De Statu Animae

Whence also the Doctor of the Gentiles does not so much judge the philosophers to be ignorant of the truth, as he accuses them of being despisers of what they knew, saying: "The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are understood to be seen through the things that are made; also His eternal power and divinity, so that they are inexcusable, because when they had known God, they did not magnify Him as God." Therefore they knew, and the human mind entered the secret of hidden divinity, and, having transcended all corporeal things, marveling, it saw that the creator of the universe is He who not only precedes all corporeal things, as the irrational soul does, nor even excels them as the rational soul does, but who surpasses all these together by far incomparable power. For it saw that body is moved through places and times, either when it yields place to place or changes the age of time by the passage of time. Therefore it paused a little within itself and, contemplating its own power not without horror, doubted whether it should seek something above itself, or whether it should rest in itself. But it could not doubt that it, being in doubt, was not God, because the cause of doubt would be ignorance, and only the ignorant would be uncertain, whereas God would be ignorant of nothing and therefore could not doubt.

Moreover, he observed that he was necessarily ignorant and consequently in doubt, with the addition that, even if it were not subject to motion through place, it would be moved in time through affection, and that it would not be the principal foundation of things, which could be moved either in place or in time, because nothing could be moved except through another, but that in which the universe stands would consist in itself. Thus, reasoning more deeply in its author, it recognized that which I recalled in the previous book, and saw that nothing can be moved unless by an unmoved mover, and therefore the soul must stand in order to move the body through time and place, while God stands in himself, who moves the soul through time, but the body through both place and time. And since there can be no principle of a principle, which must be thought of in terms of immensity and eternity, because just as it began from nothing, so it consists in nothing, it is necessary to proceed from the lowest, which is all body, to the highest, which is God, through some middle; and it found itself placed as a middle between the extremes, because it was not similar to any body, since it was the likeness of God, nor could it be equated to God, because even if it had begun from him, it was not of him.

He also observed that in the fullness of things, one thing exists according to truth which judges and is not judged, another which judges and is judged, another which is judged and does not judge: according to truth, God judges, concerning whom it is not judged; the soul judges and is judged; bodies are judged and do not judge. Moreover, the one who judges is least deceived when he adheres to that according to which he judges, and most deceived when he collapses toward that about which he judges. He also understood that, on account of the immutable force of contraries, just as darkness is contrary to light, and nothingness to essence, so body is contrary to the incorporeal, and he saw that the likeness of any thing cannot exist in its contrary, because the unmoved principle of things does not permit that something live while dead, see while blind, or be substance and nothingness simultaneously. Here, therefore, understanding that there is something in the human soul similar to God, since He is the light that illuminates and it is the light that can be illuminated, he determined without doubt that it is incorporeal, adding this: that if the soul were a body and this same likeness of God existed, then God would be corporeal, and he rightly preferred to exalt the creature on account of the likeness of the creator, rather than to debase the creator on account of the same likeness, knowing with certainty the indissoluble bond that two similar things are either both incorporeal or both corporeal.

There are also among substantial things some not only dissimilar in species but even contrary in natural force, like water or flame, and yet these are corporeal; and it would be remarkable if two dissimilar and contrary things, like water or flame, can be corporeal at the same time, and two similar and concordant things, which are God and the soul, cannot be incorporeal at the same time. III. HE USES GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AS WITNESSES CONCERNING CORPOREAL OR INCORPOREAL THINGS, PROPOSING THE EXAMPLE OF THE CAMEL AND THE ANT. Having therefore, as far as I could, gone through the volumes of philosophers using such arguments, and having rejected the common crowd of the ignoble, I have chosen whichever more eminent ones would bear witness to the truth in the present matter. It is indeed superfluous for me to set forth their opinions, not because we lack our own, but because it is more remarkable that our own people fight against us and foreigners fight for us. And it would certainly not be my concern to borrow anything from them, had not this friend of the body, by the mere mention of the philosophical name, brandished certain terrors of deeper knowledge against us. Therefore, let him, from those whom he summons against the truth, receive the voice of truth, and let him first hear the many-sounding trumpet of the Pythagoreans and the clarion of Plato from the twin Greece, and let him not swell with the empty vanity of names, but grow fat with the manifold truth of reasons. Since Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, the opinion of the Pythagoreans must be sought from his successors.

things, in which I find that Philolaus of Tarentum especially flourished, who, in many volumes discoursing quite obscurely about things to be understood and what each signifies, before he decides about the substance of the soul, argues wonderfully about measures, weights, and numbers according to geometry, music, and arithmetic, affirming that through these the whole universe came into existence, evidently agreeing with that scripture in which it is said to God: "You have arranged all things by measure, weight, and number." I am surprised that this sentence from divine reading was thrown at us by the adversary. For he says in these words: "God, who made everything from nothing, just as he established them by work, so he incorporated them into matter, and to all things, among which the soul is also counted, just as he distributed weight, number, and measure, so he also placed quantity." Take note, O good knower of ours, of this learned and eloquent doctor of the present age: he wants nothing incorporeal to be created, and he says everything corporeal is incorporated. Into what, I ask, is that which is a body incorporated? If you have not perhaps set "in" for "pro," so that you wish "incorporatum" to be understood as "not corporated," you grant us more than we wish voluntarily, because if the creator of things did not corporify all that he made, then whatever exists is without body. For indeed, what exists and is without body must necessarily be incorporeal, which the Greeks call more elegantly.

If, however, you have used a preposition of this kind simply, you have unwittingly stumbled upon the truth, yet through that same ignorance you have slipped on only one point, in that you said that all things are incorporated, when it is sufficiently established that the substance of twofold creation is so composed by a most orderly law that every created incorporeal thing is also incorporated, but not every corporeal thing is also animate. And on this account, an incorporated thing could not be called a body, as if sent into a body, because incorporation pertains without ambiguity to that nature which, both before it was incorporated, was not a body, and after it was incorporated, is not a body. If, however, you said that all things are incorporated perhaps in that sense in which it could plainly be said, even if it should not have been, that all things have been made corporeal, you have fallen equally from the proper meaning of the word and from the reason of truth, because if every creature is corporeal, nothing is incorporated; but if some incorporeal thing is created, not every creature is corporeal.

But this one and the same cause is what entangles you in manifold error: namely, a great ignorance of things and a remarkable presumption of knowledge. Hence it comes about that you either believe the spirit to be a body when it is embodied, or else define bodies as incorporeal. In these dialectical conclusions of yours, may that infamy of deep error which you think to brand upon others always come to your mind. May the divine saying also move you: that one must first lay down one’s own beam, so that another may be able to remove another’s straw. Therefore, since you do not challenge those who are, as it were, doubtful of battle, but strike down the peaceful with the sword of insult, and you have said that measure, weight, and number are inherent in all parts of creation—because it is agreed that these are present in all bodies at once—and you determine that the soul is a body, I ask what its measure is, what its number, what its weight. If the measure of the living body makes the measure of the animating soul, because the external body, like some vessel, encloses the soul as if it were some lesser body, then, as you claim, the soul’s quantity is to be reckoned according to the body’s quantity.

If it were possible for me to speak with you about these things face to face and openly, I would of course act liberally, granting you some things by my own right, and I would not immediately ask about a human being, but would first request as a favor that you, being skilled in matters, confess with an evident answer whether you think the souls of an ant and a camel are governed by providence or by bulk. If by providence, it would be clearer than light that the soul of the camel so surpasses the soul of the ant that the camel is almost as much smaller than the ant in spirit as it is larger in body. If bulk pleases you in such a comparison, I would of course repeat the same points and none the less ask: if the measure of the soul is the measure of the body, why does the camel grow brutish below the measure of the body, and the ant thrive above the measure of the body? Your words would perhaps halt, which now fly safely great for you. I would propose these very things by a twofold choice, making available whichever you preferred. If you chose the bulk of the body, I would oppose the very tiny body of the ant; if the vigor of the spirit, I would prove that this same vigor is in no way according to bulk, since I would demonstrate that it has no existence in that corporeal magnitude of the camel. Hence I would also cast at you that Maronian saying, which is most truly spoken of bees: "They turn huge spirits in a narrow breast.

Now, when I had begun to discourse on the state of the human being, I would, of course, ask you, a new geometer, for a ten-foot rod, not for a judgment, in order to discern the abilities of any persons whatsoever. If perhaps you had wished to use that refuge, saying that invisible things cannot be measured by visible ones, I would immediately reply that the soul which fills the body could be measured by the magnitude of the body that encloses the soul. If you said it could not be done, I would most insistently ask why it could not be done in the case of one kind of body, when it could be done in the case of all bodies? If you agreed that it could be done, I would say to you in prophetic speech: "Go to the ant, O sluggard, and emulate by seeing its ways," that is, its providences, unless perhaps it is to be believed that we are reminded by this heavenly oracle to seek the knowledge of walking from the ant. Do not let the concern for walking trouble you in this utterance, but the skill of acting, so that, just as huge ants pile up a heap of grain, mindful of winter, and store it safely, so you, a human being, in comparison with irrational beings, because of the sin of the first-formed one's fall, lest your flight become winter, should provide for yourself by the warmth of faith and the devotion of work, and likewise understand that the vast minds of the ant and the bee are not enclosed in a small body. For nothing great [in place] is contained by a small local thing, and the bee has a small body and a vast mind: therefore it is not contained by the body; it is therefore outside itself.

But nothing can be outside itself; therefore it is wholly in the body, but a large corporeal thing is not contained by a small corporeal thing, because each thing fills as much space as it is local. Therefore, either the soul will be non-local and thus incorporeal, or it will not be wholly with itself. But it can be nothing except with itself; therefore, a great thing is non-locally in a small thing. Therefore, the mind is not local, and nothing non-local is corporeal: therefore it is not corporeal. Moreover, whatever is not corporeal is not to be judged by bulk; therefore, the magnitude of the mind does not arise from the magnitude of the body. Let us now see how you might escape: the bee denies you the body, the camel denies you the magnitude of the mind. Do you see whether the opinion pleasing to you begins to totter under arguments of this kind, and that the magnitude of the mind is not subject to corporeal quantities, numbers, weights, and measures, since it, small in a large thing, holds the whole, and, large in a small thing, does not overflow? But perhaps the mind cannot be measured corporeally, yet can be weighed. Let him dare to say that he can know how many pounds the mind can be in weight, who holds grasped how many feet it is in length. Indeed, the traces of numbers in bodies are distinguished in three ways. For, in the first place, for a body to be maximum or minimum, it is necessary that it be one, which, of course, it is from number. Secondly, that it consists of parts, which parts, as we have already said, are right and left, up and down, forward and backward.

Third, according to the aforementioned diversity of parts, every body can be cut into parts, and any part of those parts of the body, by virtue of the primordial force of number, will both be one body and consist of the same number of parts, and can accordingly be cut into parts. It is for you to see whether, since any living creature has one soul, this same soul can be divided, so that any part of the soul is a soul, just as any part of a body is a body. Since I think no sane person can say this, there is no time to waste in discussing these causes, which by their own nature are so clear that they seem rather to be obscured by disputation. IV. ON THE MEASURE, NUMBER, AND WEIGHT OF THE BODY. Now, unless you disdain it, turn your mind more to this, so that, insofar as it deigns to be seen, the divine power of measure, weight, and number may be revealed to you. For we read that it is said to God: "Thou hast disposed all things by measure, number, and weight," which testimony you especially used, of course, to prove that even our souls have certain corporeal quantities implanted in them. Let us therefore see where this measure, this weight, this number were in place, and when they began to exist, so that God might form all things according to their pattern, as it were. If nothing is uncreated except the creator, then these are created.

If they were created, then God did not arrange all things by measures, numbers, and weights, since He did not form these very things according to those; but to oppose divine authority is impious. Therefore, all things were created by numbers, weights, and measures. Measure, weight, and number, then, were not created: for not all things were created according to them, if they themselves were created. Here, with all the powers of thought, one must strive, so that in some way it may be recognized that this is not the principal weight which is weighed, but that by which it is weighed; nor is it the same number which is counted, but that by which it is counted; nor the measure which measures, but that by which it measures; just as, likewise, magnitude is not the same as that which is large, nor equality the same as that which is equal, nor beauty the same as that which is beautiful. For nothing created is large in itself, but something is called large by comparison with something smaller. Hence it is that we call a mountain small and a millet seed large, also a fly large and an ox small. But when we come to creative magnitude itself, because it cannot be compared, it is neither greater nor smaller. So too in these principal forms the principle is the same, which Plato calls Ideas. For according to the same law of squaring we construct both a square board and a square forum, and although the forum is a larger square, it is not, however, more square.

