De Statu Animae

LETTER OF FAUSTUS. You ask me, most reverend of priests, how one should respond to the Arians, who with blasphemous mouth attempt to assert: "It cannot be," they say, "that the one born should not be younger than the unbegotten." In accordance with this, as if commanded to discharge a total silence, I will presume, not so much for the instruction of the matter as for the confession of faith, first observing this, that I not obscure things obscure in themselves by the pursuit of composed speech, but rather set forth certain indications of a poor understanding, which seem to serve not so much ornament as understanding. I therefore respond as disciples are accustomed to respond to questioning teachers. Thus, I speak at the command of your blessedness, so that you may examine my inexperience; I call upon you to teach. For if I remain silent before the most learned, I can scarcely know what I do not know. About to speak of the unbegotten, we ought to know that it is one thing to be the substances of things, another thing to be the names of things, just as, for example, when you have said "gold" and "silver," you have not immediately uttered the metal itself, but the names of the metal. For gold is one thing in the property of its kind, another in the appellation of speech; it is one thing when we name it, another when we hold it.

Begotten" and "unbegotten" is a designation of divinity, not divinity itself; it is an appellation of nature, not nature itself. The naming of "unbegotten" and "begotten" serves this purpose: that you may understand from what source someone subsists, and recognize that the Father is not from the Son, but the Son is from the Father. A principle from a principle is both one and lacks a beginning, just as if you say: "God from God," yet not two gods, but one is spoken of. Therefore, "begotten," "unbegotten," and that which proceeds from both indicate persons, not natures. For the majesty—which is undivided in the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit—can be distinguished by names, but cannot be ordered by degrees. At this point, it is necessary that you apply the intention of your mind with foreknowledge. You perhaps say: "Because he is from him, he is later than him." Come, let us nourish our understanding on this with some comparisons. Let us see if there is any thing that exists from another, which yet is not later in age than that from which it exists. For example, the very name "Son" is believed to be derived from the name "Father," yet it is not found to be later, because unless this one were born, that one would not be called "Father." Behold a name which is absolutely coeval with that from which it comes, and although the Son is from the Father, the Son makes the name "Father" for the Father: the person being born acquires the title of piety for the begetter. Since this is from that, neither is this later nor is the other proven to be older, and when the Son is called by the name "arm" from the virtues of works, behold the arm proceeds from the body, and yet the age of the arm does not precede that of the body.

The word is brought forth from the voice, and yet, although it is born from the mouth, it is not proven to be posterior to the voice. Fire and heat have an undivided partnership: but although heat is understood without doubt to exist from fire, nevertheless fire is by no means known to be prior to its own heat. Behold a thing which seems to exist from another, and yet is joined to that from which it exists without any interval of time. But when we come to God, "begotten" is the same as "just" and "justice," "wise" and "wisdom," "merciful" and "mercy." We understand that justice and wisdom arise absolutely from a just and wise God according to the Apostle, and just as a just man was never without justice, a wise man never without wisdom, so the Son is from the Father, but the Father could never be without the Son. Without doubt the Arians do not dare to deny our Savior, but while they call Him lesser, they cannot affirm that He is God. For God naturally subsists with the dignity of fullness, and their impiety testifies in its first confession that it worships one God. But because it makes Him younger, through Him who is thought to be older, it makes two and cuts through the solidity of unity. For the very name "lesser" reveals another who is greater than that one. Who is older than He who pronounces of Himself: "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last," who, when asked by the Jews who He was, answered thus: "The beginning which I also speak to you," who confirms with a truthful voice through the prophet: "Before me there was no God, and after me there will be none"?

If the Father says this, he affirms that the inferior did not begin after him; if the Son says it, he declares that it was not at all before him. The prophetic word clearly suggests this: "This is our God, and no other will be reckoned to him," and after this: "He was seen among men and dwelt with men." According to these things, therefore, between the begotten and the unbegotten there is neither order, because he is one, nor does time intervene, because he is first, nor is he to be postponed, because he is alone, nor is he to be called lesser, because he is full. Therefore he is said to be of perfect and simple nature, inestimable and impassible, even though we truly and salutarily confess that he suffered in the flesh for us. After this, in the following place, you ask me how, according to the substance of God, it was written in a certain letter: "He felt nothing with the sense of the one suffering, but he felt with the affection of the one sympathizing." First of all, this is very easy to know, which not even philosophers were unaware of: that in man, diverse affections—that is, justice, mercy, holiness, benevolence, piety—are adventitious things and are therefore called affects. But God is not passively affected by these, because they are known to be in him continually and naturally. Therefore, what in man is affect and grace, in God is virtue and nature.

For what was said: "He did not feel with the sense of one who suffers, but with the affection of one who suffers with," why should anyone not presume to say that which even the prophetic word recalls: "Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger nor chastise me in your fury," and "The Lord swore, and he will not repent of it," and again: "The Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance," and likewise Jacob is described as having loved and Esau as having been hated with different affection. He is said to be saddened by our sins and to rejoice in his works, and subject to affections, he himself says about himself: "I repent of having made man," and from the highest seat of heaven he declares: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He even seems to show the affection of one who suffers with when he says: "I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink," and other things of this sort, which abundantly occur to memory. Therefore, just as if some priest, endowed with knowledge of many languages and placed among diverse peoples, were to instruct a Hebrew in Hebrew, a Greek in Greek, a Roman in Roman, shaping his words according to each one's understanding and adapting his speech to the sense of each individual, and distributing the dissonant voices of one heart and [sinner's] breast into various hearings, so also God, when about to speak with man, deigns to take up man's tongue, and, about to take up human form as well, attests to the affections of our arrangements through the sounds of our understandings.

For while describing the functions of the five human senses, he says: "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers," and again: "The mouth of the Lord has spoken," and likewise: "And He smelled the odor of sweetness," and: "My hand has made all these things. The heaven is my throne, but the earth is the footstool of my feet," he suggests to our hearts the efficacies of things under the signification of members, so that on account of His ineffable condescension toward the human race, which does not disdain to name and address servants as friends and sons, man converses with Him in turn with human speech and manner. Moreover, the anger of God is justice, the fury of God is the vigor of severity, that God has sworn is to have defined, that God has repented is a sentence often changed, and when He is said to be harmed by someone persecuting Him, it shows the crime of the one harming. The entire ministry of speech and every means by which God is either understood or proclaimed is cut off from us, if these exchanges of human discourse are removed. Why, therefore, cannot it be said among these things: "But He felt with the affection of one who suffers with"?

If, therefore, a simple and open response has satisfied the questioning teacher, let us move on to the third question, which you command me to answer: what in human affairs is to be perceived as corporeal, and what as incorporeal. To these matters I will bring forth something not from the presumption of my own understanding, but from the opinion of the holy elders, especially since these things cannot harm the soul and can nourish the faith, and can arm and guide us up to the point where the Son appears equal to the Father against the perversities of the Arians. Therefore, when the discussion concerns a higher treatise, the senses and the mind must be prepared for a more subtle understanding. Some of the most learned fathers assert that some things are invisible, while others are incorporeal. They define that whatever is created is seen as matter, and is comprehensible to its maker and corporeal. For they assert that the nature of souls and angels is corporeal, because they are bounded by a beginning and by space. For as we read in a certain treatise of St. Jerome: "They consider," he says, "the globes of the stars to be embodied spirits," and again: "If angels," he says, "are said to be even celestial bodies unclean in comparison to God, what do you think man is to be considered?" But amidst these things, you deny that the soul is corporeal because, according to the opinion of some, it is neither local nor subsists by quality or quantity, which it is clear must be believed only about the majesty of God. For we read in a certain...

In the most received treatise of the fathers: "To enter," it says, "and to fill all things is possible for the Trinity alone, which so pervades every intellectual nature that it not only encompasses and surrounds it, but also glides into it and, as it were, can be poured incorporeally into a body." For although we declare that some natures are spiritual, such as angels, archangels, and the other powers, and also our own soul or indeed this subtle air, yet they are by no means to be considered incorporeal. For they have, according to themselves, a body by which they subsist, though much and incomparably thinner than our bodies, according to the Apostle's statement saying: "both celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies." From this it is clearly gathered that nothing is incorporeal except God alone, and therefore only He is able to penetrate all spiritual and intellectual substances. Since this is so, you object to me that the soul is not corporeal because, as has been said, it is neither local nor subsists by quality or quantity. How dangerous it is to believe this will be shown in what follows; but now, in this state of our treatise, after the discussion has been held, it will remain in suspense: if it is neither local nor subject to quantity, let us grant without doubt that it is incorporeal; but if we demonstrate that it is determined by quantity or confined by place, then consequently it is also contained by a body, and you yourself will no longer doubt this.

In what way is it not local, which, inserted into limbs and bound up in viscera, is held enclosed by the sole motions of the substance’s wandering condition? But if you think that the soul is not local because it roams through diverse senses and is dispersed by thoughts, it must first be understood that the state of the soul is one thing, and the affection of thought that arises from the soul is another. For this reason, it should rather be judged that if it ever imagines something for itself, it is more occupied with its own motions within itself, and if there is anything else that it seems to behold, it is more depicted for it in the mirror of recollection. For when it thinks of an absent loved one, has it already satisfied its desire as if it had seen him? Or when it depicts the likeness of Peter or Paul within the secret places of the mind, has it immediately penetrated the innermost seats of paradise, where we know them to be? Or when it sets before itself from reading the flames of that rich man in its heart, has it already descended to the places of his torments and the inaccessible depths of hell? All these things it undoubtedly either fashions within the secret chambers of the breast through various likenesses, or, if unstable thought, driven by slippery motion, runs about outside the seat of the soul, it does this locally, and whether it thinks of a city or any region, it fixes itself there only with its lingering sense, where it is carried by the intention of the mind. It can imagine some things for itself, but it cannot embrace all things at once.

Therefore, when the soul has thought of Alexandria or Jerusalem, if it was truly present there in its entirety, as you suppose, let it report to us the layout of the places, the faces of the men, the movements and actions of the peoples. But this very thing which we now exchange between us in mutual conversation by the action of the spirit—I perceive that I speak with you, but within my own consciousness, whereas I do not perceive that I have come to you. For if the soul is believed to be carried along with its senses when it recalls them, and to present itself by its own thoughts to those whom it remembers, behold, in these moments of present time I think of you and see you with my recollecting mind, but I am wholly ignorant of what you are doing and whether you are engaged in rest, reading, or prayer. But this happens because I reach you by the affection of my heart, not by the truth of my own substance. For the nature of our soul does not consist in its motions, which we feel to be sometimes best, sometimes worst. For if it were believed to consist in its thoughts, why, when these sometimes vanish and perish, does it itself endure in its own vigor and alacrity? How many thoughts and cares, even salutary ones, die within us most frequently, and work all the more for the freedom of the inner life! If the soul consisted in them, without doubt it could not survive when they perish.

Hence reason itself speaks more clearly to our own consciences: each individual soul either gives birth within itself to manifold thoughts conceived from the causes of things, or disperses its senses—like certain offices or ministries—to be occupied by diverse necessities, while the soul itself rests once within the chamber of its own body, about to depart from it only at death. For this reason, that it is itself local, let us offer a sufficient example once more: was not the soul of Lazarus, while life remained, within the body; but when life withdrew, did it not depart from the dwelling of the body, and, once poured back into the lifeless body, did it not return, summoned back from where it had been absent? Do you then see it both driven from the habitation of its lodging and restored again within the lodging from which it had been absent, and yet contend that it is not local? But why do I speak of these things concerning corruptible man, when He whose flesh did not see corruption possessed an immaculate soul, yet a local one, which He certainly held within Himself when He was fixed to the cross, and undoubtedly sent forth from Himself when He lay in the tomb: how is it not local, which the flesh contains, life joins, and death separates? But if, as you say, the nature of souls does not admit of local necessity, are there not, then, souls from the region of paradise that are shut up in the prison of hell? Tell me, I ask, if they are not local, how does that vast chaos, with its grim interposition, separate sinners from the gatherings and associations of the just, so that neither can they approach from here to there, nor cross over from there to here?

Now that is most evident: that things which are contained in spaces are circumscribed by quantity. If you have acknowledged the soul to be local, concede that it is corporeal. Tell me, did not the soul of our glorious Redeemer Himself leave the world when He rose again to heaven? For my part, I would not hesitate to affirm that not even angels are local, whom it is certain are sometimes contained in the heavens, sometimes borne through the empty spaces of the air, sometimes sent down to earthly regions—whom divine speech describes as ascending and descending in the vision of the patriarch. If they were not local and were everywhere, they could not, by ascending and descending, be present and depart. The most blessed Gabriel himself, who testifies that he stands before God, when he announced the Lord of the heavens to be poured into the womb of Mary, and when, under the Lord's command, he stood before the eyes of the mother, without doubt was absent from heaven, did not occupy the seas, did not fill the empty and diffuse vastness of the air, but occupied only that place in which he was. Since these things are so, whatever occupies a place is a body; and I do not see how one who is sent from place to place is not held by local law, and, like a body, is transferred by motion and approach, descends by mass, runs about by mobility, goes, returns, is absent, ascends. Or, I suppose, that one is local who, from the moment he was cast out of heaven, is not in heaven; and he did not only prove himself local, who, when thrust down from on high, dragged a third part of the stars with him.

Tell me, if it does not have a body, what fell in that casting down? What do you deny to it of a corporeal nature, whose ruin you do not dare to deny? And if, as you say, it does not have a body, it will not burn: but where, except in a body, will it feel that fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels? I think it is superfluous to say now that it drew some thickness from the mixture of elements from its association with this air. Tell me, if it did not have a body, where in the air was there a thickening, where could this very thickness, whatever it is, have gathered itself, if it did not bring with it something corporeal from that celestial citadel? It will, as I see, carry a foreign body to the torments. Therefore, recognize that it is a body even from your own assertion. It is a body which is infected, which is stained, which is changed by any addition from something approaching. So here the firstborn of the angels has long since become the prince of darkness, and, as if corporeal, beautiful before, now degenerate, once conspicuous with celestial splendor, now defiled with the foul horror of infernal sin. It is a body, I say, which has place, is driven by action, is circumscribed by quantity, is changed by quality, is consumed by pain. Since these things are so, see into what deep crime those who call the soul incorporeal plunge themselves.

