De mortuis non esse dolendum

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, Discourse on Those Who Have Fallen Asleep Those who make a calamity of the necessary sequence of our nature in those who depart from life, and who grieve heavily for those who have passed from this life here to the intellectual and incorporeal life, do not seem to me to have considered what our life is, but rather to suffer the affliction of the many, who through some irrational habit love the present state as though it were good, whatever it may be. And yet the one who is set before the irrational nature by reason and understanding ought to have his inclination toward this alone, which by the judgment of reason appears good and choiceworthy, and not in every case to choose that which from some habit and uncritical attachment appears pleasant and agreeable to them. Therefore it seems good to me, by some device withdrawing them from their disposition toward the customary, to lead them over, as far as possible, to the better understanding, which is fitting for those who reason. For in this way the irrationality that is eagerly cultivated among the many in matters of the passions would be banished from human life. And our zeal for reason would follow the underlying subject if first the truly good were examined as to what it is, then we should contemplate what is peculiar to life in the body, and in addition to these, if through comparison the things laid up for us in hope were set side by side with the present things. For in this way the contemplation would advance toward the goal of the discourse, so that the understanding of the many might be transferred from the customary to the good.

For since a certain natural affinity for the good lies implanted in all human beings, and every choice is moved toward this, setting before itself the aim of the good as the goal of all earnest endeavor in life, for this reason the failure to discern what is truly good has customarily brought about most of our sins—since, if the truly good were evident to all, we would never have missed that whose nature is goodness, nor would we have willingly encountered the experience of evils, if things were not colored over by some deceptive fantasy of the good. Therefore, before all else, let us consider by reason what the truly good is, so that through error concerning it the worse may never be earnestly pursued in place of the better. I say, then, that one ought to lay down beforehand, as it were, a definition and mark of the thing sought, by which our understanding of the good may become secure. What, then, is the mark of true goodness? Not to have the beneficial only in relation to something, nor to appear at certain times either useful or useless, nor to be good for one person but not so for another, but rather to be that which is good in itself according to its own nature and is so for all and always in the same way. This, in my judgment, is the unerring and undeceptive mark of the nature of the good. For whatever is not good for all, nor always, nor in itself apart from external circumstance, would not properly be judged to be in the nature of the good. Therefore many of those who attend without examination to the things that exist among the elements of the world have imagined that the good is in them, though one would find, on examining, that none of them is found to be good in itself and always and for all.

For the activity directed toward the opposite is mingled with the usefulness of each of these things. For example, water is life-giving to those nourished in it, but destructive to land-dwelling creatures if it should flood over them; and in the same way, air is life-giving to those whose nature it is to live in it, but it is found to be corrupting and destructive to those who have been allotted a watery life, whenever any of the creatures beneath the water comes to be in it. So too fire, though it becomes useful to us for certain purposes, is destructive in most cases; and one would find that the sun itself is not good for all, nor always, nor in every respect, to those who partake of it. For there are circumstances in which it becomes exceedingly harmful, both overheating beyond the proper measure and drying up the underlying subject in excess, and often producing diseased conditions, and aggravating the disease in the more sensitive eyes, and through the putrefaction of the fluids generating certain harmful and unpleasant things in the corrupted decay of the fluids. Therefore, as has been said, one must choose from all things only that which is good, namely that which is always and equally for all seen in the nature of the good, being always such and not changing according to external circumstances. For concerning the other things that seem good to human beings according to some more irrational preconception—I mean concerning the body and external things, such as strength and beauty and nobility of birth, and wealth and powers and distinctions and all such things—since these are from the outset evident to all, I think one ought to be silent and not vainly introduce a crowd of arguments into the discourse through things that are agreed upon.

For who does not know the brevity of beauty and power, or the instability of dominion, or the precariousness of glory, or the vain attachment of men to wealth, by reason of which, because of its fair color and its rarity in certain materials, beauty has been esteemed? Since these matters have thus been articulated by us, it would be fitting to consider the present life (I mean this life that is carried on through the flesh), whether it is such as to be contemplated in the character of beauty, or whether it is otherwise. For what is discovered about it by reason will surely guide the understanding of those who have examined these things as to how one ought to be disposed toward the departure from here. The life of our body, then, is a filling and an emptying, effected from two directions—the one through eating and drinking, the other through the drawing in and expulsion of air—without which the life according to the flesh cannot by nature subsist. For a man ceases to live when the succession of these opposites no longer keeps the nature in turmoil; for after that, such activity comes wholly to a standstill, since nothing from outside either flows in or passes out in those who have died, but the body composed of these elements is dissolved and resolved back into its kindred elements. For the rest, nature is at rest in quiet, having settled what is kindred and of the same stock upon its proper element—the earthy upon the earth, what is its own upon the air, what is proper to it upon the moist, and what is suited to it upon the warm.

For no longer is the mass composed of things of different kinds forcibly and compulsorily interwoven, but when each of the elements within us has returned by its own power to its proper home, nature ceases from that point to hold together within herself by force the coalescence of things of alien kind. And if someone should include sleep and waking, along with the things said, among the forms of this life, he will not make his account fall outside the truth. For through these too nature is always toiling, being drawn now to opposites, now dissolved by sleep and again stretched taut by waking, through both of which she is prepared for emptying and filling. If, then, filling and emptying are the peculiar property of our life, it would be well now to compare the character of the judgment concerning the good, mentioned above, with the properties of life, so as to discern whether this life is the true good or something else besides it. That filling, then, in itself would not reasonably be judged to lie within the nature of the good is clear to everyone from the fact that its opposite (I mean emptying) is also thought to be good. For in the case of things that stand opposed to one another from contrariety, it is not possible for the account of the good to fit the opposed things equally; but if this were good according to its own nature, its opposite would certainly be evil. But in fact here nature has the benefit from each of the two equally. Therefore neither filling nor emptying is able to receive the definition of the good. Consequently, filling has been shown to be something other than the good.