You must take from this an indication of that unweighed weight, unmeasurable measure, and innumerable number, which three things together, coeternal, always undivided, everywhere and wholly everywhere, are one God. For all bodies, by which we either number or weigh or measure anything, are both numerable and weighable and measurable. For in bodies there is a fixed limit to numbers, and a fixed weight to the scales' balance, and a fixed measure to the ten-foot rod, from whose magnitude one may go back as far as ounces and half-ounces and down to the minimum, beyond which there is nothing, and likewise proceed beyond to the greatest extents and to the spaces of the world itself, now inaccessible to the senses. For whatever is finite has a fixed limit of magnitude. Consequently, the whole mass of the world, since it is composed of finite bodies—for one body indeed makes a limit for another—is without doubt itself finite and therefore measurable. Beyond which, if the human mind conceives of any spaces, it does not doubt that in that reasoning of measure it can be sent through bodily forms, which indeed is clearly possible in truth, if there is any place outside the world. But since outside every place a place cannot exist, local measure does not approach where there is no place, and when that which can be measured is lacking, that by which it can be measured remains, because for a finite measurable thing, unmeasurable measure is not lacking.

Thus, indeed, the nature of weight does not perish when that which can be weighed ceases, and number is not ended when the countable is finished. Therefore, if the splendor of immense light glows for us with some radiance, you will necessarily be reminded here to set aside for a little while the deceptions of carnal visions and tell us: to whom is the form of a ten-foot corporeal body visible? But since you will not deny that this is visible to the body, unless perhaps you are excessively angry, I consequently ask: that immeasurable measure of which we spoke above—do you say it is visible to the soul or to the body? But may truth not abandon anyone so far that he contends that divine things are visible to the body, since it knows that not even bodies are seen except by an animate being, or, to speak more truly, understands that the soul sees through the body rather than that the body perceives anything by itself. Therefore, the power of seeing is twofold: the soul sees measure, weight, and number by itself, and it sees measurable, numerable, and weighable things through the body. Thus, through the body it sees things that are like the body, that is, corporeal things, but incorporeal things it sees by itself, to which it is itself similar.

Now, if you please, since all things are arranged by measures, weights, and numbers, let us seek the signs of these same in creatures. The lowest of all elements is certainly earth. In a round body, that lowest point is understood to be the center, because in the outermost parts of a round body there is no lowest point. Therefore, any part of earth, whether large or very small, or a tiny pebble or the minutest speck of dust, which cannot be touched by a visible point, have both a measure according to their own size and a number according to the ratio of their parts, by which higher things are distant from lower, right from left, and prior from posterior; whence even the smallest thing can be divided into two, because it is a body. Its weight, however, is observed from this: that this same smallest thing, lifted from its origin and released in water, that is, in the higher element, does not rest with untiring motion until it has been carried by its natural weight to the earth's floor. In this manner, hold to the path of reason in the remaining bodies, because even a drop of water, which you have lifted with a dipped finger, has, of course, a measure according to the mode of its magnitude, and a number according to the distance of its parts: by the law of weight, if you release it in air, it does not settle until it has reached its own place. The ratio of air is also equal, nothing of which can be contained either under water or carried above fire; if this should happen by some means, it would either naturally burst forth from below by the necessity of weight or spontaneously sink down from above.

the center. But that air is measurable and, by the number of its parts, numerable is, I think, clear from this: that the corporeal world, of which air is the third part, has already been established as capable of being measured. So also the element fire, both by its parts, because it is local, receives numbers, and by its space, because it is finite, is subject to measures. But the weight of this earthly fire has, as it were, a certain seed of the highest fires directed upward, which, the greater the fuel by which it is fed and the greater the strength it has, as if heading toward its homeland, the subtle nature breaks into the large masses of compressed air and, unless the depth of the other element overcame it, would reach where it is carried by nature. V. ON THE MEASURE, NUMBER, AND WEIGHT OF THE SOUL. Behold, it is clear that nothing corporeal exists which does not have measure, weight, and number. Now, since these same things have both a divisible unity and a local weight and a measurable magnitude, let us inquire whether these three exist in the soul as they do in the body. Certainly, we call a body great by length, breadth, and height, whose space, of course, we judge as large or small according to its capacity. Therefore, each body receives as much of any body as it is capable of by its amplitude. So indeed, having passed beyond the lower grade of creation, behold the more sublime creature and measure the magnitude of the mind by its capacity. Behold, the human soul is capable of wisdom, for it is capable of that which is its understanding.

Therefore, just as before acquiring wisdom one cannot be called capable of wisdom, so before becoming a participant in it, one cannot be called wise. At this point I come to inquire: is it a spatial interval, judges, or something non-spatial by which wisdom is received? I judge thus: if the wise soul is capable of wisdom according to a spatial interval, then wisdom is great according to bulk. Since truth does not permit this to be said, that which receives is non-spatial, so that what is received can be non-spatial. Behold for you the magnitude without bulk of the human mind; now consider the nature of number. You have observed, I think, that these are signs of numbers in bodies: namely, that bodies are numerable which, according to the most excellent equality of number, correspond to each other by the parity of their parts, so that just as the sum of equality of one to one, and of two to two, and of three to three is perfect, so likewise we call that body numerable which is formed with a fixed dimension, so that, for example, the human body has its pairs placed opposite each other in such a way that they differ neither in size, nor in form, nor in position, as are the ears and eyes; and likewise the single parts, such as the nose and mouth, occupy a middle place, and, so that they can be beautiful, they imitate the harmony of supreme equality.

Therefore, to the extent that we find the truth of number in the human soul, it must first harmonize within itself the rationale of its own activity in accordance with the equality of the virtues, so that wisdom corresponds to justice, and fortitude to temperance—which equality is certainly numerical, because the more harmonious a thing is, the closer it is to numbers. But I consider that which is numerical in the soul to be rather that by which it is scientifically capable of number, so that it is not numerical in parts as a body is, but discerns number itself and judges according to that same number. For that three and four make seven, and these and three make ten, nothing except the human soul either can know or will be able to know. Therefore, just as it became clear concerning measure, so also concerning numbers it sufficiently appears that these exist visibly in body, but intellectually in soul. It remains now that we discuss weight. It has been shown that the weight of bodies is that by which they are naturally borne into their own regions, from which they primordially arise, and do not rest until, having traversed the space of another element, they arrive at their own. But the weight of the soul is its will, which is more properly called love, by which the soul loves either itself or any other things whatsoever. For whether it loves incorporeal things, such as true wisdom, or covets corporeal things for the body, such as beautiful bodies, it is swept away by the non-local weight of love until it attains possession of the beloved. Therefore, the weight of a body, wherever it carries the body, inseparably drags along its measures and numbers.

Likewise, weight is the soul's love for that which it loves, and it draws memory and counsel along with it, because the soul can remember or think of nothing other than that for whose love it burns. Hence it is divinely said to man: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul"—that is, just as the body is compelled by weight toward its proper place, so the soul is carried back to its homeland by its weight. By this weight of its own, however, the soul is not only joined to others, but is also itself consolidated, because through the mediating love of counsel and mind, both the mind is loved by counsel and counsel by the mind. VI. ON MEASURE, NUMBER, AND WEIGHT OF THE DIVINE TRINITY: HOW THESE THREE ARE THEMSELVES THE TRINITY. Thus also, incorporeally, the all-surpassing unity of the most exalted Trinity is, as they say, measure without measure, weight without weight, and number without number. Therefore, the weight by which these same are ineffably one with each other is the love of the Father and the Son, since the Apostle, indicating the Holy Spirit specifically, says: "Love of God has been diffused in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us," clearly showing that by this weight—that is, divine love—that ineffable number and that measure are stably borne whither such weight has approached.

Therefore, these three are inseparable in the body, but much more so in the soul, and they are indivisible in the soul, but much more so in themselves. And just as nothing existed without the one creator, that is, the Trinity itself, so nothing at all can exist that does not both subsist in a threefold manner and be one. For every body will be both one and measurable, both numerable and weighable, and every rational soul subsists by three indivisibles: memory, counsel, and will, by which it is capable of measure, weight, and number, judging according to these concerning measurable, weighable, and numerable things, that is, concerning bodies. If it were a body, it would certainly not grasp incorporeal things, just as a body could be judged and could not judge concerning bodies. Therefore, from the highest, which is God, through the middle, which is the soul, to the lowest, which are bodies, the pattern of the Trinity flows, impressing its signs on bodies, and also granting knowledge to souls, forming those visibly, these intelligibly. Since nothing grasps substance except essence, and nothing becomes one except by three, as we have discussed above, when is the unity in the body, that is, in the vestige of the Trinity, as great as it is in the soul, that is, in the image of the Trinity? And likewise, when is the unity in the image as great as it is in the Trinity itself?

CHAPTER VII. HE USES PAGAN WITNESSES TO SHOW THAT THERE ARE NO CORPOREAL MEASURES OR LOCAL WEIGHTS IN THE SOUL. But since the present time is other than that in which we might more copiously dispute concerning the preeminence of this question, I have lingered in these matters only so much as I judge sufficient for prudent persons, that they may fully recognize that there are no corporeal measures or local weights or spatial divisions in the soul, but that it perceives that which neither place contains nor weight moves nor division diminishes, provided that you, learned arbiter, have judged it just, knowing how to bear a true sentence, whether there is a place that receives the non-local, or a divisible thing that cannot be cut, or a measurable thing that contains the infinite. Now I return to Philolaus, from whom I have long since digressed with a great interval, who in the third of the books which are entitled *On Nature* speaks thus about the human soul: "The soul is placed in the body through number and an immortal and likewise incorporeal harmony." Likewise after other things: "The body is loved by the soul, because without it it cannot use the senses. From which, after it has been removed by death, it lives an incorporeal life in the world." I do not now retrace the path of arguments and the most intricate subtleties of questions by which Philolaus makes these things probable, however you might wish an opponent. If anyone should happen to burn with curiosity or zeal for these things, he will draw from the source itself. Indeed, it will suffice for me to have adduced the testimony of such a philosopher for the sake of authority, just as it will be fitting to bring forth the others briefly after this.

It is certainly an injury that is demanded from someone, both as an argument and as a testimony. Archytas of Tarentum, likewise a Pythagorean, in that work which he published, magnificent as it is, on the nature of things, after a long and most subtle discussion concerning numbers, says: "The soul is composed after the example of the One, which rules incorporeally in the body, just as the One rules in numbers." What, I ask, can be said more sublime, what more true? Composed, that is, after the example of the One, because it was made in the image of the One. And for this reason the One is the principal exemplar of forms, since things capable of form receive their forms from that which did not begin. Hippon of Metapontum, from the same school of Pythagoras, having set forth, in accordance with the state of his opinion, insoluble arguments concerning the soul, pronounces thus: "The soul is one thing, the body another; the soul thrives in a torpid body, sees in a blind body, and lives in a dead body; whence, however, this is so, by what principle, he says he does not know.

But I am not now pursuing the opinions of all the philosophers of the Pythagorean family in such a way that, by heaping up those same opinions more copiously from others’ volumes, I might satisfy myself, thinking that I have already brought forth clear knowledge on the present question from the beginning of the Pythagorean school, certain, of course, that none of the learned men refute this, but that Archippus, Epaminondas, Aristeus, Gorgiades, Diodorus, and all the successors of Pythagoras have thought the same and have set it forth in writing—men whose names, not to mention opinions, if I wished to set forth the same in a multitude, I would produce a volume. Therefore, let Plato come forward, from whom it truly shines forth how great a good the human race neglects in itself, especially in our age, in which religion has been so cried down by words and deeds published from heaven that, with the labor of believing almost removed, the warmth of faith having subsided, it reaps the fruit of knowledge and receives the reward of labor without the work having been accomplished.

Thus it happens that I cannot sufficiently marvel at the mind of this Plato, who, so many centuries before the virgin’s childbearing, before the incarnation of God, before the resurrection of man, before the preaching of the ineffable unity of the supreme Trinity among the Gentiles, sought, found, and disclosed three persons in the divinity with laudable daring, marvelous genius, and inimitable eloquence: Father God and the paternal Mind, the Art or Counsel, and the mutual Love of these two, one supreme coeternal undivided divinity—not only teaching that it ought to be believed, but proving that it is so. I cannot persuade myself that this philosopher’s soul was corporeal, nor that any soul should perhaps be judged a body by a headlong fall into folly. I would indeed judge those souls corporeal which believe themselves to be body, not thereby detracting from the genus of souls, but marking out certain ones by the dishonesty of their own opinion, not by my own choice. And what happens to men whom ignorance holds so fast that they do not know themselves to be unlearned, yet they claim for themselves the privilege of knowledge? While they spew the froth of childish words into unskilled ears, with one and the same falsehood they both deceive themselves of knowledge and, by teaching others, deceive them—like Lysias, whom the same Plato in the *Phaedrus* rebukes for pouring out empty words about things, to the point of asserting that it is worse to be skilled in words but ignorant of causes than to be ignorant of things and not know words, preferring unskilled silence to talkative ignorance.

