are in readiness, rain the same
manner the rich and munificent Entertainer of our nature, when He had
decked the habitation  with beauties of every kind, and prepared this
great and varied banquet, then introduced man, assigning to him as his task
not the acquiring of what was not there, but the enjoyment of the things
which were there; and for this reason He gives him as foundations the
instincts of a twofold organization, blending the Divine with the earthy,
that by means of both he may be naturally and properly disposed to each
enjoyment, enjoying God by means of his more divine nature, and the good
things of earth by the sense that is akin to them.

III. That the nature of man is more precious than all the visible
creation(9).

   1. But it is right that we should not leave this point without
consideration, that while the world, great as it is, and its parts, are
laid as an elemental foundation for the formation of the universe, the
creation is, so to say, made offhand by the Divine power, existing at once
on His command, while counsel precedes the making of man; and that which is
to be is fore-shown by the Maker in verbal description, and of what kind it
is fitting that it should be, and to what archetype it is fitting that it
should bear a likeness, and for what it shall be made, and what its
operation shall be when it is made, and of what it shall be the ruler, wall
these things the saying examines beforehand, so that he has a rank assigned
him before his genesis, and possesses rule over the things that are before
his coming into being; for it says, "God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and the beasts of the earth, and the fowls of the heaven, and the
cattle, and all the earth(1)"

   2. O marvellous! a sun is made, and no counsel precedes; a heaven
likewise; and to these no single thing in creation is equal. So great a
wonder is formed by a word alone, and the saying indicates neither when,
nor how, nor any such detail. So too in all particular cases, the aether,
the stars, the intermediate air, the sea, the earth, the animals, the
plants,--all are brought into being with a word, while only to the making
of man does the Maker of all draw near with circumspection, so as to
prepare beforehand for him material for his formation, and to liken his
form to an archetypal beauty, and, setting before him a mark for which he
is to come into being, to make for him a nature appropriate and allied to
the operations, and suitable for the object in hand.

IV. That the construction of man throughout signifies his ruling power(2).

   1. For as in our own life artificers fashion a tool in the way suitable
to its use, so the best Artificer made our nature as it were a formation
fit for the exercise of royalty, preparing it at once by superior
advantages of soul, and by the very form of the body, to be such as to be
adapted for royalty: for the soul immediately shows its royal and exalted
character, far removed as it is from the lowliness of private station, in
that it owns no lord, and is self-governed, swayed autocratically by its
own will; for to whom else does this belong than to a king? And further,
besides these facts, the fact that it is the image of that Nature which
rules over all means nothing else than this, that our nature was created to
be royal from the first. For as, in men's ordinary use, those who make
images(3) of princes both mould the figure of their form, and represent
along with this the royal rank by the vesture of purple, and even the
likeness is commonly spoken of as "a king," so the human nature also, as it
was made to rule the rest, was, by its likeness to the King of all, made as
it were a living image, partaking with the archetype both in rank and in
name, not vested in purple, nor giving indication of its rank by sceptre
and diadem (for the archetype itself is not arrayed with these), but
instead of the purple robe, clothed in virtue, which is in truth the most
royal of all raiment, and in place of the sceptre, leaning on the bliss of
immortality, and instead of the royal diadem, decked with the crown of
righteousness; so that it is shown to be perfectly like to the beauty of
its archetype in all that belongs to the dignity of royalty.

V. That man is a likeness of the Divine sovereignty(4).

   1. It is true, indeed, that the Divine beauty is not adorned with any
shape or endowment of form, by any beauty of colour, but is contemplated as
excellence in unspeakable bliss. As then painters transfer human forms to
their pictures by the means of certain colours, laying on their copy the
proper and corresponding tints, so that the beauty of the original may be
accurately transferred to the likeness, so I would have you understand that
our Maker also, painting the portrait to resemble His own beauty, by the
addition of virtues, as it were with colours, shows in us His own
sovereignty: and manifold and varied are the tints, so to say, by which His
true form is portrayed: not red, or white(5), or the blending of these,
whatever it may be called, nor a touch of black that paints the eyebrow and
the eye, and shades, by some combination, the depressions in the figure,
and all such arts which the hands of painters contrive, but instead of
these, purity, freedom from passion, blessedness, alienation from all evil,
and all those attributes of the like kind which help to form in men the
likeness of God: with such hues as these did the Maker of His own image
mark our nature.

   2. And if you were to examine the other points also by which the Divine
beauty is expressed, you will find that to them too the likeness in the
image which we present is perfectly preserved. The Godhead is mind and
word: for "in the beginning was the Word(6)" and the followers of Paul
"have the mind of Christ" which "speaks" in them(7): humanity too is not
far removed from these: you see in yourself word and understanding, an
imitation of the very Mind and Word. Again, God is love, and the fount of
love: for this the great John declares, that "love is of God," and "God is
love(8)": the Fashioner of our nature has made this to be our feature too:
for "hereby," He says, "shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
love one another(9)" :--thus, if this be absent, the whole stamp of the
likeness is transformed. The Deity beholds and hears all things, and
searches all things out: you too have the power of apprehension of things
by means of sight and hearing, and the understanding that inquires into
things and searches them out.

VI. An examination of the kindred of mind to nature: wherein, by way of
digression, is refuted the doctrine of the Anomoeans(1).

   1. And let no one suppose me to say that the Deity is in touch with
existing things in a manner resembling human operation, by means of
different faculties. For it is impossible to conceive in the simplicity of
the Godhead the varied and diverse nature of the apprehensive operation:
not even in our own case are the faculties which apprehend things numerous,
although we are in touch with those things which affect our life in many
ways by means of our senses; for there is one faculty, the implanted mind
itself, which passes through each of the organs of sense and grasps the
things beyond: this it is that, by means of the eyes, beholds what is seen;
this it is that, by means of hearing, understands what is said; that is
content with what is to our taste, and turns from what is unpleasant; that
uses the hand for whatever it wills, taking hold or rejecting by its means,
using the help of the organ for this purpose precisely as it thinks
expedient.

   2. If in men, then, even though the organs formed by nature for
purposes of perception may be different, that which operates and moves by
means of all, and uses each appropriately for the object before it, is one
and the same, not changing its nature by the differences of operations, how
could any one suspect multiplicity of essence in God on the ground of His
varied powers? for "He that made the eye," as the prophet says, and "that
planted the ear(2)," stamped on human nature these operations to be as it
were significant characters, with reference to their models in Himself: for
He says, "Let us make man in our image(3).

   3. But what, I would ask, becomes of the heresy of the Anomoeans? what
will they say to this utterance? how will they defend the vanity of their
dogma in view of the words cited? Will they say that it is possible that
one image should be made like to different forms? if the Son is in nature
unlike the Father, how comes it that the likeness He forms of the different
natures is one? for He Who said, "Let us make after our image," and by the
plural signification revealed the Holy Trinity, would not, if the
archetypes were unlike one another, have mentioned the image in the
singular: for it would be impossible that there should be one likeness
displayed of things which do not agree with one another: if the natures
were different he would assuredly have begun their images also differently,
making the appropriate image for each: but since the image is one, while
the archetype is not one, who is so far beyond the range of understanding
as not to know that the things which are like the same thing, surely
resemble one another? Therefore He says (the word, it may be, cutting short
this wickedness at the very formation of human life), "Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness."

VII. Why man is destitute of natural weapons and covering(4).

   1. But what means the uprightness of his figure? and why is it that
those powers which aid life do not naturally belong to his body? but man is
brought into life bare of natural covering, an unarmed and poor being,
destitute of all things useful, worthy, according to appearances, of pity
rather than of admiration, not armed with prominent horns or sharp claws,
nor with hoofs nor with teeth, nor possessing by nature any deadly venom in
a sting,--things such as most animals have in their own power for defence
against those who do them harm: his body is not protected with a covering
of hair: and yet possibly it was to be expected that he who was promoted to
rule over the rest of the creatures should be defended by nature with arms
of his own so that he might not need assistance from others for his own
security. Now, however, the lion, the boar, the tiger, the leopard, and all
the like have natural power sufficient for their safety: and the bull has
his horn, the hare his speed, the deer his leap and the certainty of his
sight, and another beast has bulk, others a proboscis, the birds have their
wings, and the bee her sting, and generally in all there is some protective
power implanted by nature: but man alone of all is slower than the beasts
that are swift of foot, smaller than those that are of great bulk, more
defenceless than those that are protected by natural arms; and how, one
will say, has such a being obtained the sovereignty over all things?

   2. Well, I think it would not be at all hard to show that what seems to
be a deficiency of our nature is a means for our obtaining dominion over
the subject creatures. For if man had had such power as to be able to
outrun the horse in swiftness, and to have a foot that, from its solidity,
could not be worn out, but was strengthened by hoofs or claws of some kind,
and to carry upon him horns and stings and claws, he would be, to begin
with, a wild-looking and formidable creature, if such things grew with his
body: and moreover he would have neglected his rule over the other
creatures if he had no need of the co-operation of his subjects; whereas
now, the needful services of our life are divided among the individual
animals that are under our sway, for this reason--to make our dominion over
them necessary.

   3. It was the slowness and difficult motion of our body that brought
the horse to supply our need, and tamed him: it was the nakedness of our
body that made necessary our management of sheep, which supplies the
deficiency of our nature by its yearly produce of wool: it was the fact
that we import from others the supplies for our living which subjected
beasts of burden to such service: furthermore, 'it was the fact that we
cannot eat grass like cattle which brought the ox to render service to our
life, who makes our living easy for us by his own labour; and because we
needed teeth and biting power to subdue some of the other animals by grip
of teeth, the dog gave, together with his swiftness, his own jaw to supply
our need, becoming like a live sword for man; and there has been discovered
by men iron, stronger and more penetrating than prominent horns or sharp
claws, not, as those things do with the beasts, always growing naturally
with us, but entering into alliance with us for the time, and for the rest
abiding by itself: and to compensate for the crocodile's scaly hide, one
may make that very hide serve as armour, by putting it on his skin upon
occasion: or, failing that, art fashions iron for this purpose too, which,
when it has served him for a time for war, leaves the man-at-arms once more
free from the burden in time of peace: and the wing of the birds, too,
ministers to our life, so that by aid of contrivance we are not left behind
even by the speed of wings: for some of them become tame and are of service
to those who catch birds, and by their means others are by contrivance
subdued to serve our needs:. moreover art contrives to make our arrows
feathered, and by means of the bow gives us for our needs the speed of
wings: while the fact that our feet are easily hurt and worn in travelling
makes necessary the aid which is given by the subject animals: for hence it
comes that we fit shoes to our feet.

VIII. Why man's form is upright; and that hands were given him because of
reason; wherein also is a speculation on the difference of souls(5).

    1. But man's form is upright, and extends aloft towards heaven, and
looks upwards: and these are marks of sovereignty which show his royal
dignity. For the fact that man alone among existing things is such as this,
while all others bow their bodies downwards, clearly points to the
difference of dignity between those which stoop beneath his sway and that
power which rises above them: for all the rest have the foremost limbs of
their bodies in the form of feet, because that which stoops needs something
to support it: but in the formation of man these limbs were made hands, for
the upright body found one base, supporting its position securely on two
feet, sufficient for its needs.

   2. Especially do these ministering hands adapt themselves to the
requirements of the reason: indeed if one were to say that the ministration
of hands is a special property of the rational nature, he would not be
entirely wrong; and that not only because his thought turns to the common
and obvious fact that we signify our reasoning by means of the natural
employment of our hands in written characters. It is true that this fact,
that we speak by writing, and, in a certain way, converse by the aid of our
hands, preserving sounds by the forms of the alphabet, is not unconnected
with the endowment of reason; but I am referring to something else when I
say that the hands co-operate with the bidding of reason.

   3. Let us, however, before discussing this point, consider the matter
we passed over (for the subject of the order of created things almost
escaped our notice), why the growth of things that spring from the earth
takes precedence, and the irrational animals come next, and then, after the
making of these, comes man: for it may be that we learn from these facts
not only the obvious thought, that grass appeared to the Creator useful for
the sake of the animals, while the animals were made because of man, and
that for this reason, before the animals there was made their food, and
before man that which was to minister to human life.

   4. But it seems to me that by these facts Moses reveals a hidden
doctrine, and secretly delivers that wisdom concerning the soul, of which
the learning that is without had indeed some imagination, but no clear
comprehension. His discourse then hereby teaches us that the power of life
and soul may be considered in three divisions. For one is only a power of
growth and nutrition supplying what is suitable for the support of the
bodies that are nourished, which is called the vegetative(6) soul, and is
to be seen in plants; for we may perceive in growing plants a certain vital
power destitute of sense; and there is another form of life besides this,
which, while it includes the form above mentioned, is also possessed in
addition of the power of management according to sense; and this is to be
found in the nature of the irrational animals: for they are not only the
subjects of nourishment and growth, but also have the activity of sense and
perception. But perfect bodily life is seen in the rational (I mean the
human) nature, which both is nourished and endowed with sense, and also
partakes of reason and is ordered by mind.

   5. We might make a division of our subject in some such way as this. Of
things existing, part are intellectual, part corporeal. Let us leave alone
for the present the division of the intellectual according to its
properties, for our argument is not concerned with these. Of the corporeal,
part is entirely devoid of life, and part shares in vital energy. Of a
living body, again, part has sense conjoined with life, and part is without
sense: lastly, that which has sense is again divided into rational and
irrational. For this reason the lawgiver says that after inanimate matter
(as a sort of foundation for the form of animate things), this vegetative
life was made, and had earlier(7) existence in the growth of plants: then
he proceeds to introduce the genesis of those creatures which are regulated
by sense: and since, following the same order, of those things which have
obtained life in the flesh, those which have sense can exist by themselves
even apart from the intellectual nature, while the rational principle could
not be embodied save as blended with the sensitive,--for this reason man
was made last after the animals, as nature advanced in an orderly course to
perfection. For this rational animal, man, is blended of every form of
soul; he is nourished by the vegetative kind of soul, and to the faculty of
growth was added that of sense, which stands midway, if we regard its
peculiar nature, between the intellectual and the more material essence
being as much coarser than the one as it is more refined than the other:
then takes place a certain alliance and commixture of the intellectual
essence with the subtle and enlightened element of the sensitive nature: so
that man consists of these three: as we are taught the like thing by the
apostle in what he says to the Ephesians(8), praying for them that the
complete grace of their "body and soul and spirit" may be preserved at the
coming of the Lord; using, the word "body" for the nutritive part, and
denoting the sensitive by the word "soul," and the intellectual by
"spirit." Likewise too the Lord instructs the scribe in the Gospel that he
should set before every commandment that love to God which is exercised
with all the heart and soul and mind(9): for here also it seems to me that
the phrase indicates the same difference, naming the more corporeal
existence "heart," the intermediate "soul," and the higher nature, the
intellectual and mental faculty, "mind."

   6. Hence also the apostle recognizes three divisions of dispositions,
calling one "carnal," which is busied with the belly and the pleasures
connected with it, another "natural(1)," which holds a middle position with
regard to virtue and vice, rising above the one, but without pure
participation in the other; and another "spiritual," which perceives the
perfection of godly life: wherefore he says to the Corinthians, reproaching
their indulgence in pleasure and passion, "Ye are carnal(2)," and incapable
of receiving the more perfect doctrine; while elsewhere, making a
comparison of the middle kind with the perfect, he says, "but the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit: for they are foolishness unto
him: but he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged
of no man(3)." As, then, the natural man is higher than the carnal, by the
same measure also the spiritual man rises above the natural.

   7. If, therefore, Scripture tells us that man was made last, after
every animate thing, the lawgiver is doing nothing else than declaring to
us the doctrine of the soul, considering that what is perfect comes last,
according to a certain necessary sequence in the order of things: for in
the rational are included the others also, while in the sensitive there
also surely exists the vegetative form, and that again is conceived only in
connection with what is material: thus we i may suppose that nature makes
an ascent as it were by steps--I mean the various properties of life--from
the lower to the perfect form.

   8(4). Now since man is a rational animal, the instrument of his body
must be made suitable for the use of reason(5); as you may see musicians
producing their music according to the form of their instruments, and not
piping with harps nor harping upon flutes, so it must needs be that the
organization of these instruments of ours should be adapted for reason,
that when struck by the vocal organs it might be able to sound properly for
the use of words. For this reason the hands were attached to the body; for
though we can count up very many uses in daily life for which these
skilfully contrived and helpful instruments, our hands, that easily follow
every art and every operation, alike in war and peace(6), are serviceable,
yet nature added them to our body pre-eminently for the sake of reason. For
if man were destitute of hands, the various parts of his face would
certainly have been arranged like those of the quadrupeds, to suit the
purpose of his feeding: so that its form would have been lengthened out and
pointed towards the nostrils, and his lips would have projected from his
mouth, lumpy, and stiff, and thick, fitted for taking up the grass, and his
tongue would either have lain between his teeth, of a kind to match his
lips, fleshy, and hard, and rough, assisting his teeth to deal with what
came under his grinder, or it would have been moist and hanging out at the
side like that of dogs and other carnivorous beasts, projecting through the
gaps in his jagged row of teeth. If, then, our body had no hands, how could
articulate sound have been implanted in it, seeing that the form of the
parts of the mouth would not have had the configuration proper for the use
of speech, so that man must of necessity have either bleated, or "baaed,"
or barked, or neighed, or bellowed like oxen or asses, or uttered some
bestial sound? but now, as the hand is made part of the body, the mouth is
at leisure for the service of the reason. Thus the hands are shown to be
the property of the rational nature, the Creator having thus devised by
their means a special advantage for reason.