For it is not agreed by all that such a thing is choiceworthy in every case, or always, or in every form. For not only is satiety amid harmful things destructive, but also to exceed usefulness by immoderation in suitable things often becomes a cause of dangers and corruption. And if ever, when a state of repletion seeks evacuation, another repletion should load upon the existing one, such a thing becomes a heap of evils, proceeding into incurable sufferings. Therefore, neither for all nor in every way is fullness a good, but it becomes useful in relation to something, at some time, and in respect of quantity and quality. In this way one might find that what is understood from the opposite (I mean that which pertains to evacuation) is also dangerous for those who undergo it, if it should exceed usefulness by immoderation, and again is not without benefit, if it should occur in relation to something beneficial, with the occasion and the quantity and the quality taken along together for the usefulness of evacuation. Since, therefore, the form of this life which we live does not correspond to the character of the good, it would be agreed, through the sequence of what has been said, that departure from such a life is a separation from no good. For it is clear that the truly and properly and primarily good is neither evacuation nor fullness, which have been shown to be useful at some time, in relation to something, and in certain cases—things to which the character of the truly existing good does not belong.

Since, then, the opposition of the truly good is to the not-truly-good, and the contrariety of these two is immediate, it would follow that for those who are separated from the not-truly-beautiful, the transition is to be believed to be thence to the beautiful by nature—that which is always and for all and through all good, neither at certain times nor in relation to something nor in the case of certain persons nor for some reason, but always in the same respects and in the same way. To this, then, the human soul passes over from the fleshly life, receiving in place of the present one another kind of state of life, which it is impossible for those still mingled with the flesh to see exactly as it is, but from the removal of the things known in this life it is possible to attain some conjecture by analogy.

For it will no longer be entangled in bodily grossness, nor will it live in the equal balance of opposing elements, whose evenly matched struggle against one another produces our constitution and health (for the excess of one of the contraries, and its deficiency, becomes a passion and sickness of nature), in which nothing is either contracted by being emptied or distressed by being burdened, but it is also wholly removed from the unpleasant things that come from the air (I mean colds and heats) and is released from all things conceived in opposition, and it comes to be in those conditions where life is free and at ease from all necessary toils, not suffering hardship through farming, not enduring the labors across the sea, not behaving shamefully through trade and huckstering, and separated from building and weaving and the misery of the banausic crafts, it passes a certain calm and quiet life, as Paul says, not fighting on horseback, not fighting at sea, not wrestling hand-to-hand in infantry formation, not busying itself with the making of weapons, not collecting taxes, not building trenches and walls, but being free and unencumbered from all such things, neither having troubles nor providing them, in which slavery and lordship and poverty and wealth and noble birth and low birth and private lowliness and official power and every such irregularity have no place.

For the needlessness and immateriality of that life removes the necessity of all these things and of things like them, in which the sustaining of the soul's subsistence is not a participation in some dry and moist element, but the comprehension of the divine nature; and instead of the airy spirit, we do not doubt that the fellowship is of the true and holy Spirit. The enjoyment of these things does not come about, changed by way of habit and privation, as in this life here, being admitted and rejected, but is always being filled and never circumscribing its fulfillment by satiety. For the intellectual delight is weightless and always unfilled, overflowing insatiably upon the desires of those who partake. For this reason that life is blessed and undefiled, no longer wandering, through the pleasures of the senses, in its judgment of the beautiful. What, then, is gloomy in the matter, on account of which we are saddened at the departure of those who are dear to us?

Unless someone considers this a cause for grief, that their transition is to the impassible and untroubled life—a life that admits no pains of blows, fears no threat of fire, no wounds from iron, no calamities from earthquakes and shipwrecks and captivities, no attacks of savage beasts, no stings and bites of creeping and venomous creatures—in which no one is puffed up by vanity, nor trampled in lowliness, nor made beastly by audacity, nor terrified by cowardice, nor swells with rage seething in anger and raging, nor is shaken by fear, unable to withstand the impulse of the one in power; in which there is no care—what the dispositions of kings are, what their legislations are, what the character of those appointed to offices is, what their decrees are, how great the annual tax is; nor whether a great flood of rain has come, overwhelming by its excess what is cultivated, nor whether hail has ruined the hopes of the farmers, nor whether drought prevailing dries up everything that grows. But it has complete freedom from all the other evils of life as well; for the gloom of orphanhood does not grieve that life, the evils that come from widowhood have no place, and the manifold sicknesses of the body lie idle, and envy against the prosperous and contempt for the unfortunate and all such things are banished from that life, and a certain equality of speech and equality of law through all peaceful freedom dwells as a fellow citizen with the people of souls, each having that which he has prepared for himself by his own choice.

But if anything worse should be prepared for someone by some lack of counsel, instead of the better, death is not the cause of such things, since the choice has chosen what seemed best by its own authority. For what, then, are those who lament the departed displeased? Indeed, if the one who had put off pleasure and grief together with the body had not been entirely purified of every passionate disposition, that one would more justly have lamented those who remain alive, who suffer the same as those dwelling in a prison, whom habit toward gloomy things and companionship with darkness have made to consider the present pleasant and painless. And perhaps those men also grieve for those being cast out of the guardhouse, in ignorance of the brightness that awaits those released from the darkness. For if they knew the sights in the open air—the ethereal beauty and the heavenly height and the rays of the luminaries and the dance of the stars and the circuits of the sun and the moon's course and the many-formed season of the earth in its plants and the pleasant sight of the sea, gently rippling in sunlike radiance through a soft breeze—and the beauties of buildings in the cities, both private and public, through which the bright and costly adornments of cities are beautified—if, then, those born in the prison knew these things and things like them, they would not bewail those brought out of the prison as if they were departing from some good.