First of all, since the creator of the universe, God, is reported to have made everything in number and weight, therefore the soul is believed to be excepted from the matter of the whole creation, which is not corporeal nor local; if it is not contained in place, therefore it is diffused everywhere, is said to enter everything, fill everything, and be present everywhere, as if the creature were joined to its creator and fragility to its author, so that it is to be considered not a thing of God, but a part of God. See where a deep fall into error leads its advocates. For us, indeed, those things which are above us are invisible; but to Him who made everything from nothing, all things are both comprehensible and corporeal; just as He established them by His work, so He incorporated them into matter, and to all things, among which the soul is counted, just as He distributed weight, number, and measure, so He also assigned quantity. Among these, if by chance, as has been said, someone should think it worth asserting that a certain contagion of this air, collected by admixture, is found liable to flames in that nature of angelic subtlety, therefore the punishment will rage in the air alone (as he says, if it is airy that will burn), not in that, but outside it. But without doubt it is nothing other than the substance of a body, where the force of pain will be able to hold sway.

See where the imprudent and unskilled persuasion is heading: when it speaks of the incorporeal, it also confesses it to be incomprehensible, and thus ascribes to the work of creation what belongs only to the creator, and communicates to created things the privileges of majesty and an undue power over creation, extending even to an injury against the maker. If we rightly inquire to what outcomes of things you refer the soul, this credulity especially cast the devil down from that station of the blessed seat, and because of this he lost the dignity of an angel, while he presumed to have the nature of God. Therefore, God alone is incorporeal, because He is also incomprehensible and everywhere diffused: for He took the beginning of His material existence from no corporeal matter of any creation, and for this reason the Son is coeternal with the Father, because He was created from no work and is circumscribed by no beginnings, and is diffused with incorporeal majesty over all things, which, comprehensible and corporeal, He wrought within the body of the world, as their potter; born from the unbegotten, that is, from the Father, but always with the Father, He rules with the undivided society of the Holy Spirit over those things which He brought forth from nothing.

Preface. To the most learned and excellent man, the patrician Ecdicius, from Sidonius Apollinaris, Claudianus Mamertus. You, a cautious arbiter of silence and a deliberate judge of speech, commanded me to publish the little books I composed on the state of the soul. It was right for me to yield either to the expertise of a most learned man or to trust in the affection of a most loving friend. But, as you yourself eminently know, many very great men gave me this same task, and they themselves, along with you, entrusted me with this business, which I would not have rashly undertaken unless I had judged it more dangerous to spurn than more laborious to undertake, although, for my part, it was also my duty, even unadmonished, to assert the truth as far as my ability allows. Therefore, I have written these few things, like certain seeds of reasoning, from which, if any studious person takes them up not idly, as I think, he will be able to derive many things, which, though flowing from narrow channels, will yet swell into great rivers with a longer course. But I, cheated of time and occupied in mind, have considered it sufficient, given the preeminence of the task, to indicate succinctly, as if with a finger, what to avoid or what to follow. As for that little work published without an author and sought after everywhere, brought forth in battle line with its whole array and joined in combat with us hand to hand—whether it has conquered or yielded, do you, most excellent of the eloquent, pronounce judgment.

But so that each reader may grasp from the preface the sequence of our style: the first book, at its very beginning, briefly establishes that the impassible divinity is subject to no affection whatsoever. Afterwards, it alternates a varied struggle with the adversary concerning the state of the soul. From this point, likewise, for the instruction of the reader in those matters which are more obscure, it has modestly and moderately, and as sparingly as it could, prefaced something from geometrical, arithmetical, and even dialectical rules, and from certain philosophical principles, insofar as it was useful for the purpose, engaging in debate with the opposing side from time to time; and thus, with some additions of our own, without any interpolation of others' material, the book reached its end. The second book, after its beginning, discusses measure, number, and weight not idly and, as I believe, not without profit; where, if a discerning reader is present, with the help of piety, through the grades of different creatures, he will arrive at a certain firmness—if not yet the happiness of contemplating the creative Trinity of all things, then certainly a more robust belief in it. After this, the entire book, up to its end, employs witnesses.

The third book argues a little at its very beginning, then pursues the wounded stragglers from the opposing battle line, and finally neither spurns peace nor fears a conflict with an unknown adversary. You have read, most learned of men, what you will read again: only see to it that you remember that what you order to be published ought not to be brought forth without care for yourself. Nor have I doubted the weight of the matter, but the lightness of the action. Therefore, assert and defend your counsel: since, if anything in these matters is otherwise, I shall be in danger for the writing, but you for the publication. Farewell, and thrive with good strength, restorer of ancient eloquence. CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS, ON THE STATE OF THE SOUL, BOOK ONE. I. ON THE OPINIONS OF THE INEXPERIENCED AND THE STUBBORN IN DEFENDING PRIDE. There is a great vice in the human race, Sollius Sidonius, most beloved brother: arrogant inexperience and stubborn pertinacity in defending wrongly presumed opinions. For most mortals are either deceived by images drawn through the senses of the body from corporeal things, as if by certain shadows of things, in the gaze of the mind, or they grow childish in old age with the tender persuasions of their former infancy. If they have any facility in speaking, they neglect the causes of things, spurn the soul of reason, and love the bodies of words; and since there is a twofold path to truth, so that either by trusting in prejudiced authority...

let ourselves be subjected to authority or strive toward knowledge through reasoning, saying nothing that either authority commands or reason persuades, they mock the unlearned, having spurned the small number of the learned, which is the greatest crowd. But they themselves are also deceived by those whom they deceive, by a reciprocal mockery. For they are praised and falsely praised, and they believe it, whereby the health of the mind is most endangered. Added to this is also the ever-growing intention of envy, the crime and punishment of a jealous mind. For if anything is brought forth by those whom they assail with unjust hatred for the public benefit, they immediately construct the opposite, even if they think the same, and thus, with an inexhaustible and confirmed hatred toward those whom it is their practice to hate, they do not at all fear having made a loss of truth. Therefore they hate their neighbor, and they hate God. And with the fullness of all precepts and the whole law spurned in these two, it is not surprising if they do not think rightly either about God or about man, since they distance both from themselves through the mediation of hatred. But I am moved rather slightly by this same fault of theirs, though it is blameworthy, because even if they aim the weapons of malice at others, they themselves, transfixed by their own blows, receive the wounds they try to inflict: for the authors of the same hatreds are punished first by the goads of those hatreds. That is a much greater and far more dangerous crime, that they foolishly conceive, vainly put forth, and proudly maintain opinions hostile to Catholic soundness, with rashness.

They write, they defend with intent, and because they have fallen through imprudence in a human way, they choose to defend the fault of their own audacity with stubborn obstinacy, lest they seem to have been able to err. For they openly construct their opinions, yet no less do they murmur secretly, with coaxing blandishments earnestly entreating the ignorant of matters to acquiesce especially in their opinion, to assent to themselves: that it is full of truth, that it is salutary, what they themselves teach, even confirming it by swearing falsely. If you seek authority, they interpose that the secrets of such causes can by no means be approached except by the most subtle reason, the investigator of things. If you demand the same at a critical point, they add that one ought rather to concede to authority, and that I have not previously said that I would enter the sea of disputation because of certain hidden rocks of arguments. Thus they evade reason by authority, and authority by the objection of reason, and they use both of these in such a way that they use neither. But if a somewhat tighter circle of disputation encloses them, they say that there are certain saints for whom it is very easy to solve questions of this kind, that they themselves depend more on another's authority, that they will follow above all what another has sanctioned. Who could bear this, and judge it possible to be borne in any way, that any man both denies knowledge and claims doctrine, builds up his own thoughts if a scrutinizer is absent, and covers them up if one is present? But, you say, whither does the discourse proceed? I, however, rather far.

I have prefaced what I wished to say, since it irks and wearies those present; for recently I came upon certain persons who were very eagerly reading a certain little pamphlet, and because it is the custom of the human race, drawn by the recognition of a new work, they had intently directed their mind to grasping it: I did not at all refuse to examine this same thing, as they thrust it upon me of their own accord as if necessary for knowledge. II. WHERE HE REMEMBERS HAVING COME UPON A BOOK WITHOUT AN AUTHOR. The first face of the little work, barely hovering at the doors of a most sublime question concerning the begotten and unbegotten God, presented a not entirely uncatholic opinion, albeit with a far from equal treatment: thus with me the gravity of the case weighed against the mildness of reasoning. When, as the reading progressed, I approached the remainder of the reading, I noticed that the author of that little work was laboring with certain circumlocutions to have it believed that divinity is passible. I ask about the name: it is revealed neither by answer nor by writing. I began, I confess, to hold the style of such a page as highly suspect, and just as in those places which, either yielding from the constant washing of moisture, or slippery with a slight incline, or hanging from a hollow, or rough with stakes, we are accustomed to try an unknown path with a cautious step rather than to run, so I enter the third part of the question, as it is there. From this point, the opinion, no longer to be explored but to be exploded, appeared to be striving with quite diligent effort, by no means of measured speech, to see if by some means it could make the soul seem to be a body.

Therefore, with no power of argumentation, with no law commanding, with no reason persuading, this third discourse is ended in this, as it were, futile business. And it is first in my heart to inquire what reason there was that, about to undertake such great causes and to speak of such sublime matters, he avoided being known. If you are well aware of what you are arguing, why do you conceal your name? If you fear being recognized, why do you publish the work—not to say, why do you write these things? Or do you perhaps follow the example of our ancestors in this matter? But I see that the prophets, evangelists, apostles, and afterwards very many of the authentic commentators prefixed their own names to their own volumes, and others even began the beginnings of their works with their own names, as in that: "Peter, apostle of Christ, and Paul," and also others and still others, founders and teachers of the church: evidently they knew that the vain or harmful fictions of the apocryphal works were to be guarded against. But not even thus could the fabrications of rash men be avoided. Hence it is that many works prefixed with the names of Paul and of many saints our catholic soundness does not receive, because it does not weigh the merit of a work by the adornment of a name, but the author is concealed from it by the truth of the style. Indeed, that this page is published and its author concealed gives clear evidence that the one by whom it was composed was condemned. For no one strives to be hidden unless he fears being recognized.

I, however, cannot sufficiently wonder why, in the same matter, there was not a zeal for avoiding harm, where there could have been an indication of suppressing a name. III. THAT THE DIVINITY, BEING IMPASSIBLE, IS SUBJECT TO NO AFFECT WHATSOEVER. But, returning to the subject, let us examine the very words of the aforementioned work: to that person, namely, to whom he directs such things, whom he took pains to conceal just as himself, he says: you ask of me how, according to the substance of God, it was said in a certain letter, and here he wished it to be indicated neither which letter, nor whose, nor to whom, nor concerning what it was. And he continues concerning God: he felt not with the sense of one suffering, but with the affect of one suffering-with. He adds that this was not unknown to the philosophers: because, he says, in man the diverse affections, that is, justice, mercy, holiness, are accidental things and are therefore called affects. But God is not affected by these in a passible manner. O "not in a passible manner"! O "is affected"! By what is he affected, if he does not suffer? Why is your memory so swift to forget even those things which you yourself have put forward? You said that justice and mercy, because they are accidents in man, are affects. Therefore, if in man, because they are accidents, they are affects, in God, because they are not accidents, they are not affects. Therefore, he did not feel with the affect of one suffering-with, in whom, because there was no accident, an affect could not exist. But you say: therefore, what in man is affect and grace, in God is virtue and nature. But when what is virtue in God has been given to man, is it not virtue?

For God is without doubt power, and if He is immutable, even when He has given Himself to a human, He is power in the human. Therefore, what is power in God is also power in the human, differing only in that there it is substantial, here it is accessible. Hence the Lord to the apostles: "Sit," He says, "in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high," and the prophet: "I will love You, Lord, my power." But you say that God is power in Himself and is not power in the human. Yet the cause of such an opinion is clearer than light: it follows, of course, that you assert that what you say is affected is changed. And first, the property of this name must be especially examined. "Affect" is so called from that which affects something; whatever is affected, suffers. To suffer, however, belongs only to a passible and created substance, which, since it was called into existence from nothing by the supreme essence, which is God, is intermediate between that from which it was made and that by which it was made: thus the substance can be affected either so as to advance, as in lower things, or so as to decline. I speak, of course, of the human soul. Therefore, neither can nothing be affected in any way, because it has no substance, nor can God, because He does not experience losses or receive increases. But intermediate things are affected, as said above, either by advance or by decline.

For indeed, whatever is affected suffers, and whatever suffers, no sane person will deny is not God, because the two are mutually reciprocal, so that nothing can be mutable unless it is passible, nor can anything be passible unless it is mutable. But when, on the testimony of the philosophers, it says that mercy and justice and goods of this kind are passible affections of the creature, and that the same are in God essentially, not accessorily, it does not intend to put forward things contrary to itself in its own mind, because affection is an accession, but nothing accedes to God: therefore He is not subject to affection. For whatever is affected is equally subject to contrary and congruent passions alike, being exposed to passion in both ways. Therefore, if the supreme divinity felt the affection of a fellow-sufferer, it is also subject to the goad of evil passion. You say it felt: certainly, feeling is an accident of that which did not feel before. But to eternity, because it knew the passion of Christ sempiternally, inasmuch as it had itself ordained it, nothing new—which it might know, let alone which it might feel—acceded at the time of the passion.