IX. That the form of man was framed to serve as an instrument for the use
of reason(7).

   1. Now since our Maker has bestowed upon our formation a certain
Godlike grace, by implanting in His image the likeness of His own
excellences, for this reason He gave, of His bounty, His other good gifts
to human nature; but mind and reason we cannot strictly say that He gave,
but that He imparted them, adding to the image the proper adornment of His
own nature. Now since the mind is a thing intelligible and incorporeal, its
grace would have been incommunicable and isolated, if its motion were not
manifested by some contrivance. For this cause there was still need of this
instrumental organization, that it might, like a plectrum, touch the vocal
organs and indicate by the quality of the notes struck, the motion within.

   2. And as some skilled musician, who may have been deprived by some
affection of his own voice, and yet wish to make his skill known, might
make melody with voices of others, and publish his art by the aid of flutes
or of the lyre, so also the human mind being a discoverer of all sorts of
conceptions, seeing that it is unable, by the mere soul, to reveal to those
who hear by bodily senses the motions of its understanding, touches, like
some skilful composer, these animated instruments, and makes known its
hidden thoughts by means of the sound produced upon them.

   3. Now the music of the human instrument is a-sort of compound of flute
and lyre, sounding together in combination as in a concerted piece of
music. For the breath, as it is forced up  from the air-receiving vessels
through the windpipe, when the speaker's impulse to utterance attunes the
harmony to sound, and as it strikes against the internal protuberances
which divide this flute-like passage in a circular arrangement, imitates in
a way the sound uttered through a flute, being driven round and round by
the membranous projections. But the palate receives the sound from below in
its own concavity, and dividing the sound by the two passages that extend
to the nostrils, and by the cartilages about the perforated bone, as it
were by some scaly protuberance, makes its resonance louder; while the
cheek, the tongue, the mechanism of the pharynx by which the chin is
relaxed when drawn in, and tightened when extended to a point--all these in
many different ways answer to the motion of the plectrum upon the strings,
varying very quickly, as occasion requires, the arrangement of the tones;
and the opening and closing of the lips has the same effect as players
produce when they check the breath of the flute with their fingers
according to the measure of the tune.

X. That the mind works by means of the senses.

   1. As the mind then produces the music of reason by means of our
instrumental construction, we are born rational, while, as I think,  we
should not have had the gift of reason if  we had had to employ our lips to
supply the need of the body--the heavy and toilsome part of the task of
providing food. As things are,  however, our hands appropriate this
ministration to themselves, and leave the mouth available for the service
of reason.

   2(8). The operation of the instrument(9), however, is twofold; one for
the production of sound, the other for the reception of concepts from
without; and the one faculty does not blend with the other, but abides in
the operation for which it was appointed by nature, not interfering with
its neighbour either by the sense of hearing undertaking to speak, or by
the speech undertaking to hear; for the latter is always uttering
something, while the ear, as Solomon somewhere says, is not filled with
continual hearing(1).

   3. That point as to our internal faculties which seems to me to be even
in a special degree matter for wonder, is this :--what is the extent of
that inner receptacle into which flows everything that is poured in by our
hearing? who are the recorders of the sayings that are brought in by it?
what sort of storehouses are there for the concepts that are being put in
by our hearing? and how is it, that when many of them, of varied kinds, are
pressing one upon another, there arises no confusion and error in the
relative position of the things that are laid up there? And one may have
the like feeling of wonder also with regard to the operation of sight; for
by it also in like manner the mind apprehends those things which are
external to the body, and draws to itself the images of phenomena, marking
in itself the impressions of the things which are seen.

   4. And just as if there were some extensive city receiving all comers
by different entrances, all will not congregate at any particular place,
but some will go to the market, some to the houses, others to the churches,
or the streets, or lanes, or the theatres, each according to his own
inclination,--some such city of our mind I seem to discern established in
us, which the different entrances through the senses keep filling, while
the mind, distinguishing and examining each of the things that enters,
ranks them in their proper departments of knowledge.

   5. And as, to follow the illustration of the city, it may often be that
those who are of the same family and kindred do not enter by the same gate,
coming in by different entrances, as it may happen, but are none the less,
when they come within the circuit of the wall, brought together again,
being on close terms with each other (and one may find the contrary happen;
for those who are strangers and mutually unknown often take one entrance to
the city, yet their community of entrance does not bind them together; for
even when they are within they can be separated to join their own kindred);
something of the same kind I seem to discern in  the spacious territory of
our mind; for often  the knowledge which we gather from the different
organs of sense is one, as the same object is divided into several parts in
relation to the senses; and again, on the contrary, we may learn from some
one sense many and varied things which have no affinity one with another.

   6. For instance--for it is better to make our argument clear by
illustration--let us suppose that we are making some inquiry into the
property of tastes--what is sweet to the sense, and what is to be avoided
by tasters. We find, then, by experience, both the bitterness of gall and
the pleasant character of the quality of honey; but when these facts are
known, the knowledge is one which is given to us (the  same thing being
introduced to our understanding in several ways) by taste, smell, hearing,
and often by touch and sight. For when one sees honey, and hears its name,
and receives it by taste, and recognizes its odour by smell, and tests it
by touch, he recognizes the same thing by means of each of his senses.

   7. On the other hand we get varied and multiform information by some
one sense, for as hearing receives all sorts of sounds, and our visual
perception exercises its operation by beholding things of different kinds--
for it lights alike on black and white, and all things that are
distinguished by contrariety of colour,--so with taste, with smell, with
perception by touch; each implants in us by means of its own perceptive
power the knowledge of things of every kind.

XI. That the nature of mind is invisible(2)

   1. What then is, in its own nature, this mind that distributes itself
into faculties of sensation, and duly receives, by means of each, the
knowledge of things? That it is something else besides the senses, I
suppose no reasonable man doubts; for if it were identical with sense, it
would reduce the proper character of the operations carried on by sense to
one, on the the ground that it is itself simple, and that in what is simple
no diversity is to be found. Now however, as all agree that touch is one
thing and smell another, and as the rest of the senses are in like manner
so situated with regard to each other as to exclude intercommunion or
mixture, we must surely suppose, since the mind is duly present in each
case, that it is something else besides the sensitive nature, so that no
variation may attach to a thing intelligible.

   2. "Who hath known the mind of the Lord(3)?" the apostle asks; and I
ask further, who has understood his own mind? Let those tell us who
consider the nature of God to be within their comprehension, whether they
understand themselves--if they know the nature of their own mind. "It is
manifold and much compounded." How then can that which is intelligible be
composite? or what is the mode of mixture of things that differ in kind?
Or, "It is simple, and incomposite." How then is it dispersed into the
manifold divisions of the senses? how is there diversity in unity? how is
unity maintained in diversity?

   3. But I find the solution of these difficulties by recourse to the
very utterance of God; for He says, "Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness(4)." The image is properly an image so long as it fails in
none of those attributes which we perceive in the archetype; but where it
falls from its resemblance to the prototype it ceases in that respect to be
an image; therefore, since one of the attributes we contemplate in the
Divine nature is incomprehensibility of essence, it is clearly necessary
that in this point the image should be able to show its imitation of the
archetype.

   4. For if, while the archetype transcends comprehension, the nature of
the image were comprehended, the contrary character of the attributes we
behold in them would prove the defect of the image; but since the nature of
our mind, which is the likeness of the Creator evades our knowledge, it has
an accurate resemblance to the superior nature, figuring by its own
unknowableness the incomprehensible Nature.

XII. An examination of the question where the ruling principle is to be
considered to reside; wherein also is a discussion of tears and laughter,
and a physiological speculation as to the interrelation of matter, nature,
and minds.

   1. Let there be an end, then, of all the vain and conjectural
discussion of those who confine the intelligible energy to certain bodily
organs;  of whom some lay it down that the ruling principle is in the
heart, while others say that the mind resides in the brain, strengthening
such opinions by some plausible superficialities. For he who ascribes the
principal authority to the heart makes its local position evidence of his
argument (because it seems that it somehow occupies the middle position in
the body(6)), on the ground that the motion of the will is easily
distributed from the centre to the whole body, and so proceeds to
operation; and he makes the troublesome and passionate disposition of man a
testimony for his argument, because such affections seem to move this part
sympathetically. Those, on the other hand, who consecrate the brain to
reasoning, say that the head has been built by nature as a kind of citadel
of the whole body, and that in it the mind dwells like a king, with a
bodyguard of senses surrounding it like messengers and shield-bearers. And
these find a sign of their opinion in the fact that the reasoning of those
who have suffered some injury to the membrane of the brain is abnormally
distorted, and that those whose heads are heavy with intoxication ignore
what is seemly.

   2. Each of those who uphold these views puts forward some reasons of a
more physical character on behalf of his opinion concerning the ruling
principle. One declares that the motion which proceeds from the
understanding is in some way akin to the nature of fire, because fire and
the understanding are alike in perpetual motion; and since heat is allowed
to have its source in the region of the heart, he says on this ground that
the motion of mind is compounded with the mobility of heat, and asserts
that the heart, in which heat is enclosed, is the receptacle of the
intelligent nature. The other declares that the cerebral membrane (for so
they call the tissue that surrounds the brain) is as it were a foundation
or root of all the senses, and hereby makes good his own argument, on the
ground that the intellectual energy cannot have its seat save in that part
where the ear, connected with it, comes into concussion with the sounds
that fall upon it, and the sight (which naturally belongs to the hollow of
the place where the eyes are situated) makes its internal representation by
means of the images that fall upon the pupils, while the qualities of
scents are discerned in it by being drawn in through the nose, and the
sense of taste is tried by the test of the cerebral membrane, which sends
down from itself, by the veterbrae of the neck, sensitive nerve-processes
to the isthmoidal passage, and unites them with the muscles there.

   3. I admit it to be true that the intellectual part of the soul is
often disturbed by prevalence of passions; and that the reason is blunted
by some bodily accident so as to hinder its natural operation; and that the
heart is a sort of source of the fiery element in the body, and is moved in
correspondence with the impulses of passion; and moreover, in addition to
this, I do not reject (as I hear very much the same account from those who
spend their time on anatomical researches) the statement that the cerebral
membrane (according to the theory of those who take such a physiological
view), enfolding in itself the brain, and steeped in the vapours that issue
from it, forms a foundation for the senses; yet I do not hold this for a
proof that the incorporeal nature is bounded by any limits of place.

   4. Certainly we are aware that mental aberrations do not arise from
heaviness of head alone, but skilled physicians declare that our intellect
is also weakened by the membranes that underlie the sides being affected by
disease, when they call the disease frenzy, since the name given to those
membranes is phre'nes. And the sensation resulting from sorrow is
mistakenly supposed to arise at the heart; for while it is not the heart,
but the entrance of the belly that is pained, people ignorantly refer the
affection to the heart. Those, however, who have carefully studied the
affections in question give some such account as follows:--by a compression
and closing of the pores, which naturally takes place over the whole body
in a condition of grief, everything that meets a hindrance in its passage
is driven to the cavities in the interior of the body, and hence also (as
the respiratory organs too are pressed by what surrounds them), the drawing
of breath often becomes more violent under  the influence of nature
endeavouring to widen what has been contracted, so as to open out the
compressed passages; and such breathing we consider a symptom of grief and
call it a groan or a shriek. That, moreover, which appears to oppress the
region of the heart is a painful affection, not of the heart, but of the
entrance of the stomach, and occurs from the same cause (I mean, that of
the compression of the pores), as the vessel that contains the bile,
contracting, pours that bitter and pungent juice upon the entrance of the
stomach; and a proof of this is that the complexion of those in grief
becomes sallow and jaundiced, as the bile pours its own juice into the
veins by reason of excessive pressure.

   5. Furthermore, the opposite affection, that, I mean, of mirth and
laughter, contributes to establish the argument; for the pores of the body,
in the case of those who are dissolved in mirth by hearing something
pleasant, are also somehow dissolved and relaxed. Just as in the former
case the slight and insensible exhalations of the pores are checked by
grief, and, as they compress the internal arrangement of the higher
viscera, drive up towards the head and the cerebral membrane the humid
vapour which, being retained in excess by the cavities of the brain, is
driven out by the pores at its base(7), while the closing of the eyelids
expels the moisture in the form of drops (and the drop is called a tear),
so I would have you think that when the pores, as a result of the contrary
condition, are unusually widened, some air is drawn in through them into
the interior, and thence again expelled by nature through the passage of
the mouth, while all the viscera (and especially, as they say, the liver)
join in expelling this air by a certain agitation and throbbing motion;
whence it comes that nature, contriving to give facility for the exit of
the air, widens the passage of the mouth, extending the cheeks on either
side round about the breath; and the result is called laughter.

   6. We must not, then, on this account ascribe the ruling principle any
more to the liver than we must think, because of the heated  state of the
blood about the heart in wrathful dispositions, that the seat of the mind
is in the heart; but we must refer these matters to the character of our
bodily organization, and consider that the mind is equally in contact with
each of the parts according to a kind of combination which is
indescribable.

   7. Even if any should allege to us on this point the Scripture which
claims the ruling principle for the heart, we shall not receive the
statement without examination; for he who makes mention of the heart speaks
also of the reins, when he says, "God trieth the hearts and reins"(8); so
that they must either confine the intellectual principle to the two
combined or to neither.

   8. And although I am aware that the intellectual energies are blunted,
or even made altogether ineffective in a certain condition of the body, I
do not hold this a sufficient evidence for limiting the faculty of the mind
by any particular place, so that it should be forced out of its proper
amount of free space by any inflammations that may arise in the
neighbouring parts of the body(9) (for such an opinion is a corporeal one,
that when the receptacle is already occupied by something placed in it,
nothing else can find place there); for the intelligible nature neither
dwells in the empty spaces of bodies, nor is extruded by encroachments of
the flesh; but since the whole body is made like some musical instrument,
just as it often happens in the case of those who know how to play, but are
unable, because the unfitness of the instrument does not admit of their
art, to show their skill (for that which is destroyed by time, or broken by
a fall, or rendered useless by rust or decay, is mute and inefficient, even
if it be breathed upon by one who may be an excellent artist in flute-
playing); so too the mind, passing over the whole instrument, and touching
each of the parts in a mode corresponding to its intellectual activities,
according to its nature, produces its proper effect on those parts which
are in a natural condition, but remains inoperative and ineffective upon
those which are unable to admit the movement of its art; for the mind is
somehow naturally adapted to be in close relation with that which is in a
natural condition, but to be alien from that which is removed from nature.

   9.(1) And here, I think there is a view of the matter more close to
nature, by which we may learn something of the more refined doctrines. For
since the most beautiful and supreme good of all is the Divinity Itself, to
which incline all things that have a tendency towards what is beautiful and
good(2), we therefore say that the mind, as being in the image of the most
beautiful, itself also remains in beauty and goodness so long as it
partakes as far as is possible in its likeness to the archetype; but if it
were at all to depart from this it is deprived of that beauty in which it
was. And as we said that the mind was adorned(3) by the likeness of the
archetypal beauty, being formed as though it were a mirror to receive the
figure of that which it expresses, we consider that the nature which is
governed by it is attached to the mind in the same relation, and that it
too is adorned by the beauty that the mind gives, being, so to say, a
mirror of the mirror; and that by it is swayed and sustained the material
element of that existence in which the nature is contemplated.

   10. Thus so long as one keeps in touch with the other, the
communication of the true beauty extends proportionally through the whole
series, beautifying by the superior nature that which comes next to it; but
when there is any interruption of this beneficent connection, or when, on
the contrary, the superior comes to follow the inferior, then is displayed
the misshapen character of matter, when it is isolated from nature (for in
itself matter is a thing without form or structure), and by its
shapelessness is also destroyed that beauty of nature with which(4) it is
adorned through the mind; and so the transmission of the ugliness of matter
reaches through the nature to the mind itself, so that the image of God is
no longer seen in the figure expressed by that which was moulded according
to it; for the mind, setting the idea of good like a mirror behind the
back, turns off the incident rays of the effulgence of the good, and it
receives into itself the impress of the shapelessness of matter.

   11. And in this way is brought about the genesis of evil, arising
through the withdrawal of that which is beautiful and good. Now all is
beautiful and good that is closely related to the First Good; but that
which departs from its relation and likeness to this is certainly devoid of
beauty and goodness. If, then, according to the statement we have been
considering, that which is truly good is one, and the mind itself also has
its power of being beautiful and good, in so far as it is in the image of
the good and beautiful, and the nature, which is sustained by the mind, has
the like power, in so far as it is an image of the image, it is hereby
shown that our material part holds together, and is upheld when it is
controlled by nature; and on the other hand is dissolved and disorganized
when it is separated from that which upholds and sustains it, and is
dissevered from its conjunction with beauty and goodness.

   12. Now such a condition as this does not arise except when there takes
place an overturning of nature to the opposite state, in which the desire
has no inclination for beauty and goodness, but for that which is in need
of the adorning element; for it must needs be that that which is made like
to matter, destitute as matter is of form of its own, should be assimilated
to it in respect of the absence alike of form and of beauty.

   13. We have, however, discussed these points m passing, as following on
our argument, since they were introduced by our speculation on the point
before us; for the subject of enquiry was, whether the intellectual faculty
has its seat in any of the parts of us, or extends equally over them all;
for as for those who shut up the mind locally in parts of the body, and who
advance for the establishment of this opinion of theirs the fact that the
reason has not free course in the case of those whose cerebral membranes
are in an unnatural condition, our argument showed that in respect of every
part of the compound nature of man, whereby every man has some natural
operation, the power of the soul remains equally ineffective if the part
does not continue in its natural condition. And thus there came into our
argument, following out this line of thought, the view we have just stated,
by which we learn that in the compound nature of man the mind is governed
by God, and that by it is governed our material life, provided the latter
remains in its natural state, but if it is perverted from nature it is
alienated also from  that operation which is carried on by the mind.