For what it is reasonable for those outside the prison to think about those still confined—namely, that they are enduring a pitiable life—this, it seems to me, is what those who have come to be outside the guard of this life would also do: if indeed it were at all possible for them to show through tears their sympathy for those who suffer ill, they would lament and weep for those prolonged in the pains of this life, because they do not see the beauties that are beyond the world and immaterial, and thrones and principalities and powers and dominions and angelic armies and assemblies of the holy and the city above and the heavenly festival of those who are enrolled. For the beauty that lies beyond these things, which the truthful word declared that the pure in heart see, is beyond all hope and higher than conjecture from guesses. Nor is this alone worthy of groans and grief, as it would be reckoned by us for those who have departed, but also that, with so many grievous things surrounding this life, such a great attachment to wretched things has entered into them that they do not bear their onset as some necessary service, but they make it their earnest endeavor that these things remain forever. For the desire for dominions and greed and these gluttonous pleasures, and whatever else of that sort is earnestly pursued—for the sake of which both weapons and wars and mutual slaughters and all the misery and treachery voluntarily carried out—is nothing other than a heap of calamities introduced into life by choice, with earnestness and eagerness.

But there is no experience of tears among the departed, since there is no other experience either; but those who have been released from flesh and blood, being mind and spirit, have no natural capacity to be seen by those buried in the thickness of the body, nor to admonish men through themselves to stand apart from the mistaken judgment concerning things that exist. Therefore let our own mind speak in their place, and let us say, as far as it is possible—having come outside the bodies in thought and having removed the soul from its attachment to matter—: O man, every one who partakes of nature, attend to yourself according to the commandment of Moses, and know yourself accurately, who you are, having distinguished by reasoning what you truly are and what is observed concerning you. Do not ever think that in looking at the things outside you, you are looking at yourself. Learn from the great Paul, who examined nature with precision, who says that the outer man is one thing and the inner man another, and that while the former is being corrupted, the latter is being renewed. Do not, then, suppose that in looking at what is being corrupted you are looking at yourself (for that too will one day be free from corruption, when in the regeneration the mortal and dissoluble is transformed into the immortal and indissoluble; but for now at least what appears outwardly in us flows and falls away and is corrupted). Therefore one must not look to this, since it is not fitting to look thus at any other of the things that are seen either, since Paul said: While we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen.

For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal. But turning our contemplation to the invisible part within us, we should believe that we truly are that which escapes sensory comprehension. Let us therefore, according to the proverbial saying, become judges of ourselves. For knowing oneself becomes a purification of the errors that arise from ignorance. But it is not easy to behold oneself—at least for one who truly wishes to see himself—unless some device makes the impossible possible for us. For just as nature has done with the bodily eyes, which, while seeing all other things, remain unable to see themselves, in the same way the soul, while examining all other things and busying itself with and tracking down things outside itself, is unable to see itself. Therefore let the soul imitate what happens with the eyes. For those too, since they have no natural power for the contemplation of themselves, turn back their visual activity and behold themselves in a mirror, seeing the form and shape of their own circle through the image, and thus they see themselves. In this way the soul too must look toward its own image, and whatever it sees in the character to which it has been made like, it must behold as its own. But it is fitting to alter the example a little, so that the thought may be adapted to the argument. For in the case of the form in a mirror, the image is shaped according to the archetype, but in the case of the soul's character we understand the opposite: for the soul's form is imaged according to the divine beauty. Therefore, when the soul looks toward its own archetype, then it beholds itself with precision.

What, then, is the divine nature to which the soul has been made like? It is not a body, not a shape, not a form, not a size, not resistance, not weight, not place, not time, nor anything else of that sort through which material creation is known; but when all these and similar things have been stripped away, one must by all means understand what remains as something intelligible and immaterial and intangible and incorporeal and without extension. If, then, such is the character of the archetype that is apprehended, it follows by all means that the soul, having been formed according to that form, is recognized through the same characteristics, so that it too is immaterial and formless and intelligible and incorporeal. Let us consider, then, when human nature comes closer to the archetypal beauty: in living through the flesh, or when we have come to be outside it. But this is clear to everyone: that just as the flesh, being material, is akin to this material life, so too the soul then partakes of the intelligible and immaterial life, when it shakes off the matter that surrounds it. What, then, in these things is worthy of misfortune? For if the true good were a body, we ought to be distressed at the alienation of the flesh, as though we were falling away from it, since the affinity for the good would certainly be cast off together with the body.

Since, then, the good that surpasses all understanding, after whose image we have come to be, is intellectual and incorporeal, it would be consistent to be persuaded that, when through death we pass over to the incorporeal, we draw near to that nature which is separated from all bodily coarseness, and that, as if stripping off a hideous mask, the fleshy covering, we return to our own proper beauty, in which we were originally formed, having come to be according to the image of the archetype. And such a thought would be a ground for gladness, not for dejection, in what is said: that man, having fulfilled this necessary service, no longer lives among things that are alien, having given back to each of the elements its own which he had borrowed from them, and having returned to his own and natural home, the pure and incorporeal one. For truly the matter of the body is something strange and foreign to the incorporeal nature, and the mind, necessarily entangled with it in this life, is in distress, living together with a life of another kind. For the interweaving of the elements with one another is like that of people of different tongues and estranged in customs, from various nations filling up one community; their fellowship is forced and discordant, each being drawn by its own nature toward what is kindred and proper to it. But the mind, mixed in with these things, being uncompounded and in a simple and uniform nature, lives among strange and alien things, not sharing a common nature with the community of the elements that surrounds it, which, sown into the bodily multiplicity by some necessity, does violence to its own nature in being united with things of another kind.