But why am I now discussing affection and trying to prove by argument that the same is impassible, when the very one with whom we are disputing has undoubtedly admitted that God was compassionate with a crucified man? What, I ask, is this: he did not feel with the feeling of the one suffering, but he felt with the affection of the one suffering with him? What is "felt," and what "did not feel"? Or how did he suffer, if he did not feel? If someone were to say: that one walks, and that one walks with him, or: that one speaks, and that one speaks with him, does this not signify that the one speaking with him speaks, and the one walking with him walks? Or if someone says: that one died, and that one died with him, does this not confirm that both died? For he who dies with someone certainly dies. Therefore, he who suffers with someone certainly suffers. Therefore, if the divinity suffered with him, it suffered; therefore perhaps it also died, or if even thinking this is impious: therefore God did not suffer, therefore he was not affected. Where now is the affection of the one suffering with him?

He then adds what certain of the ancient and holy men, with prophetic spirit, prophesied figuratively for the purpose of frightening and restraining those who think carnally and humanly, saying that it is written: "Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger," and "The Lord swore, and he will not repent." Previously, through the philosophers, he did not attribute accidents to God, and here, through the prophets, he even imposes the necessities of vices, because matters which are to be taken figuratively, unless they are skillfully examined inwardly, do not reach the life-giving spirit but remain in the dead letter. That is to say, so that we might believe the impassible essence of the sublime divinity to be passible, if we consider the prophecies of the prophets, animated by allegorical secrets, only in the body of the letter. For when it is recorded in prophetic oracles that God either becomes angry or repents, the effects of these passions, not the affections, are to be considered. Moreover, this modern writer who claims that his own meditations ought to be weighed according to the example of prophetic speech does not profess himself to be a commentator, but a prophet, since the birth of the virgin closed the mouths of the prophets, in order to unlock prophecies. Therefore, it is otherwise than reason demands to weave oratorical periods with the mystical style of the prophets, with the result that he who promises to expound the works of others cannot himself be expounded. Therefore, either do not use the words of the prophets, or prophesy. Certainly, neither prophecy for the present time nor prophetic speech for a commentator is at all suitable.

Therefore, whatever you have borrowed from prophetic speech in defense of yourself opposes you rather than helps you, because either the sought-for defense confesses weakness, or the unsuitable patronage does not clear the error. Thus the inviolable divinity is by no means rightly said to be affected, because effect is from the maker, affection is in the work. For when God temporally punishes someone, it is by eternal counsel that the one who is punished suffers. God would also suffer something, if he either temporally recognized anyone's sins or if anger moved him to exercise justice against that same person. For every temporal thing, mobile and changeable, is enclosed by immutable and standing eternity, which healthfully affects some things, and judicially allows some things to be affected, itself being quite alien from every affection or motion of time and place, endowed only with that motion which is called stable, from which and through which and in which is everything that is moved by time alone and by it alone, and everything that is moved by both time and place by it, and not by time alone. But of this elsewhere. Now, however, setting aside those things which are certainly such in merit or strength that to disapprove of them is just, to attack them unnecessary, let us come to those testimonies which he borrowed from the apostle in support of himself.

He says, indeed, why it cannot be said: "He felt with the affection of one suffering with him," when the Apostle thought it should be said: "They would never have crucified the Lord of glory," since, just as light can feel no wound of a blow, so also the author of light felt no pain of the passion. Therefore, it can be said: "But he felt with the affection of one suffering with him." It can indeed, because everything is permitted, but it ought not, because not everything edifies. Yet I can scarcely restrain my laughter at this kind of comparisons and your propositions. A little while ago you had asserted that God ceases to be virtue and therefore changes; now, with a flaccid argument, you declaim that just as light can feel no wound of a blow, so also the author of light felt no pain of the passion. Therefore, light alone feels a blow. Does not earth, or water, or air feel the blow of any wound? Or is light perhaps animate? Or can any inanimate body feel? Or is there any body which, even if it does not feel a wound, cannot be wounded? Therefore, light can be wounded, even if it cannot feel, because just as night is broken by the intrusion of light, so light is wounded by darkness. Whence the most famous poet played with the most delightful Asclepiads, saying: "And the absent day, light, a rival, drives, which night, conquered, flees with torn robe." What do you say, that just as light does not feel a blow, so divinity did not feel a wound in the passion? If it is so, therefore it could be wounded, even if it could not feel, and one thing was of insensibility, another of corruptibility.

For it is not that he did not suffer on account of incorruptibility, if he could be wounded, because light is both insensible and vulnerable. See whether perhaps this is the man whom you think we should approve, fallen as he is from the height of error. You say that corporeal light, common to both man and beast, is such that God does not feel the wound inflicted, and you do not liken any beautiful body, though it be a body, to the supreme incorporeal, but you equalize them; and in such a culpable opinion you arrogate to yourself not only the privilege of innocence but of praise, and you pronounce us, because we say that the likeness of God, as it is his likeness, is incorporeal, to be outside the faith. But let us discuss this later; for now, let us speak about the affection. Therefore, if Christ was crucified in such a way that the inviolable incorruptibility of the supreme divinity is believed to have been crucified for the whole world, I would like you to tell me—unless it is offensive—who it is that, after the humility of death, is believed to have been exalted from the supreme God, that is, from the Trinity itself, and to whom a name, which is above every name, was conferred? To him, I think, who, made obedient unto death, because of the obedience of ineffable humility, was ineffably exalted into the glory of God the Father. Dare, if you will, not to confess that the same one is the Lord of glory whom you confess to be the Son of man. But you wish to use that statement, "They would never have crucified the Lord of glory," in such a way that it is undoubtedly believed that the divinity itself can be affected, if it could be crucified.

Therefore, by your open statement you have made your opinion clear. For while you think you have said that God is affected blamelessly because the apostle says the Lord of glory was crucified, and truth persuades us to understand the crucified Lord of glory in such a way that the divinity is not believed to have been crucified, you, however, argue more stubbornly that the divinity is affected, and in your zeal to defend your error you do not notice that you are saying that the penal suffering which the crime of the persecutors inflicted on the man Christ was inflicted on the inviolable divinity itself. If this is so, God could have suffered for men even without having assumed a man, because if he is passible in the man, he could also have been passible outside the man. But perhaps you contend that he was changed by the contamination of the human substance, and that for this reason he became passible after assuming the man. Therefore God is not incorruptible, because whatever can be deteriorated can certainly also be corrupted; but divinity cannot be corrupted nor changed, therefore it cannot suffer either.

Now it remains, since Christ, true man and true God, from a double substance one person, is both God and man and man and God, that the same Lord of glory was not crucified in respect of the inviolable divinity and was crucified in the man in respect of the unity of the person. Thus in a wondrous and unthinkable way the God [man] suffered, and the divinity did not suffer. See now, therefore, that you have claimed the apostle's testimony for this one purpose only, not so that your opinion might gain strength from it, but so that the perversity of your crooked opinion might not lie hidden. You, of course, as if truth were stipulating for you through the apostle, say that the divinity is affected, but the apostle compels the Lord of glory crucified to be understood in that part of himself in which he could be crucified. This opinion, therefore, is left to you alone, that the inviolable and unassailable divinity was beaten with whips, pierced with nails, transfixed with a lance, afflicted with pains, consumed by death, because in one and the same Christ you refuse to believe that one thing was subject to death, another to suffering. But with truth pressing you, you change your words, saying that what the created substance is affected by is in God substantially, not accessibly. Go on speaking thus; do not let presumptuous ignorance intersperse falsehood with the sincerity of truth. It is human, of course, to err: it is human to repent of a fault. No one has sinned more dangerously than he who defends his sins.

For indeed you do not refuse, as you rightly declare, to affirm with the philosophers that the essence of the supreme divinity is impassible and subject to no affection. Therefore, banish this internal war from your mind. Be certain that truth can no more be mixed with falsehood than essence with nothingness. But you say that He is affected whom you deny to suffer. For if He is not without affection, the profession of impassibility concerning the same is deceitful; one thing excessively contradicts the other: he who says "He felt the affection of a fellow-sufferer" does not say that He felt nothing in the passion. Moreover, you say that God is not affected in a passible manner; therefore He is affected, but not in a passible manner. This is as if someone were to say: "This one stands while running, that one sleeps while waking," which the discrepancy of opposites certainly does not permit. What, then, is gained by your addition of "in a passible manner," when it can be said most truly and most fully: "God is not affected"? That twofold expression is not free from the blemish of suspicion. You do not say that God suffers, but you say that He is affected. Affection and passion signify one and the same thing: either remove both, or preserve both in each other. Therefore, it should not be said: "God is not affected in a passible manner," but: "God is not affected." If He is not affected, He did not feel the affection of a fellow-sufferer. If He felt the affection of a fellow-sufferer, He is consequently affected.

I say: the divine substance is affected by nothing; you say: God is not affected. Let us be reconciled. Let the one who, perhaps taking advantage of your ignorance—which is certainly evident—has rashly spattered you with infamy be cast out from our midst. But you add further and declare that the Apostle said concerning Christ already placed in heaven: we have such a high priest who can sympathize with our infirmities, and as if nothing here needed to be examined and discussed, you boast that you have satisfied the proposition, about to move on to the third question. Therefore, to give my response as briefly as possible: that high priest, I believe, is the one who principally before the divinity of the supreme Trinity offers the sacrifices of the human race, expiates sins, commends vows. He himself, therefore, is the true priest, because if the Son of God, according to that which he is equal to the Father, does not so much pour forth prayers as he hears those praying, a man is rather to be understood here, whom the Apostle calls high priest and declares sympathizes with our infirmities, saying likewise of him: Christ Jesus, who died, indeed who also rose again, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. That high priest, therefore, sympathizes with us, who also intercedes for us. But the one who assents to the intercessor, the Trinity itself, would certainly not have anyone whom it would be necessary for it to intercede for itself, if it could in any way suffer or be affected. Do you not now understand that the testimony of truth is rather taken up in defense of falsehood?

Since if anything of this kind, as we said above, is found in the divine volumes, it is to be referred to the unity of the person, because just as soul and body from diverse substance are one man, so God and man from diverse substance are one Christ. And through this, since he is one from diverse substance, he himself in a certain way seeks himself, he himself in a certain way hears himself for us. The things that could most readily be said on this are countless, but since they are not to be laboriously shaken which collapse by themselves, for the present let these suffice on these matters. IV. FROM HERE HE DISPUTES ON THE STATE OF THE SOUL. The state of the human soul, that is, of the divine image, is now called into doubt. This indeed is that third question, by which this necessary friend of mine, entering into the causes of distinguishing natures, pronounces the spirit of life to be a body, asserting that he brings forth on this the decrees of the prejudged authority of the fathers, whom he indeed recalls not so much to have defined something known to them by perception of the mind, as to have held certain opinions. And because he himself, as far as he speaks, has yielded not so much to proven reason or inviolable authority, but rather to human opinion, he strives with great labor that, spurning divine authority and also setting aside clear reason, with closed eyes, as they say, we should assent to him. Whoever truly and piously think about God consequently understand that nothing which it was fitting to be created was not created by him.

For the cause of creating things is the goodness of the creator, who, being able to create everything he wishes, would have exercised no goodness if he had created nothing, and would have used a half-full benevolence if he had created something half-full. But it seems strange that something would be missing from the fullness of things if the little flower of the rose did not exist, and that nothing would be missing if an incorporeal substance had not been created. So that not the least thing, but rather the most important thing, might be missing from the fullness of creation, an incorporeal substance also had to be created. But perhaps it is referred to as an injury to the creator if he is said to have created something incorporeal and like himself, because nothing like God is found in a body. But the human soul is said by God himself to be the likeness of God, and in a body there can be no divine likeness: therefore, that which is like God will be incorporeal; the human mind, moreover, was made in the likeness of God; therefore the human mind is incorporeal.

5. That the incorporeal is set above the corporeal, and the non-local above the local, in dignity. Now every incorporeal thing is set above a corporeal one, every non-local thing above a local one, every indivisible thing above a divisible one, and every living thing above a non-living one, in the dignity of nature. Indeed, if the most omnipotent and likewise most benevolent creator did not create a substance superior to every body and like to himself—which it has already been established ought to have been created—then he either was unwilling or certainly was unable. If he was unwilling and unable, he lacked omnipotence. If he was able and unwilling—which is impious even to think—he was envious. But omnipotence cannot be unable, nor goodness be envious. Therefore, he both could and would create the incorporeal; therefore, he did create it. Unless perhaps you say that what he could will ought not to have been made, since he could not will anything except what he ought to do. Why do you now contend that what you do not doubt ought to have been created was not created? It certainly ought to have been created, because, since the incorporeal creator is the greatest good, and the created incorporeal is a great good, and the created body—which is not unless it is created—is some good, just as the body was created as some good by the supreme God, who is the greatest good, so the incorporeal, a great good, ought to have been created. For it would not befit the omnipotent good, who made all things very good, to make the perfection of the fullness of things truncated even in the least, not to say to fail to create the most powerful things.