   14. Let us return however once more to the point from which we started-
-that in those who are not perverted from their natural condition by some
affection, the mind exercises its own power, and is established firmly in
those who are in sound health, but on the contrary is powerless in those
who do not admit its operation; for we may confirm our opinion on these
matters by yet other arguments: and if it is not tedious for those to hear
who are already wearied with our discourse, we shall discuss these matters
also, so far as we are able, in a few words.

XIII. A Rationale of sleep, of yawning, and of dreams(5).

   1. This life of our bodies, material and subject to flux, always
advancing by way of motion, finds the power of its being in this, that it
never rests from its motion: and as some river, flowing on by its own
impulse, keeps the channel in which it runs well filled, yet is not seen in
the same water always at the same place, but part of it glides away while
part comes flowing on, so, too, the material element of our life here
suffers change in the continuity of its succession of opposites by way of
motion and flux, so that it never can desist from change, but in its
inability to rest keeps up unceasingly its motion alternating by like
ways(6): and if it should ever cease moving it will assuredly have
cessation also of its being.

   2. For instance, emptying succeeds fulness, and on the other hand after
emptiness comes in turn a process of filling: sleep relaxes the strain of
waking, and, again, awakening braces up what had become slack: and neither
of these abides continually, but both give way, each at the other's coming;
nature thus by their interchange so renewing herself as, while partaking of
each in turn, to pass from the one to the other without break. For that the
living creature should always be exerting itself in its operations produces
a certain rupture and severance of the overstrained part; and continual
quiescence of the body brings about a certain dissolution and laxity in its
frame: but to be in touch with each of these at the proper times in a
moderate degree is a staying-power of nature, which, by continual
transference to the opposed states, gives herself in each of them rest from
the other. Thus she finds the body on the strain through wakefulness, and
devises relaxation for the strain by means of sleep, giving the perceptive
faculties rest for the time from their operations, loosing them like horses
from the chariots after the race.

   3. Further, rest at proper times is necessary for the framework of the
body, that the nutriment may be diffused over the whole body through the
passages which it contains, without any strain to hinder its progress. For
just as certain misty vapours are drawn up from the recesses of the earth
when it is soaked with rain, whenever the sun heats it with rays of any
considerable warmth, so a similar result happens in the earth that is in
us, when the nutriment within is heated up by natural warmth; and the
vapours, being naturally of upward tendency and airy nature, and aspiring
to that which is above them, come to be in the region of the head like
smoke penetrating the joints of a wall: then they are dispersed thence by
exhalation to the passages of the organs of sense, and by them the senses
are of course rendered inactive, giving way to the transit of these
vapours. For the eyes are pressed upon by the eyelids when some leaden
instrument(7), as it were (I mean such a weight as that I have spoken of),
lets down the eyelid upon the eyes; and the hearing, being dulled by these
same vapours, as though a door were placed upon the acoustic organs, rests
from its natural operation: and such a condition is sleep, when the sense
is at rest in the body, and altogether ceases from the operation of its
natural motion, so that the digestive processes of nutriment may have free
course for transmission by the vapours through each of the passages.

   4. And for this reason, if the apparatus of the organs of sense should
be closed and sleep hindered by some occupation, the nervous system,
becoming filled with the vapours, is naturally and spontaneously extended
so that the part which has had its density increased by the vapours is
rarefied by the process of extension, just as those do who squeeze the
water out of clothes by vehement wringing: and, seeing that the parts about
the pharynx are somewhat circular, and nervous tissue abounds there,
whenever there is need for the expulsion from that part of the density of
the vapours--since it is impossible that the part which is circular in
shape should be separated directly, but only by being distended in the
outline of its circumference--for this reason, by checking the breath m a
yawn the chin is moved downwards so as to leave a hollow to the uvula, and
all the interior parts being arranged in the figure of a circle, that smoky
denseness which had been detained in the neighbouring parts is emitted
together with the exit of the breath. And often the like may happen even
after sleep when any portion of those vapours remains in the region spoken
of undigested and unexhaled.

   5. Hence the mind of man clearly proves its claim s to connection with
his nature, itself also co-operating and moving with the nature in its
sound and waking state, but remaining unmoved when it is abandoned to
sleep, unless any one supposes that the imagery of dreams is a motion of
the mind exercised in sleep. We for our part say that it is only the
conscious and sound action of the intellect which we ought to refer to
mind; and as to the fantastic nonsense which occurs to us in sleep, we
suppose that some appearances of the operations of the mind are
accidentally moulded in the less rational part of the soul; for the soul,
being by sleep dissociated from the senses, is also of necessity outside
the range of the operations of the mind; for it is through the senses that
the union of mind with man takes place; therefore when the senses are at
rest, the intellect also must needs be inactive; and an evidence of this is
the fact that the dreamer often seems to be in absurd and impossible
situations, which would not happen if the soul were then guided by reason
and intellect.

   6. It seems to me, however, that when the soul is at rest so far as
concerns its more excellent faculties (so far, I mean, as concerns the
operations of mind and sense), the nutritive part of it alone is operative
during sleep, and that some shadows and echoes of those things which happen
in our waking moments--of the operations both of sense and of intellect--
which are impressed upon it by that part of the soul which is capable of
memory, that these, I say, are pictured as chance will have it, some echo
of memory still lingering in this division of the soul.

   7. With these, then, the man is beguiled, not led to acquaintance with
the things that present themselves by any train of thought, but wandering
among confused and inconsequent delusions. But just as in his bodily
operations, while each of the parts individually acts in some way according
to the power which naturally resides in it, there arises also in the limb
that is at rest a state sympathetic with that which is in motion, similarly
in the case of the soul, even if one part is at rest and another in motion,
the whole is affected in sympathy with the part; for it is not possible
that the natural unity should be in any way severed, though one of the
faculties included in it is in turn supreme in virtue of its active
operation. But as, when men are awake and busy, the mind is supreme, and
sense ministers to it, yet the faculty which regulates the body is not
dissociated from them (for the mind furnishes the food for its wants, the
sense receives what is furnished, and the nutritive faculty of the body
appropriates to itself that which is given to it), so in sleep the
supremacy of these faculties is in some way reversed in us, and while the
less rational becomes supreme, the operation of the other ceases indeed,
yet is not absolutely extinguished; but while the nutritive faculty is then
busied with digestion during sleep, and keeps all our nature occupied with
itself, the faculty of sense is neither entirely severed from it (for that
cannot be separated which has once been naturally joined), nor yet can its
activity revive, as it is hindered by the inaction during sleep of the
organs of sense; and by the same reasoning (the mind also being united to
the sensitive part of the soul) it would follow that we should say that the
mind moves with the latter when it is in motion, and rests with it when it
is quiescent.

   8. As naturally happens with fire when it is heaped over with chaff,
and no breath fans the flame it neither consumes what lies beside it, nor
is entirely quenched, but instead of flame it rises to the air through the
chaff in the form of smoke; yet if it should obtain any breath of air, it
turns the smoke to flame--in the same way the mind when hidden by the
inaction of the senses in sleep is neither able to shine out through them,
nor yet is quite extinguished, but has, so to say, a smouldering activity,
operating to a certain extent, but unable to operate farther.

   9. Again, as a musician, when he touches with the plectrum the
slackened strings of a lyre, brings out no orderly melody (for that which
is not stretched will not sound), but his hand frequently moves skilfully,
bringing the plectrum to the position of the notes so far as place is
concerned, yet there is no sound, except that he produces by the vibration
of the strings a sort of uncertain and indistinct hum; so in sleep the
mechanism of the senses being relaxed, the artist is either quite inactive,
if the instrument is completely relaxed by satiety or heaviness; or will
act slackly and faintly, if the instrument of the senses does not fully
admit of the exercise of its art.

   10. For this cause memory is confused, and foreknowledge, though
rendered doubtful(9) by uncertain veils, is imaged in shadows of our waking
pursuits, and often indicates to us something of what is going to happen:
for by its subtlety of nature the mind has some advantage, in ability to
behold things, over mere corporeal grossness; yet it cannot make its
meaning clear by direct methods, so that the information of the matter in
hand should be plain and evident, but its declaration of the future is
ambiguous and doubtful,--what those who interpret such things call an
"enigma."

   11. So the butler presses the cluster for Pharaoh's cup: so the baker
seemed to carry his baskets; each supposing himself in sleep to be engaged
in those services with which he was busied when awake: for the images of
their customary occupations imprinted on the prescient element of their
soul, gave them for a time the power of foretelling, by this sort of
prophecy on the part of the mind, what should  come to pass.

   12. But if Daniel and Joseph and others like them were instructed by
Divine power, without any confusion of perception, in the knowledge of
things to come, this is nothing to the present statement; for no one would
ascribe this to the power of dreams, since he will be constrained as a
consequence to suppose that those Divine appearances also which took place
in wakefulness were not a miraculous vision but a result of nature brought
about spontaneously. As then, while all men are guided by their own minds,
there are some few who are deemed worthy of evident Divine communication;
so, while the imagination of sleep naturally occurs in a like and
equivalent manner for all, some, not all, share by means of their dreams in
some more Divine manifestation: but to all the rest even if a foreknowledge
of anything does occur as a result of dreams, it occurs in the way we have
spoken of.

   13. And again, if the Egyptian and the Assyrian king were guided by God
to the knowledge of the future, the dispensation wrought by their means is
a different thing: for it was necessary that the hidden wisdom of the holy
men(1) should be made known, that each of them might not pass his life
without profit to the state. For how could Daniel have been known for what
he was, if the soothsayers and magicians had not been unequal to the task
of discovering the dream? And how could Egypt have been preserved while
Joseph was shut up in prison, if his interpretation of the dream had not
brought him to notice? Thus we must reckon these cases as exceptional, and
not class them with common dreams.

   14. But this ordinary seeing of dreams is common to all men, and arises
in our fancies in different modes and forms: for either there remain, as we
have said, in the reminiscent part of the soul, the echoes of daily
occupations; or, as often happens, the constitution of dreams is framed
with regard to such and such a condition of the body: for thus the thirsty
man seems to be among springs, the man who is in need of food to be at a
feast, and the young man in the heat of youthful vigour is beset by fancies
corresponding to his passion.

   15. I also knew another cause of the fancies of sleep, when attending
one of my relations attacked by frenzy; who being annoyed by food being
given him in too great quantity for his strength, kept crying out and
finding fault with those who were about him for filling intestines with
dung and putting them upon him: and when his body was rapidly tending to
perspire he blamed those who were with him for having water ready to wet
him with as he lay: and he did not cease calling out till the result showed
the meaning of these complaints: for all at once a copious sweat broke out
over his body, and a relaxation of the bowels explained the weight in the
intestines. The same condition then which, while his sober judgment was
dulled by disease, his nature underwent, being sympathetically affected by
the condition of the body--not being without perception of what was amiss,
but being unable clearly to express its pain, by reason of the distraction
resulting from the disease--this, probably, if the intelligent principle of
the soul were lulled to rest, not from infirmity but by natural sleep,
might appear as a dream to one similarly situated, the breaking out of
perspiration being expressed by water, and the pain occasioned by the food,
by the weight of intestines.

   16. This view also is taken by those skilled in medicine, that
according to the differences of complaints the visions of dreams appear
differently to the patients: that the visions of those of weak stomach are
of one kind, those of persons suffering from injury to the cerebral
membrane of another, those of persons in fevers of yet another; that those
of patients suffering from bilious and from phlegmatic affections are
diverse, and those again of plethoric patients, and of patients in wasting
disease, are different; whence we may see that the nutritive and vegetative
faculty of the soul has in it by commixture some seed of the intelligent
element, which is in some sense brought into likeness to the particular
state of the body, being adapted in its fancies according to the complaint
which has seized upon it.

   17. Moreover, most men's dreams are conformed to the state of their
character: the brave man's fancies are of one kind, the coward's of
another; the wanton man's dreams of one kind, the continent man's of
another; the liberal man and the avaricious man are subject to different
fancies; while these fancies are nowhere framed by the intellect, but by
the less rational disposition of the soul, which forms even in dreams the
semblances of those things to which each is accustomed by the practice of
his waking hours.

XIV. That the mind is not in a part of the body; wherein also is a
distinction of the movements of the body and of the soul(2).

   1. But we have wandered far from our subject, for the purpose of our
argument was to show that the mind is not restricted to any part of the
body, but is equally in touch with the whole, producing its motion
according to the nature of the part which is under its influence. There are
cases, however, in which the mind even follows the bodily impulses, and
becomes, as it were, their servant; for often the bodily nature takes the
lead by introducing either the sense of that which gives pain or the desire
for that which gives pleasure, so that it may be said to furnish the first
beginnings, by producing in us the desire for food, or, generally, the
impulse towards some pleasant thing; while the mind, receiving such an
impulse, furnishes the body by its own intelligence with the proper means
towards the desired object. Such a condition, indeed, does not occur in
all, save in those of a somewhat slavish disposition, who bring the reason
into bondage to the impulses of their nature and pay servile homage to the
pleasures of sense by allowing them the alliance of their mind; but in the
case of more perfect men this does not happen; for the mind takes the lead,
and chooses the expedient course by reason and not by passion, while their
nature follows in the tracks of its leader.

   2. But since our argument discovered in our vital faculty three
different varieties--one which receives nourishment without perception,
another which at once receives nourishment and is capable of perception,
but is without the reasoning activity, and a third rational, perfect, and
co-extensive with the whole faculty--so that among these varieties the
advantage belongs to the intellectual,--let no one suppose on this account
that in the compound nature of man there are three souls welded together,
contemplated each in its own limits, so that one should think man's nature
to be a sort of conglomeration of several souls. The true and perfect soul
is naturally one, the intellectual and immaterial, which mingles with our
material nature by the agency of the senses; but all that is of material
nature, being subject to mutation and alteration, will, if it should
partake of the animating power, move by way of growth: if, on the contrary,
it should fall away from the vital energy, it will reduce its motion to
destruction.

   3. Thus, neither is there perception without material substance, nor
does the act of perception take place without the intellectual faculty.

XV. That the soul proper, in fact and name, is the rational soul, while the
others are called so equivocally; wherein also is this statement, that the
power of the mind extends throughout the whole body in fitting contact with
every part(3).

   1. Now, if some things in creation possess the nutritive faculty, and
others again are regulated by the perceptive faculty, while the former have
no share of perception nor the latter of the intellectual nature, and if
for this reason any one is inclined to the opinion of a plurality of souls,
such a man will be positing a variety of souls in a way not in accordance
with their distinguishing definition. For everything which we conceive
among existing things, if it be perfectly that which it is, is also
properly called by the name it bears: but of that which is not every
respect what it is called, the appellation also is vain. For instance:--if
one were to show us true bread, we say that he properly applies the name to
the subject: but if one were to show us instead that which had been made of
stone to resemble the natural bread, which had the same shape, and equal
size, and similarity of colour, so as in most points to be the same with
its prototype, but which yet lacks the power of being food, on this account
we say that the stone receives the name of "bread," not properly, but by a
misnomer, and all things which fall under the same description, which are
not absolutely what they are called, have their name from a misuse of
terms.

   2. Thus, as the soul finds its perfection in that which is intellectual
and rational, everything that is not so may indeed share the name of
"soul," but is not really soul, but a certain vital energy associated with
the appellation of "soul(4)." And for this reason also He Who gave laws on
every matter, gave the animal nature likewise, as not far removed from this
vegetative life(5), for the use of man, to be for those who partake of it
instead of herbs:--for He says, "Ye shall eat all kinds of flesh even as
the green herb(6);" for the perceptive energy seems to have but a slight
advantage over that which is nourished and grows without it. Let this teach
carnal men not to bind their intellect closely to the phenomena of sense,
but rather to busy themselves with their spiritual advantages, as the true
soul is found in these, while sense has equal power also among the brute
creation.

   3. The course of our argument, however, has diverged to another point:
for the subject of our speculation was not the fact that the energy of mind
is of more dignity among the attributes we conceive in man than the
material element of his being, but the fact that the mind is not confined
to any one part of us, but is equally in all and through all, neither
surrounding anything without, nor being enclosed within anything: for these
phrases are properly applied to casks or other bodies that are placed one
inside the other; but the union of the mental with the bodily presents a
connection unspeakable and inconceivable,--not being within it (for the
incorporeal is not enclosed in a body), nor yet surrounding it without (for
that which is incorporeal does not include(7) anything), but the mind
approaching our nature in some inexplicable and incomprehensible way, and
coming into contact with it, is to be regarded as both in it and around it,
neither implanted in it nor enfolded with it, but in a way which we cannot
speak or think, except so far as this, that while the nature prospers
according to its own order, the mind is also operative; but if any
misfortune befalls the former, the movement of the intellect halts
correspondingly.

XVI. A contemplation of the Divine utterance which said--"Let us make man
after our image and likeness"; wherein is examined what is the definition
of the image, and how the passible and mortal is like to the Blessed and
Impassible, and how in the image there are male and female, seeing these
are not in the Prototype(8).

   1. Let us now resume our consideration of the Divine word, "Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness(9)." How mean and how unworthy of the
majesty of man are the fancies of some heathen writers, who magnify
humanity, as they supposed, by their comparison of it to this world! for
they say that man is a little world, composed of the same elements with the
universe. Those who bestow on human nature such praise as this by a high-
sounding name, forget that they are dignifying man with the attributes of
the gnat and the mouse: for they too are composed of these four elements,--
because assuredly about the animated nature of every existing thing we
behold a part, greater or less, of those elements without which it is not
natural that any sensitive being should exist. What great thing is there,
then, in man's being accounted a representation and likeness of the world,-
-of the heaven that passes away, of the earth that changes, of all things
that they contain, which pass away with the departure of that which
compasses them round?