But since the elements are naturally drawn apart from one another toward what is akin and proper to each, sensation is necessarily distressed when the natural union is dissolved and split apart; and the thinking part of the soul is distressed along with sensation, inclined by habit toward whatever is always painful. The mind, then, ceases to be vexed and distressed when it comes to be outside the battle that arises in the interweaving of opposing elements. For whenever either the cold is defeated by the heat prevailing, or, conversely, the heat flees the excess of cold, and the moist gives way to the dry through its dominance, or the solid is dissolved by the dry in the excess of moisture—then, when the war within us has been dissolved through death, the mind keeps peace, having left behind the battle-line of the conflict, I mean the body, and having come to be outside the array of the elements against one another, it lives by itself, recovering through rest its strength that had labored in the interweaving of the body. These things, then, and things like them, the mind speaks to those living in the body, all but uttering a voice, saying: O human beings, you do not know precisely even the things in which you are, and you do not yet understand that into which you will pass over. For what the present state is by nature, reason has not yet been able to discover, but looking only to the habit of living it cannot know what the nature of the body is, what the power of the senses is, what the arrangement of the organic members is, what the economy of the inward parts is, what the self-moving activity of the nerves is, how of the things in

For us, one part is solidified into the nature of bone, another is given substance as the light-bearing ray of the eye; how, from the same food and the same drink, one part is thinned into hair, while another is spread out flat into nails at the tips of the fingers; or how the fire in the heart is always kindled, carried through the arteries to the whole body; or how what is drunk, when it comes into the liver, changes both its form and its quality, being turned into blood automatically by some alteration. The knowledge of all these things is until the present unspeakable, so that we are ignorant of the life in which we live. But those who live by sensation are wholly unable to behold the life that is separated from sensation. For how could anyone see through sensation what is outside sensation? Since, then, both lives are alike unknown—this one because we look only at what appears, that one because sensation does not reach it—what has happened to you, O men, that you cling to this life as good although it is unknown, but fear and shudder at that one as harsh and worthy of fear, for no other reason than this alone, that it is unknown what it is like? And yet many other things too, both among the things that appear to us through sensation and among things unknown, we do not fear. For what is the nature of the things that appear in the sky, or what is it that turns the poles in the opposite direction of motion, or what is it that supports the fixedness of the earth, or how the flowing nature of waters is always coming to be from the earth and the earth is not consumed—and many other such things we have neither known nor do we judge the ignorance of them worthy of fear.

But we have believed that that very nature which surpasses all understanding—the divine, blessed, and incomprehensible nature—exists; yet no one has ever been found who by conjecture comprehends in what its being consists, and nevertheless we love the unknown with our whole heart and soul and strength, though it cannot be grasped by our reasonings. Why, then, is this irrational fear established only in the case of the life that awaits us after this one, because we fear through ignorance alone what we do not know, just as happens with infants who are terrified by baseless imaginings? For one who wishes to look upon the truth of things first comes to a consideration of the matter, then reasons out what it is by nature—whether something useful and approachable or something difficult and repugnant. But what is wholly obscure and unknown—how could any sensible person judge it to be difficult, suspecting the departure from habit alone as though it were the attack of some fire or wild beast? And yet we are taught clearly through life not always to look to habit, but always to transfer our desires to the good. For neither is life in the womb for those being formed throughout the whole time, but as long as they are in the entrails, nature makes their life in the womb pleasant and suitable for them; nor, when they have come forth, do they remain at the breast throughout the whole time, but only as long as such a thing is good and suitable for the incomplete stage of age. After this they pass over to another sequence of life, persuaded by nothing of habit to remain at the breast.

Then, after the infant state, other pursuits belong to the young and others to those more advanced in age, to which a person passes in sequence, changing painlessly with his ages and his habit. Just as, then, if there were a voice in the one nourished in his mother's womb, he would have been indignant at being brought out through birth from the entrails and would have cried out that he was suffering terribly at being torn away from the way of life dear to him (which indeed he does, casting out the tear together with his first breath at birth, as though indignant and lamenting at the separation from his accustomed life), so those who are vexed at the change from the present life seem to me to suffer the lot of embryos, in wishing to live forever in this place of material unpleasantness. For when the pangs of death act as midwife to people for another life, they, when into the light

...when they have advanced there and drawn in the pure Spirit, they know by experience how great is the difference between that life and the present one. But those who are left behind in this moist and flaccid life, being truly embryos and not men, count unhappy the one who has gone forth before them from the confinement that encloses us, as though he had come to be outside some good, not knowing that for him, in likeness of the newborn infant, the eye is opened when he comes outside what now confines him (and one must certainly understand the eye of the soul, with which it sees through to the truth of things), and the organ of hearing is opened, through which he hears the unutterable words which it is not permitted for a man to speak, as the apostle says, and the mouth is opened and draws in the pure and immaterial Spirit, through which it is tuned to the intelligible voice and the true Word, when it is mingled with the sound of those keeping festival in the choir of the saints; and so too it is deemed worthy of divine taste, through which it knows, according to the psalmody, that the Lord is good, and through the activity of smell it perceives the fragrance of Christ, and the soul receives the power of touch as well, touching the truth and handling the Word, according to the testimony of John. If, then, these things and things like them are laid up for men after the birth that comes through death, what is the meaning of mourning and gloom and dejection? Now let him who looks to the nature of things answer us, whether he thinks it preferable to be led astray by the bodily senses in judging of the beautiful, rather than with the naked eye of the soul to look to the very truth of things.

For here some necessity is imposed on the soul to be enslaved to another's judgment in its supposition about the beautiful. For since the perfect power of the soul is not yet capable of being contained by the infant body, while the activity of the senses is immediately brought forth complete together with the infant, for this reason the mind is anticipated by sense perception in its judgment of the beautiful, and what has already appeared to the senses and been thought to be beautiful, and has been taken beforehand through habit, the soul accepts without examination, being persuaded that that is beautiful which sense perception, having taken it beforehand, attests—beholding the beautiful in certain colors and flavors and such rubbish. When these no longer appear after the soul's departure from the body, it is entirely necessary that the truly good appear to the soul, to which it is naturally akin. For neither will the sight of this eye be enticed any longer toward what is fair-colored, since it no longer exists, nor will the inclination of the will be toward anything else that sweetens the senses, since all bodily sensation has been extinguished, and only the intellectual activity, touching the beauty of the intelligible without matter and without body, unhindered—the nature will receive its own good, which is neither color nor shape nor dimension nor magnitude, but which surpasses every conjectural likeness. What then, perhaps, will someone say who is vexed at the present life? For what purpose is the body, and in exchange for what, if indeed the life apart from it has been shown by the argument to be better? To which we will say that not even the gain from these things is small for those who are able to look into the whole economy of nature.