Thus also Tully, in the first book of his *De Oratore*: "Eloquence," he says, "is the knowledge of comprehending very many things, without which a fluency of words is empty and ridiculous," and a little later: "For speech ought to blossom and overflow from knowledge of things; unless a thing perceived and known by the speaker underlies it, it has a certain empty and almost childish utterance." But of this elsewhere. In the *Phaedrus*, however, Plato pronounces concerning the soul as follows: "The soul," he says, "is immortal, which is always moved by itself and is the cause of motion for others, but the body is not moved by itself." He does not say merely: "it moves others," but: "it is the cause of motion for others," the man of excellent genius observing, I suppose, that there will be some things for which being moved is proper, being the cause of another's motion. For whatever is moved voluntarily is itself almost the cause of its own motion; but that which is moved either unknowingly or unwillingly has its causes of motion in the one who knows or compels. Nor does it contradict our earlier discussions that we here say the soul is moved by itself, since we say that the principal hinge of motions is in God, because that very thing—that it is moved spontaneously—is itself almost from God, namely that, just as the cause of the soul's motion is its will, so the cause of the substance which uses the will is God, because, although the ability to will is from God for us, not every motion of our will will be from God. Or then I think, when we sin by will, the cause of our motion is from us, lest we make God the author of sins.

Therefore, if a body is not moved by itself, and a body is not that which is the cause of its own motion, because it has within itself the causes of its motion, the soul is not a body. The same Plato, in the book he wrote *On the Soul*, says: "The soul of all living beings is not corporeal, and it moves itself and is the mover of others which are naturally moved." Moreover, in the *Phaedo*, by the same Plato, Socrates speaks with Simmias and Cebes and other philosophers in such a way that, when we see there things very much in agreement and thoroughly consonant with our own being pronounced—things which not only enjoy the authority of precedent but are also supported by the power of reason—we should take note that, beyond the native vigor of the human mind, these souls, which have pursued such remote matters, approached such hidden things, and seen such concealed truths, were inspired by the light of truth for this purpose: that a doctrine divinely brought forth for the salvation of the human race might, at some time throughout the whole world, use the testimonies of Gentiles among the minds of peoples unacquainted with the truth, so that Gentility, blinded by the cloud of ignorance and hardened into a kind of ice by the cold of unbelief, might yield to the warmth of evangelical truth, if that same truth had also sounded from the mouths of those opposed to it. Or why should we not believe that these same things were providentially procured for us through philosophers for the use of truth, when we recognize that they are useful for refuting even the inexperience of our own people?

Therefore, in the Phaedo, persuading Socrates, true reason speaks thus: as long as we have a body and our soul is mixed with such an evil, we will never fully and completely attain that which we have long desired. But what we desire is the knowledge of truth. For the body first inflicts upon us countless and infinite occupations, by which we are worn down for the sake of necessary sustenance and daily nourishment. Then, if diseases befall us, they are an impediment to our being able to investigate and discover the truth. For the body is burdened with countless desires, lusts, fears, visions of various things and pursuits, and an infinite kind of madness, so that because of it we cannot even have understanding in any matter. And if at some time we either have or make free time for philosophizing, even then in our very thoughts the body intervenes, bringing a turmoil of errors to the mind, so that, with it blinding us, we cannot see through to the truth. Thus this one thing in every inquiry, and that indeed most clearly proven, is shown to us: if we ever wish to know anything in good faith, we must withdraw from the body and consider matters in the soul itself. For then we seem to attain that which we desire and whose lovers we profess ourselves to be, when we are dead; for while we live, it is hopeless.

For if it is established that the soul, when mixed with the body, can perceive nothing pure, it follows that one of two things is the case: either true knowledge can never at any time or anywhere be attained by man, or else it can be attained only when we have departed from life. For the soul of the dead is free and released from the body. But during the time we are alive, we will approach and apply ourselves to knowledge in this way only: if we use the body as little as possible, or not at all, and do not surrender the soul to its company except insofar as necessity demands. For thus we will be least filled with the vicious and turbulent nature of the body, but pure from its contagion, as far as we are able, and if we do so, we will depart uncorrupted and sincere, and come to all things uncorrupted and sincere. I thought it right to excerpt these things word for word from the dialogue of a most eminent philosopher and to insert them into this volume of ours, not supposing that there would be anyone who, by the allurements of bodily deceptions...

which is accustomed to stand in the way of rational arguments, and who, feeling these contradictions in himself, with himself as a witness to the disparity of the natures of body and mind, assents in this very matter—not without discussion, indeed, by far the greatest of philosophers—and, with reason presiding, debates between his own mind and body what that thing is which, as they say, a corporeal mind is always hindered by the obstacle of an external body from every discovery that presents itself, or why it calls an external body to account for diverting it from the contemplation of truth, when it is itself an impediment to itself, if it is a body. But I will not argue about these matters. Truth itself shines forth by its own light, nor does it need any external ornament or support, being more beautiful and stronger when naked. Hence I have thought it right to use the testimonies of my witnesses, which have so far been undefended by me, because we will doubt these guarantors of truth only among those who are entirely too much given over to the body. But what the same Plato pronounced about the soul in the *Hipparchus*, in the *Laches*, in the *Protagoras*, in the *Symposium*, in the *Alcibiades*, in the *Gorgias*, in the *Crito*, and also in the *Timaeus*, as in a kind of citadel and summit of philosophy, I pass over for the sake of the brevity I have chosen. For it does not contribute to the knowledge of the truth to ask what someone has often said about the same thing, rather than what he thought, because in things often said there is no richer knowledge of matters, while the prolixity of words is burdensome.

Therefore, for the construction of truth, it is more to be considered what many have thought as one, than what one has often said. I, however, have often summoned Plato—in my opinion, the deserved prince of all philosophers—as a witness in the present matter, drawn by my admiration for him, although you may read many things of his elsewhere, compared to the countless things he has discoursed on the soul, these are very few, and not his own. But neither did Porphyry the Platonist, many centuries after Plato, dissent from his master anywhere on this same subject. For with a distinguished voice he reminded the human race of its own dignity: "If we wish to be happy," he says, "the whole body must be fled." Therefore, there is something incorporeal in us, to which the contagion of the whole body is adverse, and what will that be, if not the image of God, and what is the image of God, if not the human mind? Which, if it cannot be happy in the body and is not incorporeal, will never be happy, for it will not be without itself.

VIII. He Uses Roman Pagan Philosophers as Witnesses Concerning the Incorporality of the Soul. We have used very many testimonies of very many philosophers in the present matter, and we could bring forward many from the same Greece, if either the cause demanded or reason permitted. But lest we seem to have sought truth locally, as if this could be perceived by only one people and was unknown to others—since the human substance, being composed of truth, is not a matter of region but of kind—let us also cite Romans, and indeed those same philosophers, among whom Sextius the father and Sextius the son, with a zeal inclined toward the practice of wisdom, philosophized excellently and delivered this judgment concerning every soul: "Incorporal," they say, "every soul is, and non-local, and a certain incomprehensible power, which without space capable of body absorbs and contains." These men, unless I am mistaken, have entered more deeply into the hidden reasons of things than some of our own people, who, in their chamber disputations about the investigation of sublime causes, yawning something soporific in their beds, with a compelling abundance of tepid ditties and a stupid praiser, sleep off the drowsy suspicions of old-womanish opinions, and decree that the soul, bound to the viscera, is enclosed and contained by the barriers of the body. But this is an empty figment of ignorance of the truth, which, as the place of the arguments demanded, we both discussed in the previous book and now, with the testimonies of the greatest authors brought forward, with the truth aiding us in its own matter, we also refute by the forces of reason.

Marcus Varro, the most learned man of his age and, by the testimony of Tullius, without doubt the most erudite of all, what does he contend in his books on music, on arithmetic, on geometry, and in his philosophical works with a certain divine argumentation, if not to draw the mind away from visible things to invisible, from local things to non-local, from corporeal things to incorporeal, by the wondrous methods of eternal art, and to make it master of itself when it has slipped down into bodies, that is, into things adverse to itself? For if it were a body, a body could not be adverse to it. Why should I now bring forward in defense of the truth the opinions of Zoroaster, of the Brahmans from India, of Anacharsis from Scythia, indeed of the Catos, of Marcus Cicero, of Crispus, who from almost the very beginning of his work grants the right of ruling to the mind and imposes the law of servitude on the body? Why should I not prove that the judgment of the whole world concerning the state of the soul agrees with us, at least in those who have deservedly shone forth?

CHAPTER 9. HE NOW USES ECCLESIASTICAL DOCTORS AS WITNESSES CONCERNING THE INCORPOREALITY OF THE SOUL. This same thing would indeed be easy for me to do, were it not that the addition of any person whatsoever is not permitted by a compelled crowd of witnesses, and it is now either time or reason that urges us to open the divine oracles. And so that we may come to the very fountains of the celestial volumes under those guides, as it were, who have drawn more abundantly from them, Gregory Nazianzenus in his Apologetic declares that there is a great distinction between soul and body, and that just as the body is fed by corporeal things, so the soul is nourished by incorporeal things. The blessed Ambrose, speaking to the people of the church at Milan with a most learned and erudite word, says: "Let us separate ourselves from the body, against which, if we wish to be safe, we have a perpetual struggle." This one preeminent and same opinion must be understood with the same intellect and treated with the same discourse. I shall now say, therefore, what I remember often saying when the discussion has come to this point. Ambrose persuades us that we ought to be separated from the body. I ask, therefore, who this is, for whom it is fitting to be separated from the body. For we consist of soul and body, and since the mind cannot be separated from itself, there is nothing in us that can be separated from the body, if the mind is body.

Why, holy Ambrose, why do you teach thus? Why do you smear the bride of Christ with the filth of falsehood? Why do you thrust her from the path of truth into precipitous byways by the impulse of a perverse preaching? Why do you maintain that body ought to be separated from body? What, I ask, will that profit a man? Is it because the nature of the inner man is more subtle, which yet is nothing but body, that it is therefore fitting for it to be dissolved and separated? Is it because in this structure of the world’s mass some things are more subtle and lighter, some thicker and heavier, that it is fitting for the finer elements to have broken the entire solid framework, or will the air be more blessed if it is not with water and earth? To these falsehoods chattering around, he offers this response: what doctrine is this that arises for us—bare of words, empty of virtue, alien to reason, void of truth, hollow of vanity, swollen with pride—of this new schism without an author, lifted up with arrogance, cast down with falsehood, filled with abuse, stealing power from the creator, dignity from the image, which by a wondrous kind of folly defames it with comparisons of corporeal substance, asserting, of course, that the soul profits as little from being separated from the body as it is beneficial for the air to be separated from the thicker bodies of the world’s mass.

Moreover, if there are any of you anywhere among the nations, whose intellects have yielded to the secrets of causes, be present swiftly, punish yourselves for ignorance, marvel at the new dogma: the dignity of the soul is taken up in the solid part of the world, the fourth part of the cosmic body. This, then, is evidently the greater soul of all souls, and more wise in proportion to its mass. And so, by this reasoning, someone will be more abundantly endowed with wisdom to the extent that he has drawn in more of this air, according to its capacity; nor is it unjust that the human race has accused nature of injustice, which has produced oxen larger than men, evidently more blessed in proportion to their greater capacity. But enough of Ambrose, who indeed alone is sufficient; yet I also make way for others to bear witness.

Aurelius Augustinus, with the sharpness of his intellect, the abundance of his subjects, and the magnitude of his work—like a certain Chrysippus in the power of argumentation, or Zeno in the subtlety of the senses, or our own Varro in the vastness of his volumes—and who indeed proved to be such by nature, attention, and disciplines, that he not undeservedly dissented from those corporeal Epicureans or Cynics of our age as a spiritual sophist, in his book to Jerome on the origin of the soul pronounces thus: that the soul is incorporeal, even if it can be difficult to persuade the slower-minded, I confess that I am persuaded of it; and when he proves this to be so by great reasons and irrefutable argumentation, and demands Jerome’s opinion on this matter, he receives from Jerome only writings of his own praise, since without doubt Jerome says that nothing can be thought more truly about the soul, nothing can be argued more perfectly. Behold, two most illustrious men, endowed far and wide with preeminence in virtues and doctrines, think with us about the state of the soul, and they lay you, unarmed, prostrate by the weight of authority and the forces of reason, and, separated by bodies, they make two souls one by the unity of wisdom.

Therefore, I greatly wonder that Jerome has been cited to you as a witness, since the most eminent of the commentators was least able to argue both on behalf of the soul and against the soul, although the things you have set forth from him against us, not understood, serve us to such an extent that you seem, not so much a clever adversary, but rather a suborned traitor, who, as if by a feigned collusion, have made us conquer by means of your own witnesses. Indeed, it is a glorious kind of victory to take up arms from the one with whom you are contending, and to have the adversary’s sought-for witness stand on one side and speak on the other. Lest, however, you think me sluggish in returning the favor, as the occasion demands, I advise that it would have been more fitting for you to have Hilary of Poitiers on your side regarding your opinion, who, among many of his sublime disputations, feeling somewhat more lax, argued two things contrary to the truth: one, that he said nothing created is incorporeal; the other, that he said Christ felt no pain in the Passion. If his Passion was not true, then our redemption could not be true either. But since the blessed Hilary obliterated the fault of this opinion by the virtue of his confession, he thus endures the pen of reproach in such a way that he does not suffer a loss of merits. For this reason, faith is to be given to the divine interpreters of the Scriptures only to the extent that they adhere to the same tenor of truth.