   2. In what then does the greatness of man consist, according to the
doctrine of the Church? Not in his likeness to the created world, but in
his being in the image of the nature of the Creator.

   3. What therefore, you will perhaps say, is the definition of the
image? How is the incorporeal likened to body? how is the temporal like the
eternal? that which is mutable by change like to the immutable? that which
is subject to passion and corruption to the impassible and incorruptible?
that which constantly dwells with evil, and grows up with it, to that which
is absolutely free from evil? there is a great difference between that
which is conceived in the archetype, and a thing which has been made in its
image: for the image is properly so called if it keeps its resemblance to
the prototype; but if the imitation be perverted from its subject, the
thing is something else, and no longer an image of the subject.

   4. How then is man, this mortal, passible, shortlived being, the image
of that nature which is immortal, pure, and everlasting? The true answer to
this question, indeed, perhaps only the very Truth knows: but this is what
we, tracing out the truth so far as we are capable by conjectures and
inferences, apprehend concerning the matter. Neither does the word of God
lie when it says that man was made in the image of God, nor is the pitiable
suffering of man's nature like to the blessedness of the impassible Life:
for if any one were to compare our nature with God, one of two things must
needs be allowed in order that the definition of the likeness may be
apprehended in both cases in the same terms,--either that the Deity is
passible, or that humanity is impassible: but if neither the Deity is
passible nor our nature free from passion, what other account remains
whereby we may say that the word of God speaks truly, which says that man
was made in the image of God?

   5. We must, then, take up once more the Holy Scripture itself, if we
may perhaps find some guidance in the question by means of what is written.
After saying, "Let us make man in our image," and for what purposes it was
said "Let us make him," it adds this saying:--"and God created man; in the
image of God created He him; male and female created He them(1)." We have
already said in what precedes, that this saying was uttered for the
destruction of heretical impiety, in order that being instructed that the
Only-begotten God made man in the image of God, we should in no wise
distinguish the Godhead of the Father and the Son, since Holy Scripture
gives to each equally the name of God,--to Him Who made man, and to Him in
Whose image he was made.

   6. However, let us pass by our argument upon this point: let us turn
our inquiry to the question before us,--how it is that while the Deity is
in bliss, and humanity is in misery, the latter is yet in Scripture called
"like" the former?

   7. We must, then, examine the words carefully: for we find, if we do
so, that that which was made "in the image" is one thing, and that which is
now manifested in wretchedness is another. "God created man," it says; "in
the image of God created He him(3)." There is an end of the creation of
that which was made "in the image": then it makes a resumption of the
account of creation, and says, "male and female created He them." I presume
that every one knows that this is a departure from the Prototype: for "in
Christ Jesus," as the apostle says, "there is neither male nor female(2)."
Yet the phrase declares that man is thus divided.

   8. Thus the creation of our nature is in a sense twofold: one made like
to God, one divided according to this distinction: for something like this
the passage darkly conveys by its arrangement, where it first says, "God
created man, in the image of God created He him(3)," and then, adding to
what has been said, "male and female created He them 3,"--a thing which is
alien from our conceptions of God.

   9. I think that by these words Holy Scripture conveys to us a great and
lofty doctrine; and the doctrine is this. While two natures--the Divine and
incorporeal nature, and the irrational life of brutes--are separated from
each other as extremes, human nature is the mean between them: for in the
compound nature of man we may behold a part of each of the natures I have
mentioned,--of the Divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does
not admit the distinction of male and female; of the irrational, our bodily
form and structure, divided into male and female: for each of these
elements is certainly to be found in all that partakes of human life. That
the intellectual element, however, precedes the other, we learn as from one
who gives in order an account of the making of man; and we learn also that
his community and kindred with the irrational is for man a provision for
reproduction. For he says first that "God created man in the image of God"
(showing by these words, as the Apostle says, that in such a being there is
no male or female): then he adds the peculiar attributes of human nature,
"male and female created He them(3)."

   10. What, then, do we learn from this? Let no one, I pray, be indignant
if I bring from far an argument to bear upon the present subject. God is in
His own nature all that which our mind can conceive of good;--rather,
transcending all good that we can conceive or comprehend. He creates man
for no other reason than that He is good; and being such, and having this
as His reason for entering upon the creation of our nature, He would not
exhibit the power of His goodness in an imperfect form, giving our nature
some one of the things at His disposal, and grudging it a share in another:
but the perfect form of goodness is here to be seen by His both bringing
man into being from nothing, and fully supplying him with all good gifts:
but since the list of individual good gifts is a long one, it is out of the
question to apprehend it numerically. The language of Scripture therefore
expresses it concisely by a comprehensive phrase, in saying that man was
made "in the image of God": for this is the same as to say that He made
human nature participant in all good; for if the Deity is the fulness of
good, and this is His image, then the image finds its resemblance to the
Archetype in being filled with all good.

   11. Thus there is in us the principle of all excellence, all virtue and
wisdom, and every higher thing that we conceive: but pre-eminent among all
is the fact that we are free from necessity, and not in bondage to any
natural power, but have decision in our own power as we please; for virtue
is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion: that which is the  result of
compulsion and force cannot be virtue. 12. Now as the image bears in all
points the semblance of the archetypal excellence, if it had not a
difference in some respect, being absolutely without divergence it would no
longer be a likeness, but will in that case manifestly be absolutely
identical with the Prototype. What difference then do we discern between
the Divine sad that which has been made like to the Divine? We find it in
the fact that the former is uncreate, while the latter has its being from
creation: and this distinction of property brings with it a train of other
properties; for it is very certainly acknowledged that the uncreated nature
is also immutable, and always remains the same, while the created nature
cannot exist without change; for its very passage from nonexistence to
existence is a certain motion and change of the non-existent transmuted by
the Divine purpose into being.

   13. As the Gospel calls the stamp upon the coin "the image of
Caesar(4)," whereby we learn that in that which was fashioned to resemble
Caesar there was resemblance as to outward look, but difference as to
material, so also in the present saying, when we consider the attributes
contemplated both in the Divine and human nature, in which the likeness
consists, to be in the place of the features, we find in what underlies
them the difference which we behold in the uncreated and in the created
nature.

   14. Now as the former always remains the same, while that which came
into being by creation had the beginning of its existence from change, and
has a kindred connection with the like mutation, for this reason He Who, as
the prophetical writing says, "knoweth all things before they be(5),"
following out, or rather perceiving beforehand by His power of
foreknowledge what, in a state of independence and freedom, is the tendency
of the motion of man's will,--as He saw, I say, what would be, He devised
for His image the distinction of male and female, which has no reference to
the Divine Archetype, but, as we have said, is an approximation to the less
rational nature.

   15. The cause, indeed, of this device, only those can know who were
eye-witnesses of the truth and ministers of the Word; but we, imagining the
truth, as far as we can, by means of conjectures and similitudes, do not
set forth that which occurs to our mind authoritatively, but will place it
in the form of a theoretical speculation before our kindly hearers.

   16. What is it then which we understand concerning these matters? In
saying that "God created man" the text indicates, by the indefinite
character of the term, all mankind; for was not Adam here named together
with the creation, as the history tells us in what follows(6)? yet the name
given to the man created is not the particular, but the general name: thus
we are led by the employment of the general name of our nature to some such
view as this--that in the Divine foreknowledge and power all humanity is
included in the first creation; for it is fitting for God not to regard any
of the things made by Him as indeterminate, but that each existing thing
should have some limit and measure prescribed by the wisdom of its Maker.

   17. Now just as any particular man is limited by his bodily dimensions,
and the peculiar size which is conjoined with the superficies of his body
is the measure of his separate existence, so I think that the entire
plenitude of humanity was included by the God of all, by His power of
foreknowledge, as it were in one body, and that this is what the text
teaches us which says, "God created man, in the image of God created He
him." For the image is not in part of our nature, nor is the grace in any
one of the things found in that nature, but this power extends equally to
all the race: and a sign of this is that mind is implanted alike in all:
for all have the power of understanding and deliberating, and of all else
whereby the Divine nature finds its image in that which was made according
to it: the man that was manifested at the first creation of the world, and
he that shall be after the consummation of all, are alike: they equally
bear in themselves the Divine image(7).

   18. For this reason the whole race was spoken of as one man, namely,
that to God's power nothing is either past or future, but even that which
we expect is comprehended, equally with what is at present existing, by the
all-sustaining energy. Our whole nature, then, extending from the first to
the last, is, so to say, one image of Him Who is; but the distinction of
kind in male and female was added to His work lash as I suppose, for the
reason which follows(8).

XVII. What we must answer to those who raise the question--"If procreation
is after sin, how would souls have came into being if the first of mankind
had remained sinless(9)?"

   1. It is better for us however, perhaps, rather to inquire, before
investigating this point, the solution of the question put forward by our
adversaries; for they say that before the sin there is no account of birth,
or of travail, or of the desire that tends to procreation, but when they
were banished from Paradise after their sin, and the woman was condemned by
the sentence of travail, Adam thus entered with his consort upon the
intercourse of married life, and then took place the beginning of
procreation. If, then, marriage did not exist in Paradise, nor travail, nor
birth, they say that it follows as a necessary conclusion that human souls
would not have existed in plurality had not the grace of immortality fallen
away to mortality, and marriage preserved our race by means of descendants,
introducing the offspring of the departing to take their place, so that in
a certain way the sin that entered into the world was for the life of man:
for the human race would have remained in the pair of the first-formed, had
not the fear of death impelled their nature to provide succession.

   2. Now here again the true answer, whatever it may be, can be clear to
those only who, like Paul, have been instructed in the mysteries of
Paradise; but our answer is as follows. When the Sadducees once argued
against the doctrine of the resurrection, and brought forward, to establish
their own opinion, that woman of many marriages, who had been wife to seven
brethren, and thereupon inquired whose wife she will be after the
resurrection, our Lord answered their argument so as not only to instruct
the Sadducees, but also to reveal to all that come after them the mystery
of the resurrection-life: "for in the resurrection," He says, "they neither
marry, nor are given in marriage neither can they die any more, for they
are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of
the resurrection(1)." Now the resurrection promises us nothing else than
the restoration of the fallen to their ancient state; for the grace we look
for is a certain return to the first life, bringing back again to Paradise
him who was cast out from it. If then the life of those restored is closely
related to that of the angels, it is clear that the life before the
transgression was a kind of angelic life, and hence also our return to the
ancient condition of our life is compared to the angels. Yet while, as has
been said, there is no marriage among them, the armies of the angels are in
countless myriads; for so Daniel declared in his visions: so, in the same
way, if there had not come upon us as the result of sin a change for the
worse, and removal from equality with the angels, neither should we have
needed marriage that we might multiply but whatever the mode of increase in
the angelic nature is (unspeakable and inconceivable by human conjectures,
except that it assuredly exists), it would have operated also in the case
of men, who were "made a little lower than the angels(2)," to increase
mankind to the measure determined by its Maker.

   3. But if any one finds a difficulty in an inquiry as to the manner of
the generation of souls, had man not needed the assistance of marriage, we
shall ask him in turn, what is the mode of the angelic existence, how they
exist in countless myriads, being one essence, and at the same time
numerically many; for we shall be giving a fit answer to one who raises the
question how man would have been without marriage, if we say, "as the
angels are without marriage;" for the fact that man was in a like condition
with them before the transgression is shown by the restoration to that
state.

   4. Now that we have thus cleared up these matters, let us return to our
former point,--how it was that after the making of His image God contrived
for His work the distinction of male and female. I say that the preliminary
speculation we have completed is of service for determining this question;
for He Who brought all things into being and fashioned Man as a whole by
His own will to the Divine image, did not wait to see the number of souls
made up to its proper fulness by the gradual additions of those coming
after; but while looking upon the nature of man in its entirety and fulness
by the exercise of His foreknowledge, and bestowing upon it a lot exalted
and equal to the angels, since He saw beforehand by His all-seeing power
the failure of their will to keep a direct course to what is good, and its
consequent declension from the angelic life, in order that the multitude of
human souls might not be cut short by its fall from that mode by which the
angels were increased and multiplied,--for this reason, I say, He formed
for our nature that contrivance for increase which befits those who had
fallen into sin, implanting in mankind, instead of the angelic majesty of
nature, that animal and irrational mode by which they now succeed one
another.

   5. Hence also, it seems to me, the great David pitying the misery of
man mourns over his nature with such words as these, that, "man being in
honour knew it not" (meaning by "honour" the equality with the angels),
therefore, he says, "he is compared to the beasts that have no
understanding, and made like unto them(3)." For he truly was made like the
beasts, who received in his nature the present mode of transient
generation, on account of his inclination to material things.

XVIII. That our irrational passions have their rise from kindred with
irrational nature.(4)

   1. For I think that from this beginning all our passions issue as from
a spring, and pour their flood over man's life; and an evidence of my words
is the kinship of passions which appears alike in ourselves and in the
brutes; for it is not allowable to ascribe the first beginnings of our
constitutional liability to passion to that human nature which was
fashioned in the Divine likeness; but as brute life first entered into the
world, and man, for the reason already mentioned, took something of their
nature (I mean the mode of generation), he accordingly took at the same
time a share of the other attributes contemplated in that nature; for the
likeness of man to God is not found in anger, nor is pleasure a mark of the
superior nature; cowardice also, and boldness, and the desire of gain, and
the dislike of loss, and all the like, are far removed from that stamp
which indicates Divinity.

   2. These attributes, then, human nature took to itself from the side of
the brutes; for those qualities with which brute life was armed for self-
preservation, when transferred to human life, became passions; for the
carnivorous animals are preserved by their anger, and those which breed
largely by their love of pleasure cowardice preserves the weak, fear that
which is easily taken by more powerful animals, and greediness those of
great bulk; and to miss anything that tends to pleasure is for the brutes a
matter of pain. All these and the like affections entered man's composition
by reason of the animal mode of generation.

   3. I may be allowed to describe the human image by comparison with some
wonderful piece of modelling. For, as one may see in models those carved(5)
shapes which the artificers of such things contrive for the wonder of
beholders, tracing out upon a single head two forms of faces; so man seems
to me to bear a double likeness to opposite things--being moulded in the
Divine element of his mind to the Divine beauty, but bearing, in the
passionate impulses that arise in him, a likeness to the brute nature;
while often even his reason is rendered brutish, and obscures the better
element by the worse through its inclination and disposition towards what
is irrational; for whenever a man drags down his mental energy to these
affections, and forces his reason to become the servant of his passions,
there takes place a sort of conversion of the good stamp in him into the
irrational image, his whole nature being traced anew after that design, as
his reason, so to say, cultivates the beginnings of his passions, and
gradually multiplies them; for once it lends its co-operation to passion,
it produces a plenteous and abundant crop of evils.

   4. Thus our love of pleasure took its beginning from our being made
like to the irrational creation, and was increased by the transgressions of
men, becoming the parent of so many varieties of sins arising from pleasure
as we cannot find among the irrational animals. Thus the rising of anger in
us is indeed akin to the impulse of the brutes; but it grows by the
alliance of thought: for thence come malignity, envy, deceit, conspiracy,
hypocrisy; all these are the result of the evil husbandry of the mind; for
if the passion were divested of the aid it receives from thought, the anger
that is left behind is short-lived and not sustained, like a bubble,
perishing straightway as soon as it comes into being. Thus the greediness
of swine introduces covetousness, and the high spirit of the horse becomes
the origin of pride; and all the particular forms that proceed from the
want of reason in brute nature become vice by the evil use of the mind.

   5. So, likewise, on the contrary, if reason instead assumes sway over
such emotions, each of them is transmuted to a form of virtue; for anger
produces courage, terror caution, fear obedience, hatred aversion from
vice, the power of love the desire for what is truly beautiful; high spirit
in our character raises our thought above the passions, and keeps it from
bondage to what is base; yea, the great Apostle, even, praises such a form
of mental elevation when he bids us constantly to "think those things that
are above(6);"  and so we find that every such motion, when elevated by
loftiness of mind, is conformed to the beauty of the Divine image.

   6. But the other impulse is greater, as the tendency of sin is heavy
and downward; for the ruling element of our soul is more inclined to be
dragged downwards by the weight of the irrational nature than is the heavy
and earthy element to be exalted by the loftiness of the intellect; hence
the misery that encompasses us often causes the Divine gift to be
forgotten, and spreads the passions of the flesh, like some ugly mask, over
the beauty of the image.

   7. Those, therefore, are in some sense excusable, who do not admit,
when they look upon such cases, that the Divine form is there; yet we may
behold the Divine image in men by the medium of those who have ordered
their lives aright. For if the man who is subject to passion, and carnal,
makes it incredible that man was adorned, as it were, with Divine beauty,
surely the man of lofty virtue and pure from pollution will confirm you in
the better conception of human nature.

   8. For instance (for it is better to make our argument clear by an
illustration), one of those noted for wickedness--some Jechoniah, say, or
some other of evil memory--has obliterated the beauty of his nature by the
pollution of wickedness; yet in Moses and in men like him the form of the
image was kept pure. Now where the beauty of the form has not been
obscured, there is made plain the faithfulness of the saying that man is an
image of God.

   9. It may be, however, that some one feels shame at the fact that our
life, like that of the brutes, is sustained by food, and for this reason
deems man unworthy of being supposed to have been framed in the image of
God; but he may expect that freedom from this function will one day be
bestowed upon our nature in the life we look for; for, as the Apostle says,
"the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink(7);" and the Lord declared that
"man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God(8)." Further, as the resurrection holds forth to us a
life equal with the angels, and with the angels there is no food, there is
sufficient ground for believing that man, who will live in like fashion
with the angels, will be released from such a function.