For truly blessed is that life of the angels which needs none of the body's weight. Yet not even this present life is without contribution in comparison with that one; for the present life becomes a road toward what is hoped for, just as one can see in the case of plants, where the fruit, beginning from the flower, passes through it to become fruit, even if the flower is not the fruit. But also the crops, growing out from the seeds, do not appear immediately in the ear, but first the grass becomes a shoot, then from this the stalk is formed when the grass has withered away, and thus the fruit is ripened in the head of the ear. Nevertheless the farmer does not find fault with this necessary cycle and sequence, saying, "Why is the flower before the fruit?" or "For what purpose is the grass that springs up first from the seed, if indeed the flower falls away and the grass dries up in vain, contributing nothing to human nourishment?" For he who looks upon the wonder-working of nature knows that the fruit could not otherwise be brought to perfection from the seeds and shoots unless this skillful sequence paved the way for its perfection. For it is not because the grass that is first put forth from the seeds is useless for our enjoyment that what comes to be is therefore superfluous and pointless. For the one who needs nourishment looks to his own need, but the reason of nature looks to nothing else than how it may advance the production of fruit through the appointed sequence to perfection.

Therefore it first implants itself in the underlying soil in many parts through roots, by which it draws the nourishment suited to itself through the moisture; then it sprouts grass [making the grass a covering for the root against harm from the air], which is not fruit but becomes a kind of cooperation and a road toward the perfection of the fruit, first cleansing through itself the power stored in the seed (nature preparing the grass beforehand as a sort of residue of the fruit), and then it becomes a covering for the root against the harms that come from the air through cold and heat. But when the seed has already been more firmly established deep in the roots, then the grass is thereafter neglected, since the root no longer needs the covering for the upward growth of the stalk; all its power is given over, nature crafting with a certain mechanical wisdom the pipe-like structure, whose shoot is straight, encompassed round about by successive layers; for the stalk, being moist and without tension, must be nourished at first by these intermediate joints girded about for the sake of safety. And if it runs up to its due length, then the stalk luxuriates, the last layer having first shown forth from itself the ear, which, divided hair-like into many awns, hides the grain that is nourished at the base of the awns by the husks.

If, then, the farmer is not displeased at the roots of the seeds, nor at the grass that shoots out first from the seed, nor at the awns of the ear of grain, but in each of these he observes some necessary use, by which nature, proceeding skillfully, brings the fruit to perfection, cleansing the generative power through the rejection of what is useless, it is time for you also not to be displeased as our nature advances through necessary paths toward its own end, but to consider, by the analogy of the seeds, that what is present at each stage is in every way useful and necessary, yet that this is not the reason for which we came into being. For we did not come into existence to become an embryo at the hands of our Creator, nor does the aim of nature look toward infant life, nor does it look toward the successive ages which the form continually puts on through change, altering itself along with time, nor toward the dissolution of the body that comes through death, but all these things and the like are parts of the road along which we travel. The aim and the end of the journey through these things is the restoration to the original state, which is nothing other than likeness to the divine.

And just as in the image of the ear of grain, the grass that shoots out first seemed necessary to the account of nature, yet farming is not for its sake, nor are the chaff and the darnel and the stalk and the undergrowth set before the farmer's zeal, but rather the nourishing fruit that comes through these to perfection—so too in the case of life, the end that is hoped for is blessedness, while all the things now observed concerning the body—death and old age and youth and infancy and the formation in the womb—all these are like certain grasses and darnel and stalks, a road and a sequence and a power of the hoped-for perfection. If you look to that with a sound mind, you will neither be hostile toward these things nor will you be disposed emotionally and desirously, so as either to grieve when separated from them or to desert to death. But if one must add this too to the account, it is perhaps not useless, even if it seems to be outside the sequence: that nature constantly practices death, and death is altogether conjoined with life as it advances through time. For since life is always moving from the past toward what is to come and never dissolves backward, death is that which always follows inseparably upon the life-giving activity. For in the past of time, all life-giving motion and activity altogether ceases. Since, then, it is proper to death to be without action and without activity, and this always altogether follows behind the life-giving activity, it is not outside the truth to say that death is interwoven with this life.

And in another way one might find this same thought confirmed for us by the truth itself, with experience bearing witness to the doctrine: that the man of today is not the same as yesterday's man in respect of the material substrate, but some part of him is altogether continually dying and decaying and being cast out—I mean, as it were, of the house of the body's construction, nature carrying out the corpse-like stench and handing over to the earth what has already come to be outside the vital power. Therefore, according to the voice of the great Paul, we die daily, not remaining the same throughout in the same house of the body, but each time becoming different from different things, ever being altered by addition and removal, as toward a new body. Why, then, are we surprised at death, whose constant practice and exercise the life in the flesh has been shown to be? And if you speak of sleep and waking, you are speaking of another interweaving of death with life, sensation being extinguished in those who sleep and waking again working in us in itself the hoped-for resurrection. But the proposed thought has not yet been made clear to us through what has been said, since the episode has led the discourse on to another contemplation. Let us therefore again take up what was set before us: that not uselessly with a view to the hoped-for expectation of good things does the nature of the body exist either. For if we were what we were made from the beginning, we would certainly not have needed the tunic of skins, since the likeness to the divine would shine upon us.