But although I have necessarily passed over citing a number of disputants, while I rightly hasten to the divine oracles on which the authority of those same disputants depends, I have by no means passed over Eucherius, known to me while he was alive through his teaching and through face-to-face disputations, not, indeed, learned of through messengers or reading—a man who, green in age, mature in mind, disdainful of earth, aspiring to heaven, humble in spirit, lofty in merit, and accordingly most subtle in intellect, full of knowledge, fluent in eloquence, by far the greatest of the great bishops of his age, having published many volumes of various works on matters of faith, also preached to the people on the state of the soul, saying: "Some are accustomed to ask," he says, "how in Christ man and God could have been mixed. They seek the rationale of this mystery, which happened once, when they themselves can by no means give the rationale of that thing which always happens—how the soul is joined to the body, so that a man comes to be. Therefore, just as a corporeal thing and an incorporeal thing are joined and the soul is mixed with the body so that a man is produced, so man was joined to God and Christ was made: and yet, so that Christ might be made, those two incorporeal things, that is, the soul and God, could have been joined and mixed more easily than one incorporeal thing and another corporeal thing are mixed, that is, the soul and the body, so that the person of a man comes into existence.

Now I pass over those who, though equally trained in such matters, have degenerated from these teachings, ruining their own health and subjecting themselves to others’ harmful influences, driven by an unjust hatred of themselves in their self-love, to the point that they would rather choose outsiders with falsehood and condemn Eucherius with truth. Here you may see some weighing something with sluggish judgment, others either ignorantly praising the same thing with foolish acclaim or knowingly laughing with feigned agreement; among these, one pleases himself whom no one has praised except either the ignorant or the cunning. Here judgments are now delivered about individuals not according to the quality of their merits but according to the quality of their wishes; for the sake of praising some present rabble-rousers, far greater authors are condemned. There, the one praised, lest his judgment seem inferior to that of his praiser, plucks certain scraps from the varied reading of different authors and sews them onto his own cheap rags like tow, and, more shameful in his tattered clothing than the naked, he walks about cloaked in eloquence, mute without thievish meditation. Here you may see another, from the stench of foul cesspits, from his own stinking thickets and shadows, exhaling the bilge of belly and mouth, and, while belching, chirping certain petty insults, praised by another who has squandered his own means on various gluttonies, in a parasitic manner. Amid these and similar trifles, will you dare to say anything sober safely? Moreover, you will risk a great danger from the sluggish crowd: why? For nothing is more unjust than the ignorant.

But I myself do not fear these and such men; and if there is now any place for admonition, I admonish and declare beforehand: let those men, and any others who either murmur slanders against great men or utter certain ravings about the highest matters with their drinking companions, either speak openly or be silent. For indeed, they will be dug out and dragged forth by me, even by name, from the hidden dens where they have lurked until now. Yet it is possible to know beforehand that I shall not keep silent about the deeds of those whose names I shall not conceal. Let them, however, do what they please and spurn wholesome warnings—not without consequence, of course—but I would rather be rejected by them along with Eucherius than be condemned by the truth along with them. But now is the place and time for us to proceed, as from the philosophers to the expositors, so from the expositors to the authorities, by a consistent step, with reason persuading, while many of the witnesses are, of course, passed over in silence. X. DIVINE WISdom Itself Is Used as a Witness, with Testimonies from the Scriptures.

Let us therefore hear what divine wisdom declares to its enemies concerning its own image: "The impious," it says, "thinking not rightly, said: 'The time of our life is short and wearisome, and our body, when extinguished, will be ashes, and our spirit will be dispersed like soft air.'" The impious, then, said these things, concerning which a little later the same Scripture speaks thus: "For their malice blinded them, because God created man indestructible and made him in the image of his own likeness." At this point I believe you should be stirred more sharply to your own defense, and, as the merit of the case demands, you would even address to me words of this sort: "Why do you use testimonies gathered from here and there which nevertheless do not strike the sincerity of our conscience with truth? And what does it matter to me, or what further concern is it, that the impious are divinely punished for diminishing the dignity of the divine image, when I know that I am not held by the snares of this impiety? Therefore I warn you: desist, and do not falsely brand me with the infamy of such a judgment." Now, unless you refuse, I return with you into your own position, from which you will judge whether that oracle of prophetic speech was directed against the impious or against you—whether it strikes you, you especially, who, under the pretext of a privilege of knowledge, devoted to reputation against judgment and anxious for reputation against judgment, reject the same things there as if alien, yet defend them there as if your own.

Let no one, however, have any room for interpreting otherwise on my part, or perhaps for denying on yours, let us now examine both sides of the matter we are treating. The prophet indeed says that the impious declare: "Our body, when extinguished, will be ash, and our spirit will be dispersed like soft air." But what do you yourself say? "There are some spiritual natures," you say, "such as angels, archangels, and the other powers, and even our own soul, or certainly this subtle air, yet they are by no means to be considered incorporeal." Pay attention, I ask, each of us as our own judge, and render judgment: is there any difference between these statements? The impious said concerning the human spirit, that is, concerning the human soul, that the spirit is dispersed like soft air. Our necessary interlocutor adds that the human soul and this subtle air are equally spiritual, but are not thereby incorporeal. Now weigh the same words and meaning, for what is there called the human spirit, here the soul, so perfectly agrees that if each had said either soul or spirit, that which is there said to be poured into soft air is likewise compared here to subtle air. Therefore, what is said to be dispersed like soft air is as if it were said: the spirit is what soft air is.

Likewise, our soul is spiritual, and that subtle air is such that it might be said: our soul is what that subtle air is. And since of these two, what was stated first is the blasphemy of the impious, and what was placed after is your opinion, and these two are so united that they are indistinguishable in subject, sense, and word, what chiefly follows, except that either, for the sake of the similarity of your opinion, if you believe it should be defended, the opinion of the impious is also praiseworthy, or, because that one is punishable, yours also is condemnable on account of its parity? But why do we continue to argue in vain, when the prophet has judged concerning this: "The impious," he says, "said, thinking wrongly among themselves: 'The time of our life is short, and our body will be ash when extinguished, and our spirit will be dispersed like soft air.'" And a little later, after interposing a discussion, he adds the judgment: "These things," he says, "they thought and they erred, for their malice blinded them." And as if you were to say: "What fault is turned against them in these things, what error?" he replies: "They thought the soul to be corporeal and they erred." And as if he were asked by one doubling: "And what does the truth conceal in this, that one might perceive the soul to be a body?" the prophet repeats the answer: "They erred, that is, they erred, because God created man indestructible and made him in the image of his likeness." That is to say: the soul is not a body to such an extent that it is a divine image.

Is there anything by which you might, from this point onward, be betrayed by your own judgment, caught by the forces of truth, convicted by the testimony of a prophet? But let each person see what he thinks: as my own opinion holds, this much at least—what we have so far argued for the spiritual against the corporeal—would be sufficient, were I not to consider it fitting that apostolic or even evangelical testimonies also be brought into the present controversy. XI. THE APOSTLE PAUL IS USED AS A WITNESS FOR THE NON-LOCALITY OF THE SOUL. Therefore, although I have used the testimonies of these scriptures in some places where it was convenient, it is nevertheless permissible for the manifold sword of truth to cut the throat of falsehood with a salutary incision. Paul, the teacher of the gentiles, the chosen vessel: "Every sin," he says, "is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins in his own body." If, except for the crime of fornication, every sin is outside the body, then it is in the soul. Moreover, if it is in the soul and the soul is a body, then not every sin is outside the body. But the apostle says that, except for fornication, every sin is outside the body. Therefore, the soul is incorporeal, so that there may be something in which sin can be outside the body. Likewise, to the Corinthians, about to pronounce sentence on the man who, polluted by the crime of incest, had defiled his stepmother's bed—almost his mother's—the fornicator, he speaks thus: "Although absent in body, but present in spirit, I have already judged the one who did this deed." What is this, Apostle Paul? What is this?

How, being absent in body, are you present in spirit? If the spirit is a body, why do you not rather say that you are absent by one body and present by another, since you are composed of two bodies? Or if you are entirely one body, why do you not declare that you are absent by a part of the body and present by a part of the body? For you can say that you are absent in body from the Corinthians precisely because you are wholly corporeal in your entire being; but if you are wholly corporeal and—for this reason—because you are absent in body you are wholly absent, I know not by what part of you, where you are not, you claim to be present: either you convict yourself of falsehood, or you convince these corporealists of the incorporeality of the soul. Is there anything here that is obscure or perhaps unclear? For insofar as he is corporeal, he is absent from the Corinthians; either he is present by no part of himself, or he is present through the incorporeal. Therefore the human spirit, by which the apostle Paul, absent in his entire corporeal self, could be made present to the Corinthians, is incorporeal. These and similar examples we could produce in countless numbers from almost the entire body of authoritative volumes.

XII. On the Apostle Saying He Was Snatched Up to the Third Heaven. The sound teaching of the Catholic faith, indeed, ascends by an interposed step from the lowest to the middle, from the middle to the highest, in such a way that, with reasoned judgment, it subordinates corporeal creation to incorporeal creation and, subordinating this same creation together with its inferior to the supreme incorporeal creator, it snatches Paul's followers into the third heaven—those who have passed through the solid sensible world with a penetrable mind and, fixing their intent gaze from the back of the lowest heaven, have, with renewed strength, crossed over all incorporeal created being with a greater effort, according to the dignity of the more excellent substance, and, having there drawn breath for a brief pause, have stood firm in the supreme knowledge of the incorporeal creator, their strength restored. Therefore, I now wish to inquire diligently of these corporeal men what their opinion generally is concerning this apostolic statement. For since the apostle says he was snatched up to the third heaven, I first ask whether he was snatched locally or non-locally, and what these three heavens are, or whether there are more than these, and whether they are corporeal or whether any are incorporeal, so that, since the order of the discussion has brought us to this point, we may see, after consulting the truth, what is to be followed in this matter.

And first, let us examine a question about the number of heavens, not entirely easy, with somewhat more scrupulous care. For we read: "Praise the Lord, the heavens of heavens," but this can be understood both of many and of two, so that it may seem possible to take both many heavens of many heavens and two heavens of two heavens, with the number article left unspoken. Behold, from the earth's contiguous region up to the air, there is the element of waters; then the depth of air extends up to the nearest light of the lunar star; from there, the spaces of ethereal fires reach to the outermost trans-mundane regions, where the world is enclosed by a spherical globe. Where now, in the whole totality of bodies, shall we seek a heaven beyond all that is mundane? But in this dark cloud of obscure things, let us consult the oracles from the sanctuaries of supercelestial doctrines. "In the beginning," says the beginning of Genesis, "God created the heaven and the earth." If, setting aside opinions, we seek the truth of faith, behold, the very author of creation is a witness to the creatures, who, when he had created heaven and earth before all time, and on the first day made light, and on the second day likewise established the firmament, and called that heaven by an improper name, to which he then attached the ornaments of stars varying in their fixed intervals of place or motion, it is easy to observe that this visible firmament yields to the invisible heaven by as great an interval of substance as it likewise surpasses the lowest places of the earth by the intervening distance.

Therefore, that firmament can be called heaven by a borrowed and transferred name, since the name "heaven" is proper to that one heaven created before time. Indeed, that star-bearing thing which we call heaven is called the firmament of heaven in the book of Genesis, where it recounts the creation of the luminaries: "God," it says, "made two great lights and placed them in the firmament of heaven." By which authority, of course, we are permitted to believe in that one true heaven before time, although we are not forbidden to call this firmament of which we speak "heaven," precisely because God called the firmament "heaven." But it again raises a question that in the authoritative volumes the heavens are often called not only by the dual but also by the plural number. Yet it is also submitted that the body of the earth is called in the Scriptures "the orb of the lands." So perhaps, then, the heavens are called many when they are two, just as the lands are said to be many when there is one. To what, then, was Paul raptured as a third heaven? Come now, please, step forth and, having shaken off the masses of the elements and placed the weights of bodies on the balance of judgment, weigh the world: perhaps some heavens will leap out for us from somewhere. Or if one world does not have more heavens, let some worlds with Epicurus, born of the minute atoms, give birth so that Paul may find a third heaven. But what does it contribute to blessedness that someone ascends from one corporeal thing to another, or from this to a third equally corporeal, since what is higher in place is not thereby more blessed in merit?

otherwise men would yield to birds, and each would go to eternity not by progress but by steps. Therefore, since neither local preeminence makes one blessed, nor does the soul find three heavens of a bodily nature, so that at last, worn out by bodies, it might yield to incorporeal ones, let us examine, according to the reason previously touched upon in silent discussion, the number and difference of the three heavens, because where there is a difference of dignities there is a distance of places. If the first and second heavens are more distant than they differ, I ask: what is the reality? Either there is substance there, or nothing. If nothing, no cause of the created heaven will underlie it, since even in the lowest parts of the earth nothing has existed without preceding causes in eternity. But if there is there a multitude of living beings superior to earthly ones, then that supracelestial substance is under the heaven, obviously drawing from the higher source the flames of the more vibrant stars and the more liquid breezes of the air, whose element fills the hollow of the intercelestial void, which is separated from the third heaven by other populations of living beings and by other depths of intervening air.