But perhaps it will be argued that an incorporeal creature is either not a good, or that it ought not to have been created, or that what ought to have been done could not be done. But the highest good is the incorporeal creator, a great good is the incorporeal creature: therefore it was fitting that a great good be made by the highest good, and the omnipotent one was able to do what the good one ought to have willed. Therefore he created an incorporeal substance, who could not fail to do what ought to have been done, unless perhaps it is said that something ought to have been done which he did not do: consequently it will follow that he did something which he ought not to have done. But you will say to me: if some incorporeal thing has been created, it is therefore equal to the creator. We are inquiring about the true man, that is, about the human soul. This is not equal to God, but similar: similar, indeed, insofar as it is incorporeal to an incorporeal being, inferior insofar as it is a creature to the creator, similar insofar as it is intellectual light to intelligible light: dissimilar insofar as a mutable creature is to an immutable creator. For truth is one thing, the image of truth another. But just as no image of a corporeal thing can exist unless it is a body, so an image of an incorporeal thing is never found in a body. For there, where Moses speaks about the creation of man, he says thus: "And God said: let us make man in our image and likeness. And he made man in his image and likeness. He created him in the image of God, male and female." That is divine.

authority's oracle can neither be eluded by eloquence, nor deceived by argument, nor overcome by force, nor corrupted by art. If the human soul is the image of God, it is evidently the image of an incorporeal being; if it is the image of an incorporeal being, then it is itself incorporeal. But if it is not incorporeal, it is absolutely not the image of an incorporeal being. Yet it is the image of an incorporeal being; therefore it is incorporeal: for because it is created, it is not God; because it is the image of God, it is not a body. VI. THAT WHILE EVERY INCORPOREAL BEING IS INVISIBLE, NOT EVERY CORPOREAL BEING IS VISIBLE. But you object from certain persons—whose names, however, you conceal from our knowledge—that they teach in such a way that they say some things are incorporeal, others invisible. Dreadfully learned expositors, to be sure, who have penetrated to this secret: if some things are incorporeal, others invisible, then incorporeal things are not invisible. Therefore every incorporeal thing is to be placed after every corporeal thing, because truth says through the Apostle: "Things that are seen are temporal, but things that are not seen are eternal." But you distinguish between creative and created substance in such a way that some things are incorporeal, others invisible. Therefore every corporeal thing is invisible, and every incorporeal thing is visible. At this point I myself dare to inquire: is God invisible or visible? If you deny that He is corporeal, you do not refuse that He is visible. If you say He is invisible, you confess that He is corporeal.

According to this opinion, therefore, which is far from you and from me, either God, eternal, invisible, and incorporeal, will not be incorporeal, or He will be visible and will not be eternal. Yet he wished to think of something, but was unable to express it—an ignorant teacher of obvious causes, I suppose, who meant to say that there are certain corporeal things which cannot be seen, since it is proper to everything incorporeal not to be seen, and thus some corporeal things can be invisible, while incorporeal things cannot but be invisible. For although everything incorporeal is invisible, not everything invisible is incorporeal. For sound is not seen, yet it is a body, although, because of the preeminence of sight, we often say that things pertaining to the other senses are seen, just as we often say: "See what sounds," when sound belongs to hearing, not to sight; yet we do not say: "Hear what shines," because sight, being more eminent than the other senses, improperly claims for itself what belongs to the lower senses, while it does not mingle its own power with theirs. Therefore, all things that can be perceived by any bodily sense are visible, if we refer everything to sight, and not all things are visible if we assign to each sense what is special to it. Hence, all the principal bodies, which are called elements, are undoubtedly visible; we experience them being perceived.

from whose metrical arrangement in due proportion, with compacted dimensions, the living body is made, with the soul animating it, although there are many things that are not animate and yet cannot be denied to live. But we are speaking of those which not only live but also feel, such as animate beings lacking reason. Having deferred discussion of these for a little while, we speak of ourselves. Therefore, since we consist of soul and body, and just as body cannot be soul, so soul cannot be body, the soul which feels in the body, even though it feels through the visible, feels invisibly. For sight is one thing, the eye another; the ears one thing, hearing another; the nostrils one thing, smell another; the mouth one thing, taste another. Nor are the hand and touch the same. Thus by touch we discern hot and cold, but we do not touch the sense of touch itself. For there is neither cold nor heat in it. And by taste we perceive sweet and bitter, but we cannot taste taste itself. For there is nothing bitter or sweet in it. With the nostrils we receive odors, yet we do not grasp smell by smell, because smell has no odor; and with the ears we drink in voices, but since hearing sounds nothing, we do not hear hearing itself.

We see colored and shaped forms with the eyes, and because they are colored and shaped, we perceive them with the eyes, but we do not see sight, because it is neither colored nor shaped: for we would see it perpetually if sight shone, and we would always hear if hearing sounded, and we would perpetually smell if smell were fragrant, and we would taste without ceasing if taste had flavor, and we would touch eternally if touch touched itself. And, to say nothing of the rest, if taste could be tasted, no one could be hungry, nor would external things need to be applied upon which the sense might exert itself, if it perceived itself. Therefore, the limb through which we perceive is one thing, and the sense by which we perceive is another, because between the invisible incorporeal and the visible body there is that visible corporeal thing which in us is sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch: which, since they exist only in an animate body, from the diverse combination of both are both corporeal and invisible, drawing from the visible body that they be corporeal, and from the incorporeal mind that they be invisible. Therefore, according to your opinion, that will not be invisible which is not incorporeal, as if being visible to the incorporeal and invisible to the corporeal were its property, since nothing of the body would be invisible, unless the invisibility of the incorporeal made it invisible, because in the same man, as we said above, both the incorporeal soul is invisible and the corporeal invisible, which the soul invisibly works from the visible body.

CHAPTER VII: THAT THE FIVE-FOLD SENSES OF THE BODY CONSIST OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS. Now indeed, whatever we touch with the bodily senses pertains to each of them in such a way that they do not admit others into the communion of their own properties. Therefore, among all corporeal things, the light of the sun is without doubt more excellent. This pertains to that highest element in the whole corporeal realm, which is called fire. Hence it is that in the human body, sight has received the principal place among all the senses. For from the internal heat of the heart and liver, certain little sparks, tirelessly glittering, fly up into the chamber of the head as if into the heaven of our body. From these, rays spread through the middle of the eyes and, mingled with external light, absorb the colors and shapes of bodies that have fallen upon them, by a rebound returning backwards. You therefore notice the highest fire among the elements, the most beautiful light among colors, the preeminent sight among the senses. Hearing follows this in merit and power, being composed of that element which the Greeks call aether: which, although it is of the nature of air, yet because it discharges certain dregs, as it were, from its highest parts downwards as if into a bottom, it is purer and more subtle, and surpasses this stormy and naturally cloud-bearing air both in place and dignity. Hence it is that the purest air makes hearing easier and more far-reaching.

For just as the eyes cannot perceive without the forms of bodies and external light, so the ears do not sense unless the air is either struck or blown. And so it is with the sense of the nostrils, for just as the air is infected with sounds so that it may produce hearing in the ears, so likewise this same air is infected with odors so that it may produce smell in the nostrils, which are not felt to be present naturally unless by drawn-in air. But that the sense of taste can by no means act without the aid of moisture is made evident by this clear indication: nothing savory is perceived if it is taken with a dry tongue. Concerning touch, I do not think it should be doubted, but rather that it is most similar to the elements, that is, to earth. Now let us return to that for the sake of which we have treated these matters: behold, sight contemplates and perceives both light and other things through the same bodies. Does hearing perhaps usurp anything from this for itself? Again, the passages of the ears receive sounds and formed voices. Does sight claim anything from this for itself? Through the caverns of the nostrils we capture odors of countless kinds; certainly hearing is unable to sense any of these. Perhaps taste communicates with smell in the exploration of flavors, or touch allows something to taste for perceiving rough or smooth things? Behold, a voice is not seen by the more eminent sense of sight; light, likewise, is not heard; a voice is certainly not captured by the nostrils; fragrance is not received by taste; flavor is perceived only in the mouth.

CHAPTER VIII: THAT NO SOUL WHATSOEVER IS MADE FROM ANY ELEMENT OR ANY BODY WHATSOEVER. Behold, you have a body of every kind, composed from all the elements into the fabric of the human body by the scarcely conceivable modes of that eternal music and the principle of harmony. Choose now from which kind of body the soul is made, if the soul is a body. For if the soul is not from one of these, nor from some, nor from all bodies, then it is not a body. But what shall I do now? Whither shall I turn, forestalled by the genius and art of a most acute and learned disputant? He, clearly understanding that no body can exist unless it is either created principally from nothing, as the elements of bodies are, or formed from these by analogical reasoning, and decreeing that the soul is a body, preferred that it be fashioned from one of the principal bodies rather than composed from all. With cunning caution, of course, he did not wish the substance of the soul to be assembled from a mixture of many bodies, lest, having been contracted from the same principles as the external body, if it were said to have been able to be formed accordingly, it might seem able to be dissolved. Therefore he chose air, from which or to which he decides the soul is similar, adding the testimony of some author of his, whose words are these: "There are," he says, "some spiritual natures, such as angels, archangels, and other powers: also our own soul, or certainly that subtle air, yet they are in no way to be considered incorporeal." Are these words entrusted to parchment?

This business is being conducted for the sake of that which we are undertaking. Setting aside everything else, it will hang on this one scale alone: if reasoned inquiry reveals that the soul is either made from air or similar to air, I will now cross over, as they say, to the side of my adversary, and then to the opinion of my teacher, begging pardon for my error. But if, as is the case and as I claim for myself by the right of established truth, it is proven by reasoning that not only the human soul, but every soul whatsoever, not only is not made from air, but is made from no body at all, it will be right for you either to agree with us or to forgive us. CHAPTER IX: ARGUMENT THAT THE SOUL IS CREATED FROM NO BODY WHATSOEVER. It has already been shown above that the element of fire surpasses the element of air both in place and in power. This is clearly demonstrated by that earthly fire, which, with an almost incomprehensible mobility, is borne upward toward its own region by a natural weight. But if this were not even granted to be recognized, it could be understood from this manifest fact: that all air brightens in the presence of the sun and darkens in its absence. Moreover, this is of the greatest reason: that air suffers from fire so as to become hot, yet fire suffers nothing from air so as to become cold. Air can be enclosed and contained in any vessels whatsoever, whereas this does not happen to fire at all. Therefore, fire is clearly superior to air by a manifest reason. Sight, however, which comes to us from fire—a sense common to both man and beast—is such that some irrational animals nevertheless surpass men in keenness of vision.

If, therefore, it cannot be denied that sight is from fire, and, according to your reasoning, the soul is from air, then the eye of a beast is more eminent in dignity of substance than the soul of a man, because the former is from fire and the latter from air. Not undeservedly does he who judges the soul to be airy think it local and affirm it to be enclosed within the prison of the body. Now, therefore, you must choose one of the two: either the soul is inferior to the sight of a beast, if it is airy, or it is not airy, if it is more excellent. You see how easily the figment of unlearned presumption has vanished, besides which it is very easy to argue many things on this point. Indeed, if it is airy, then its darkness is the departure of this corporeal sun, and its light is the arrival of this same sun. And that which the Evangelist declares, saying, "There was the true light, which illuminates every man coming into this world," and that which the prophet speaks in the person of sinners, "Therefore the light of justice did not shine for us, and the sun did not rise for us," will be false. Surely these men, living in this world, had not seen this corporeal sun, but were their incorporeal eyes seeking an incorporeal sun? It seems very strange, if this light has eyes which it illuminates, but that true light does not have them: or if it has them, just as it truly has that by which it can be seen incorporeally, then it is not only not airy, but I think it is not corporeal.

X. THAT ALREADY FORMED SUBSTANCE CANNOT BE CALLED MATTER. Now what sort of thing is that which you believed the reader should be reminded of at the very beginning of your disputation, so that he might prepare his mind for thinking about those more subtle matters? You try to lead our rational mind from the highest to the lowest, from incorporeal to corporeal things, and, as if teaching us to prepare the eye of the mind for subtle things, you add shortly thereafter and say: whatever is created is seen to be matter, which you determine to be corporeal. If creation is still matter, then man is not yet formed, because it is said to God: who created man from unformed matter. But the world is full of forms, whether lesser or greater according to the quality or kind of beautiful things, while matter is unformed and the world is formed; therefore, creation is not matter. XI. THAT EVERYTHING INCORPOREAL OR CORPOREAL THAT EXISTS IS CREATED. After this you argue and say that nothing created is incorporeal, because whatever is comprehensible to its maker cannot be incorporeal. Under this reasoning, therefore, God himself is unknown to himself: for if he created nothing incorporeal, lest something created exceed the knowledge of the creator, since nothing, whether corporeal or incorporeal, existed except by the preceding knowledge of the creator—evidently because he made nothing unknowingly—then he himself, who surpasses incorporeally every substance he created, is ignorant of himself before all things, and by this he is greater than himself, who is not capable of comprehending himself.

Because it is not permitted by reason to say this, it follows that he did not create something incorporeal, lest something created could be incomprehensible to him, since the supreme incorporeal being cannot be unknown to himself. See how easily the warmth of truth melts the frosts of frigid words. And when you cannot distinguish matter from the created, the formed from the unformed, spirit from air, you pronounce on the image of God as if you were an expert on the most important matters, while you are proven ignorant of the least. Now, compelled by a great scarcity of testimonies, you append a certain chapter from a certain work of Saint Jerome, which you clearly did not understand, in which he says: "They think that the globes of the stars are embodied spirits." There is no doubt that everyone who thinks is in doubt. But you say that the blessed Jerome reports the opinion of certain people about embodied spirits: if he follows the opinion of those who think, that is, of those who doubt, and you also follow his opinion, and since the doubt of one who thinks proceeds only from ignorance, recognize that you, in seeking the truth from us, have brought many ignorances in place of the one knowledge you promised. For when you use as a most proven testimony a man who, doubting about those whose testimonies he uses, brings forward as witnesses those who are themselves in doubt, what are you to be considered capable of pronouncing, you who, third in line, already doubt, following the doubtful author of your doubting author?

XII. THAT HE, NOT UNDERSTANDING THE PHILOSOPHERS, HAS SUPPOSED THE GLOBES OF THE STARS TO BE CORPOREAL SPIRITS AND DECIDES THAT ANGELS ARE BODIES. I nevertheless find that the philosophers say this, who in some disputations maintain that the very globes of the moon or sun are animated by incorporeal spirits, of course, under a certain divine mind. But you must recognize that this same testimony not only does nothing for your opinion against us, but is very much in our favor against that same opinion. This happens to you because, not understanding the philosophical statement, you have set forth that which, properly understood, can only support our side. For if they had said that spirits are corporeal, then the whole hinge of your argument would totter on the authority of those who are not defining, but rather opining. But since they have said, not doubtfully but knowingly, not corporeal but *corporate* spirits, is it not discerned that whatever is corporate is not corporeal? Otherwise they would have said corporeal, not corporate, spirits, because that is corporeal which an incorporeal spirit animates, but that is incorporeal by which a body is animated. Therefore, since they have clearly distinguished the animated body from the incorporeal animator, it seems to me that this advocate of the body either did not understand the philosophical statement about incorporeal substance, or ought never to have brought it forward in his own behalf under the very name of Saint Jerome.