XIX. To those who say that the enjoyment of the good things we look for
will again consist in meat and drink, because it is written that by these
means man at first lived in Paradise(9).

   1. But some one perhaps will say that man will not be returning to the
same form of life, if as it seems, we formerly existed by eating, and shall
hereafter be free from that function. I, however, when I hear the Holy
Scripture, do not understand only bodily meat, or the pleasure of the
flesh; but I recognize another kind of food also, having a certain analogy
to that of the body, the enjoyment of which extends to the soul alone: "Eat
of my bread(1)," is the bidding of Wisdom to the hungry; and the Lord
declares those blessed who hunger for such food as this, and says, "If any
man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink": and "drink ye joy(2)," is the
great Isaiah's charge to those who are able to hear his sublimity. There is
a prophetic threatening also against those worthy of vengeance, that they
shall be punished with famine; but the "famine" is not a lack of bread and
water, but a failure of the word:-"not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for
water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord."

   2. We ought, then, to conceive that the fruit in Eden was something
worthy of God's planting(and Eden is interpreted to mean "delight"), and
not to doubt that man was hereby nourished: nor should we at all conceive,
concerning the mode of life in Paradise, this transitory and perishable
nutriment: "of every tree of the garden," He says, "thou mayest freely
eat(4)."

   3. Who will give to him that has a healthful hunger that tree that is
in Paradise, which includes all good, which is named "every tree," in which
this passage bestows on man the right to share? for in the universal and
transcendent saying every form of good is in harmony with itself, and the
whole is one. And who will keep me back from that tasting of the tree which
is of mixed and doubtful kind? for surely it is clear to all who are at all
keen-sighted what that "every" tree is whose fruit is life, and what again
that mixed tree is whose end is death: for He Who presents ungrudgingly the
enjoyment of" every" tree, surely by some reason and forethought keeps man
from participation in those which are of doubtful kind.

   4. It seems to me that I may take the great David and the wise Solomon
as my instructors in the interpretation of this text: for both understand
the grace of the permitted delight to be one,--that very actual Good, which
in truth is "every" good;--David, when he says, "Delight thou in the
Lords," and Solomon, when he names Wisdom herself (which is the Lord) "a
tree of life(6)."

   5. Thus the "every" tree of which the passage gives food to him who was
made in the likeness of God, is the same with the tree of life; anti there
is opposed to this tree another tree, the food given by which is the
knowledge of good and evil:--not that it bears in turn as fruit each of
these things of opposite significance, but that it produces a fruit blended
and mixed with opposite qualities, the eating of which the Prince of Life
forbids, and the serpent counsels, that he may prepare an entrance for
death: and he obtained credence for his counsel, covering over the fruit
with a fair appearance and the show of pleasure, that it might be pleasant
to the eyes and stimulate the desire to taste.

XX. What was the life in Paradise, and what was the forbidden tree(7)?

   1. What then is that which includes the knowledge of good and evil
blended together, and is decked with the pleasures of sense? I think I am
not aiming wide of the mark in employing, as a starting-point for my
speculation, the sense of "knowable(8)." It is not, I think, "science"
which the Scripture here means by "knowledge"; but I find a certain
distinction, according to Scriptural use, between "knowledge "and
"discernment": for to "discern" skilfully the good from the evil, the
Apostle says is a mark of a more perfect condition and of "exercised
senses(9)," for which reason also he bids us "prove all things(1)," and
says that "discernment "belongs to the spiritual man(2): but "knowledge" is
not always to be understood of skill and acquaintance with anything, but of
the disposition towards what is agreeable,--as "the Lord knoweth them that
are His(3)"; and He says to Moses, "I knew thee above all(4)"; while of
those condemned in their wickedness He Who knows all things says, "I never
knew you(5)."

   2. The tree, then, from which comes this fruit of mixed knowledge, is
among those things which are forbidden; and that fruit is combined of
opposite qualities, which has the serpent to commend it, it may be for this
reason, that the evil is not exposed in its nakedness, itself appearing in
its own proper nature--for wickedness would surely fail of its effect were
it not decked with some fair colour to entice to the desire of it him whom
it deceives--but now the nature of evil is in a manner mixed, keeping
destruction like some snare concealed in its depths, and displaying some
phantom of good in the deceitfulness of its exterior. The beauty of the
substance seems good to those who love money: yet "the love of money is a
root of all evil(6)": and who would plunge into the unsavoury mud of
wantonness, were it not that he whom this bait hurries into passion thinks
pleasure a thing fair and acceptable? so, too, the other sins keep their
destruction hidden, and seem at first sight acceptable, and some deceit
makes them earnestly sought after by unwary men instead of what is good.

   3. Now since the majority of men judge the good to lie in that which
gratifies the senses, and there is a certain identity of name between that
which is, and that which appears to be "good,"--for this reason that desire
which arises towards what is evil, as though towards good, is called by
Scripture "the knowledge of good and evil;" "knowledge," as we have said,
expressing a certain mixed disposition. It speaks of the fruit of the
forbidden tree not as a thing absolutely evil (because it is decked with
good), nor as a thing purely good (because evil is latent in it), but as
compounded of both, and declares that the tasting of it brings to death
those who touch it; almost proclaiming aloud the doctrine that the very
actual good is in its nature simple and uniform, alien from all duplicity
or conjunction with its opposite, while evil is many-coloured and fairly
adorned, being esteemed to be one thing and revealed by experience as
another, the knowledge of which (that is, its reception by experience) is
the beginning and antecedent of death and destruction.

   4. It was because he saw this that the serpent points out the evil
fruit of sin, not showing the evil manifestly in its own nature (for man
would not have been deceived by manifest evil), but giving to what the
woman beheld the glamour of a certain beauty, and conjuring into its taste
the spell of a sensual pleasure, he appeared to her to speak convincingly:
"and the woman saw," it says, "that the tree was good for food, and that it
was pleasant to the eyes to behold, and fair to see; and she took of the
fruit thereof and did eat(7)," and that eating became the mother of death
to men. This, then, is that fruit-bearing of mixed character, where the
passage clearly expresses the sense in which the tree was called "capable
of the knowledge of good and evil," because, like the evil nature of
poisons that are prepared with honey, it appears to be good in so far as it
affects the senses with sweetness: but in so far as it destroys him who
touches it, it is the worst of all evil. Thus when the evil poison worked
its effect against man's life, then man, that noble thing and name, the
image of God's nature, was made, as the prophet says, "like unto
vanity(8)."

   5. The image, therefore, properly belongs to the better part of our
attributes; but all in our life that is painful and miserable is far
removed from the likeness to the Divine.

XXI. That the resurrection is looked for as a consequence, not so much from
the declaration of Scripture as from the very necessity of things(9).

   1. Wickedness, however, is not so strong as to prevail over the power
of good; nor is the folly of our nature more powerful and more abiding than
the wisdom of God: for it is impossible that that which is always mutable
and variable should be more firm and more abiding than that which always
remains the same and is firmly fixed in goodness: but it is absolutely
certain that the Divine counsel possesses immutability, while the
changeableness of our nature does not remain settled even in evil.

   2. Now that which is always in motion, if its progress be to good, will
never cease moving onwards to what lies before it, by reason of the
infinity of the course to be traversed:--for it will not find any limit of
its object such that when it has apprehended it, it will at last cease its
motion: but if its bias be in the opposite direction, when it has finished
the course of wickedness and reached the extreme limit of evil, then that
which is ever moving, finding no  halting point for its impulse natural to
itself when it has run through the lengths that can be run in wickedness,
of necessity turns its motion towards good: for as evil does not extend to
infinity, but is comprehended by necessary limits, it would appear that
good once more follows in succession upon the limit of evil and thus, as we
have said, the ever-moving character of our nature comes to run its course
at the last once more back towards good, being taught the lesson of
prudence by the memory of its former misfortunes, to the end that it may
never again be in like case.

   3. Our course, then, will once more lie in what is good, by reason of
the fact that the nature of evil is bounded by necessary limits. For just
as those skilled in astronomy tell us that the whole universe is full of
light, and that darkness is made to cast its shadow by the interposition of
the body formed by the earth; and that this darkness is shut off from the
rays of the sun, in the shape of a cone, according to the figure of the
sphere-shaped body, and behind it; while the sun, exceeding the earth by a
size many times as great as its own, enfolding it round about on all sides
with its rays, unites at the limit of the cone the concurrent streams of
light; so that if (to suppose the case) any one had the power of passing
beyond the measure to which the shadow extends, he would certainly find
himself in light unbroken by darkness ;--even so I think that we ought to
understand about ourselves, that on passing the limit of wickedness we
shall again have our conversation in light, as the nature of good, when
compared with the measure of wickedness, is incalculably superabundant.

   4. Paradise therefore will be restored, that tree will be restored
which is in truth the tree of life;--there will be restored the grace of
the image, and the dignity of rule. It does not seem to me that our hope is
one for those things which are now subjected by God to man for the
necessary uses of life, but one for another kingdom, of a description that
belongs to unspeakable mysteries.

XXII. To those who say, "If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good,
how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped far in some
periods of time? "(1)

   1. Let us give our attention, however, to the next point of our
discussion. It may be that some one, giving his thought wings to soar
towards the sweetness of our hope, deems it a burden and a loss that we are
not more speedily placed in that good state which is above man's sense and
knowledge, and is dissatisfied with the extension of the time that
intervenes between him and the object of his desire. Let him cease to vex
himself like a child that is discontented at the brief delay of something
that gives him pleasure; for since all things are governed by reason and
wisdom, we must by no means suppose that anything that happens is done
without reason itself and the wisdom that is therein.

   2. You will say then, What is this reason, in accordance with which the
change of our painful life to that which we desire does not take place at
once, but this heavy and corporeal existence of ours waits, extended to
some determinate time, for the term of the consummation of all things, that
then man's life may be set free as it were from the reins, and revert once
more, released and free, to the life of blessedness and impassibility?

   3. Well, whether our answer is near the truth of the matter, the Truth
Itself may clearly know; but at all events what occurs to our intelligence
is as follows. I take up then once more in my argument our first text :--
God says, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God
created man, in the image of God created He him(2)." Accordingly, the Image
of God, which we behold in universal humanity, had its consummation
then(3); but Adam as yet was not; for the thing formed from the earth is
called Adam, by etymological nomenclature, as those tell us who are
acquainted with the Hebrew tongue--wherefore also the apostle, who was
specially learned in his native tongue, the tongue of the Israelites, calls
the man "of the earth(4)" choi..ko's, as though translating the name Adam
into the Greek word.

   4. Man, then, was made in the image of God; that is, the universal
nature, the thing like God; not part of the whole, but all the fulness of
the nature together was so made by omnipotent wisdom. He saw, Who holds all
limits in His grasp, as the Scripture tells us which says, "in His hand are
all the corners of the earth(5),"He saw, "Who knoweth all things" even
"before they be(6)," comprehending them in His knowledge, how great in
number humanity will be in the sum of its individuals. But as He perceived
in our created nature the bias towards evil, and the fact that after its
voluntary fall from equality with the angels it would acquire a fellowship
with the lower nature, He mingled, for this reason, with His own image, an
element of the irrational (for the distinction of male and female does not
exist in the Divine and blessed nature);--transferring, I say, to man the
special attribute of the irrational formation, He bestowed increase upon
our race not according to the lofty character of our creation; for it was
not when He made that which was in His own image that He bestowed on man
the power of increasing and multiplying; but when He divided it by sexual
distinctions, then He said, "Increase and multiply, and replenish the
earth(7)." For this belongs not to the Divine, but to the irrational
element, as the history indicates when it narrates that these words were
first spoken by God in the case of the irrational creatures; since we may
be sure that, if He had bestowed on man, before imprinting on our nature
the distinction of male and female, the power for increase conveyed by this
utterance, we should not have needed this form of generation by which the
brutes are generated.

   5. Now seeing that the full number of men pre-conceived by the
operation of foreknowledge will come into life by means of this animal
generation, God, Who governs all things in a certain order and sequence,--
since the inclination of our nature to what was beneath it (which He Who
beholds the future equally with the present saw before it existed) made
some such form of generation absolutely necessary for mankind,--therefore
also foreknew the time coextensive with the creation of men, so that the
extent of time should be adapted for the entrances of the pre-determined
souls, and that the flux and motion of time should halt at the moment when
humanity is no longer produced by means of it; and that when the generation
of men is completed, time should cease together with its completion, and
then should take place the restitution of all things, and with the World-
Reformation humanity also should be changed from the corruptible and
earthly to the impassible and eternal.

   6. And this it seems to me the Divine apostle considered when he
declared in his epistle to the Corinthians the sudden stoppage of time, and
the change of the things that are now moving on back to the opposite end
where he says, "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but
we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump(8)." For when, as I suppose, the full complement of human nature
has reached the limit of the pre-determined measure, because there is no
longer anything to be made up in the way of increase to the number of
souls, he teaches us that the change in existing things will take place in
an instant of time, giving to that limit of time which has no parts or
extension the names of "a moment," and "the twinkling of an eye"; so that
it will no more be possible for one who reaches the verge of time (which is
the last and extreme point, from the fact that nothing is lacking to the
attainment of its extremity) to obtain by death this change which takes
place at a fixed period, but only when the trumpet of the resurrection
sounds, which awakens the dead, and transforms those who are left in life,
after the likeness of those who have undergone the resurrection change, at
once to incorruptibility; so that the weight of the flesh is no longer
heavy, nor does its burden hold them down to earth, but they rise aloft
through the air--for, "we shall be caught up," he tells us, "in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord(9)."

   7. Let him therefore wait for that time which is necessarily made co-
extensive with the development of humanity. For even Abraham and the
patriarchs, while they had the desire to see the promised good things, and
ceased not to seek the heavenly country, as the apostle says, are yet even
now in the condition of hoping for that grace, "God having provided some
better thing for us," according to the words of Paul, "that they without us
should not be made perfect(1)." If they, then, bear the delay who by faith
only and by hope saw the good things "afar off" and "embraced them(2)," as
the apostle bears witness, placing their certainty of the enjoyment of the
things for which they hoped in the fact that they "judged Him faithful Who
has promised(3)," what ought most of us to do, who have not, it may be, a
hold upon the better hope from the character of our lives? Even the
prophet's soul fainted with desire, and in his psalm he confesses this
passionate love, saying that his "soul hath a desire and longing to be in
the courts of the Lord(4)," even if he must needs be rejected(5) to a place
amongst the lowest, as it is a greater and more desirable thing to be last
there than to be first among the ungodly tents of this life; nevertheless
he was patient of the delay, deeming, indeed, the life there blessed, and
accounting a brief participation in it more desirable than "thousands" of
time--for he says, "one day in Thy courts is better than thousands(6) "--
yet he did not repine at the necessary dispensation concerning existing
things, and thought it sufficient bliss for man to have those good things
even by way of hope; wherefore he says at the end of the Psalm, "O Lord of
hosts, blessed is the man that hopeth in Thee(7)."

   8. Neither, then, should we be troubled at the brief delay of what we
hope for, but give diligence that we may not be cast out from the object of
our hopes; for just as though, if one were to tell some inexperienced
person beforehand, "the gathering of the crops will take place in the
season of summer, and the stores will be filled, and the table abundantly
supplied with food at the time of plenty," it would be a foolish man who
should seek to hurry on the coming of the fruit-time, when he ought to be
sowing seeds and preparing the crops for himself by diligent care; for the
fruit-time will surely come, whether he wishes or not, at the appointed
time; and it will be looked on differently by him who has secured for
himself beforehand abundance of crops, and by him who is found by the
fruit-time destitute of all preparation. Even so I think it is one's duty,
as the proclamation is clearly made to all that the time of change will
come, not to trouble himself about times (for He said that "it is not for
us to know the times and the seasons(8)"), nor to pursue calculations by
which he will be sure to sap the hope of the resurrection in the soul; but
to make his confidence in the things expected as a prop to lean on, and to
purchase for himself, by good conversation, the grace that is to come.

XXIII. That he who confesses the beginning of the world's existence must
necessarily also agree as to its end(9).

   But if some one, beholding the present course of the world, by which
intervals of time are marked, going on in a certain order, should say that
it is not possible that the predicted stoppage of these moving things
should take place, such a man clearly also does not believe that in the
beginning the heaven and the earth were made by God; for he who admits a
beginning, of motion surely does not doubt as to its also having an end;
and he who does not allow its end, does not admit its beginning either; but
as it is by believing that "we understand that the worlds were framed by
the word of God," as the apostle says, "so that things which are seen were
not made of things which do appear(1)," we must use the same faith as to
the word of God when He foretells the necessary stoppage of existing
things.

   2. The question of the "how" must, however, be put beyond the reach of
our meddling; for even in the case mentioned it was "by faith" that we
admitted that the thing seen was framed from things not yet apparent,
omitting the search into things beyond our reach. And yet our reason
suggests difficulties on many points, offering no small occasions for doubt
as to the things which we believe.

   3. For in that case too, argumentative men might by plausible reasoning
upset our faith, so that we should not think that statement true which Holy
Scripture delivers concerning the material creation, when it asserts that
all existing things have their beginning of being from God. For those who
abide by the contrary view maintain that matter is co-eternal with God, and
employ in support of their own doctrine some such arguments as these. If
God is in His nature simple and immaterial, without quantity(2), or size,
or combination, and removed from the idea of circumscription by way of
figure, while all matter is apprehended in extension measured by intervals,
and does not escape the apprehension of our senses, but becomes known to us
in colour, and figure, and bulk, and size, and resistance, and the other
attributes belonging to it, none of which it is possible to conceive in the
Divine nature,--what method is there for the production of matter from the
immaterial, or of the nature that has dimensions from that which is
unextended? for if these things are believed to have their existence from
that source, they clearly come into existence after being in Him in some
mysterious way; but if material existence was in Him, how can He be
immaterial while including matter in Himself? and similarly with all the
other marks by which the material nature is differentiated; if quantity
exists in God, how is God without quantity? if the compound nature exists
in Him, how is He simple, without parts and without combination? so that
the argument forces us to think either that He is material, because matter
has its existence from Him as a source; or, if one avoids this, it is
necessary to suppose that matter was imported by Him ab extra for the
making of the universe.