Now, therefore, if the apostle, carried through these, came into the third heaven, what did he especially find there, which, if it had to be sought locally, could not be found in the first heaven? But he himself says that he was snatched up to the third heaven and heard something divine, which it is not permitted for a man to speak. Is it so, then, apostle, that God is sought through places, or that truth is found only in a place? If this is so, then God will be local, and you, who find God locally, will lose him locally; for if he is only in the third heaven, he is left for you there where he was found. But since you are blessed not by a corporeal heaven but by the lord of heaven, and the lord of heaven is wholly everywhere, who is neither sought locally nor found locally, this true cause of your ascent will be given, if you ascend from the heaven of an inferior substance to the heaven of a more powerful substance. For those seeking God, there is no ascent from corporeal things to corporeal things; whither now will the enclosed corporeality flee? Behold, it is true that Paul was snatched up to the third heaven, and again it is not true that there are three corporeal heavens. Therefore, you will either confess something created incorporeal, or you will deny the three heavens. But since both that there are three heavens and that not all are corporeal is taught by indisputable authority or proved by manifest reason, let us, with the help of a single truth, as we have dispelled falsehood, so seek the truth.

We read in the prophet: "He who made heaven and earth. The heaven of heaven is for the Lord, but the earth He gave to the sons of men." Here it must be observed that heaven is one thing and the heaven of heaven is another, since when "heaven of heaven" is said, it is as if "heaven and earth" were said. For the lowest part of the starry heaven is this earth, but since before all that is temporal God created heaven and earth, and on the second day He made this visible heaven, therefore heaven is later in time than earth, though it is so much superior in quality. But because the creation of the world does not admit of intervals and spaces of time and delays of days—since there is now no time to discuss the number of the six days rather than their duration—understand this: that the prophet made as great a difference between heaven and the heaven of heaven as there is, roughly, between this heaven and earth, so that just as this earth is the earth of this heaven, so this heaven is in turn the earth of that heaven. Hence it is to be inferred that the entire body of the world is more divinely called "earth," and that which is given to the Lord is called by the proper name "heaven." For Scripture speaks thus: "The heaven of heaven is for the Lord, but the earth He gave to the sons of men.

What then shall we say? Surely this visible heaven has not been given to men, nor the brilliance and heat of the sun, nor the variation of the lunar globe through its increases and decreases, nor the wandering and fixed circuit of the stars, nor the conjunctions of the constellations through their great orbits and their appointed progression, whether because they vary the alternations of days and nights, or because they temper the world by the reciprocal warmth of heat and cold, or because they mark the divisions of the seasons with measured boundaries and, returning through the same unending path of lines, bring back the same things without end through the same circuits of circles, or because they adorn the ether with distinct, numerous choruses and musical intervals? Are not all these things either conducive to the use of the mortal race or delightful to behold? And for this reason, the corporeal heaven, because it has been given to men, is called earth, just as the bodies of water and air, though not of the same corpulence as earth, are nevertheless called earth because they have been given to the sons of men, with the addition that the sense of touch, among all living beings that perceive through the senses, is principally derived from earth. Moreover, just as nothing can be seen without fire, so nothing can be touched without earth: for fire is subject to touch, and the ether is fire, so it is not incongruous that there is something earthly there. Therefore, since every corporeal thing is included under the name of earth, and by sound judgment, in the composite of corporeal things, every corporeal thing is called earth, because this sensible world, together with the visible heaven, is earth, which has been given to the sons of men.

What shall we say about that heaven which has been given to the Lord, not to the sons of men? Therefore let us again have recourse to divine utterances. The same psalmist indeed says: "Confess to the Lord, who made the heavens in understanding." Wherefore, if the heavens which God inhabits are in understanding, and the heaven which has been given to the Lord is only incorporeal—that is, the heaven for which every corporeal thing is earth—it is clearly evident that everything which understands is not corporeal. Moreover, the human mind understands substantially; therefore the human mind is incorporeal. Behold for you all corporeal creation as earth; behold for you heaven as incorporeal and intellectual substance. Now, therefore, so that you may be swept up, with Paul as your guide, through two heavens as far as the third heaven, transmit the whole corporeal universe through your own incorporeal nature, and then also transcend the created incorporeal, which is likewise mutable, with a keener effort and a swifter flight; and from there rest in the third heaven, in the most blessed contemplation of the immutable incorporeal itself; and know yourself, human soul, to be incorporeal, for whom, by the excellence of your nature, it is both ready and fitting, as a mediating substance, either to look down from on high upon the lowest body or to look up from below upon the highest God, between the depths and the heights of your own being.

Now I ask you: do you bring forward another account of the number and diversity of the three heavens? I certainly desire one, but it is clear that it cannot be given by anyone unless the nature of an incorporeal substance interposes itself between body and God, because if nothing except body exists apart from God, then there are not three heavens, but two, so that all body is roughly one heaven and the creator of body another. But since Paul was snatched not beyond the third heaven but into the third heaven, all corporeal and incorporeal creation must be crossed over like two heavens, while to the creator, as if into the third heaven, one must come not for the purpose of crossing over—which is impossible—nor of returning—which is not permitted—but for the purpose of standing and remaining. This course and this state, however, are progress and perfection, which are of virtues, not of places, since he who progresses runs and he who is perfected arrives. Now, since we have traversed the very broad fields of a very wide question along a quite narrow path, having given, as I think, some indications which separate the deviations of errors from the straight path of truth, I inquire what the Apostle means when he says that he was snatched either in the body or outside the body. For he speaks thus: "I know a man who was snatched, whether in the body or outside the body I do not know," and the rest, concerning which we have said what was relevant. And first, with discussion applied, let us see what the blessed Apostle holds as certain in this matter and what he admits as uncertain.

He knows that a man was snatched away, but he does not know whether in the body or outside the body. Notice now that here one thing is called man, another thing body. Yet see—it has been distinguished what the apostle says he does not know, what he says he knows. Let us therefore examine whether from the incorporeal or from the corporeal or from both he is so far ignorant, just as he does not know whether he was snatched with the body or without the body. "I know," he says, "that a man was snatched, but whether in the body or outside the body I do not know." Here it may now be observed that he who was snatched and knows that he was snatched, yet sensing that he himself is not his own body, and thus hesitating whether he was snatched with that same body or without it, nevertheless does not doubt that he himself was snatched. And when with this everything obscure becomes clear, surely he who is uncertain whether he was snatched with the body or without the body is nevertheless certain that he is incorporeal and has a body, because if he was not snatched without the body, then the body was snatched with him, and yet he himself is not that body with which he was snatched. If without the body, it is much more understood that he is not a body, since he can exist without a body. "I know," he says, "that a man was snatched, but whether in the body or outside the body I do not know," which is as if he were saying: I know that I was snatched, but whether with the body or without the body I do not know. Therefore, even if you were snatched with the body, you could still have been snatched without the body.

Therefore, you are incorporeal even while in the body, if you were able to be snatched away without the body, since the incorporeal, with its substance preserved, is mixed with the body for the purpose of giving it life; but that a body should be without a body is not permitted by the established law of things. XIII. FROM THE GOSPEL, GOD IS USED AS A WITNESS FOR THE INCORPOREALITY OF THE SOUL. But now my witnesses, namely the heralds of truth, will testify to the undoubted faith by truth itself. The Lord says in the Gospel: Do not fear those who kill the body, for they cannot kill the soul. Why, I ask you, cannot one who can kill the body kill the soul, unless perhaps because the soul is not a body? But you say: It is indeed a body, but a thinner one; it is indeed a body, but a lighter one. Yet I return this answer: Let it be thinner and lighter, but still, if it is a body, it can be killed by one by whom a body can be killed. For we are dealing with these two, namely the soul and the body, of which the visible man consists. For he who said, "Do not fear them," did not say, "those who kill the denser body, the heavier body," but "those who kill the body." And likewise he did not say, "the thinner and lighter body," but "they cannot kill the soul." For by the name "body" he certainly included the living body, because nothing can be killed unless it is alive, and therefore if the soul is a living body, it can be killed by one by whom a body can be killed. Truth says: Those who kill the body cannot kill the soul.

Therefore, the soul is not a body, since it cannot be killed by those things by which a body can be killed. But because the reader’s attention must be relieved from the burden of continuous reading, let this be the end of this volume. CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS, ON THE STATE OF THE SOUL: BOOK THREE. I. ON THE BODY OF LAZARUS: HOW IT LAY LIFELESS LOCALLY, WHEN THE SOUL HAD DEPARTED FROM THE BODY NON-LOCALLY. Having set forth, as I think, witnesses sufficiently suitable both in merit and in number for the construction of the truth, it now remains for us to examine those matters which remain undiscussed from the little work of this patron of the body. He, with rash persuasion, decrees that the soul is contained by the body, and, having taken up for this same purpose an example of evangelical authority, argues as if peremptorily, saying that the body of Lazarus, when it was dead, was without life, and that the same body was revived with life, so that by this the soul might be believed to be local, which departed from the body and again approached the body.

II. ON THE SOUL, IN WHICH IT BEARS THE LIKENESS OF GOD. And to prescribe for the whole race of souls in common, he pronounces the soul of our Redeemer Himself to be local, by a syllogism, of course, that is formidable and, as he claims, insoluble: that the soul, where it is, both is and is not, and where it is not, as if we were saying that the same soul is either everywhere or nowhere, since if it were everywhere, it would be God, if it were nowhere, it would be nothing. That soul indeed is not whole in the whole world, but just as God is everywhere whole in the universe, so this soul is found everywhere whole in the body. And just as God by no means fills a smaller part of the world with a smaller part of Himself, and a larger with a larger, but is whole in a part, whole in the whole, so this soul is not in a part of the body according to a part of itself. Nor does one part of the soul give sensation to the eye and another give life to the finger, but just as in the eye it lives wholly and through the eye sees wholly, so also in the finger it lives wholly and through the finger feels wholly. Or if perhaps it feels wholly in the finger in such a way that it is not wholly in the finger, then it feels wholly where it is not wholly, and it is where it is not. Therefore, either the soul will be whole in the smallest part of the body, while nonetheless being whole in the whole, or, since it feels wholly where it is not wholly, it is therefore wholly where it is not wholly. But concerning this, I have discussed quite a lot in the first book and prefaced not a little at the beginning of the second; if anyone should attend to these diligently, he will approach this place, of course, not as a novice.

It is, indeed, most difficult to contemplate incorporeal things, because the deceptive sight of the bodily senses so clouds the eye of the weak mind with sin that, when it wishes to contemplate itself or God, it sees only the veil of corporeal images which is spread before it, since it cannot see beyond that. Therefore, whoever is offended by the difficulty of this matter should devote study and effort, not to slandering me, but to being able to be purified. Yet I myself am not so forgetful of myself that I do not feel that weakness is more present in me than health. Nevertheless, it delights me that I escaped this opinion, by which the soul is believed to be a body, with my boyhood years, because at that time, when I held that opinion, I was certainly ignorant. But to hold an opinion is characteristic of one who is ignorant, and ignorance is contrary to knowledge: therefore, whoever holds an opinion does not know. Hence it came about that I desired knowledge more than opinion, knowing that I did not know, as long as I held an opinion. But you say, when we inquire about the substance of the soul, that what is above us cannot be seen by us, since we ourselves are not above ourselves, and also that you deny that it can be known, as if judging it known, and you affirm that the soul is a body of the body. If you say this knowingly, because false things cannot be known, you speak truly, and if you speak truly in this, you lie that the substance of the soul cannot be known. Therefore, either it is false that the soul is a body, or it is false that the substance of the soul cannot be known. You see where opinion leads its followers?

For since no one except an ignorant person holds an opinion, and ignorance is opposed to knowledge, you, who wish to pronounce a certain judgment from the uncertainty of opinion and to declare as if knowing concerning those things which you do not know, are proven to teach what you do not know. Therefore, you teach ignorance, and when you say that it is possible to be ignorant, you presume to teach. Grant us, we beseech you, pardon for being unwilling to learn ignorance. III. THAT THE BODY DOES NOT CONTAIN THE SOUL LOCALLY, BUT THE SOUL CONTAINS THE BODY NON-LOCALLY, AND EVERYTHING THAT IS IS EITHER IN ITSELF, OR A SUBJECT, OR IN A SUBJECT. You say, therefore, that the soul is contained by the body. Should not that apostolic saying have come into your mind, which was spoken: "And if our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner man is renewed"? Everything that is, to speak briefly, is either in itself, or a subject, or in a subject. In itself is God; in bodily things, the body is the subject and the color of the body is in the subject; in incorporeal things, the mind and discipline are so bound together that neither is body without color nor is the rational mind without discipline. It is for you to see, who believe the soul to be a body and the same to be contained as a superject in the subject body, whether we can prove that what is in the subject remains when the subject itself perishes, because if it is contained by the body, it is itself in its superject subject, and it will not be able to remain, that which is contained, when that which contains perishes. But the apostle says that as the body grows old, the soul is renewed, and as it is corrupted, it is consolidated; therefore, it is not contained by the body.