He continues and adds: "If angels," he says, "are said to be unclean even compared to celestial bodies, what do you think man is to be considered?" As far as I can see, this most violent disputant does not understand even that. For he believes that angels are of one substance, so that he may think better of the stars, which he judges to be corporeal spirits. For what else will the learned man Jerome be considered to have said here, except that the bodies of angels far surpass human bodies in their fitness and power? When he said: "If angels," and added: "even celestial bodies," he wished two things to be understood: angels and celestial bodies, because since angels are corporeal spirits, there are in the heavens certain things which are bodies alone. Therefore he clearly shows that no body, however supreme in place, however powerful in motion, can be preferred to incorporeal things. Again, making a step in comparison, he says: "So much so that man cannot be compared to divine beings, that not even an angel can." Moreover, he distinguishes between body and flesh, because while every flesh is also a body, not every body is flesh. Whence the Apostle: "one flesh of birds, another flesh of fish, another of men." And celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, clearly showing that a terrestrial body will also be flesh, but a celestial one will not also be flesh.

Lest it happen that what he recalls the same Jerome saying might fittingly be applied here: they think that the spheres of the stars are embodied spirits, so that the stars themselves, or the bodies of angels, are certainly celestial bodies, while those spirits which are embodied in them are not corporeal, just as we say that God is incarnate, and just as the human soul itself is incarnate, of course, when it undertakes to administer the flesh. To which, however it may happen that what Scripture testifies, saying: "the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul," yet it is not to be believed that the soul is converted into a body, however much it is burdened by the weight of the flesh, because neither will a body ever be changed into the nature of a soul, however much it is moved by that same soul animating it; otherwise it would not be a body. Hence, whether the Apostle meant by what he said: "both celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies" to be understood of angels, or of stars, or of any earthly bodies whatsoever, about which there is no question, will appear from what follows. For immediately, without distinction, he adds and says: "the glory of celestial things is one thing, but the glory of terrestrial things is another." And to show clearly what these celestial bodies were: "the brightness of the sun," he says, "is one thing, and the brightness of the moon is another, and the brightness of the stars is another. For a star differs from a star in glory. So also the resurrection of the dead," teaching, of course, the same thing, that just as there is a difference in the quality of the stars, so there will be a distinction in the bodies of the resurrected according to the diversity of their merits.

Here indeed, without ambiguity, the Doctor of the Gentiles, while discussing solely the resurrection of human bodies, made use of comparisons of this kind. For he enters upon the case of this passage in this way: someone asks, how will the dead rise? In what kind of body will they come? And from this point up to that comparison concerning the stars, he pursues the same subject without the interjection of any other cause, making no mention of the soul, lest, of course, anyone should, with a perverse judgment, think that what he argued concerning the differences of the sun, moon, and stars—bodies, indeed, of the heavens—was said about souls. XIII. ON THE RESURRECTION. Now, therefore, if the human body—that is, earthly and mortal—will be transformed into that glory, so that it becomes from carnal spiritual, according to the Apostle who says: the animal body is sown, the spiritual body will rise, and the human soul is now spiritual in such a way that it is nevertheless a body, then human flesh will be transferred into the dignity of the soul, when it has been made a spiritual body. And the soul, which has justly ruled the body, which has piously and justly served the Lord, which has faithfully believed or perhaps even known God, will itself also, with its flesh made equal to it, be advanced nothing in respect of the quality of its substance. And where is that saying: not he who has cleansed the eye of the flesh, but he who has cleansed the eye of the heart, will see God? For the blessed are pure of heart, since they themselves will already see God. Therefore, perhaps the body will be beatified according to its own mode, and the soul likewise according to its own mode.

That will be changed, so that it serves the spirit in all things at its nod, which it often stubbornly resisted; and this will be changed, so that it may see God, whom it yearned for with the ardor of chaste love. And since the Apostle distinguished spirit, soul, and body, saying: "that your whole spirit and soul and body," because after the resurrection one is not to live in an animal manner, that is, where there is no eating or drinking, where there is no sleeping or coition, the whole animal body will pass into a spiritual body, because the whole soul will also pass into spirit, and the whole will be a spiritual body on account of the indwelling spirit. That spirit, indeed, if in this life it lusted against the flesh and did not yield to the flesh lusting against it, will rightly feel nothing of that difficulty in eternity, whose difficulties it overcame by the power of heavenly aid; nor will it be equal so as to be matched with the Lord, to whom it yielded unwillingly, and it will remain in the state of a servant, which conquered willingly. Therefore, it is given to be understood that, just as in this life the substance of the human soul incorporeally precedes the animal body in its dignity, so after the resurrection and reward it will precede the spiritual body. But whatever is more than a spiritual body, is, as I think, not a body: therefore, according to the treatise of this necessary man of mine, who decrees that angels are only bodies, the angelic nature will be inferior to the human substance.

For we hold as certain, by divine authority, that the bodies of the saints, which will merit to be changed into glory, are to be made equal to angelic bodies, as the Lord says: "And they will be as angels in heaven." Therefore, if angels are only spiritual bodies and of a single substance, and the human body is to be raised to the dignity of an angelic body, then man will be equal to the angel in quality of body, but will surpass him in dignity of spirit. But if this seems absurd, as indeed it does, then angelic substance, like human substance, is twofold: having a body of utmost agility and greatest beauty, which appears to men when commanded, and having an incorporeal part, by which it always sees God, according to that Gospel saying: "Because the angels always see the face of my Father." XIV. SPIRITUAL THINGS CAN BY NO MEANS BE SEEN WITH CORPOREAL EYES. But I am greatly amazed how any Christian, especially one in the position of a teacher, can define that God is to be contemplated by any beautiful body, by any sublime body, yet a body, and that the universal can be seen locally, when to see God is to understand. And we know by understanding that understanding is not local, because if understanding is local, then what is understood will also be local. For nothing is local which is not itself a place. But if understanding is local, and God is in this, because He is understood, then God is local.

Since this is contradictory, we must understand that a human being consists of both corporeal and incorporeal, each to be reformed for the better, and that an angel consists of both body and spirit, formed with preeminent dignity among creatures. For that spirit is more powerful than any created spirit, and that body is more sublime than the most potent of all elements, according to that prophetic passage where the twofold substance of an angel is undoubtedly affirmed, in which it is said: "Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a burning fire." Now it is manifest that fire is not spirit, and spirit is accordingly not fire, because nothing here is to be taken allegorically, as in that passage where the Lord says: "I will send fire upon the earth," when he spoke of the Holy Spirit. For it is not permissible to believe that human souls are inflamed with divine love through participation in the angelic spirit, since by the same gift a human being is good as an angel is good, and by the same gift each is blessed. Both desire the same thing by the same will, that is, by the same spirit; both perceive this same thing by an incorporeal capacity; and a human being, an angel, and God become one spirit, according to the Apostle saying: "He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit." But I do not see how a body can be blended with an incorporeal so that it may rightly be called one spirit. For if the soul is a body, then the corporeal will be changed so that it can be one with the incorporeal, and thus one necessarily returns to that reasoning by which it is said that something incorporeal could have been created.

For if something can become incorporeal from corporeal, it could also have been created from nothing, unless perhaps it is said that the immutable God, as it were, becomes corporeal, so that He can be one with a body. But let this be the faith of certain lost men, because if it is good for an angel or a human to adhere to God, the immutable Creator will not be degraded to the creature, but the mutable creature will advance toward the Creator, whence in the Gospel the Lord says: "Father, let these be one in us, as we are one." XV. THAT ALL CORPOREAL THINGS BECOME LARGER BY THE ADDITION OF THEMSELVES, AND MANY THAN FEW, BUT ALL INCORPOREAL THINGS NEITHER INCREASE IN MANY NOR DECREASE IN SINGLE. Nor indeed may it be believed that any conjunction of bodies can imitate the unity of the Trinity or be mixed with it without confusion. For it is clearly evident that any one body is doubled by the addition of an equal body, and that there exist in it up and down, right and left, front and back, and that according to its magnitude there are length, breadth, and height. But in God's Trinity itself we do not say that there are parts and spaces of this divisibility and locality, to whose likeness He who made us says that we can be one with Him and be united with Him, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, that there was one mind and one heart of the believers and of those who willed.

Nevertheless, I do not think that many souls were so joined together that a greater soul, as it were, was made from many souls, because the Trinity, through which and with which all good souls become one, is neither less in any one person of that same Trinity than in three, nor greater in three than in each single one. Thus also the substance of the human soul, in imitation of that whose image it is, is neither greater in many according to any bulk nor lesser in single individuals according to any bulk, because those are powers, not bodies. Created powers, however, the creative power rightly surpasses by that very fact and especially by the fact that it created. For we often both experience and have learned that one soul is more excellent than another, yet we do not believe that the one which we have learned is more excellent in power is greater in bulk, which it does not possess. I also think you would not deny that any many souls perfectly wise do not know more than one soul perfectly wise, nor that what one soul wills in every way, many souls by not willing in every way will more, nor that whatever one soul remembers best, many souls remember with better tenacity of memory. A body, however, has more weight when large than when small, and a multitude of bodies is stronger than a few, and many hands hold, sustain, or push something more forcefully than single hands. Now let us examine what follows.

CHAPTER 16: THAT SOULS ARE INCORPOREAL. “Souls,” you say, “have in themselves a body by which they subsist, although much and incomparably thinner than our bodies are.” Let it be accepted as such, if it is so. I would like you to answer this: who is it that says: “The soul has a body incomparably thinner than our bodies are”? If these are the words of the soul, what body does it call its own—that which it itself is, or that which it sensitizes and animates, the fleshly one? For the soul itself says: “The body of the soul is thinner than my body.” What body does the soul call its own, unless it is that which it itself is, if the soul is a body? Therefore, either the soul is a body and does not rightly call that fleshly body its own, because rather that which it itself is is its own; or, if that body is the body of the soul, then it is given to be understood that the soul itself is not a body. After this, it likewise speaks thus to its inquirer: “You object to me that the soul is not corporeal because it is neither local nor subsists by quality or quantity: that it is dangerous to believe so, we will demonstrate in what follows. Now, in this state of our treatise, after discussion, it will hang in the balance, so that if it is neither local nor subject to quantity, you may believe it to be undoubtedly incorporeal. But if we demonstrate that it is determined by quantity or confined by place, then consequently you yourself will no longer doubt that it is also contained by a body.

CHAPTER 17: ON LIFE, THAT THE SOUL VIVIFIES THE BODY NON-LOCALLY. And first, I ask you to answer: in what place of the body is the soul itself? Is it in the whole or in a part? If it is in a part, how does it move and sensitize the entire body everywhere? If it is in the whole, how does it form its thoughts and exercise its motions within the workshop of the breast alone? Or perhaps it is not only in the breast, but also in the head, nor only in the head, but in the foot and in the bones? And wherever you believe the soul to be locally, there you will also admit that it locally knows and locally thinks; and since, if it is corporeal, it is present in the body in such a way that, just as water fills a wineskin, it fills its smaller parts with a smaller part of itself and its larger parts with a larger, it necessarily follows that its thought is greater in the breast and smaller in the finger. And thus, whatever part of a living body someone cuts off, he also cuts off an equal part of the soul that animates it, and by this the power of thinking or the capacity of remembering in the soul, now certainly weakened, will not be as great.

For air, from which and to which you declare the soul to be similar, no one doubts that it is divisible and separable; for both when we breathe in and when we breathe out, we draw in and give back particles of it, which those veins that the Greeks call *arteriae* take up for the nourishment of the whole body, through which the same air is dispersed for the tempering of the three elements by the tireless motion of the lungs as well. But if, according to your opinion, the air that is drawn in pertains to the nourishment of the soul, because, namely, an aerial thing is suitably nourished by air, then, as was said above, it undergoes division together with the body which it animates. The power of memory certainly pertains to the whole soul without question. Moreover, every body, however large or however small, can certainly be cut, which happens to it because it consists of parts. For whatever has a part can indeed be divided, because a part can be separated from a part. Therefore, if the soul is a body, it certainly undergoes division; if it undergoes division, it undergoes diminution; if it undergoes diminution, when any part of the living body is lost, a part of the soul is also lost. But with a part of the soul, a part of memory perishes. Therefore the soul, whose substance has been diminished, must certainly remember less. And thus, if the soul is local, it can be fragmented by manifold division and destroyed by repeated fragmentation.

but because a sound mind, not to say a learned one, does not accept that the soul is non-local, in order that it may become more apparent, as far as we are able to set it forth with divine aid, let us discuss motions, since there will be no doubt that just as a body is that which is moved locally, so that which is not moved locally is not a body. XVIII. THERE ARE THREE MOTIONS. Three motions, then, are known: stable, non-local, and local. Stable motion is of God, non-local of the soul, local of the body. Stable motion is that God did not always make creation, but nevertheless did not then wish to create it by a new will when he created it, because he always then wished to create when he made it. "Then" is a designation of time; "always" does not pertain to time. "Then," therefore, pertains to the beginning of time, not to time, because the stability of the eternal will encloses temporal motion, and through this, always then to will is stable motion. Here you must grasp that nothing can be moved except by an unmoved mover, and to teach this by example, we certainly cannot move a finger unless the hand is still, and the motion of the arm is from the stability of the shoulder. And not to dwell longer, in walking, one foot must be planted so that the other can be advanced. Hold this when we distinguish the motion of the mind from the motion of the body. For just as, as was said above, God is moved stably, so the soul is moved temporally.