   4. If, then, it was external to God, something else surely existed
besides God, conceived, in respect of eternity, together with Him Who
exists ungenerately; so that the argument supposes two eternal and
unbegotten existences, having their being concurrently with each other --
that of Him Who operates as an artificer, and that of the thing which
admits this skilled operation; and if any one under pressure of this
argument should assume a material substratum for the Creator of all things,
what a support will the Manichaean find for his special doctrine, who
opposes by virtue of ungenerateness a material existence to a Good Being.
Yet we do believe that all things are of God, as we hear the Scripture say
so; and as to the question how they were in God, a question beyond our
reason, we do not seek to pry into it, believing that all things are within
the capacity of God's power--both to give existence to what is not, and to
implant qualities at His pleasure in what is.

   5. Consequently, as we suppose the power of the Divine will to be a
sufficient cause to the things that are, for their coming into existence
out of nothing, so too we shall not repose our belief on anything beyond
probability in referring the World-Reformation to the same power. Moreover,
it might perhaps be possible, by some skill in the use of words, to
persuade those who raise frivolous objections on the subject of matter not
to think that they can make an unanswerable attack on our statement.

XXIV. An argument against those who say that matter is co-eternal with
God(3).

   1. For after all that opinion on the subject of matter does not turn
out to be beyond what appears consistent, which declares that it has its
existence from Him Who is intelligible and immaterial. For we shall find
all matter to be composed of certain qualities, of which if it is divested
it can, in itself, be by no means grasped by idea. Moreover in idea each
kind of quality is separated from the substratum; but idea is an
intellectual and not a corporeal method of examination. If, for instance,
some animal or tree is presented to our notice, or any other of the things
that have material existence we perceive in our mental discussion of it
many things concerning the substratum, the idea of each of which is clearly
distinguished from the object we contemplate: for the idea of colour is
one, of weight another; so again that of quantity and of such and such a
peculiar quality of touch: for "softness," and "two cubits long," and the
rest of the attributes we spoke of, are not connected in idea either with
one another or with the body: each of them has conceived concerning it its
own explanatory definition according to its being, having nothing in common
with any other of the qualities that are contemplated in the substratum.

   2.(4) If, then, colour is a thing intelligible, and resistance also is
intelligible, and so with quantity and the rest of the like properties,
while if each of these should be withdrawn from the substratum, the whole
idea of the body is dissolved; it would seem to follow that we may suppose
the concurrence of those things, the absence of which we found to be a
cause of the dissolution of the body, to produce the material nature: for
as that is not a body which has not colour, and figure, and resistance, and
extension, and weight, and the other properties, while each of these in its
proper existence is found to be not the body but something else besides the
body, so, conversely, whenever the specified attributes concur they produce
bodily existence. Yet if the perception of these properties is a matter of
intellect, and the Divinity is also intellectual in nature, there is no
incongruity in supposing that these intellectual occasions for the genesis
of bodies have their existence from the incorporeal nature, the
intellectual nature on the one hand giving being to the intellectual
potentialities, and the mutual concurrence of these bringing to its genesis
the material nature.

   3. Let this discussion, however, be by way of digression: we must
direct our discourse once more to the faith by which we accept the
statement that the universe took being from nothing, and do not doubt, when
we are taught by Scripture, that it will again be transformed into some
other state.

XXV. How one even of those who are without may be brought to believe the
Scripture when teaching of the resurrection(5).

   1. Some one, perhaps, having regard to the dissolution of bodies, and
judging the Deity by the measure of his own power, asserts that the idea of
the resurrection is impossible, saying that it cannot be that both those
things which are now in motion should become stationary, and those things
which are now without motion should rise again.

   2. Let such an one, however, take as the first and greatest evidence of
the truth touching the resurrection the credibility of the herald who
proclaims it. Now the faith of what is said derives its certainty from the
result of the other predictions: for as the Divine Scripture delivers
statements many and various, it is possible by examining how the rest of
the utterances stand in the matter of falsehood and truth to survey also,
in the light of them, the doctrine concerning the resurrection. For if in
the other matters the statements are found to be false and to have failed
of true fulfilment, neither is this out of the region of falsehood; but if
all the others have experience to vouch for their truth, it would seem
logical to esteem as true on their account, the prediction concerning the
resurrection also. Let us therefore recall one or two of the predictions
that have been made and compare the result with what was foretold, so that
we may know by means of them whether the idea has a truthful aspect.

   3. Who knows not how the people of Israel flourished of old, raised up
against all the powers of the world; what were the palaces in the city of
Jerusalem, what the walls, the towers, the majestic structure of the
Temple? things that seemed worthy of admiration even to the disciples of
the Lord, so that they asked the Lord to take notice of them, in their
disposition to marvel, as the Gospel history shows us, saying, "What works,
and what buildings(6)!" But He indicates to those who wondered at its
present state the future desolation of the place and the disappearance of
that beauty, saying that after a little while nothing of what they saw
should be left. And, again, at the time of His Passion, the women followed,
bewailing the unjust sentence against Him,--for they could not yet see into
the dispensation of what was being done:--but He bids them be silent as to
what is befalling Him, for it does not demand their tears, but to reserve
their wailing and lamentation for the true time for tears, when the city
should be compassed by besiegers, and their sufferings reach so great a
strait that they should deem him happy who had not been born: and herein He
foretold also the horrid deed of her who devoured her child, when He said
that in those days the womb should be accounted blest that never bare(7).
Where then are those palaces? where is the Temple? where are the walls?
where are the defences of the towers? where is the power of the Israelites?
were not they scattered in different quarters over almost the whole world?
and in their overthrow the palaces also were brought to ruin.

   4. Now it seems to me that the Lord foretold these things and others
like them not for the sake of the matters themselves--for what great
advantage to the hearers, at any rate, was the prediction of what was about
to happen? they would have known by experience, even if they had not
previously learnt what would come;--but in order that by these means faith
on their part might follow concerning more important matters: for the
testimony of facts in the former cases is also a proof of truth in the
latter.

   5. For just as though, if a husbandman were explaining the virtue of
seeds, it were to happen that some person inexperienced in husbandry should
disbelieve him, it would be sufficient as proof of his statement for the
agriculturist to show him the virtue existing in one seed of those in the
bushel and make it a pledge of the rest--for he who should see the single
grain of wheat or barley, or whatever might chance to be the contents of
the bushel, grow into an ear after being cast into the ground, would by the
means of the one cease also to disbelieve concerning the others--so the
truthfulness which confessedly belongs to the other statements seems to me
to be sufficient also for evidence of the mystery of the resurrection.

   6. Still more, however, is this the case with the experience of actual
resurrection which we have learnt not so much by words as by actual facts:
for as the marvel of resurrection was great and passing belief, He begins
gradually by inferior instances of His miraculous power, and accustoms our
faith, as it were, for the reception of the greater.

   7. For as a mother who nurses her babe with due care for a time
supplies milk by her breast to its mouth while still tender and soft; and
when it begins to grow and to have teeth she gives it bread, not hard or
such as it cannot chew, so that the tender and unpractised gums may not be
chafed by rough food; but softening it with her own teeth, she makes it
suitable and convenient for the powers of the eater; and then as its power
increases by growth she gradually leads on the babe, accustomed to tender
food, to more solid nourishment; so the Lord, nourishing and fostering with
miracles the weakness of the human mind, like some babe not fully grown,
makes first of all a  prelude of the power of the resurrection in the case
of a desperate disease, which prelude, though it was great in its
achievement, yet was not such a thing that the statement of it would be
disbelieved: for by "rebuking the fever." which was fiercely consuming
Simon's wife's mother, He produced so great a removal of the evil as to
enable her who was already expected to be near death, to "minister(8)" to
those present.

   8. Next He makes a slight addition to the power, and when the
nobleman's son lies in acknowledged danger of death (for so the history
tells us, that he was about to die, as his father cried, "come down, ere my
child die(9)"), He again brings about the resurrection of one who was
believed about to die; accomplishing the miracle with a greater act of
power in that He did not even approach the place, but sent life from afar
off by the force of His command.

   9. Once more in what follows He ascends to higher wonders. For having
set out on His way to the ruler of the synagogue's daughter, he voluntarily
made a halt in His way, while making public the secret cure of the woman
with an issue of blood, that in this time death might overcome the sick.
When, then, the soul had just been parted from the body, and those who were
wailing over the sorrow were making a tumult with their mournful cries, He
raises the damsel to life again, as if from sleep, by His word of command,
leading on human weakness, by a sort of path and sequence, to greater
things.

   10. Still in addition to these acts He exceeds them in wonder, and by a
more exalted act of power prepares for men the way of faith in the
resurrection. The Scripture tells us of a city called Nain in Judaea: a
widow there had an only child, no longer a child in the sense of being
among boys, but already passing from childhood to man's estate: the
narrative calls him "a young man." The story conveys much in few words: the
very recital is a real lamentation: the dead man's mother, it says, "was a
widow." See you the weight of her misfortune, how the text briefly sets out
the tragedy of her suffering? for what does the phrase mean? that she had
no more hope of bearing sons, to cure the loss she had just sustained in
him who had departed; for the woman was a widow: she had not in her power
to look to another instead of to him who was gone; for he was her only
child; and how great a grief is here expressed any one may easily see who
is not an utter stranger to natural feeling. Him alone she had known in
travail him alone she had nursed at her breast; he alone made her table
cheerful, he alone was the cause of brightness in her home, in play, in
work, in learning, in gaiety, at processions, at sports, at gatherings of
youth; he alone was all that is sweet and precious in a mother's eyes. Now
at the age of marriage, he was the stock of her race, the shoot of its
succession, the staff of her old age. Moreover, even the additional detail
of his time of life is another lament: for he who speaks of him as "a young
man" tells of the flower of his faded beauty, speaks of him as just
covering his face with down, not yet with a full thick beard, but still
bright with the beauty of his cheeks. What then, think you, were his
mother's sorrows for him? how would her heart be consumed as it were with a
flame; how bitterly would she prolong her lament over him, embracing the
corpse as it lay before her, lengthening out her mourning for him as far as
possible, so as not to hasten the funeral of the dead, but to have her fill
of sorrow! Nor does the narrative pass this by: for Jesus "when He saw
her," it says, "had compassion"; "and He came and touched the bier; and
they that bare him stood still;" and He said to the dead, "Young man, I say
unto thee, arise(1)" "and He delivered him to his mother alive. Observe
that no short time had intervened since the dead man had entered upon that
state, he was all but laid in the tomb; the miracle wrought by the Lord is
greater, though the command is the same.

   11. His miraculous power proceeds to a still more exalted act, that its
display may more closely approach that miracle of the resurrection which
men doubt. One of the Lord's companions and friends is ill (Lazarus is the
sick man's name); and the Lord deprecates any visiting of His friend,
though far away from the sick man, that in the absence of the Life, death
might find room and power to do his own work by the agency of disease. The
Lord informs His disciples in Galilee of what has befallen Lazarus, and
also of his own setting out to him to raise him up when laid low. They,
however, were exceedingly afraid on account of the fury of the Jews,
thinking it a difficult and dangerous matter to turn again towards Judaea,
in the midst of those who sought to slay Him: and thus, lingering and
delaying, they return slowly from Galilee: but they do return, for His
command prevailed, and the disciples were led by the Lord to be initiated
at Bethany in the preliminary mysteries of the general resurrection. Four
days had already passed since the event; all due rites had been performed
for the departed; the body was hidden in the tomb: it was probably already
swollen and beginning to dissolve into corruption, as the body mouldered in
the dank earth and necessarily decayed: the thing was one to turn from, as
the dissolved body under the constraint of nature changed to
offensiveness(2). At this point the doubted fact of the general
resurrection is brought to proof by a more manifest miracle; for one is not
raised from severe sickness, nor brought back to life when at the last
breath--nor is a child just dead brought to life, nor a young man about to
be conveyed to the tomb released from his bier; but a man past the prime of
life, a corpse, decaying, swollen, yea already in a state of dissolution,
so that even his own kinsfolk could not suffer that the Lord should draw
near the tomb by reason of the offensiveness of the decayed body there
enclosed, brought into life by a single call, confirms the proclamation of
the resurrection, that is to say, that expectation of it as universal,
which we learn by a particular experience to entertain. For as in the
regeneration of the universe the Apostle tells us that "the Lord Himself
will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel(3)," and by a
trumpet sound raise up the dead to incorruption--so now too he who is in
the tomb, at the voice of command, shakes off death as if it were a sleep,
and ridding himself from the corruption that had come upon his condition of
a corpse, leaps forth from the tomb whole and sound, not even hindered in
his egress by the bonds of the grave-cloths round his feet and hands.

   12. Are these things too small to produce faith in the resurrection of
the dead? or dost thou seek that thy judgment on this point should be
confirmed by yet other proofs? In truth the Lord seems to me not to have
spoken in vain to them of Capernaum, when He said to Himself, as in the
person of men, "Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, 'Physician, heal
thyself(4).'" For it behoved Him, when He had accustomed men to the miracle
of the resurrection in other bodies, to confirm His word in His own
humanity. Thou sawest the thing proclaimed working in others--those who
were about to die, the child which had just ceased to live, the young man
at the edge of the grave, the putrefying corpse, all alike restored by one
command to life. Dost thou seek for those who have come to death by wounds
and bloodshed? does any feebleness of life-giving power hinder the grace in
them? Behold Him Whose hands were pierced with nails: behold Him Whose side
was transfixed with a spear; pass thy fingers through the print of the
nails thrust thy hand into the spear-wound(5); thou canst surely guess how
far within it is likely the point would reach, if thou reckonest the
passage inwards by the breadth of the external scar; for the wound that
gives admission to a man's hand, shows to what depth within the iron
entered. If He then has been raised, well may we utter the Apostle's
exclamation, "How say some that there is no resurrection of the dead(6)?"

   13. Since, then, every prediction of the Lord is shown to be true by
the testimony of events, while we not only have learnt this by His words,
but also received the proof of the promise in deed, from those very persons
who returned to life by resurrection, what occasion is left to those who
disbelieve? Shall we not bid farewell to those who pervert our simple faith
by "philosophy and vain deceit(7)," and hold fast to our confession in its
purity, learning briefly through the prophet the mode of the grace, by his
words, "Thou shalt take away their breath and they shall fail, and turn to
their dust. Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created, and
Thou shalt renew the face of the earth(8);" at which time also he says that
the Lord rejoices in His works, sinners having perished from the earth: for
how shall any one be called by the name of sin, when sin itself exists no
longer?

XXVI. That the resurrection is not beyond probability(9).

   1. There are, however, some who, owing to the feebleness of human
reasoning, judging the Divine power by the compass of our own, maintain
that what is beyond our capacity is not possible even to God. They point to
the disappearance of the dead of old time, and to the remains of those who
have been reduced to ashes by fire; and further, besides these, they bring
forward in idea the carnivorous beasts, and the fish that receives in its
own body the flesh of the shipwrecked sailor, while this again in turn
becomes food for men, and passes by digestion into the bulk of him who eats
it: and they rehearse many such trivialities, unworthy of God's great power
and authority, for the overthrow of the doctrine, arguing as though God
were not able to restore to man his own, by return(1) through the same
ways.

   2. But we briefly cut short their long circuits of logical folly by
acknowledging that dissolution of the body into its component parts does
take place, and not only does earth, according to the Divine word, return
to earth, but air and moisture also revert to the kindred element, and
there takes place a return of each of our components to that nature to
which it is allied; and although the human body be dispersed among
carnivorous birds, or among the most savage beasts by becoming their food,
and although it pass beneath the teeth of fish, and although it be changed
by fire into vapour and dust, wheresoever one may in argument suppose the
man to be removed, he surely remains in the world; and the world, the voice
of inspiration tells us, is held by the hand of God. If thou, then, art not
ignorant of any of the things in thy hand, dost thou deem the knowledge of
God to be feebler than thine own power, that it should fail to discover the
most minute of the things that are within the compass of the Divine span?

XXVII. That it is possible, when the human body is dissolved into the
elements of the universe, that each should have his own body restored from
the common source(2).

   1. Yet it may be thou thinkest, having regard to the elements of the
universe, that it is a hard thing when the air in us has been resolved into
its kindred element, and the warmth, and moisture, and the earthy nature
have likewise been mingled with their own kind, that from the common source
there should return to the individual what belongs to itself.

   2. Dost thou not then judge by human examples that even this does not
surpass the limits of the Divine power? Thou hast seen surely somewhere
among the habitations of men a common herd of some kind of animals
collected from every quarter: yet when it is again divided among its
owners, acquaintance with their homes and the marks put upon the cattle
serve to restore to each his own. If thou conceivest of thyself also
something like to this thou wilt not be far from the right way: for as the
soul is disposed to cling to and long for the body that has been wedded to
it, there also attaches to it in secret a certain close relationship and
power of recognition, in virtue of their commixture, as though some marks
had been imprinted by nature, by the aid of which the community remains
unconfused, separated by the distinctive signs. Now as the soul attracts
again to itself that which is its own and properly belongs to it, what
labour, I pray you, that is involved for the Divine power, could be a
hindrance to concourse of kindred things when they are urged to their own
place by the unspeakable attraction of nature, whatever it may be? For that
some signs of our compound nature remain in the soul even after dissolution
is shown by the dialogue in Hades(3), where the bodies had been conveyed to
the tomb, but some bodily token still remained in the souls by which both
Lazarus was recognized and the rich man was not unknown.