But the divine character that appeared in us at the beginning was not a particular quality of some shape or color; rather, man too was adorned with those things by which the divine beauty is contemplated, imitating through impassibility and blessedness and incorruptibility the grace that is in the archetype. But since, through the deceit of the enemy, man voluntarily inclined our life toward the brutish and irrational, to separate him from the worse against his will and to transfer him forcibly to the better seems perhaps useful to the undiscerning, but it appeared unprofitable and unjust to the fashioner of nature—to inflict on nature, through such an arrangement, the loss of the greatest of goods. For since man became godlike and blessed, honored with self-determination (for the autonomous and unmastered is proper to divine blessedness), for him to be moved to something by necessity and by force was a deprivation of his dignity. For if, when human nature had rushed voluntarily, by its self-determined motion, toward something of what ought not to be, he had forcibly and by compulsion removed it from the things that pleased it, what was done would have been a deprivation of the preeminent good and a stripping away of the honor that is equal to God's.

(For self-determination is godlike.) So then, in order that free will might remain in nature and evil might be done away with, the wisdom of God devised this plan: to leave man to become whatever he wished, so that, having tasted the evils he desired and having learned by experience what things he exchanged for what, he might run back voluntarily through desire to the first blessedness, casting off all that is passionate and irrational as a kind of burden from his nature—either purified in the present life through attention and philosophy, or after the departure from here through the refining of purifying fire. For just as if a physician, possessing by his art all the knowledge of both remedies and poisons, advising a youth on what is needful, were unable by advice to restrain one who, being immature in age and understanding, was disposed with desire toward some destructive fruit or plant, but having a full supply of every kind of antidote, he would permit the child to partake of the harmful things, so that through the experience of pains he might learn the usefulness of his father's advice and, coming to desire health, might again through the remedies restore the child to good health, from which he had fallen through his unnatural desire for poisons—so the sweet and good Father of our nature, who knows both the things by which we are saved and the things by which we are destroyed, made the poison known to man and advised him not to partake of it; but when the desire for the worse prevailed, he was not at a loss for good counter-remedies, by which he might again restore man to his original good health.

For when man chose this material pleasure before the soul's gladness, it seemed in some way to concur with his impulse through the tunic of skins, which God placed around him because of his inclination toward the worse, and through which the properties of the irrational nature were mixed into man, and the garment of the rational nature was fashioned by the wisdom of Him who orders the better things through their opposites. For that tunic of skins, containing in itself all the properties that the irrational nature possessed—pleasure, and anger, and gluttony, and insatiability, and the like—gives a way to human free choice, becoming material for its inclination in either direction, toward virtue and toward vice. For living amid these things in this present life, by his self-determining motion, if a man distinguishes what is proper to the rational from the irrational and looks to himself through the more refined life, he will make the present life a purification of the evil that has been mixed in, mastering irrationality through reason. But if he inclines toward the irrational impulse of the passions, using the skin of the irrational creatures as a collaborator for his passions, he will deliberate otherwise afterward toward the better, having learned after his departure from the body the difference between virtue and vice, in that he cannot partake of the divine nature unless the purifying fire cleanses away the filth that has been mixed into the soul. These are the things that have made the body's use necessary for us, through which both self-determination is preserved and the return to the good is not hindered.

But by this periodic sequence, through free will, the inclination toward the better comes to be in us—for some, already here through the life in the flesh, who accomplish the spiritual life in impassibility, such as we hear the patriarchs and prophets were, and those with them and after them who through virtue and philosophy ran back up to perfection (I mean disciples and apostles and martyrs and all who honored the virtuous life before the material life, who, even if they are fewer in number than the multitude of those flowing toward the worse, are nonetheless testified to make it possible for virtue to be accomplished through the flesh)—while the rest, through the guidance that comes afterward, in the purifying fire cast off their attachment to matter and voluntarily return, through the desire of good things, to the grace originally allotted to nature. For the desire of things alien to nature does not remain forever, because what is not one's own is for each person satiating and cloying, since nature did not have its fellowship in itself from the beginning; only what is kindred and of the same stock remains forever desirable and lovely, as long as nature remains in itself unaltered. But if it should suffer some deviation through a wicked choice, then the desire for alien things arises in it, the enjoyment of which pleases not nature but the passion of nature; and when the passion departs, the desire for things contrary to nature departs with it, and what is proper and fitting becomes again desirable to it. And this is the pure and immaterial and incorporeal, which is proper to that which is above

If someone says that all things are of divinity, he will not err. For just as, when some sharper humor has clouded the optical spirit in bodily eyes, the darkness becomes its own due to the affinity of density to darkness, but if what disturbed the spirit is consumed by some treatment, the light again becomes proper and suited, mingling with the pure and radiant pupil—in the same way, since evil, like a stream, flowed by the deception of the adversary into the optical faculty of the soul, the reasoning faculty inclined voluntarily toward the dark life, having through passion become akin to the gloom (for everyone who practices base things hates the light, as the divine voice says), but when evil has been consumed from among beings and has passed again into non-being, the nature of the soul again looks up with pleasure toward the light, since what clouded the purity of the soul has departed. It has therefore been shown by what has been said that it is vain to be hostile toward the nature of the flesh; for the cause of evils does not depend on it (otherwise it would have held equal power over all who have obtained the bodily life), but since each of those remembered for virtue was both in the flesh and not in evil, it is clear from these things that the body is not the cause of the passions, but the choice that creates the passions. For the body is moved in accordance with its own nature, being governed by its own impulses toward those things through which it is preserved for its own constitution and continuance. I mean something like this: it has need of food and drink so that what has been dissipated of its power may again be introduced in place of what is lacking. The appetite is moved toward this.