But that is temporal which a little while ago was proud, now humble, previously joyful, now sad, loved before, now hates, formerly forgot something, now remembers. The body does not share in motions of this kind of the soul, by which it is moved while the body nevertheless remains unmoved, whence it is given to understand that the soul is moved non-locally through time, and that by the same soul the body is moved both temporally and locally, but that the same soul is not moved locally by the body. And so that I may make this very thing plain in words, if I can in any way, I need a more attentive reader from myself. Behold: when the hand is to be moved for writing or fashioning something, the nod of the soul is directed. The soul contemplates incorporeal forms non-locally, to which it is inseparably joined, whether placed over subjects or placed under those placed over, and it moves the whole limb, and it contemplates the truth of the forms as a whole, and it makes the whole body, beyond this, everywhere sentient as a whole. Therefore, when, as has been said, intent upon those eternal and always the same forms, it strives to produce through the body a corporeal tetragon or hexagon or round thing according to the examples of those same forms, certainly if it has turned its mind, that is, its eye, elsewhere—for example, wishing to make a square, it thinks of a round thing, or wishing to write the name Paul, it thinks of the name Simon—does not the motion of the limb immediately be driven to express or shape that which the nod of the mind has passed over to think?

The soul, therefore, will stand in the contemplation of forms so that it may move the body in the figuration of things capable of being formed, which truth of forms is not visible except to the rational soul. For every soul stands in the appetite for the rational and in deliberation. But it is not credible that, when by the nod of the soul of a writer the hand is moved to write, the soul is also moved by the agitation of the hand, which, unless it beheld the forms of letters immovably and without location, could not form the same letters locally by the movement of the fingers. But perhaps you say: that part of the soul which is in the fingers of the writer is moved, and the rest is not moved. This, moreover, is what those contend who think the soul is divisible, although by an inseparable consequence, if it were corporeal, it would be divisible, because that which is divisible is corporeal and everything corporeal is divisible. Let us therefore inquire whether the mind can be divided into parts, so that it can be moved by a part of itself for a part of the body, or not, and let us see. And first, for the shaking out of this question, it should be especially important for us that, if the mind has parts, it can be cut into parts. Let us therefore attend to the mind, that no body can either be touched as a whole at once or touch a whole at once, and the soul in each of its motions or acts is wholly present at once. For, as we argued above, every body, however large or however small, has length, breadth, and height. It is subject, moreover, according to the number of its parts, to six motions certainly.

Every body is moved upward and downward, to the right and left, forward and backward. A body is also moved by a seventh motion, such as that of a wheel or a sphere, which perfect motion is performed from itself, through itself, and in itself as an indication of eternity. Therefore, every body, as we have said, having six parts and being subject to six motions, also has, by virtue of its own thickness, something intermediate. For the outer parts of bodies would be entirely nonexistent if the inner parts were also nonexistent. Consequently, any body, even if it is grasped in the hand and touched throughout its outer parts, is certainly not touched in its inner parts. From this it is clear that every body cannot be touched all at once as a whole, nor can any smallest body, such as a poppy seed or any part of that seed, be entirely in one place, since it certainly does not have its lower parts where it has its upper parts, nor its right parts where its left, nor its front parts where its back. The soul, however, sees entirely through the body and entirely recollects what is seen, and entirely hears and entirely remembers sounds, and entirely smells and entirely remembers odors, and entirely perceives tastes through the tongue and, as others hold, through the palate, and distinguishes them, and entirely touches smooth and rough things, and entirely approves and disapproves.

It seems remarkable, however, in view of the necessity of place and time, as I discussed above, that the soul entirely animates the whole body, and while the whole body is alive and the whole body is sentient, it receives forms all at once through the smallest part of the body, which is sight, and receives voices all at once through that same part of the body, which is hearing, and perceives fragrances all at once through the tiny member of the nostrils, and distinguishes differences of tastes all at once through the sense of taste, and discerns hot and cold all at once through the mere tip of a finger. Therefore, if it is locally present in its entirety at the eye in order to see, how is it that it is not absent in its entirety from all the senses at once, so that it feels everywhere in its entirety and animates each individual part of the body not by its parts but by its entire self, and simultaneously imparts sensation through diverse parts? Therefore, if you persuade yourself that the soul acts locally in these matters, then you will persuade me that it is either local or divisible. And yet all these things are still common to man and beast.

CHAPTER 19. THAT THE SOUL IS NOT SUBJECT TO QUANTITY. Therefore, if the soul’s lack of place has appeared to some extent, even though I have not yet argued about the principal part, that is, about our rational soul, let us discuss how far the soul is not subject to quantity, since, wherever there is no place, quantity cannot exist, because these two are so mutually bound together that either both can exist in something or neither. Of those Aristotelian categories, the divine essence is subject to none at all; again, the human soul is not subject to all; moreover, any body whatsoever is subject to all. For concerning God we do not say what quality he has, because he cannot be compared as if to something else, so that it might be said: he is such. Nor do we say how great he is, because he is not great by bulk; nor what he has, because he lacks nothing; nor in what state he is, because he himself is the state; nor do we inquire about his condition, because he contains all things; nor about place, because only a body is in a place; nor about time, because he is eternity; nor about action, because he acts while at rest; nor about passion, because he does not suffer. The tenth, or rather the first, is substance itself, from which these categories are woven.

CHAPTER 20. THAT THE SOUL RECEIVES QUALITY. The human soul, just as it does not receive quantity, so it is subject to quality. For if we inquire about someone what his body is like, the quality of the body is indicated thus: he is fair, he is ruddy, he is pale, or he is dark. But if we consult about the soul, its quality is shown to us thus: it is proud, it is humble, it is wrathful, it is calm, it remembers very well or quickly forgets. Likewise, if the quantity of the body is sought, we are rightly told: his length extends to five feet, he is two feet wide, he has the same in thickness. Is the quantity of the soul marked by these indicators, or is anything long or wide or thick found in it? But if this is so, then each person will have a greater soul the greater his body is, and we would never truly call a man of very small body great-souled, since we often call men of huge bulk pusillanimous. Just as we say 'great-souled Moses', when as an undaunted leader he entered the paths of the Red Sea, and the spirit of the people (the people's soul), who did not believe that this very thing would be an easy deed, with God promising it. Behold, the soul of an entire people compared to the soul of one man is without doubt greater, namely in virtue, not in bulk, since if by bulk, the bulk of two souls would be greater than that of one, not to mention many.

Therefore, quality exists in the soul, but quantity does not, because that which is subject to the mutability of affections receives quality, but that which has no bulk has no quantity. Hence it is that every animate body when dying does not lose the soul, but dismisses it, because what is not enclosed does not depart, nor is what is not held lost. For if it were held, it would not be lost, and if it were not lost, it would not die. Hence, not poetically but philosophically, Papinius says: "...I hate the limbs and this fragile use of the body, the deserter of the mind." So that this may become clearer, let us examine it more diligently and come from the lowest kind of living beings to rational life also in an orderly and gradual manner, so that we may be able to see those three things—memory, deliberation, will—by which the unity of the human soul is constituted, although remembering is common to both the rational and the irrational soul. CHAPTER 21. THAT MEMORY IS COMMON TO THE RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL SOUL, AND THAT EVERY CREATURE IS MAN.

Hence it is not without truth that a boundary between man and beast is said to exist in memory. For storks and swallows revisit their nests after a year, and horses return to their stables, and dogs recognize their masters. But because the souls of beasts, even though they naturally retain images of places, yet have no knowledge of their own substance, they necessarily remain in the recollection of corporeal things, which they have drawn in through the senses of the body, and, having no eye for reasoning, they cannot see—I will not say anything above themselves—but even themselves. Therefore, let the whole man render thanks to his Creator, if not as much as he ought, at least as much as he can, who, by the bounty of ineffable kindness, gave him essence in common with stones, seminal life with herbs and trees, sentient and likewise animal life with beasts, and rational life with angels. Therefore, that the life of herbs and shrubs may also be shown to be incorporeal and not to be lost by the body but to be dismissed, I ask you whether you deny that herbs and shrubs live, or perhaps you say that in these living things themselves there are souls by which they live. But if they were animate, they would not lack their own motion, because there are things that are moved by a motion not their own. They would also feel a wound inflicted. But we know that such things are not present in them from the cutting of bones and the cutting off of hair and nails, which we cut off without any sensation of pain. Therefore, there is life even there where there is no soul.

Now look at how, to produce this very life of a tree, the seeds of all the elements have come together individually. It has, evidently, earth in its density, water in its moisture, air in its growth, fire in its sprouting. But if the soul is from air or like air, as you declare, then you will not deny that a tree is animate, because it is clear that a nature like air is present in it. Lower things, indeed, in the rational order of things, are affected by higher ones: after the winter cold has passed, through the turning of the sky and the return of the stars, heat coming from above first affects the air, which is nearest to it both in place and nature. And since air yields to fire by as great a degree as it itself stands above water, it draws water from the depths of the earth through the roots of trees or of any shoots, because the element of fire, naturally seizing everything, drives the warmed air toward itself, and through the pith of the tree, just as it itself draws in the air, so the air draws water, and so the water draws earth. Hence it is that we also, through a pipe or a reed of any kind, by drawing in air, easily draw up water, and from the depths of wells, by means of some ingeniously assembled device, water, heavier by nature, is forced upward and, with the help of air, driven by force into the narrow channels of tubes, is pressed out as far as the lip above the top of the well and flows forth. This dissonance of bodies contrary to one another, so that any living body exists, is compelled into a certain harmony by the will of the Creator.

Now from these four elements, which harmonize moderately and musically in the life of a tree, if anything beyond measure has either been in excess or deficiency, the tree itself first sickens, then dies off as if overcome by languor. You see here that from the parts of the body dissonant with the harmony of unity, life rather departs from the body than the body is dismissed by life. It is therefore established that every life neither locally withdraws from the body, nor is in the body as if in a place, nor approaches the body locally. Here, if you examine the secrets of causal principles, you may observe that although the soul is absent from fixed living beings, incorporeal life is not absent. And to select one particular thing from every kind of seed, we certainly know how great the size of a grain of wheat is, and we measure its bulk by the same capacity. If we wish to see any internal corporeal part of it, by splitting it open we behold nothing except as much gleaming flour as the brief capacity of the thinnest husk contains. Behold for you in a corporeal space the utmost of a wheat grain. Now give me corporeally in this same grain the swellings of shoots, the greenness of grasses, the stalks of straw, the bristly ears, the smooth chaff, the rich fruits, and from these the tirelessly multiplied seeds of seeds, all of which are stored in that grain by causal secrets.

Now, therefore, either show corporally all things that come forth from seeds within those same seeds, or also confess the incorporeal life of plants and declare, if you please, the corporeal soul of man and the corporeal life of a shrub. Since no one of sound judgment can bear this, let us pass to animate living beings, which not only live but also feel. There is, therefore, in a beast a corruptible body and a mortal soul, which neither anticipates nor outlasts the life of the body. You see, then, that the seminal life which we find in herbs and shrubs is, in the body of a beast, granted sense and motion through the appetites of the soul, yet only if the body itself, with its elements harmoniously and analogically concordant, is properly sound, so that it accords with the soul's commands in obedient motion. But how does it happen that the soul moves a healthy and a diseased member disparately by the same command? Behold, that one has vigor in the left hand, but has lost the use of the right hand from a stroke of fluid, as often happens: the hand, adhering to the rest of the body, even if not in the same vigor, remains in the same form, yet does not serve the soul's commands. What shall we say—has the soul, driven out, locally withdrawn? And where has it gone, where has it departed? But perhaps it has betaken itself to the remaining part of itself: but the soul already filled the whole body, and can anything be added to a full thing without overflowing? Therefore, perhaps something of the soul must be breathed out or belched forth or in some way discharged, because a not-whole body does not receive a not-whole soul.

These things must certainly follow without ambiguity, if the soul is a body. Since this can by no means happen, consider rather this: that the soul has not lost its power of commanding, but the limbs have lost their capacity for serving. For when, by the rush of blood, as it were, the harmony of the cooperating elements is disturbed, the possibility of serving is taken away from the body, and difficulty in ruling befalls the mind, and what was useful begins to be a burden. Yet the soul has not lost its power of moving, but the member has not suitably presented itself for the necessary motion; and in any person deprived of sight, as far as the soul is concerned, the power of seeing corporeal things through the body remains, but the organs of the member fail, through which it might exert its powers for perceiving corporeal things. Therefore, just as it is clearly evident by plain reason that it is not the soul that is locally driven from a weak member, but that the member, sluggish with languor, like a certain nearness of death, dissents from the soul's lively intention, so, when the body of some animal has dissented by its own disharmony, the particles of the elements returning to their own regions, the soul, not having where to unfold its intentions, perishes in the case of a beast, and in the human case rests from those motions only by which it moved the body through places, itself moved in a non-local manner through time.

Now let no little bodies, as it were, present themselves to the eyes of the mind, so that we believe that souls, once bodies are laid aside, occupy certain regions of air or of any element. Understand your own intellect, if you can, to which alone, together with an angel, it is granted to see these things. Do you see anything long, broad, or high in your intellect? Does any splendor of bodily light gleam there? Does any melody, measured and flowing through time, resound there, or does the sweetness of a fleeting fragrance waft there, or does anything corpulent taste there, or does anything soft or hard touch locally? Its sight is brightened by prudence, darkened by folly. Its hearing is offended by falsehood, soothed by truth. Non-locally, equity smells fragrant to it, iniquity stinks; it wastes away with vanity, grows fat with virtue. Therefore it is wholly eye, because it wholly sees and sees everything it inspects, but any body is neither wholly seen nor wholly sees. It is wholly hearing, because it wholly hears everything it hears, but a body hears nothing wholly. And it wholly smells, tastes, and touches, since such unity and power cannot exist in a body. This, however, is so for it by its own nature, because there seeing is the same as hearing, hearing the same as smelling, smelling the same as tasting, tasting the same as touching.