   3. There is therefore nothing beyond probability in believing that in
the bodies that rise again there will be a return from the common stock to
the individual, especially for any one who examines our nature with careful
attention. For neither does our being consist altogether in flux and
change--for surely that which had by nature no stability would be
absolutely incomprehensible--but according to the more accurate statement
some one of our constituent parts is stationary while the rest goes through
a process of alteration: for the body is on the one hand altered by way of
growth and diminution, changing, like garments, the vesture of its
successive statures, while the form, on the other hand, remains in itself
unaltered through every change, not varying from the marks once imposed
upon it by nature, but appearing with its own tokens of identity in all the
changes which the body undergoes.

   4. We must except, however, from this statement the change which
happens to the form as the result of disease: for the deformity of sickness
takes possession of the form like some strange mask, and when this is
removed by the word(4), as in the case of Naaman the Syrian, or of those
whose story is recorded in the Gospel, the form that had been hidden by
disease is once more by means of health restored to sight again with its
own marks of identity.

   5. Now to the element of our soul which is in the likeness of God it is
not that which is subject to flux and change by way of alteration, but this
stable and unalterable element in our composition that is allied: and since
various differences of combination produce varieties of forms (and
combination is nothing else than the mixture of the elements--by elements
we mean those which furnish the substratum for the making of the universe,
of which the human body also is composed), while the form necessarily
remains in the soul as in the impression of a seal, those things which have
received from the seal the impression of its stamp do not fail to be
recognized by the soul, but at the time of the World-Reformation, it
receives back to itself all those things which correspond to the stamp of
the form: and surely all those things would so correspond which in the
beginning were stamped by the form; thus it is not beyond probability that
what properly belongs to the individual should once more return to it from
the common source(5).

   6. It is said also that quicksilver, if poured out from the vessel that
contains it down a dusty slope, forms small globules and scatters itself
over the ground, mingling with none of those bodies with which it meets:
but if one should collect at one place the substance dispersed in many
directions, it flows back to its kindred substance, if not hindered by
anything intervening from mixing with its own kind. Something of the same
sort, I think, we ought to understand also of the composite nature of man,
that if only the power were given it of God, the proper parts would
spontaneously unite with those belonging to them, without any obstruction
on their account arising to Him Who reforms their nature.

   7. Furthermore, in the case of plants that grow from the ground, we do
not observe any labour on the part of nature spent on the wheat or millet
or any other seed of grain or pulse, in changing it into stalk or spike or
ears; for the proper nourishment passes spontaneously, without trouble,
from the common source to the individuality of each of the seeds. If, then,
while the moisture supplied to all the plants is common, each of those
plants which is nourished by it draws the due supply for its own growth,
what new thing is it if in the doctrine of the resurrection also, as in the
case of the seeds, it happens that there is an attraction on the part of
each of those who rise, of what belongs to himself?

   8. So that we may learn on all hands, that the preaching of the
resurrection contains nothing beyond those facts which are known to us
experimentally.

   9. And yet we have said nothing of the most notable point concerning
ourselves; I mean the first beginning of our existence. Who knows not the
miracle of nature, what the maternal womb receives--what it produces? Thou
seest how that which is implanted in the womb to be the beginning of the
formation of the body is in a manner simple and homogeneous: but what
langUage can express the variety of the composite body that is framed? and
who, if he did not learn such a thing in nature generally, would think that
to be possible which does take place--that that small thing of no account
is the beginning of a thing so great? Great, I say, not only with regard to
the bodily formation, but to what is more marvellous than this, I mean the
soul itself, and the attributes we behold in it.

XXVIII. To those who say that souls existed before bodies, or that bodies
were formed before souls; wherein there is also a refutation of the fables
concerning transmigration of souls(6).

   1. For it is perhaps not beyond our present subject to discuss the
question which has been raised in the churches touching soul and body. Some
of those before our time who have dealt with the question of "principles"
think it right to say that souls have a previous existence as a people in a
society of their own, and that among them also there are standards of vice
and of virtue, and that the soul there, which abides in goodness, remains
without experience of conjunction with the body; but if it does depart from
its communion with good, it falls down to this lower life, and so comes to
be in a body. Others, on the contrary, marking the order of the making of
man as stated by Moses, say, that the soul second to the body in order of
time, since God first took dust from the earth and formed man, and then
animated the being thus formed by His breath(7): and by this argument they
prove that the flesh is more noble than the soul; that which was previously
formed than that which was afterwards infused into it: for they say that
the soul was made for the body, that the thing formed might not be without
breath and motion; and that everything that is made for something else is
surely less precious than that for which it is made, as the Gospel tells us
that "the soul is more than meat and the body than raiment(8)," because the
latter things exist for the sake of the former--for the soul was not made
for meat nor our bodies for raiment, but when the former things were
already in being the latter were provided for their needs.

   2. Since then the doctrine involved in both these theories is open to
criticism--the doctrine alike of those who ascribe to souls a fabulous pre-
existence in a special state, and of those who think they were created at a
later time than the bodies, it is perhaps necessary to leave none of the
statements contained in the doctrines without examination: yet to engage
and wrestle with the doctrines on each side completely, and to reveal all
the absurdities involved in the theories, would need a large expenditure
both of argument and of time; we shall, however, briefly survey as best we
can each of the views mentioned, and then resume our subject.

   3. Those who stand by the former doctrine, and assert that the state of
souls is prior to their life in the flesh, do not seem to me to be clear
from the fabulous doctrines of the heathen which they hold on the subject
of successive incorporation: for if one should search carefully, he will
find that their doctrine is of necessity brought down to this. They tell us
that one of their sages said that he, being one and the same person, was
born a man, and afterwards assumed the form of a woman, and flew about with
the birds, and grew as a bush, and obtained the life of an aquatic
creature;--and he who said these things of himself did not, so far as I can
judge, go far from the truth: for such doctrines as this of saying that one
soul passed through so many changes are really fitting for the chatter of
frogs or jackdaws, or the stupidity of fishes, or the insensibility of
trees.

   4. And of such absurdity the cause is this--the supposition of the pre-
existence of souls for the first principle of such doctrine leads on the
argument by consequence to the next and adjacent stage, until it astonishes
us by reaching this point. For if the soul, being severed from the more
exalted state by some wickedness after having once, as they say, tasted
corporeal life, again becomes a man, and if the life in the flesh is, as
may be presumed, acknowledged to be, in comparison with the eternal and
incorporeal life, more subject to passion, it naturally follows that that
which comes to be in a life such as to contain more occasions of sin, is
both placed in a region of greater wickedness and rendered more subject to
passion than before (now passion in the human soul is a conformity to the
likeness of the irrational); and that being brought into close connection
with this, it descends to the brute nature: and that when it has once set
out on its way through wickedness, it does not cease its advance towards
evil even when found in an irrational condition: for a halt in evil is the
beginning of the impulse towards virtue, and in irrational creatures virtue
does not exist. Thus it will of necessity be continually changed for the
worse, always proceeding to what is more degraded and always finding out
what is worse than the nature in which it is: and just as the sensible
nature is lower than the rational, so too there is a descent from this to
the insensible.

   5. Now so far in its course their doctrine, even if it does overstep
the bounds of truth, at all events derives one absurdity from another  by a
kind of logical sequence: but from this point onwards their teaching takes
the form of incoherent fable. Strict inference points to the complete
destruction of the soul; for that which has once fallen from the exalted
state will be unable to halt at any measure of wickedness, but will pass by
means of its relation with the passions from rational to irrational, and
from the latter state will be transferred to the insensibility of plants;
and on the insensible there borders, so to say, the inanimate; and on this
again follows the non-existent, so that absolutely by this train of
reasoning they will have the soul to pass into nothing: thus a return once
more to the better state is impossible for it: and yet they make the soul
return from a bush to the man: they therefore prove that the life in a bush
is more precious than an incorporeal state(9).

   6. It has been shown that the process of deterioration which takes
place in the soul will probably be extended downwards; and lower than the
insensible we find the inanimate, to which, by consequence, the principle
of their doctrine brings the soul: but as they will not have this, they
either exclude the soul from insensibility, or, if they are to bring it
back to human life, they must, as has been said, declare the life of a tree
to be preferable to the original state--if, that is, the fall towards vice
took place from the one, and the return towards virtue takes place from the
other.

   7. Thus this doctrine of theirs, which maintains that souls have a life
by themselves before their life in the flesh, and that they are by reason
of wickedness bound to their bodies, is shown to have neither beginning nor
conclusion: and as for those who assert that the soul is of later creation
than the body, their absurdity was already demonstrated above(1).

   8. The doctrine of both, then, is equally to be rejected; but I think
that we ought to direct our own doctrine in the way of truth between these
theories: and this doctrine is that we are not to suppose, according to the
error of the heathen that the souls that revolve with the motion of the
universe weighed down by some wickedness, fall to earth by inability to
keep up with the swiftness of the motion of the spheres.

XXIX. A establishment of the doctrine that the cause of the existence of
soul and body is one and the same.(2)

   1. Nor again are we in our doctrine to begin by making up man like a
clay figure, and to say that the soul came into being for the sake of this;
for surely in that case the intellectual nature would be shown to be less
precious than the clay figure. But as man is one, the being consisting of
soul and body, we are to suppose that the beginning of his existence is
one, common to both parts, so that he should not be found to be antecedent
and posterior to himself, if the bodily element were first in point of
time, and the other were a later addition; but we are to say that in the
power of God's foreknowledge (according to the doctrine laid down a little
earlier in our discourse), all the fulness of human nature had pre-
existence (and to this the prophetic writing bears witness, which says that
God "knoweth all things before they be(3)"), and in the creation of
individuals not to place the one element before the other, neither the soul
before the body, nor the contrary, that man may. not be at strife against
himself, by being divided by the difference in point of time.

   2. For as our nature is conceived as twofold, according to the
apostolic teaching, made up of the visible man and the hidden man, if the
one came first and the other supervened, the power of Him that made us will
be shown to be in some way imperfect, as not being completely sufficient
for the whole task at once, but dividing the work, and busying itself with
each of the halves in turn.

   3. But just as we say that in wheat, or in any other grain, the whole
form of the plant is potentially included--the leaves, the stalk, the
joints, the grain, the beard--and do not say in our account of its nature
that any of these things has pre-existence, or comes into being before the
others, but that the power abiding in the seed is manifested in a certain
natural order, not by any means that another nature is infused into it--in
the same way we suppose the human germ to possess the potentiality of its
nature, sown with it at the first start of its existence, and that it is
unfolded and manifested by a natural sequence as it proceeds to its perfect
state, not employing anything external to itself as a stepping-stone to
perfection, but itself advancing its own self in due course to the perfect
state; so that it is not true to say either that the soul exists before the
body, or that the body exists without the soul, but that there is one
beginning of both, which according to the heavenly view was laid as their
foundation in the original will of God; according to the other, came into
existence on the occasion of generation.

   4. For as we cannot discern the articulation of the limbs in that which
is implanted for the conception of the body before it begins to take form,
so neither is it possible to perceive in the same the properties of the
soul before they advance to operation; and just as no one would doubt that
the thing so implanted is fashioned into the different varieties of limbs
and interior organs, not by the importation of any other power from
without, but by the power which resides in it transforming(4) it to this
manifestation of energy,--so also we may by like reasoning equally suppose
in the case of the soul that even if it is not visibly recognized by any
manifestations of activity it none the less is there; for even the form of
the future man is there potentially, but is concealed because it is not
possible that it should be made visible before the necessary sequence of
events allows it; so also the soul is there, even though it is not visible,
and will be manifested by means of its own proper and natural operation, as
it advances concurrently with the bodily growth.

   5. For since it is not from a dead body that the potentiality for
conception is secreted, but from one which is animate and alive, we hence
affirm that it is reasonable that we should not suppose that what is sent
forth from a living body to be the occasion of life is itself dead and
inanimate; for in the flesh that which is inanimate is surely dead; and the
condition of death arises by the withdrawal of the soul. Would not one
therefore in this case be asserting that withdrawal is antecedent to
possession--if, that is, he should maintain that the inanimate state which
is the condition of death is antecedent to the soul(5)? And if any one
should seek for a still clearer evidence of the life of that particle which
becomes the beginning of the living creature in its formation, it is
possible to obtain an idea on this point from other signs also, by which
what is animate is distinguished from what is dead. For in the case of men
we consider it an evidence of life that one is warm and operative and in
motion, but the chill and motionless state in the case of bodies is nothing
else than deadness.

   6. Since then we see that of which we are speaking to be warm and
operative, we thereby draw the further inference that it is not inanimate;
but as, in respect of its corporeal part, we do not say that it is flesh,
and bones, and hair, and all that we observe in the human being, but that
potentially it is each of these things, yet does not visibly appear to be
so; so also of the part which belongs to the soul, the elements of
rationality, and desire, and anger, and all the powers of the soul are not
yet visible; yet we assert that they have their place in it, and that the
energies of the soul also grow with the subject in a manner similar to the
formation and perfection of the body.

   7. For just as a man when perfectly developed has a specially marked
activity of the soul, so at the beginning of his existence he shows in
himself that co-operation of the soul which is suitable and conformable to
his existing need, in its preparing for itself its proper dwelling-place by
means of the implanted matter; for we do not suppose it possible that the
soul is adapted to a strange building, just as it is not possible that the
seal impressed on wax should be fitted to an engraving that does not agree
with it.

   8. For as the body proceeds from a very small original to the perfect
state, so also the operation of the soul, growing in correspondence with
the subject, gains and increases with it. For at its first formation there
comes first of all its power of growth and nutriment alone, as though it
were some root buried in the ground; for the limited nature of the
recipient does not admit of more; then, as the plant comes forth to the
light and shows its shoot to the sun, the gift of sensibility blossoms in
addition, but when at last it is ripened and has grown up to its proper
height, the power of reason begins to shine forth like a fruit, not
appearing in its whole vigour all at once, but by care increasing with the
perfection of the instrument, bearing always as much fruit as the powers of
the subject allow.

   9. If, however, thou seekest to trace the operation of the soul in the
formation of the body, "take heed to thyself(6)," as Moses says, and thou
wilt read, as in a book, the history of the works of the soul; for nature
itself expounds to thee, more clearly than any discourse, the varied
occupations of the soul in the body, alike in general and in particular
acts of construction.

   10. But I deem it superfluous to declare at length in words what is to
be found in ourselves, as though we were expounding some wonder that lay
beyond our boundaries:--who that looks on himself needs words to teach him
his own nature? For it is possible for one who considers the mode of his
own life, and learns how closely concerned the body is in every vital
operation, to know in what the vegetative(7) principle of the soul was
occupied on the occasion of the first formation of that which was beginning
its existence; so that hereby also it is clear to those who have given any
attention to the matter, that the thing which was implanted by separation
from the living body for the production of the living. being was not a
thing dead or inanimate m the laboratory of nature.

   11. Moreover we plant in the ground the kernels of fruits, and portions
torn from roots, not deprived by death of the vital power which naturally
resides in them, but preserving in themselves, hidden indeed, yet surely
living, the property of their prototype; the earth that surrounds them does
not implant such a power from without, infusing it from itself (for surely
then even dead wood would proceed to growth), but it makes that manifest
which resides in them, nourishing it by its own moisture, perfecting the
plant into root, and bark, and pith, and shoots of branches, which could
not happen were not a natural power implanted with it, which drawing to
itself from its surroundings its kindred and proper nourishment, becomes a
bush, or a tree, or an ear of grain, or some plant of the class of shrubs.

XXX. A brief examination of the construction of our bodies from a medical
point of view(8).

   1. NOW the exact structure of our body each man teaches himself by his
experiences of sight and light and perception, having his own nature to
instruct him; any one too may learn everything accurately who takes up the
researches which those skilled in such matters have worked out in books.
And of these writers some learnt by dissection the position of our
individual organs; others also considered and expounded the reason for the
existence of all the parts of the body; so that the knowledge of the human
frame which hence results is sufficient for students. But if any one
further seeks that the Church should be his teacher on all these points, so
that he may not need for anything the voice of those without (for this is
the wont of the spiritual sheep, as the Lord says, that they hear not a
strange voice(9)), we shall briefly take in hand the account of these
matters also.

   2. We note concerning our bodily nature three things, for the sake of
which our particular pans were formed. Life is the cause of some, good life
of others, others again are adapted with a view to the succession of
descendants. All things in us which are of such a kind that without them it
is not possible that human life should exist, we consider as being in three
parts; in the brain, the heart, and the liver. Again, all that are a sort
of additional blessings, nature's liberality, whereby she bestows on man
the gift of living well, are the organs of sense; for such things do not
constitute our life, since even where some of them are wanting man is often
none the less in a condition of life; but without these forms of activity
it is impossible to enjoy participation in the pleasures of life. The third
aim regards the future, and the succession of life. There are also certain
other organs besides these, which help, in common with all the others, to
subserve the continuance of life, importing by their own means the proper
supplies, as the stomach and the lungs, the latter fanning by respiration
the fire at the heart, the former introducing the nourishment for the
internal organs.

   3. Our structure, then, being thus divided, we have carefully to mark
that our faculty for life is not supported in any one way by some single
organ, but nature, while distributing the means for our existence among
several parts, makes the contribution of each individual necessary for the
whole; just as the things which nature contrives for the security and
beauty of life are also numerous, and differ much among themselves.