I fear that you may seem here too to be a new Academic, who both with the Academics know nothing and about those things which you do not know you define without hesitation. See to it that the body does not contain the soul, but is contained by the soul. For by this, when the body is corrupted, the soul is strengthened, just as that same body is dissolved by the loss of this soul. The soul lives better without the body; the body without the soul lives not even worse. And so that from these two, of which human substance consists, what is in what may prevail not only by argument but also shine forth by authority, let us also bring forth a prophetic testimony. For it says: "The body which is corrupted weighs down the soul." And we must first see whether that which is in something weighs it down, or that in which something is. If that in which something is, then the thing is burdened by the weight. But if that which is in something weighs it down, not that in which something is, then the body is more in the soul, which body weighs down the soul, than the soul is in the body, which soul is weighed down by the body: the burden, clearly, is in the bearer, not the bearer in the burden. Since these things are so, the great likeness of the soul to its author is indicated by this greatest sign, that for the sake of likeness, just as the world is in God non-locally, so the body is in the soul non-locally.

Now I ask that you answer me as I inquire: if the soul is locally within the body, how does it contain the body? It is well known, of course, that nothing corporeal can be contained by a body unless that which contains is on the outside and that which is contained is on the inside. But the soul, as you yourself affirm, being corporeal—how is it within the body to give it life and outside the body to contain it? Or perhaps it contains in such a way from the outside that it is not on the outside? Then we are driven back again into that difficulty, that the soul either is non-locally outside the body, so as to contain the body, or, if it contains where it is not, it is where it is not. But this reasoning perhaps disturbs you by its novelty. Wake up for a little while and, if you can, look: if you cannot, admire the power of the incorporeal, that it moves the body while standing still and, not approaching any places through places, acts non-locally in the same places. If you could perceive this, you would not set before us the soul of Lazarus as if it were some body, on account of a certain locality of departing and returning, but you would recognize that the same soul animated his body by an incorporeal motion and departed non-locally and again returned to it non-locally.

Now if the truth of this vision has become clear to you in its purity, you will not be tossed about by any difficulty of the question, insofar as the soul, with the body set aside, can be non-locally in the world, because it will be non-locally in any part of the world just as it was non-locally in the body. But you, to the prejudice of the whole race of souls, also pronounce the soul of Christ to be local and corporeal, and you say that the soul of the Redeemer is a body, although the soul of a beast is not. IV. BECAUSE JUST AS THE BODY, THOUGH LOCAL, IS NON-LOCALLY IN THE SOUL, SO THE WORLD, THOUGH LOCAL, IS NON-LOCALLY IN GOD. But perhaps you contend: how is the soul both in a place and not local? And I ask you in mutual consultation: how is the corporeal world both local and not in a place? For if you answer that the world is in a place, I ask no less insistently: is the place in which the world is outside the world or part of the world? If it is part of the world, then the world is not in that place, but it itself, along with the world, is in something else; if it is outside the world, I ask again: is the place in which the world is itself in a place? Therefore, either you will admit that places—that is, bodies—are infinite, and thus you will equal a body to God, who alone is infinite, or you will concede that the world is not in a place.

Now therefore consider this reasoning in your mind, and just as you perceive that so many places and so many spaces exist not in a place, so understand that that which is of no bulk, of no space, can be in a place without place, because if that which is local is not in a place, much less is that which is not local in a place. V. BECAUSE JUST AS THE SOUL DEPARTS NON-LOCALLY FROM THE BODY SO THAT THE BODY DIES, SO THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST DEPARTED NON-LOCALLY SO THAT THE SON OF GOD CHRIST DIED ON THE CROSS. But whether you understand this as clearly as it shines forth, I would have doubted: that which is of such simple consequence that its recognition is not only at hand but can scarcely even be avoided, I cannot sufficiently wonder that it has escaped you. You say that the body of Christ, when it was lifted up on the cross, was animate, but inanimate when it was consigned to the tomb, and because of this—which is not to be denied—your mind will be local by the argument of your acumen, because it alternated the vivifying of Christ's body. Therefore, under the necessity of this sentence, we will also believe God to be local by profane audacity, who both was in Christ when he was crucified and abandoned him in the passion. The Lord himself cried out from the cross: "My God, why have you forsaken me?" For if he did not depart, he did not forsake; if he forsook, he certainly departed. Now therefore object locality to God. For it is a contiguous step that from the injury of the likeness of God you are carried into God himself, and that you assail the author whom you defame by the image.

Just as, therefore, locality is not taken away from God because He abandoned the man Christ by departing, so the soul does not lose the privilege of being without location when it departs with the dying body. VI. BECAUSE YOU DID NOT SEE THE ANGEL GABRIEL IN THAT SUBSTANCE IN WHICH HE IS A SPIRIT, BUT FROM THE FACT THAT HE TEMPORARILY TOOK ON A VISIBLE BODY FROM THE AIR. Here now, as a proud orator, you inveigh against the state of the angels and choose Gabriel for yourself as a kind of prelude to your speech, declaiming thus: "The most blessed Gabriel himself, who testifies that he stands before God, when he was announcing that the Lord of the heavens was to be poured into the womb of Mary, and when he stood before the eyes of the Lord's mother, was without doubt absent from heaven, did not fly over Mary, did not fill the empty and diffused vastness of the air, but occupied only that place in which he was present." I confess that I am amazed at such great inconsistency of statements from the opponents upon a brief examination of this opinion. Now you call the air subtle, now you call the same air vast; now you call the great place of the world, which the element of air fills in proportion, empty by a certain poetic license, and you do not understand that emptiness cannot exist at all, because where something is, it is not nothing. But air is not nothing; therefore, where air is, there is no emptiness. But neither can that which is nothing rightly be called empty, because that which is nothing cannot receive anything. Hence, that which is capable of nothing is not empty.

But what about the fact that you prefer to call the mother of the Lord "genitrix" in the manner of the poets, and weave an oratorical style without verses, poetically? Yet I inquire not how, but what you say, and I ask that you answer. When the most blessed Gabriel stood before the eyes of the Lord's mother, did Mary see in Gabriel that by which Gabriel sees God? For if that was visible to Mary, then the non-local is perceptible to the local. If that is so, it is not non-local: because if each thing is local, it sees locally and, when looking, cannot see anything except a part. Therefore, he who sees locally sees a place, because a part is a place, and a place is certainly a part of places, and places are bodies. And he who sees a part sees with a part of himself, and only a part can be seen by a part; but there is no part of God, because the indivisible has no part. Therefore, either Gabriel does not see God, or he sees Him whole, and the whole can only be seen by the whole. But a body can neither be seen whole nor see whole; therefore, that by which Gabriel sees God is not a body, because that by which Gabriel saw Mary locally and Mary saw him locally cannot see non-locally. But to engage with you in word: if the whole Gabriel is nothing but a body by reason of the distance of parts, then the whole is not the foot, nor the whole the mouth, nor the whole the eye. Consequently, when he was seen by Mary, he did not speak with his foot, nor see with his mouth, nor stand with his eye, but each part of the members performed its function according to its own quality.

Therefore, just as he stood locally and sounded locally, so also he saw locally. Now at this point, as the conclusion of the inquiry, I ask whether the angel Gabriel, as you claim, being corporeally occupied with only the body in his contemplation of Mary, saw the local God in a non-local manner with one and the same sight, at one and the same time, by which he saw the local Mary locally. Because this is not permitted, due to the diversity of the corporeal and the incorporeal, it remains that either Gabriel never saw Mary, or he ceased to see God. But the truth's statement opposes this false opinion, which says: because the angels always see the face of my Father; if they always see, they never do not see. But if, when Gabriel saw Mary, he ceased to see God, then the angels do not always see God. Therefore, either when Gabriel saw Mary he ceased to see God, or what the Truth said will not be true. For this reason, it is concluded by an indissoluble argument, as is clear, that because the angel could not see God with a local sight fixed in the contemplation of Mary, and yet it is not permitted to deny that God was seen by Gabriel even then, lest, according to the fall of the devil—namely, in the misery of never seeing God—the nature of the angel, already of immutable blessedness, should fall, there is in him a corporeal and an incorporeal substance: one by which he is seen by the body or sees corporeally, the other by which he incorporeally beholds the incorporeal without end.

VII. How Far Unformed Matter Differs from Nothing, or How Far Formed Matter Differs from the Unformed. Now, for the keenness of your excellent intellect and for your knowledge of causes and things, investigate, distinguish, and pronounce how unformed matter differs from nothing, what is inanimate and yet formed, what is both formed and animate, what are place and time, how local motion is subject also to temporal motion, while temporal motion is not subject to local motion, what is stable motion and what is eternity, what it is to be nowhere and to be nowhere not, what it is to be never and to be never not: and concerning all these, seek out the hidden reason, and from whatever includes every substance, choose something that you determine angels to be. Certainly they are not nothing, because whatever is something is not nothing. They are not unformed matter, because unformed matter is between something and nothing. Behold, we have barely departed from nothing.

Now let us discuss why it pleases you to assign bodies to angels from inanimate formed matter. Observe now that just as unformed matter, which is formable, is superior to nothing, so that which is already formed is better than that which, although it can be formed, is not formed. And likewise, just as that which is formed surpasses that which is not formed, so any inanimate formed thing yields to that which is both formed and animate, because just as the formed approaches form, so the animate approaches life. And just as there are three things—unformed matter, formed inanimate matter, and the form of things—so likewise there are three things: the enlivened, the enlivening, and life. The life of bodies is one thing, the life of lives another. The body is living, the soul is alive, God is life; that is to say, the soul, which is alive in itself, is life to the body, so that the body does not live without it, just as it itself does not live without God. Now understand that to assign bodies to the holy angels is to deny them life. And by this, since any animate thing consists of a twofold substance, and you consider angels to be only body, a little worm is therefore better than an angel, because although the angel has the form of a body, it does not have life, not even as a worm does. Moreover, no body is life to itself; for body is one thing, the life of the body another. Therefore, either there is an enlivening spirit in the angel, or the angel is worse than every living thing, or, since it is mightier than every created living thing, it has not just any life, but the most blessed life.

CHAPTER VIII: THAT GOOD OR EVIL ANGELS ARE SPIRITS, NOT BODIES, AND THAT AN ANGEL DOES NOT SEE GOD THROUGH A BODY, NOR DOES A CORPOREAL HUMAN SEE AN ANGEL UNLESS THE ANGEL HAS ASSUMED A VISIBLE BODY. Therefore in Gabriel there is both an incorporeal element by which he sees God unchangeably, and a body which either Mary saw or through which Mary was seen, and which, subject to the spirit locally, he bore, and which the spirit, in its own truth, had known non-locally as something to be borne. It is sufficiently clear, I think, that the blessed angels are of both substances: they are incorporeal in that part of themselves by which God is visible to them, and likewise corporeal in that part by which they themselves are visible to humans, since neither can God be seen by an angel through a body, nor can an angel be seen by a human without a body. Since this is so, it cannot be denied that the devil also was made from the incorporeal and the corporeal, as one created together with the holy angels, and is of a double substance. After he swelled with the dropsy of pride and wasted away with the fever of envy, having voluntarily fallen from sanctity non-locally and having been involuntarily cast down from heaven locally, he ceased to be good, not to be an angel; he lost innocence, not nature. Therefore, just as the multitude of angels which persisted in both parts of itself is beatified, so that which fell away will be punished in both parts of itself.

Therefore you will by no means rightly deny two substances in the devil, because, even with me disregarded, it will certainly be necessary for you to yield to yourself and to demolish part of your own arguments with another part, and to overthrow the false with the true. Therefore the devil, himself incorporeal, has his own body, because he will not be able to feel corporeal torments without a body. And likewise, that which feels is one thing, and that through which feeling occurs is another. Indeed, if you pay attention, you will be taught by your own true statement. For you said: "If the devil drew his body from this condensed air, then he will carry an alien body to the torments," as if I had ever anywhere said that. But I do not deny the debt, that by this argument you have voluntarily granted us victory. For when you say that the devil will not carry an alien body to the torments, you confess, of course, that he will carry his own. But it does not matter to me whether he has his own body or an alien one, but whether he has a body at all—that matters to me. You, however, not only confess that the devil has a body, but even his own body, and you even argue for it. For this is your statement: "If the devil drew his body from this condensed air, then he will carry an alien body to the torments." Certainly, that which carries is something, and that which is carried is something. And when it is said, "he carries his own," it is signified that that which carries and that which is carried are different. Therefore the devil is of a twofold and diverse substance, because when he carries his own body, he is not himself what he carries.