Again, through the succession of things that come to be, the nature of the body, though mortal, is made immortal. For this reason it is also suitably disposed toward this impulse. Furthermore, the body has been made bare of the covering of hair, for which reason we have need of clothing from without. But since we are unable to withstand heat and cold and rain, we have sought the shelter of houses. These things and the like the one who looks to need with reasoned calculation accepts, each of them without trouble, making the purpose of need the limit of desire—house, clothing, marriage, food—through each of these ministering to what is lacking in nature. But the servant of pleasures has made the necessary needs into roads of passions, seeking luxury instead of food, choosing adornment instead of clothing, extravagance instead of the need of houses, and looking toward unlawful and forbidden pleasures instead of the begetting of children. For this reason greed has burst into human life through wide gates, and softness and vanity and slackness and manifold prodigality and the like have sprouted forth as it were certain branches and offshoots of the necessary needs, because desire has overstepped the limits of need and has widened out into things earnestly pursued for no useful end. For what common ground has engraved silver, flowered over with gold and stones, with the usefulness of food?

For what reason did the garment need the golden thread and the flower-bright purple and the woven painting, through which wars and beasts and such things are painted on the tunics and outer garments by the weavers, and to which the disease of greed, allied with them, has attached itself? For in order to obtain the provision and power for these things, they procure the materials of their desires from greed. And greed opened the entrance to insatiability, which, according to Solomon, is the pierced jar that always fails those who pour into it and is found empty. Therefore it is not the body that produces the occasions of evils, but the choice, diverting the aim of need toward the desire for improper things. Let not the body, then, be reviled by the unthinking, since afterward, through regeneration, it is transformed toward the more divine, and the soul will be adorned with it, while death cleanses away the superfluous and useless things, as regards the enjoyment of the life to come. For the same things will not be useful in the life that follows as those for which it now has a suitable disposition, but our body's preparation will be proper and fitting for the enjoyment of that life, being disposed in harmony for participation in the good things. I mean something of this sort (for it is better to clarify the thought by some familiar example): the lump of iron is useful to the smith's craft, even when it becomes an unworked anvil for the craftsman.

But when the iron must be worked into something finer, then, when the fire has carefully cleansed the lump, all the earthy and useless part is set aside—which the craftsmen of this work call "slag"—and thus the iron that was once an anvil or a breastplate or some other of the fine implements is made, once it has been cleansed of this surplus by smelting; which, as long as it was an anvil, was not considered to be surplus for the need of that time. For the slag also contributed something to the bulk of the iron, being mixed in with the lump. If, then, we have understood the illustration, the thought contemplated in the illustration must now be transferred to the idea before us. What, then, is this? The nature of the body now has many slag-like qualities, which in the present life contribute to something useful, but are altogether useless and alien with respect to the blessedness expected after these things. What, then, happens to the iron in the fire, when the smelting rejects all the useless part, this is accomplished for the body through death, when it rejects every surplus through the dissolution that comes in deadness. It is certainly clear to those who have examined it what these things are of which the body is cleansed afterward—things which, if they were not present in the present life, become a loss of this life. Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, a few things will also be said by us: let it be supposed, in place of the lump, the appetite that naturally operates in all things, and in place of the slag, those things toward which the appetite now has its impulses.

Pleasures and wealth and love of glory and powers and fits of temper and pride and the like. Of all these and such things death becomes the exact purification; and when the appetite has been stripped and cleansed of them all, it will turn by its activity toward the one thing alone that is desirable and longed for and lovely, not extinguishing altogether the impulses toward such things that lie in us by nature, but transforming them for participation in the immaterial goods. For there is the unceasing love of the true beauty; there is the praiseworthy covetousness of the treasures of wisdom, and the noble and good love of glory that is achieved by fellowship with the kingdom of God, and the noble passion of insatiety that is never checked by satiety with the things that lie above as it ascends toward the good desire. Therefore, having learned that in due seasons the craftsman of the universe will recast the lump of the body into a weapon of good pleasure, having wrought a breastplate of righteousness, as the apostle says, and a sword of the spirit and a helmet of hope and the whole armor of God, love your own body according to the law of the apostle, who says, "No one hated his own body." But the body that has been purified is to be loved, not the dross that is rejected. For it is true, as the divine voice says, that if our earthly house of the tabernacle is dissolved, then we shall find it a building made by God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, worthy to be a dwelling place of God in the spirit.

And let no one describe to me the character and form and appearance of that house not made with hands, in likeness of the characters that now appear to us and distinguish us from one another by their peculiarities. For since it has been proclaimed to us by the divine oracles not only that there is a resurrection, but also that those who are renewed must be changed—the divine Scripture guaranteeing this—it is entirely necessary that it be wholly hidden and unknown what we shall be changed into, since no example of the things hoped for is seen in the present life. For now all that is thick and solid has by nature a downward motion, but then the transformation of the body is toward upward motion, the Word having spoken thus: that after nature has been changed, in all who have come to life again through the resurrection, we shall be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. If, then, in the case of those who have been changed, weight does not remain with the body, but those who have been reconstituted to the more divine condition travel on high together with the incorporeal nature, it is altogether certain that the remaining peculiarities of the body also are changed together toward something more divine: color, form, outline, and all the individual details.

For this reason we see no necessity that such a difference as nature now necessarily has through the succession of those who are born afterwards should be observed in those who have been changed through the resurrection (nor indeed is it possible to state clearly that it will not be, since we do not know into what these things will pass through the change), but that there will be one race of all, when we all become one body of Christ, formed by the one impress, we do not doubt, since the divine image shines equally upon all; but what will come to us in place of such peculiarities in the change of nature, we declare to be beyond every conjectural notion. But so that our account concerning this may not be left entirely unpracticed, we say this: since the difference of male and female contributes to nature for nothing other than the begetting of children, perhaps one may take up some conjecture worthy of the promised blessing of the good things of God in the account concerning this, that the generative power of nature will pass over to the service of that birth, of which the great Isaiah partook when he said: From fear of you, Lord, we conceived in the womb and were in travail and gave birth; we brought forth the spirit of your salvation upon the earth. For if such a birth is good and childbearing becomes a cause of salvation, as the apostle says, no one who has once begotten for himself through such a birth the increase of good things ever ceases to beget the spirit of salvation.