   4. We ought, however, I think, first to discuss briefly the first
beginnings of the things which contribute to the constitution of our life.
As for the material of the whole body which serves as a common substratum
for the particular members, it may for the present be left without remark;
for a discussion as to natural substance in general will not be of any
assistance to Our purpose with regard to the consideration of the parts.

   5. As it is then acknowledged by all that there is in us a share of all
that we behold as elements in the universe--of heat and cold, and of the
other pair of qualities of moisture and dryness--we must discuss them
severally.

   6. We see then that the powers which control life are three, of which
the first by its heat produces general warmth, the second by its moisture
keeps damp that which is warmed, so that the living being is kept in an
intermediate condition by the equal balance of the forces exerted by the
quality of each of the opposing natures (the moist element not being dried
up by excess of heat, nor the hot element quenched by the prevalence of
moisture); and the third power by its own agency holds together the
separate members in a certain agreement and harmony, connecting them by the
ties which it itself furnishes, and sending into them all that self-moving
and determining force, on the failure of which the member becomes relaxed
and deadened, being left destitute of the determining spirit.

   7. Or rather, before dealing with these, it is right that we should
mark the skilled workmanship of nature in the actual construction of the
body. For as that which is hard and resistent does not admit the action of
the senses (as we may see in the instance of our own bones, and in that of
plants in the ground, where we remark indeed a certain form of life in that
they grow and receive nourishment, yet the resistent character of their
substance does not allow them sensation), for this reason it was necessary
that some wax-like formation, so to say, should be supplied for the action
of the senses, with the faculty of being impressed with the stamp of things
capable of striking them, neither becoming confused by excess of moisture
(for the impress would not remain in moist substance), nor resisting by
extraordinary solidity (for that which is unyielding would not receive any
mark from the impressions), but being in a state between softness and
hardness, in order that the living being might not be destitute of the
fairest of all the operations of nature--I mean the motion of sense.

   8. Now as a soft and yielding substance, if it had no assistance from
the hard parts, would certainly have, like molluscs, neither motion nor
articulation, nature accordingly mingles in the body the hardness of the
bones, and uniting these by close connection one to another, and knitting
their joints together by means of the sinews, thus plants around them the
flesh which receives sensations, furnished with a somewhat harder and more
highly-strung surface than it would otherwise have had.

   9. While resting, then, the whole weight of the body on this substance
of the bones, as on some columns that carry a mass of building, she did not
implant the bone undivided through the whole structure: for in that case
man would have remained without motion or activity, if he had been so
constructed, just like a tree that stands on one spot without either the
alternate motion of legs to advance its motion or the service of hands to
minister to the conveniences of life: but now we see that she contrived
that the instrument should be rendered capable of walking and working by
this device, after she had implanted in the body, by the determining spirit
which extends through the nerves, the impulse and power for motion. And
hence is produced the service of the hands, so varied and multiform, and
answering to every thought. Hence are produced, as though by some
mechanical contrivance, the turnings of the neck, and the bending and
raising of the head, and the action of the chin, and the separation of the
eyelids, that takes place with a thought, and the movements of the other
joints, by the tightening or relaxation of certain nerves. And the power
that extends through these exhibits a sort of independent impulse, working
with the spirit of its will by a sort of natural management, in each
particular part; but the root of all, and the principle of the motions of
the nerves, is found in the nervous tissue that surrounds the brain.

   10. We consider, then, that we need not spend more time in inquiring in
which of the vital members such a thing resides, when the energy of motion
is shown to be here. But that the brain contributes to life in a special
degree is shown clearly by the result of the opposite conditions: for if
the tissue surrounding it receives any wound or lesion, death immediately
follows the injury, nature being unable to endure the hurt even for a
moment; just as, when a foundation is withdrawn, the whole building
collapses with the part; and that member, from an injury to which the
destruction of the whole living being clearly follows, may properly be
acknowledged to contain the cause of life.

   11. But as furthermore in those who have ceased to live, when the heat
that is implanted in our nature is quenched, that which has become dead
grows cold, we hence recognize the vital cause also in heat: for we must of
necessity acknowledge that the living being subsists by the presence of
that, which failing, the condition of death supervenes. And of such a force
we understand the heart to be as it were the fountain-head and principle,
as from it pipe-like passages, growing one from another in many
ramifications, diffuse in the whole body the warm and fiery spirit.

   12. And since some nourishment must needs also be provided by nature
for the element of heat--for it is not possible that the fire should last
by itself, without being nourished by its proper food--therefore the
channels of the blood, issuing from the liver as from a fountainhead,
accompany the warm spirit everywhere in its way throughout the body, that
the one may not by isolation from the other become a disease and destroy
the constitution. Let this instruct those who go beyond the bounds of
fairness, as they learn from nature that covetousness is a disease that
breeds destruction.

   13. But since the Divinity alone is free from needs, while human
poverty requires external aid for its own subsistence, nature therefore, in
addition to those three powers by which we said that the whole body is
regulated, brings in imported matter from without, introducing by different
entrances that which is suitable to those powers.

   14. For to the fount of the blood, which is the liver, she furnishes
its supply by food: for that which from time to time is imported in this
way prepares the springs of blood to issue from the liver, as the snow on
the mountain by its own moisture increases the springs in the low ground,
forcing its own fluid deep down to the veins below.

   15. The breath in the heart is supplied by means of the neighbouring
organ, which is called the lungs, and is a receptacle for air, drawing the
breath from without through the windpipe inserted in it, which extends to
the mouth. The heart being placed in the midst of this organ (and itself
also moving incessantly in imitation of the action of the ever-moving
fire), draws to itself, somewhat as the bellows do in the forges, a supply
from the adjacent air, filling its recesses by dilatation, and while it
fans its own fiery element, breathes upon the adjoining tubes; and this it
does not cease to do, drawing the external air into its own recesses by
dilatation, and by compression infusing the air from itself into the tubes.

   16. And this seems to me to be the cause of this spontaneous
respiration of ours; for often the mind is occupied in discourse with
others, or is entirely quiescent when the body is relaxed in sleep, but the
respiration of air does not cease, though the will gives no co-operation to
this end. Now I suppose, since the heart is surrounded by the lungs, and in
the back part of its own structure is attached to them, moving that organ
by its own dilatations and compressions, that the inhaling and exhaling(1)
of the air is brought about by the lungs: for as they are a lightly built
and porous body, and have all their recesses opening at the base of the
windpipe, when they contract and are compressed they necessarily force out
by pressure the air that is left in their cavities; and, when they expand
and open, draw the air, by their distention, into the void by suction.

   17. This then is the cause of this involuntary respiration--the
impossibility that the fiery element should remain at rest: for as the
operation of motion is proper to heat, and we understand that the principle
of heat is to be found in the heart, the continual motion going on in this
organ produces the incessant inspiration and exhalation of the air through
the lungs: wherefore also when the fiery element is unnaturally augmented,
the breathing of those fevered subjects becomes more rapid, as though the
heart were endeavouring to quench the flame implanted in it by more
violent(2) breathing.

   18. But since our nature is poor and in need of supplies for its own
maintenance from all quarters, it not only lacks air of its own, and the
breath which excites heat, which it imports from without for the
preservation of the living being, but the nourishment it finds to fill out
the proportions of the body is an importation. Accordingly, it supplies the
deficiency by food and drink, implanting in the body a certain faculty for
appropriating that which it requires, and rejecting that which is
superfluous, and for this purpose too the fire of the heart gives nature no
small assistance.

   19. For since, according to the account we have given, the heart which
kindles by its warm breath the individual parts, is the most important of
the vital organs, our Maker caused it to be operative with its efficacious
power at all points, that no part of it might be left ineffectual or
unprofitable for the regulation of the whole organism. Behind, therefore,
it enters the lungs, and, by its continuous motion, drawing that organ to
itself, it expands the passages to inhale the air, and compressing them
again it brings about the exspiration of the imprisoned air; while in
front, attached to the space at the upper extremity of the stomach, it
warms it and makes it respond by motion to its own activity, rousing it,
not to inhale air, but to receive its appropriate food: for the entrances
for breath and food are near one another, extending lengthwise one
alongside the other, and are terminated in their upper extremity by the
same boundary, so that their mouths are contiguous and the passages come to
an end together in one mouth, from which the entrance of food is effected
through the one, and that of the breath through the other.

   20. Internally, however, the closeness of the connection of the
passages is not maintained throughout; for the heart intervening between
the base of the two, infuses in the one the powers for respiration, and in
the other for nutriment. Now the fiery element is naturally inclined to
seek for the material which serves as fuel, and this necessarily happens
with regard to the receptacle of nourishment; for the more it becomes
penetrated by fire through the neighbouring warmth, the more it draws to
itself what nourishes the heat. And this sort of impulse we call appetite.

   21. But if the organ which contains the food should obtain sufficient
material, not even so does the activity of the fire become quiescent: but
it produces a sort of melting of the material just as in a foundry, and,
dissolving the solids, pours them out and transfers them, as it were from a
funnel, to the neighbouring passages: then separating the coarser from the
pure substance, it passes the fine part through certain channels to the
entrance of the liver, and expels the sedimentary matter of the food to the
wider passages of the bowels, and by turning it over in their manifold
windings retains the food for a time in the intestines, lest if it were
easily got rid of by a straight passage it might at once excite the animal
again to appetite, and man, like the race of irrational animals, might
never cease from this sort of occupation.

   22. As we saw, however, that the liver has especial need of the co-
operation of heat for the conversion of the fluids into blood, while this
organ is in position distant from the heart (for it would, I imagine, have
been impossible that, being one principle or root of the vital power, it
should not be hampered by vicinity with another such principle), in order
that the system may suffer no injury by the distance at which the heat-
giving substance is placed, a muscular passage (and this, by those skilled
in such matters, is called the artery) receives the heated air from the
heart and conveys it to the liver, making its opening there somewhere
beside the point at which the fluids enter, and, as it warms the moist
substance by its heat, blends with the liquid something akin to fire, and
makes the blood appear red with the fiery tint it produces.

   23. Issuing thence again, certain twin channels, each enclosing its own
current like a pipe, disperse air and blood (that the liquid substance may
have free course when accompanied and lightened by the motion of the heated
substance) in divers directions over the whole body, breaking at every part
into countless branching channels; while as the two principles of the vital
powers mingle together (that alike which disperses heat, and that which
supplies moisture to all parts of the body), they make, as it were, a sort
of compulsory contribution from the substance with which they deal to the
supreme force in the vital economy.

   24. Now this force is that which is considered as residing in the
cerebral membranes and the brain, from which it comes that every movement
of a joint, every contraction of the muscles, every spontaneous influence
that is exerted upon the individual members, renders our earthen statue
active and mobile as though by some mechanism. For the most pure form of
heat and the most subtle form of liquid, being united by their respective
forces through a process of mixture and combination, nourish and sustain by
their moisture the brain, and i hence in turn, being rarefied to the most
pure condition, the exhalation that proceeds from that organ anoints the
membrane which encloses the brain, which, reaching from above downwards
like a pipe, extending through the successive vertebrae, is (itself and the
marrow which is contained in it) conterminous with the base of the spine,
itself giving like a charioteer the impulse and power to all the meeting-
points of bones and joints, and to the branches of the muscles, for the
motion or rest of the particular parts.

   25. For this cause too it seems to me that it has been granted a more
secure defence, being distinguished, in the head, by a double shelter of
bones round about, and in the vertebrae of the neck by the bulwarks formed
by the projections of the spine as well as by the diversified interlacings
of the very form of those vertebrae, by which it is kept in freedom from
all harm, enjoying safety by the defence that surrounds it.

   26. So too one might suppose of the heart, that it is itself like some
safe house fitted with the most solid defences, fortified by the enclosing
walls of the bones round about; for in rear there is the spine,
strengthened on either side by the shoulder-blades, and on each flank the
enfolding position of the ribs makes that which is in the midst between
them difficult to injure; while in front the breast-bone and the juncture
of the collar-bone serve as a defence, that its safety may be guarded at
all points from external causes of danger.

   27. As we see in husbandry, when the rain fall from the clouds or the
overflow from the river channels causes the land beneath it to be saturated
with moisture (let us suppose for our argument a garden, nourishing within
its own compass countless varieties of trees, and all the forms of plants
that grow from the ground, and whereof we contemplate the figure, quality,
and individuality in great variety of detail); then, as these are nourished
by the liquid element while they are in one spot, the power which supplies
moisture to each individual among them is one in nature; but the
individuality of the plants so nourished changes the liquid element into
different qualities; for the same substance becomes bitter in wormwood, and
is changed into a deadly juice in hemlock, and becomes different in
different other plants, in saffron, in balsam, in the poppy: for in one it
becomes hot, in another cold, in another it obtains the middle quality: and
in laurel and mastick it is scented, and in the fig and the pear it is
sweetened, and by passing through the vine it is turned into the grape and
into wine; while the juice of the apple, the redness of the rose, the
radiance of the lily, the blue of the violet, the purple of the hyacinthine
dye, and all that we behold in the earth, arise from one and the same
moisture, and are separated into so many varieties in respect of figure and
aspect and quality; the same sort of wonder is wrought in the animated soil
of our being by Nature, or rather by Nature's Lord. Bones, cartilages,
veins, arteries, nerves, ligatures, flesh, skin, fat, hair, glands, nails,
eyes, nostrils; ears,--all such things as these, and countless others in
addition, while separated from one another by various peculiarities, are
nourished by the one form of nourishment in ways proper to their own
nature, in the sense that the nourishment, when it is brought into close
relation with any of the subjects, is also changed according to that to
which it approaches, and becomes adapted and allied to the special nature
of the part. For if it should be in the neighbourhood of the eye, it blends
with the visual part and is appropriately distributed by the difference of
the coats round the eye, among the single parts; or, if it flow to the
auditory parts, it is mingled with the auscultatory nature, or if it is in
the lip, it becomes lip; and it grows solid in bone, and grows soft in
marrow, and is made tense with the sinew, and extended with the surface,
and passes into the nails, and is fined down for the growth of the hair, by
correspondent exhalations, producing hair that is somewhat curly or wavy if
it makes its way through winding passages, while, if the course of the
exhalations that go to form the hair lies straight, it renders the hair
stiff and straight.

   28. Our argument, however, has wandered far from its purpose, going
deep into the works of nature, and endeavouring to describe how and from
what materials our particular organs are formed, those, I mean, intended
for life and for good life, and any other class which we included with
these in our first division.

   29. For our purpose was to show that the seminal cause of our
constitution is neither a soul without body, nor a body without soul, but
that, from animated and living bodies, it is generated at the first as a
living and animate being, and that our humanity takes it and cherishes it
like a nursling with the resources she herself possesses, and it thus grows
on both sides and makes its growth manifest correspondingly in either
part:--for it at once displays, by this artificial and scientific process
of formation, the power of soul that is interwoven in it, appearing at
first somewhat obscurely, but afterwards increasing in radiance
concurrently with the perfecting of the work.

   30. And as we may see with stone-carvers-- for the artist's purpose is
to produce in stone the figure of some animal; and with this in his mind,
he first severs the stone from its kindred matter, and then, by chipping
away the superfluous parts of it, advances somehow by the intermediate step
of his first outline to the imitation which he has in his purpose, so that
even an unskilled observer may, by what he sees, conjecture the aim of his
art; again, by working at it, he brings it more nearly to the semblance of
the object he has in view; lastly, producing in the material the perfect
and finished figure, he brings his art to its conclusion, and that which a
little before was a shapeless stone is a lion, or a man, or whatsoever it
may be that the artist has made, not by the change of the material into the
figure, but by the figure being wrought upon the material. If one supposes
the like in the case of the soul he is not far from probability; for we say
that Nature, the all-contriving, takes from its kindred matter the part
that comes from the man, and moulds her statue within herself. And as the
form follows upon the gradual working of the stone, at first somewhat
indistinct, but more perfect after the completion of the work, so too in
the moulding of its instrument the form of the soul is expressed in the
substratum, incompletely in that which is still incomplete, perfect in that
which is perfect; indeed it would have been perfect from the beginning had
our nature not been maimed by evil. Thus our community in that generation
which is subject to passion and of animal nature, brings it about that the
Divine image does not at once shine forth at our formation, but brings man
to perfection by a certain method and sequence, through those attributes of
the soul which are material, and belong rather to the animal creation.

   31. Some such doctrine as this the great apostle also teaches us in his
Epistle to the Corinthians, when he says, "When I was a child, I spake as a
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
man I put away childish things(3)"; not that the soul which arises in the
man is different from that which we know to be in the boy, and the childish
intellect fails while the manly intellect takes its being in us; but that
the same soul displays its imperfect condition in the one, its perfect
state in the other.

   32. For we say that those things are alive which spring up and grow,
and no one would deny that all things that participate in life and natural
motion are animate, yet at the same time one cannot say that such life
partakes of a perfect soul,--for though a certain animate operation exists
in plants, it does not attain to the motions of sense; and on the other
hand, though a certain further animate power exists in the brutes, neither
does this attain perfection, since it does not contain in itself the grace
of reason and intelligence.

   33. And even so we say that the true and perfect soul is the human
soul, recognized by every operation; and anything else that shares in life
we call animate by a sort of customary misuse of language, because in these
cases the soul does not exist in a perfect condition, but only certain
parts of the operation of the soul, which in man also (according to Moses'
mystical account of man's origin) we learn to have accrued when he made
himself like this sensuous world. Thus Paul, advising those who were able
to hear him to lay hold on perfection, indicates also the mode in which
they may attain that object, telling them that they must "put off the old
man," and put on the man "which is renewed after the image of Him that
created him 4."

   34. Now may we all return to that Divine grace in which God at the
first created man, when He said, "Let us make man in our image and
likeness"; to Whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.


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. (LNPF II/V, Schaff and Wace). The digital version is by The
Electronic
Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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