But the phantoms of bodies occur to the soul, by which, affected through the senses of the body, it is circumscribed not by places but by deceptions, and because it remembers only those things whose forms it received through the body, it believes that nothing exists which is not of that kind, nor can it yearn for that fatherland from which it was deservedly cast down into this pilgrimage, since it does not know that it is on pilgrimage. But it will not be able to know that it is a stranger in the body if it believes itself to be the body, whence that man, whom his own substance no longer escaped, said: "When we are in the body, we are pilgrims from the Lord. But we dare, and we have the good will, to be more pilgrims from the body and to be present to the Lord." What, I ask, could be said more clearly? All bodies, whether thick or heavy, like water or earth, or thin and light, like fire and air, or those which are formed from these by seminal combination, are undoubtedly included under the name of body. But whatever kind of body it is, it can be called a lighter body, a thinner body, a more agile body, a more sublime body, a clearer body, yet it cannot be called anything but body. But the Apostle who says: "When we are in the body, we are pilgrims from the Lord," seems to me that he would by no means say that the soul is on pilgrimage in the body if he judged it to be the same as the body, because if the soul is a body and is on pilgrimage in a body, then it is on pilgrimage in its own substance, nor will it ever be able not to be on pilgrimage, since it cannot be without itself.

No thing, however, loses itself in any way, because nothing can be anything after itself. For it is easier for something to be utterly abolished so that it is nothing, than for it both to lose itself and to survive itself. Therefore either the soul is a body and the Apostle was mistaken, or if it sojourns in the body, the soul is not a body. XXII. A QUESTION ADDED: HOW THE SOUL SOJOURNS IN THE BODY. You may perhaps subjoin to these things and say: How is the soul said to sojourn here only in that it is in the body? If we rightly believe in the resurrection, in that eternal homeland also we shall be not without bodies. I would have you answer this: whether the soul is now called a sojourner because it is in a body, or because it is in such a body? This body, as I mentioned above, weighs down the soul not, indeed, by that weight which can be measured, because if by that, the more a man’s strength is worth, the more the body has been thinned by fasting or illness; whence this also greatly supports our arguments, that it is clearly evident that according to that life which we share with cattle, the human soul is more burdened by a wasted and dry body than by a well-fed and succulent one. This happens because a weary body is not able to serve the mind’s commands with easy motion, and what is burdensome to it is not the heaviness of weight, but the difficulty of action.

And accordingly, if we consider the brutish life, which is manifestly present in us here, that body does not weigh down the soul; but if we look to that life which will be with the angels, it weighs down the soul by occupying and enticing it, fixing it either by necessities or by pleasures in beautiful bodies and drawing it away from the contemplation of supreme beauty. Therefore, that which is necessary for eating or drinking for the preservation of the body, if it is expended beyond what is necessary, either the mind is occupied with the trifles of superfluous pleasures or it is afflicted through the body by blows and pains; it is clear that the soul is weighed down and burdened by the multitude and difficulty of action. And this is that pilgrimage of which the Apostle says: when we are in the body, we are pilgrims from the Lord. But when one who has merited arrives at that change of the body, of which the same Apostle says: we will all rise again, but not all will be changed, then the animal body, which will not exist, will not obstruct the soul's commands, but the spiritual body, which will exist, will serve in all things. But neither will that body desire anything unworthy, nor will this soul command anything unjust, and since the holy soul is swept up to God with chaste affection, understand that for it there is neither a local pilgrimage nor a local homeland. Is it not the case that in this life God is with the soul, even if the soul itself is not with God? For it is one thing to be with God, another not to be without God, because one does not come to Him locally, nor is one locally separated from Him.

Therefore, that soul is with God which sees, that is, understands God, and that soul is not with God which certainly does not understand God. But God is present non-locally to both the understanding and the non-understanding. However, the soul sojourns here to the extent that it is recalled from contemplation of the highest good through pleasure and pains of the body, through places or times, through phantasies and phantasms, which will not fully occur then when this corruptible thing has put on immortality and this mortal thing has put on immortality. Since this is the case, the soul sojourns in the body, by whose corruption, debility, and need it is separated from its homeland, that is, from God. But I think that a substance whose sojourn is local and corporeal and whose homeland is incorporeal and non-local cannot truthfully be called either corporeal or local. In that state, however, there will be no sojourn, by which it will be drawn by no appetite, seized by no resistance, hindered by no weight. It is clear, as I think, that the soul sojourns not in every body, but only in a fleshly body, because a fleshly body obstructs and a spiritual body approaches incorporeal things. Therefore, to discuss at last only our own substance, as we have previously spoken, who can gaze into the abysses and penetrate the caverns of memory alone?

In that [memory] is stored for me whatever of colors and forms I have ever seen anywhere; in this, whatever of words or sounds I have received through my ears; in this, whatever of odors I have drawn in through my nostrils; in this, whatever I have known through the diversity of tastes; in this, whatever I have distinguished through the report of touch; in this are stored for me, in a certain way, both grammar, when I discourse on dialectics, and rhetoric, when on geometry, and astrology, when on music, and all these together, when on arithmetic: knowing by means of the forms of the parts of the world which I see, with reason assisting concerning those which I do not see, I embrace the world with an incorporeal capacity. XXIII. THAT THE SOUL, BEING INCORPOREAL, SEES INCORPOREALLY THROUGH ITSELF, BUT CORPOREAL THINGS THROUGH THE BODY. But you say to me: you do not embrace the world by memory, but the image of the world. Even from this understand that the soul is not corporeal, because you see that the same cannot perceive corporeal things corporeally. Therefore, set over this [soul] is not in place, but in power and potency, a certain eye, which, whether it be called spirit or mind or intellect, is one and the same, even if it is called by a different name. Therefore, what a stone is to a non-living thing, that a non-living thing is to a living thing, and what a non-living thing is to a living thing, that a living thing is to a living and understanding thing. The irrational soul administers the animal body for the sake, of course, of its health, and administers.

a rational soul, capable of reason and intellect, for the salvation, clearly, of the rational soul, with God operating and administering by principal power and stable motion and at the uninitiated hinge of substances, first that they exist, then that, according to their mode or merit, they are such as He, who disposes all things only justly, has determined they ought to be. For just as it is fittingly said of bodies that they are here or there because of the necessity of locality, so of souls, because of their non-locality or quality, it is rightly pronounced that they are such or such, because just as a pleasant place or temperate air is agreeable to a living body, so tranquility in thought and security from fear are agreeable to a life-giving mind. Likewise, just as a dark place and harsh touch are penal for the body, so instability of thought and the distresses of fear are for the mind. Therefore, the soul is acted upon not through places, but according to the diversity of its affections, both delightfully and penally. Yet it is clear that the soul without a body can be either soothed or afflicted incorporeally through its affections, while the body without a soul cannot perceive either pleasant or penal things. Therefore, it is through the body that the embodied soul perceives corporeal things, and without the body it sees incorporeal things. Hence, just as a lifeless body perceives nothing, so a mind without a body does not perceive any corporeal things at all.

Hence it is that even while the soul administers and sensitizes the body, if it is ever raised up into that same highest state, it in a certain way deserts the bodily senses and departs from them non-locally, so that it does not see what is placed before it, does not hear what sounds nearby, does not understand the page it has read through. The soul is present so that through the eye it may gather the signs of letters, join them into syllables, combine them, and distinguish them into words, and it is not present so that it may know what it has done through these. I read something clearly; another who fixes the eye of his mind upon it understands me as I pronounce it, but I myself do not know what I have read, because the soul, non-locally intent, has departed into something else. Finally, when I return to myself, either admonished or of my own accord, I am the same who returns, and I am the same to whom I return, and I was not with myself, because I returned to myself through an interval not of place but of time, and I was not outside myself, because I could not be without myself. The soul itself is there, so that through the eye it may see what is read, and the soul itself is not there, so that it may understand what is read. Or does it not often happen in experience that, without any reading, we apply our sight and direct our hearing to some relation, and although it is very easy for these same things to be understood no less than seen and heard, we yet grasp with both senses sounds and signs, while we do not understand what these same things signify? And yet again, turning the gaze of the mind back upon that which was not understood, we comprehend it without any difficulty.

CHAPTER 24: THAT THE SOUL IS NOT ONE THING AND MEMORY, THOUGHT, OR WILL ANOTHER, SINCE THESE ARE THE SAME ONE SOUL. But you add and say: the state of the soul is one thing, the affection of thought which arises from the soul is another. For this reason, it should rather be judged that if at some time it imagines something to itself, it is more occupied with its own motions within itself, and if there is something else which it seems to behold, it is more described to it in the mirror of recollection. You think this is its nature, not its punishment, and for that reason your soul is deceived in its recognition of itself, because it embraces things opposed to itself in place of itself and, affected by the deceits of the body through the senses, is so entangled in deceptions up to that point that it seeks itself as if absent, when it itself is the one seeking. For that which is sought is not the soul, but that by which it is sought: whatever seeks is outside itself, nor does it need to seek except for what is not with itself. But it is with itself, because nothing is without itself, therefore it ought not to have sought itself, which could not be without itself. Consequently, when it seeks itself not without itself, it necessarily runs into something else, because it cannot find itself without itself. This is that delusion, which whoever understands grieves, and grieving groans, and with the prophet laments and says: "I go about sad all day long, because my soul is filled with delusions.

But the soul suffers delusions of this kind in memory, from which it could not fan out and bring forth any phantasms unless it had drawn them from the forms of bodies through the bodily senses. For whether it imagines to itself the same things which it drew in through the body, or from those which it saw it conjectures and fabricates those which it did not see, it is nevertheless certain that it can by no means imagine within a certain womb of memory except those things which it received through the body. And these are not natural for it, but penal, so that, since it flowed down from the highest good, which is God for it, into the body, enticed by bodily allurements, it suffers, persuaded, within itself justly that which it loved unjustly outside itself. Do not, therefore, wish to persuade me that the soul is that by which you see it rather to be disturbed. For if it had remained in the sublimity of its pristine state, from which it voluntarily slipped away, flesh would never have lusted against spirit, nor spirit against flesh; and if the true man, that is, the rational soul, had understood its own honor, namely the image of God, it would never have been compared to senseless beasts, that is, so that it lived in an animal-like manner. Hence is that tumult of corporeal images always thrusting itself before its eyes, so that whenever it strives by reasoning either towards itself or towards its God, it is always distracted to corporeal things by the phantasms of the body.

For when you say that the soul is one thing and the soul's thought another, you might perhaps have said better that those things about which it thinks, when it does not think about itself, are not the soul, but that thought itself is nothing other than the soul, because that which you said is to be subjected, that the soul is accustomed to rest to such an extent that it thinks of nothing at all, is lacking in truth. The soul can indeed vary what it thinks, but it cannot not think. And what is that which we call dreaming, except that not even when the body is weary and relaxed into sleep does the soul's power rest from thoughts? It is wholly there where it thinks, because it wholly thinks. But you are deceived about the state of the soul especially for this reason, because you believe the soul is one thing and the soul's powers are another. For what it thinks is an accident of it, but the substance by which it thinks. This you must likewise acknowledge about the will. For just as the whole soul is thought, so the whole soul is will, and what it perfectly wills it wills wholly, and as was said above, whatever willing is for it is an accident, but the willing itself is substance. Hence also in the sacred scriptures there is a definition of perfect will, as in that which is, that what it willed in such or such a way is judged damnable or praiseworthy. Thus in the Gospel the Lord says: "Whoever sees a woman to desire her," he says, "has already committed adultery with her in his heart." And in a good sense in another place it is said by angelic voices: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.

Behold, love—as you suppose, a certain portion of the mind; as reason teaches, the whole mind. Therefore, if I love something with total love, do I not love that very thing with my whole mind? And where does that which is said have room: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul," if love is thought to be a part of the soul? For if the soul loves by a part of itself, it certainly does not love wholly. But if it loves wholly, then without ambiguity it is wholly love. For it is said, and truly said, that God is love; but that love is of such a kind that neither can it itself love except the good, nor can it be loved through it except rightly. This love, however, which is the human soul, on account of the mutability of its affections, can both blaze with heavenly charity toward higher things—for which the only such thing is God—and flow away with damnable love toward lower things. Yet whatever it loves, if it loves with total love, it loves wholly; and when it loves wholly, it is wholly love—a unity which, of course, is not in the body.

CHAPTER 25: AN EXAMPLE FROM GEOMETRY, ARITHMETIC, AND DIALECTIC FOR INSTRUCTING THE READER IN THOSE MATTERS WHICH ARE OBSCURE: WHAT THE SOUL SEES BY ITSELF, WHAT THROUGH THE BODY. But you say: when one thinks of an absent loved one, has one not, as if by seeing him, satisfied one's desires? This, as I conjecture and as I clearly prove, is a very powerful reason which drove you, unknowing, to declare the soul corporeal. Please lift yourself a little from the bodily senses, and if you can, perceive what or how great the power of seeing is in the mind, and if you can, distinguish the sight of the mind from that of the body. Certainly the body sees nothing, because it feels nothing at all without the soul, and by this the mind sees corporeal things through the body, incorporeal things by itself. Let us now separate these very things, as much as the matter at present demands, so that it may clearly appear what are the sights of the mind through the body, and what without the body. For whoever is even somewhat educated, I believe, knows in the discipline of geometry what a point is and what a line is, but because among those who will deign to read these things there may be one who does not know, let us inquire by discussing this a little. A line is, as the most learned and excellent men have not only said but have proven by reasoning, a simple length, which cannot be found in a body at all, because every body is long in length, yet it is not itself length, nor can it be long in such a way that it is not simultaneously broad and high.