But if someone speaks of the character with which we have been formed, and says that in the resurrection the same will be present with us again, our mind is not readily inclined to suspect that this is so or otherwise. For if someone says that the resurrection will be in the same form, the argument will fall into great perplexity, because man does not always remain the same as himself in the form of his character, being reshaped by ages and experiences at different times into a different form. For an infant is formed differently, and a youth differently; differently the child, the man, the middle-aged, the one past his prime, the aged, the elder; none of these is in the same condition as the other. But also the one stained by jaundice and the one swollen with dropsy, and the one withered by consumption and the one grown fat from some bad mixture of humors, the bilious, the sanguine, the phlegmatic—each of these being conformed to the prevailing bad mixture—it is not well to reckon that these things remain after the resurrection, since the change transforms all things to the more divine; nor is it easy to reason out what sort of form will bloom again for us, since the good things set before us in hope are believed to be beyond eye and ear and mind. Or perhaps if someone calls the particular quality of the character a distinguishing form of each person, he will not be entirely wrong.

For just as now the variation in some respect of the elements within us produces the differences of character in each person, according as there is an excess or deficiency of certain corresponding qualities, the distinctive feature of the form being shaped and colored, so it seems to me that the things that will then give form to each person's shape are not these elements, but the distinctive qualities of vice or virtue, whose particular mixture with one another prepares the form in one way or another, so as to be characterized—much as happens, so to speak, even in the present life, when the outward disposition of the face reveals the disposition hidden in the soul. Hence we easily recognize the one mastered by grief, the one stirred up by anger, the one dissolved in desire, and, on the contrary, the cheerful one, the gentle one, the one adorned with the grave character of self-control. Therefore, just as in the present life the particular disposition of the heart becomes a form, and the human shape is modeled after the passion that lies within, so it seems to me that when nature has been changed to the more divine, the human being is given form through character—not being one thing and appearing another, but being known as what he is: the self-controlled, the just, the gentle, the pure, the loving, the God-loving; and again among these, either the one who has all good things, or the one adorned with only one, or the one found in the greater number, or the one who is deficient in this but excels in that.

For from these things and things of this kind, both the characteristics observed for the better and those for the opposite, people are divided from one another into different forms, as it were, until, when the last enemy has been destroyed, as the apostle says, and evil has been wholly banished from all existing things, the Godlike beauty in which we were formed in the beginning shines forth upon all. And this is light and purity and incorruption and life and truth and the like [for it is not unreasonable to be and to appear children of day and light], but of light and purity and incorruption no variation or difference will be found in relation to what is of the same kind, but one grace will shine upon all, when, having become sons of light, they shine as the sun according to the unerring voice of the Lord. But also the fact that all will be perfected into the one, according to the promise of the word of God, belongs to the same understanding as that one and the same grace will appear to all, so that each imparts the same joy to his neighbor in return, through which each both rejoices seeing the beauty of the other and rejoices in return, with no evil transforming the form into a shameful character. These things our mind has spoken in place of those who have departed, voicing their words as far as is possible for us. But we will conclude the counsel to those who grieve heavily with the voice of the great Paul: I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve as the rest who have no hope.

If, then, we have learned anything worth serious attention concerning those who have fallen asleep, through what the discourse has philosophized for us about these matters, let us no longer admit this base and servile grief, but if one must grieve, let us choose that grief which is praiseworthy and virtuous. For just as of pleasure one kind is brutish and irrational and another is pure and immaterial, so also the opposite of pleasure is distinguished in relation to vice and virtue. There is, then, a certain form of mourning that is counted blessed and not to be rejected for the acquisition of virtue, which stands in contrast to this irrational and servile dejection. For the one who has come into this state will afterward, through careful reflection, take hold of himself, as having been carried outside his proper condition when he became subject to the passion. But the mourning that is counted blessed has a sorrow that brings no regret and no shame to those who through it set right their life in virtue. For truly he mourns who has come to a sense of those good things from which he has fallen, setting in comparison this fleeting and sordid life against that undefiled blessedness, which was in his power before he used his power for evil; and the more the grief weighs heavily on account of such a life, the more it hastens for him the acquisition of the good things he longs for. For the sense of the loss of the beautiful becomes a kindling of zeal for what is longed for. Since, therefore, there is also a saving kind of mourning, as the discourse has shown, hear, you who are easily carried down into the passion of grief, that we do not forbid grief, but instead of the condemned grief we counsel the good.

Do not grieve, then, with the grief of the world, which produces death, as the apostle says, but with the grief according to God, whose end is the salvation of the soul. For the tear that is poured out vainly and to no purpose over those who have fallen asleep perhaps even becomes a cause of condemnation for the one who manages what is useful badly. For if the one who made all things in wisdom fashioned this sorrowful disposition in our nature for this purpose—that it be a purification from the wickedness that previously possessed us and a provision for participation in the good things hoped for—then perhaps the one who pours out his tear vainly and unprofitably will be accused before his own master, according to the Gospel word, as a bad steward who scatters uselessly the wealth entrusted to him. For everything that serves a good purpose is wealth, counted among the precious treasures. I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, of these things that we have learned, and of whatever other teaching besides these is revealed by the Holy Spirit to the more perfect, so that you may not grieve as the rest do who have no hope. For it belongs only to the unbelieving to limit the hopes of living to the present life, and for this reason they make death worthy of calamity, because what we believe is not hoped for by them. But we, who have believed in the great guarantor of the resurrection from the dead, the very master of all creation, who for this reason both died and rose again, so that by the deed he might confirm the word concerning the resurrection, have without doubt the hope of the good things; and while this hope is present, grief over those who have gone down to the grave will have no place.

But our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who comforts the humble, will comfort your hearts and establish them in his own love through his mercies. To him be the glory into the ages of ages. Amen.