For it is one thing to be a burden, and another to be the bearer of the burden. Therefore you will no longer struggle against us, if you believe yourself, since the body and that which has the body are substantially two, and these two are diverse, and in order that they be diverse, one will be incorporeal and the other corporeal. Therefore the devil, from a twofold and diverse substance, is both corporeal and incorporeal. IX. THAT IT IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD SPIRITUALLY, NOT CORPOREALLY, WHEN LAZARUS IN THE BOSOM OF ABRAHAM AND THE RICH MAN IN THE CHAOS OF HELL SPOKE TO ONE ANOTHER WITH AN INTERVENING SPACE. But if concerning these matters we have rendered an account, or at least in some part, let us examine that chaos, which, as you argue, placed between guilty and innocent souls, separates merits by places, under the discussion of your own chapter. For you argue thus: if souls are not local, how does that empty chaos, with a sad 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? You have placed this example from the Gospel reading, with the simplicity of the Lord’s speech removed, for the sake, evidently, of establishing the locality of souls. But the sincere divine oracle, set forth in its own truth, will clearly reveal what your speech has altered, corrupted, and concealed in this matter. The Lord says in the Gospel: the poor man died and was taken up by angels into the bosom of Abraham; the rich man died and was buried in hell.

and while he was in torments, he saw Abraham from afar and Lazarus in his bosom, and he says: "Father Abraham, send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am tortured in this flame." And Abraham replied: "Remember, son, that you received good things in your life, and likewise Lazarus bad things, and therefore now he is comforted here, while you are tortured." And in all these things a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that no one can go from here to you nor cross over from there to here. Now explain this to me according to places and times or bodies: there, without the alternation of reciprocal air and the organ of the chest and the pipe of the throat and the hollow of the mouth and the plectrum of the tongue, through any corporeal soul, as you claim, produce words with voices; here, show me the hand of the soul, whose finger's tip the burned rich man's tongue Lazarus was to cool by dipping in water; here, teach me something corporeal about that lap of Abraham, as if corporeal, so that it may be both narrow according to the measure of the human body and capable of holding many; and that chasm, either so small that mutual words can mingle across what separates them, or so immense that it cannot be crossed. But I ask this especially: that rich man, who burns in the fires of Gehenna among the underworld, if he was able to converse with Abraham in speech, did he not approach the places of blessedness? And further, how does Abraham converse with the rich man if he did not go to the underworld?

You say, not without some plausibility, that the souls of the saints dwell in the innermost regions of paradise. Therefore, since Abraham is in paradise and the rich man in hell, and they are separated from each other by some immense, impassable gulf, yet they not only see each other but also converse with one another as if nothing intervened—if these matters are to be judged spatially, you will be forced to admit one of two alternatives: either that Abraham and the rich man neither spoke with nor saw each other, or that hell is in paradise or paradise in hell. X. HOW THIS QUESTION CAN BE UNDERSTOOD SPIRITUALLY. But since neither can divine authority be obstinately resisted nor can misery be mingled with blessedness, and because we cannot, with the bleary eyes of corporeal imagination, look into the perplexity of this statement, let us set aside for a little while places and bodies and consider that, when an immense space is said to exist between certain persons separated by judgment, such that even verbal communication is possible, we should take note not of a distance of places, but of a difference of merits. For as far as the body is concerned, an unjust man can be spatially near a just man, but an unjust man cannot, while he remains unjust, be in the innocence of the just. Hence, because after death it is possible for no one either to repent or to sin, the impassable chaos of an immutable state is said to exist between the saved and the lost.

Your own speech, therefore, is borne against you; namely, the testimony which you thought would diverge from us, you observe uniting with us as the argument progresses, and closing its very slender paths, which lead to the infinite spaces of placeless regions, against you with the door reversed, because the narrowness of corporeal magnitude, not grasping the immensity of incorporeal subtleties, can embrace neither distance without place, nor word without sound, nor a bosom without space. Moreover, those things which are in such a way are not corporeal. But the souls of Abraham, Lazarus, and the rich man are in such a way; therefore they are not corporeal. But what follows after this, similar to these, ought certainly to have less labor in their own refutation for a mind vigorous in counsel. For a just judge rightly deems conquered one who, due to his own weakness, is equal to the conquered. Hence I am not without shame that you subjoin, for the sake of proving the corporeality of the soul: "Behold, if the soul thinks of Alexandria or Jerusalem, and if through thought its whole presence was there, let it report to us the layout of the places, the faces of the men, the movements and actions of the peoples." Is the author of this sentiment not ashamed to seize an indication of the soul's corporeality from a source from which an argument for its incorporeality ought to have been seen?

CHAPTER XI: THAT THE SOUL'S VISION IS INTELLECT, AND THAT JUST AS IT SEES CORPOREAL THINGS THROUGH THE BODY, SO IT SEES SPIRITUAL THINGS THROUGH ITSELF; AND THAT IF IT HAD SEEN BODIES THROUGH ITSELF, IT WOULD MORE EASILY HAVE SEEN ITS OWN VISCERA. Thus far I have discoursed concerning the incorporeal and non-local vision of the mind, and it has clearly appeared that the same mind, with no mediating substance, contemplates eternal and immutable things. Therefore, since the rational soul perceives through itself the incorporeal and non-local, and discerns truth, which is God, from falsehood by an incorporeal vision, and does not see local and corporeal things except through the body, what reason is there to believe it similar to those things for the contemplation of which it uses the body as an interpreter, and to judge it dissimilar to those things which it contemplates through itself? The soul's vision, as has often been said and it does not weary me to repeat, is intellect. For corporeal things cannot be understood; they can be perceived by the soul through the body. But just as the soul perceives through the body, so it understands through itself; the substance of what is perceived and what is understood is far different. Hence it comes about that the soul, because it is not a body, cannot perceive corporeal things except through the body, but can see through itself what is to be understood. But you, with a too contradictory opinion, wish corporeal things to be understood and incorporeal things to be seen?

But lest the human mind, which you believe to be corporeal, should seem to you capable of seeing either nothing, or only corporeal things, or perhaps incorporeal things alone through itself, as is proper to its nature, let us, as briefly as we can, ventilate the threefold obscurity of this question. Therefore, let us see whether the human mind sees through itself or not. But since almost the highest point of this matter turns on this very place, I seek a reader who is at once watchful and vigilant. The sight of the mind through the body, which is common to man and beast, strains and extends itself through those points of the pupils, by the vaporous anterior ventricle of the brain, with invisible flames of the viscera, and flowing forth into rays as far as it goes, if it encounters something of color or form, it conceives it, and just as by a course, so also by a return, it receives it through the rapid paths of the lines. And this is what is called sight, as we discussed in the first book. Through this, therefore, the human mind, along with the beast, distinguishes the known from the unknown, white from black, by the skin. Is this the limit of the human mind's sight? By what, then, does it judge the just from the unjust, the true from the false? Or will the physically sighted but mindless be believed to surpass the blind wise in judgment?

But let us have as witnesses in this ambiguous matter either Appius from the Roman Senate, or Hermophilus from the Greek gymnasium, or Tobias from the number of the prophets: of whom either Appius provided the light of counsel to those who were clear-sighted outwardly with their eyes but inwardly blind; or Hermophilus taught Theopompus geometry without a rod; or Tobias, while he opened the path of the sky as a guide for his son, gave him an angel as a companion. Therefore, the mind sees without the body, and not anything corporeal or colored or extended through space, but truth itself, which is supremely incorporeal—God—it contemplates with an incorporeal gaze. It is clear, I think, that the mind sees both incorporeal things through itself and corporeal things through the body. But that point still remains to be discussed, on account of the little men of tepid liver, whether the human mind can see corporeal things by itself without the body. Now, therefore, attend wholly and be as present as you can. Surely, as you maintain, the human mind is itself corporeal and enclosed within the barrier of the external body. If it can see anything corporeal by itself, nothing is more readily visible to it than the interior of the body in which it is enclosed.

Now, please, look into your own viscera and into all the parts of the body, in turn, with that corporeal sight of the mind which you keep talking about, and report to yourself and to us, from your own experience, in what ways and in what position the threefold form of the brain comes together, the mass of the liver lies, the rule of the spleen adheres, the balance of the stomach hangs, the plectrum of the heart strikes, what are the pathways of the veins and what their texture, what are the origins of the nerves and what their joining, what is the coming together of the bones and what their compacting, what are the hollows of the lungs, what are the tortuous flexions and reflexions of the intestines, unfolded by knotless ligatures. Behold, why do you deny that you can give answers to an arbiter about these things? Why, then, do you deny it? Because, clearly, the mind by itself cannot see corporeal things at all. But why can it not see corporeal things at all, when it has already been established that it is not without sight? No one sees anything corporeal who does not have corporeal sight. But the mind, which has sight and sees nothing corporeal, sees incorporeally; and to be able to see incorporeally is the property of incorporeal sight; and an incorporeal sight belongs only to an incorporeal being; and the human mind sees incorporeally: therefore, the human mind is incorporeal. So do not be troubled any longer by these trifles, so as to think that the mind is not there where it thinks, because it cannot by nature contemplate the situation of places, the faces of men, the movement and action of peoples—for these are corporeal.

Moreover, the incorporeal mind cannot see what is contrary to its own nature; nevertheless, it is present where it thinks, to the extent that it does not perceive with corporeal vision the places it thinks about, just as it is present where it gives life, yet does not see the inner parts of the body it animates. And if it is everywhere evident that the mind can neither see corporeal things without a body nor see incorporeal things while with a body, let us no longer wander as pilgrims in Alexandria, but, returning from Egypt, crossing the sea of errors and traversing the desert of ignorance, let us enter the fatherland of truth and, as it were, the promised land—not idle, nor sluggish, nor indeed trembling, so that if anything born of the vice of false-speaking vanity should either murmur from the side or present itself in our path, it may be struck down with Jesus as our guide and helper. XII. AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY: THE SOUL IS INCORPOREAL TO ITSELF, BUT CORPOREAL TO GOD. But there are some who, with chattering trifles, destroy souls; and although we are not halted on our journey, we are slowed. Yet to spend a little time as an interval is nothing; indeed, it helps, provided that the same truth either repels or crushes whatever is opposed to it or different from it.

And when I hear certain people who want souls to be corporeal and yet cannot deny that they are incorporeal, saying that souls are one thing to themselves and another to their creator—"Souls," they say, "are corporeal to God, but incorporeal to themselves"—this is as if they were saying that souls are both corporeal and incorporeal. I call eternity to witness that it is exceedingly laborious for me to respond to such empty talk, because here there is nothing with which I can engage, nothing I can dig out from the marrow, nothing with which I can contend in exercise, and indeed nothing that would be a victory to have won. Therefore, if the soul is corporeal to its creator and incorporeal to itself, the method of investigating the truth demands that we skillfully examine these two points: either it is truly the case that the soul is incorporeal, if it truly knows this about itself, or it is also true that the soul is corporeal, if this is established by the soul's author. They claim that both are true: it is true that the soul is incorporeal, because it knows this in truth, and it is also true that the soul is corporeal, because the creator of the soul knows this. And they maintain that these two things, which are utterly contrary to each other, are both true, although truth is contrary only to falsehood. A most illustrious and brilliant argument, which, while spurning a single and unique truth, discovers two truths for itself! Yet, to hold these people by the bonds of their own profession, even by their own admission, the human mind is incorporeal with respect to man.

Since, therefore, we agree on this part of the question, it remains for them to teach how an incorporeal substance is corporeal to the one who created that same incorporeal substance. I do not first say whether it is so or not, but for the present I grant that it is so, yet I ask from where they know it to be so. If the pages of divine volumes contain this, let them read it; if some reasoning persuades it, let them teach it; if it helps to exercise dialectic, let them prove it. If none of these is the case, let them at least concede to their own opinion, so that those who are incorporeal in themselves may not believe themselves to be corporeal outside themselves, because one cannot be something else outside oneself when one can be nothing outside oneself. Accordingly, the mind, which is incorporeal in itself, can in no way be corporeal outside itself, because neither does its author know it to be other than what he made, nor can it know itself to be other than what it was made. And through this, if it knows the truth, when it knows itself to be incorporeal, then God is mistaken if he knows the mind, which is truly incorporeal, to be corporeal. But God cannot be mistaken; therefore he knows the mind to be incorporeal, lest the truth be false, by which the mind truthfully knows itself to be incorporeal. Therefore the mind is incorporeal to itself for this reason, because it is so also to its creator.

Just as earth is earth to man because it is also earth to God, and just as water, air, and fire are the very same things to man because they are also the very same things to God, and just as all things that have truly become known to man are in man’s knowledge what they are, so indeed the human mind can in no way both be one thing and be known to God as another. For the knowledge of the creator does not arise from the knowledge of things, but the existence of things arises from the knowledge of the creator. Therefore, unless the human mind were incorporeal to God, it could not be incorporeal. For whatever is in any way incorporeal can in no way be corporeal. But lest we dwell here longer than is right, let us also inquire about that which we have discussed in no part. XIII. THAT MAN CONSISTS OF TWO SUBSTANCES, AN IMMORTAL AND NON-LOCAL SOUL AND A MORTAL AND LOCAL BODY, AND JUST AS THE SOUL SUFFERS IMMORTALLY, SO IT GLORIES IMMORTALLY AND NON-LOCALLY.