Therefore, just as they say, even if you think of a spider’s thread, because it is certainly a body, you have not thought only of its length; for, in proportion to its own measure, it possesses an inseparable breadth and depth of its length. So, if, as truth compels us to admit, length is one thing and breadth another, let us set aside breadth and think of length alone. I know, however, that this same thing is clearly seen by not many; indeed, when the philosopher Marcius also denied to the mathematician Adrastus that he saw it, although he saw the lines of the craftsmen excessively, Adrastus said: “It is certainly not surprising that you have eyes like the craftsmen, but a mind unlike Pythagoras.” But for that reason the slower-witted should not despair, provided we yield to authority, even if we do not grasp the reasoning. This length, then, about which I had begun to speak, when it has been begun from a point and ended at a point, is called by the Greeks γραμμή, by us linea. Now, if you have been able to understand what length without breadth is, and you have formed a line bounded by length, place two equal lines opposite each other; when you have done this, understand that you have not made a figure with two equal lines. For a figure is said to exist when a space is enclosed by equal or unequal lines touching each other at their ends.

Two equal parallel lines, placed without deviation and not touching at their ends, do not enclose a figure; but with three equal lines a triangular figure is formed, and this is an eternal and immutable principle, clearly evident to every human mind even without being prompted. Can it ever be that three equal lines, touching each other at their ends, form anything other than a triangle? Or is this truth more true now than it was before, or did it begin to be true at some time, or will it cease to be true at some time? Or is it not easier for the corporeal world, whose swollen and local forms are of course the image of these non-local and incorporeal forms, to perish, than for any of these to be varied in species, or moved from place, or grow old with age, or be changed in any way whatsoever? Therefore, so that I do not drag you through all the minutiae of this discipline, nor detain your attention in examining the principles of plane figures, or cubes, or pyramids, let us speak briefly, as we have done so far, about just one figure, on account of the perfection of the circle.

A circle is formed from a single line. But now you will rightly be reminded that a line without breadth and height is more perfect, yet it has something more perfect than itself. For the point is principally the origin of the line; from it the line begins and in it the line ends, since the point is manifestly seen neither to arise from anything nor to end. For the point holds the same place in figures as the unit does in numbers. Therefore this line, which can be cut transversely, cannot be split lengthwise, because if it is split, it certainly has breadth; when it is to be cut, it is cut by a point, since the point is obviously not cut. Therefore length is more perfect than breadth, because breadth admits cutting both transversely and directly. Breadth is more perfect than height, because height can not only be split and cut, but also be hewn from the side. Therefore height cannot exist without breadth and length, and where these three are present, it is undoubtedly a body. Breadth cannot exist without length; length can exist without all these, but cannot exist without the point. The point, however, always exists without these and does not need anything else in order to exist, because there can be no principle of a unit. A circle, therefore, is made by one and the same curved line, but just as in triangles and quadrilaterals there are points at the angles, by which the principle of the figures holds together, so in a circle its center will be occupied by a point, so that the circle is formed with a fixed dimension.

For when you have fixed one leg of the compass and have curved the other from the center outward, attend as much as you can to the power of the center: from the stationary leg it governs the leg that is moved around, and there, where it is not locally, it potentially forms the circle. If you direct the purified edge of your mind here, it ought now to glimmer for you what the soul is. That also is something: if we consult bodily sense, it may be believed that two equal lines can be drawn side by side through the middle of a circle, when manifest reason proves that by no means can two be drawn through the same middle unless one is shorter. It seems to me, as was evident above concerning the triangle, that here too the principle of the circle remains fixed by indissoluble and eternal laws. Now I would have you tell me: if the soul sees these things locally, what cause is there that, when I am fashioning something round, triangular, or quadrangular from bodies in the west, the same principle of round or square is not absent to me without swelling or motion, while at the same moment, according to the same law of round and square, another person in the east is able to fashion similar things from bodies? Do you see, even from these things which the soul beholds, what the vision of the mind is? Do you understand that the intelligible and the intelligent can by no means be separated? Do you also notice what the difference is between those forms which we perceive with the body and those which we perceive with the mind? That the latter are the eternal world, of which this world is an image, whence it has been divinely said: "For the figure of this world passes away.

You also see that, while knowing the lengths, breadths, and heights of bodies is of almost no importance, there is something else that suffices, whence the Apostle says that we ought to know what breadth and length, height and depth are? For what will it profit me anywhere to seek the height of the corporeal heaven, to examine the intervals of the planets, the paths of the circles, or the distances of individual stars, to know the spaces of the earth or to penetrate the depths of the abyss? Not about these, I think, did the Apostle wish to warn me—things which are not only laborious but also harmful if, when one must pass through them to eternal and ever-abiding things, one clings to them and remains in them. Now return and observe that every long thing becomes long by length, but that length itself cannot be called long, just as every chaste thing becomes chaste by chastity, but chastity itself cannot in any way be called chaste. Therefore, when you wish to contemplate pure length, or when you fix the eye of the mind upon a trigon or a hexagon, cast away as much as you can and flee not only everything corporeal, but also whatever can be like the corporeal; and when you see the trigon—whether formed by three points and three lines, or the round by a point or a line—incorporeally and non-locally, then also behold the power and preeminence of numbers, and understand that the whole corporeal realm is made numerable through numbers, but that the numbers themselves cannot be numbered.

For who—I will not say speak, but even think—could worthily grasp that number, though it exists from the one and through the one and in the one, yet the one is neither its beginning nor its end? For if we say that the one is the beginning of number, what shall we say is the beginning of the one itself? Behold, you have the beginning of number in the beginning, so that number arises from it. But if we wish to count, we add one to one to make two, and one to two to make three, and one to three to make four, and so on; as often as we multiply the one, so often are the individual units, as it were, led into a sum, so that ten times ten is called a hundred, and twenty times twenty four hundred, and a hundred times a hundred ten thousand, and a thousand times a thousand a million, that you may recognize that every number exists through the one just as it proceeds from the one. Moreover, it is evident that the end of number, which is absolutely none, cannot be reached, because beyond every number, which exists from the one and through the one and in the one, the one always remains. Yet these three are—when we say from the one and through the one and in the one—equally eternal, equally omnipresent in their entirety, always equal to the same infinite, because no true one is greater or lesser than another. These are the beginnings, the guides, and the completions of numbers: they themselves are neither begun nor numbered nor finished, I believe, because the wisdom of God has no number. For since number exists from the one and through the one and in the one, and can be numbered only in a threefold manner, so that through the same number we begin, count, and finish, the entire ternary itself is that through which every number exists.

Behold what dwells in the human soul: behold what has been granted to the eye of the heart to see. Whither do we flee, whither are we distracted, why are we outside ourselves within ourselves? Why do we seek our homeland locally, from which we certainly departed not by walking, but by sinning? Why do we believe that darkness shines, which to see is itself assuredly not to see? We seek truth, certainly: that it ought not to be sought through spaces of places, do not suppose that it is discovered through anything corporeal. He who will cling to it will separate himself from the body not only by touching but even by thinking. We seek something non-local, certainly: let us not, I pray, seek it through the local. Truth itself has made a likeness of itself, capable of itself. Let us bring to it that which it has made in us; let us not revile our God, saying to him: you could not make anything like yourself, because, if I am a body, I am not like you, because he will convict us concerning ourselves.

CHAPTER 26. THE SECRET SPEECH OF GOD TO THE SOUL: HOW IT OUGHT TO INQUIRE OF ITSELF. For truth speaks to me in silence and says to me: you, who certainly believe yourself to be a body, whence do you employ an incorporeal word? I believe your word, that is, your thought, is one thing; the voice of the word is another; what sounds is one thing, what is understood is another. For just as a voice can exist without a word, so a word exists without a voice. Yet your word uses a certain garment of voice to sound in the ears, just as I use a garment of flesh to be seen by men; and when you speak, the service of the voice reaches only as far as the ear, but the word passes locally to the soul, because, just as it approaches the one to whom you speak, so it certainly does not depart from you; and if one person hears you speaking, your whole word is with you, whole with him; and if two hear, they hear the whole; and if many, the whole; and to all it is whole, and to each it is whole, and to you it is whole. Do not lose within yourself so great a gift of mine, my likeness, which I most kindly bestowed upon you, so that you might not seek outside yourself how to direct yourself toward me. No one comes to the Father except through me, and no one comes to me except whom my Father has drawn; and no one comes to me or to the Father unless love is diffused in his heart through the Holy Spirit, which will be given only to one who believes well, hopes well, and seeks well. To that end, that we are one God, you, a man, have been made a Trinity, when it was said: Let us make man in our image and likeness.

Look into yourself concerning yourself, O human soul, and remember yourself. See your mind, see your word, see your will. For everything you think is in the mind, and what you have remembered all at once, you think all at once and you wish to think and remember, that is, you love to have mind and thought. Therefore, you embrace your thought with your mind, that is, when you remember that you think, you certainly comprehend your whole thought with your whole mind, and you think your whole love or your whole mind with your whole thought, when you think that you love or remember, and with your whole love you love that same whole mind and that same whole thought of yours, when you love to remember and think. Yet there is no one who does not love to remember and think and this very loving itself; but when you have in mind your thought and your love, if you have remembered them as great as they are, your mind is as great as they are, and when you think your love or your mind, if you think them as great as they are, your thought is as great as they are, and if you love your mind or your thought according to their mode, these and your love are certainly equal, and if each single one loves or thinks or remembers itself wholly at once, the three together were not greater when wholly at once than either the whole mind recollecting, or the whole thought knowing, or the whole love loving. You will recognize that these are in you, and rather that you are these, by my shining upon you, if you bring to me those eyes with which I deign to be seen.

By no means can I, even as incorporeal, be seen except by one who is purified, so how can you think that I can be seen by you, if you are a body? I and the Father and our love are one God: you, a rational mind and your word or your love, are one human being made in the likeness of your author, not in equality; you are created, certainly, not begotten; you yourself are formed, not the former. Withdraw from those things that are below you, which are less formed, that is, less beautiful than you are; approach the formative form, so that you may be more beautiful, and always join yourself to it, because you will receive more of that beauty the more you press yourself upon it with the weight of love; from it, indeed, you will obtain the unchangeable state of this image, from which you took your beginning. These and such things truth speaks to the ear of the heart within, admonishing us that, since we are made in the likeness of the incorporeal God, not in the likeness of the corporeal world, we should recognize that we are incorporeal, not only because we are like the incorporeal God, but also because we are unlike the corporeal world.

CHAPTER 27: THAT THE SOUL CAN BE PRESENT IN SPIRIT EVEN WHEN ITS OWN FLESH IS ABSENT AND THE BODY IS AWAY. Behold, concerning the state or vision of the rational soul, having touched briefly upon infinite reasons proportionate to the magnitude of the question rather than having discussed them sufficiently, I consider that I have given an adequate response regarding the non-locality and incorporeality of the soul. Now you, clearly understanding yourself to be placed so far beneath and unequal, should no longer boast of this uncertain bodily vision, so that if you think of your dear one, as you yourself say, as absent, you do not believe him absent for that reason because he does not appear to you bodily, because if he is dear to you in that part of himself in which you both are men and in which you love each other with vicarious love, then he is as present to you as you are to yourself. For whatever you are substantially, that he is. Vision, indeed, is the understanding of the soul: if you see yourself, you see him who is nothing other than you, who, if he were present bodily, would make his recognition known to you through the signs of the body. Through which, if you had perhaps grasped that indication by which you would recognize that the same person was rather an enemy to you, then your soul, repelled by the disparity of affections, would in a certain way recoil from his soul, and you would be in one bodily place and in the same, if it can be said, footprint, sufficiently separated by the diversity of wills. Since this is so, I do not think that souls are torn apart by separation, whom we see can be separated even when bodies are joined.

And so it is of little account that bodies obstruct the mutual representations of souls, if not through them the image of God is sought in oneself, or they themselves are sought. For it is wretched and greatly contrary to truth that the image of God, that is, the true human, be sought through the body rather than through itself. But it is sought and recognized through itself if it is sought through the image of God; and the image of God is every rational soul. Therefore, whoever seeks the image of God in himself seeks both himself and his neighbor, and whoever has recognized it by seeking it in himself recognizes the same in every human. But you not undeservedly complain that your dear one, being absent, is not with you, you who love the body in him, and you can love nothing other than the body in him, whom you believe to be nothing but a body. Love your God; love in your God your dear one, the image of your God. Let him, in turn, by loving God, love God in you. If you both seek the one, you both tend toward the one, you will always be with each other, because you consist in the one. But I do not see how it can happen that bodies placed together can be present to each other, and minds present in the one cannot be present to each other. But since this book demands an end, because, having touched upon some things only superficially, although I have omitted many things for the sake of brevity, I have not, however, omitted everything for the excellence of the cause; those things which are to be discussed after this, let us begin the principle of the second volume.

Often have I pondered with myself by what means the most excellent truth has allowed itself to have so many enemies; after much discussion of this same question, a not improbable reason, as I think, has appeared: all things are better discerned by comparison of contraries. Thus light is more pleasing when set against darkness, life against death, truth against falsehood. It was therefore fitting that these opposites should, according to their qualities, obtain suitable champions, so that neither the defender of falsehood might lie hidden, nor the advocate of truth be idle. And so it would come about that neither would the concealed one do more harm, nor the idle one grow sluggish. II. HOW THE PHILOSOPHERS SOUGHT OUT THE TRUTH OF THE WORLD AND GRADUALLY ARRIVED AT GOD. And since it is given to the race of mortals by nature to seek the hidden more eagerly, to desire the denied more ardently, to love the slowly attained more deeply, truth is loved all the more passionately the longer it is desired, the more laboriously sought, or the more slowly found. Hence it has come about that philosophers also, with their excellent talents, manifold teachings, conflicting opinions, and over long ages, seeking after the same truth from as far back as the Italian Pythagoras or the Ionian Thales, have always existed, who, while others disagreed, perceived something worthy of such an inquiry, at least in part of their work.