You say, for example: when the mind paints for itself the likeness of Peter or Paul within the secret places of the mind, has it immediately penetrated the innermost seats of paradise where it knows them to be? Or when, from reading, it has set before itself in the heart the flames of that rich man, has it already descended to the places of his torments and to the inaccessible depths of hell, which are inaccessible to the living? Already, of course, as far as was possible, I have given you answers concerning the incorporeal places of souls, and concerning hell and paradise, and concerning the incorporeal contemplation of the soul without the body, when we spoke about that rich man and the poor man, or when we treated of the twofold vision of the soul. But because that point which you stated—that the infernal regions are inaccessible to the living—remains undiscussed, I ask to what extent you have said it, namely that we consist of soul and body. And although no one doubts what in us is immortal and what is mortal, I will nevertheless deal with you in such a way that I may answer concerning whichever of the two you wish. If we die in neither part of our substance, nothing of ours descends to the infernal regions, because you said that the underworld is inaccessible to the living. If we die in both, then the body also descends to the infernal regions, and these corporeal infernal regions are not to be sought far from us, since the very sepulcher of the Lord is a place of the underworld. But sound reason rejects each of these absurdities; therefore we neither die in both substances nor do we not die in both, and the soul lives even when the body is laid aside, although if it is deprived of its God through sins, it may rightly be called dead.

Yet it will not be at all credible that a sinful soul loses that very thing which it is to be a soul, since even a dead body does not cease to be a body. For just as the body dies when it loses all life, that is, the soul, so the soul does not lose the soul. Therefore the soul is immortal, the body mortal. But if the body does not enter the underworld, being consigned to the tomb and torn apart into different parts of the world according to the diversity of the elements that had harmonized in it, and the mind does not approach the underworld because your opinion closes the underworld to the living, then either the underworld does not exist at all, or no one descends to it, and thus the foundation of our faith will be endangered, if the soul of the Redeemer did not open the underworld by entering and returning. It is enough to have been able to say that whatever that underworld is, it is inaccessible to the living, since it is established that the same cannot be approached except by the living. Now recall that you placed the state of your treatise in this, that if you could prove that the soul is subject to quantity or locality, even the opposing party would agree with you about its corporeality. But if you well recall your writings, you can at the same time observe that you set forth rather what was to be debated than debated what was set forth, and that you did not, like the older Academics, know your own ignorance, but, according to the younger members of that same school, were ignorant whether you knew anything.

But if one posits two things rashly, upon which necessarily every body of the whole work consists, would he not make either both primary, if he could, or at least one of the two, if he could not do both, by some effort, if not probable, at least credible? These two things certainly come together for victory, so that the probity of the cause is matched to the probity of the author. If one of them is lacking, the force of the action is weakened; if both are absent, it is nullified. So now, in like manner, I have made you, a forgetful and equally ignorant defender, caught in a fallacy, to those who are vigorous in understanding, not only to make it clear that you ought not to be believed in these matters, but so that the truth, which must always be believed, may appear clearer and more illustrious under the necessity of conflict and by comparison with falsehood. XIV. THAT THE SOUL IS NOT HELD ENCLOSED IN THE BODY NOR MOVES FROM PLACE TO PLACE, ALTHOUGH IT MOVES TEMPORALLY THROUGH AFFECTION. Therefore, you have voluntarily professed that you would grant quality, quantity, and locality to the soul, and you immediately add: how is it not local, which, inserted into the limbs and bound to the viscera, is held enclosed by the sole motions of a wandering condition of substance? Scarcely, so that if you perchance felt something wrongly and contended that very thing seemed likely, error can make one thing venial, ignorance of error another.

But now I marvel with strange amazement that you have said such conflicting and so diverse things in almost a single moment and with nearly the same word: therefore, the soul is bound to the limbs, wandering in its motions, and again: it is held confined by the condition of its substance, wandering in its motions. If the soul is moved within the enclosure of the body, as you say, it is evidently moved while standing still, which reason does not permit to be said. But if, on the other hand, it is carried about by motions outside the body, then it is not held confined by the condition of its substance. And why do you say “wandering only in its motions”? As if anything could wander without being moved, or as if it were not easier for something to be moved and not wander—which the mind does through affection, since it is subject to motion not according to place—than for something to wander and not be moved, which is certainly a property of body, since it is subject to motion through place. But you say that the soul is both stationary and wandering, and that it wanders while confined, when, as has already been established above, it can both stand still while the body is moved and be moved while the body is unmoved.

As far as you have argued concerning the locality of the soul, I do not, however, accuse you of laziness in this matter. That, indeed, you were unable to do, namely, that in this especially place not even the most powerful orator could have done, for however great a flow of speech he is endowed with, a proclaimer of falsehood can lie against clear truth, but he cannot deceive. But concerning quantity, why you promised to discuss it and yet discussed nothing about it, I cannot say it was due to forgetfulness, since it is sufficiently established that its name could not have been uttered except from memory. Therefore, it is more credible that you were not unwilling or forgetful to speak, but found nothing to say. What, likewise, is fitting either to call into discussion things that should be passed over in silence or to pass over in silence things that were proposed? Now there will be no controversy about quality, to which I do not deny the soul is subject, which, clearly, if it were devoid of quantity, as it is of quality, it would indeed be God; and likewise, if it yielded to quantity, as it does to quality, it would be body. But now, having obtained a certain intermediate thing of an incorporeal but created nature, it is neither God, because it has quality, nor body, because it does not have quantity.

And since, as we have taught in the preceding disputations, the immensity of questions of this kind lies open too widely, the origins of principal causes, embracing them, can by no means be inspected further within, unless you separate the creation of the twofold substance, as far as it is permitted to man, by applying the balance of judgment, or else you must cease altogether or approach those lines in such a way that first you separate body from the incorporeal, then just as in the whole genus of bodies you prefer dark to shining, lofty to lowly, precious to cheap, so also among created incorporeals you prefer human to bestial, and among those which are human, prudent to stupid, and among these again which are vigorous by nature, learned souls to unlearned. XV. BECAUSE THE SUN AND MOON OR STARS ARE ONLY BODIES, THEY DO NOT HAVE SPIRITS, AND JUST AS A BETTER BODY IS PREFERRED TO AN INFERIOR BODY, SO A MINDFUL SPIRIT IS PREFERRED TO AN INFERIOR SPIRIT.

Just as the sun is a body and any given rock, though far unlike it, is nevertheless a body, so too the nature of all kinds of lives is, of course, entirely incorporeal. But just as one body is superior to another, though each is a body, so one mind is preferred to another, though each is a mind. And again, a rich task and abundant reasons entice one to speak and almost coaxingly, by their own appearance, seek and even compel to be described. But these excellences and preeminences and supremacies belong especially to those—if any such there be—whom burning virtue has raised into the heavens. But indeed, for my part, at present it has been my province to respond to this question concerning the state of the soul, as he proposed it, with whom I have entered into debate, and perhaps somewhat more than a little: whether I have done this rightly or wrongly, a fair and learned judge will decide. XVI. A BRIEF RECAPITULATION OF THE PRECEDING BOOKS.

But since many things which we have discussed here and there under the consideration of this question cannot be grasped in memory by the inquirer with complete ease, I have brought together, reduced to a summary and concise form, and, as it were, set point by point before the mind's eye, those things which have been set forth in scattered fashion and, as I think, proven, gathering them together to be reviewed and recognized at once. 1. On the Incorporeal. God is incorporeal; but the image of God is the human mind, since man was made in the likeness and image of God. Now an image of an incorporeal thing cannot be a body; therefore, because the human mind is the image of God, the human mind is incorporeal. 2. On Life. Everything non-local is also incorporeal; moreover, the life of the body is the soul, and in a living body the smallest part of the body lives as much as the whole body. Therefore, there is as much life in a part of the body as in the whole body, and this life is the soul; nor is that which is as great in the whole as in a part, and as great in a small thing as in a large thing, local. Therefore, the mind is not local, and whatever is non-local is not a body: therefore, the soul is not a body.

3. On reason. Again, the rational soul reasons, and reasoning inheres substantially in the soul, and reason is incorporeal and non-local: therefore the soul is incorporeal. 4. On will. Again, the will of the soul is its substance, and if the whole soul wills, it is wholly will, and will is not a body: therefore the soul is not a body. 5. On memory. Again, memory is a certain non-local capacity, which is neither stretched by a multitude of things remembered nor contracted by their scarcity, and it remembers even corporeal things incorporeally. And when the mind remembers, it remembers as a whole, and the whole which remembers is memory, and memory is not a body: therefore the mind is not a body. 6. On touch. Again, a body feels touch in that part of itself where it is touched, but the mind, through not the whole body—that is, through a part of the body—feels as a whole; and a sense of this kind is non-local, and everything non-local is incorporeal: therefore every soul is incorporeal.

7. On approach and withdrawal. Again, a body neither approaches God nor withdraws from God, but the mind both approaches and withdraws non-locally: therefore the mind is not a body. 8. On motion. Again, a body is moved through place, but the mind is not moved through the same: therefore the mind is not a body. 9. On measure. Again, length, breadth, and height are in a body, and whatever lacks these is not a body; but the mind lacks these: therefore it is not a body. 10. On right and left. Right and left, up and down, front and back are in every body, but are in no soul: therefore every soul is incorporeal. Thus far, from every part of our disputations, we have summarized whatever we have labored over in the entire work, since what we have here recapitulated as briefly as possible could not have been made probable without the preceding disputations—although, if a suitable advocate had undertaken this task, he would not, as I have, have dishonored the dignity of the cause with so unequal a speech. Nor indeed could I myself have treated this same question somewhat more broadly and at greater length. But it was fitting, of course, to fight as long as the adversary was able to resist, or until he turned his back in flight and, once captured, to disarm him with leaden daggers. To proceed further, to hurl weapons into the air, and to fight without an enemy is empty contention and a waste of strength, which will be as inglorious as it is effortless.

17. Against Fastedius and the Calumniator of These Books: How He Is Overcome, Having Proposed a Comparison from the World. What then, someone says, have you spread yourself through these three volumes against a brief page, if word is enough for word? But it is not the same business to construct a fallacy as to destroy one. Let someone deny that the world is a sphere: he will have denied that with one word, indeed, but Timaeus will not have established it with one word either. Accordingly, whatever we have discoursed at somewhat greater length has been compelled not only by the refutation of falsehood, but also by the establishment of truth. For it is one thing to unteach harmful things and another to teach useful things, nor is it the same to pluck out a thorn as to sow a crop; therefore it is not the same to root out a vice as to plant a virtue. Much more labor, then, must be expended on both of these than on either one alone. Moreover, since it has been my province to engage in both, especially in such a hampered business, it is more remarkable that there is brevity than prolixity. For when these things, from whatever source, were revealing and displaying themselves and were generating others in manifold ways, I prescribed a number for the matters to be discussed, set a limit, fixed a boundary, so that I would neither bring more into the line of battle than necessary, nor contend longer than was fitting, nor proceed further than was right.

18. At the End of This Book, He Begs Pardon from His Opponent and Chooses Him as Judge between the Two Contests. Now you, whoever you are, against whose writings the injury of your own compositions has compelled me to speak, I beg and beseech you not to be angry with me; for I have neither returned abuse nor repaid a curse. I have only given back truth for falsehood, not in equal exchange. I am and will be an adversary to those things which, the more they are yours, the more harmful they are to you, and I urge you, for your own sake, to be an adversary to them as well. These few and meager responses I have given back, as the narrow time allowed. Weigh both sides with yourself, and take up the role of judge between me and you, and apply the balance of justice. If our scale inclines more and is heavier with truth, let it not vex nor shame you to take refuge from flight and to yield from falsehood under truth. But if, which I do not wish nor would have you persuaded to that point, obstinacy prevails, then publish something for public reading according to your own opinion, and do not hide your name. As long as our common God and life exist, since we have otherwise made a trial of the danger of the ways, you will indeed experience how great the force of truth is in the destruction of falsehood.

EPILOGUE. If I were not sending these things which I write to you, venerable sir, to be examined and corrected, it could rightly seem superfluous and arrogant to wish to teach one whom I know to be learned, and from the poverty of my lack to give a drachma to one who abounds in many talents of knowledge. Hence it happens that the publication of the booklets I have sent, which I have arranged with the most subtle disputation of philosophical art, has made me cautious and anxious, so that I commit their understanding not to my own judgment, but direct it to the expertise of a better man, and I have sent for your approval not only those things which I have now perceived from their reading, but also those which I have long since entrusted to memory from various sources. For your worthiness well knows that we have scarcely anyone by whose discussion we might be rendered firm and stable concerning those things about which we are uncertain. Every nature which attains to the knowledge of God is called by its own name, and therefore the name of the nature of each thing is shown.

Therefore, our predecessors said that a name makes a thing known, that it introduces images of the thing itself, as if through the senses of the body, that it directs memory, that it brings them into the ears, and that, just as when we speak we understand, so we think of the absences of things and the images retained in memory, when there is a will. But the nature of things is twofold: both corporeal and spiritual. For every creature is either spirit or body. Corporeal things, of course, we perceive through the body; intellectual things we perceive through the intellect. Therefore, in two ways, as far as is granted in this life, knowledge of every thing is obtained. What then is it that is said that there are three kinds of questions: whether it is, what it is, what it is like? Why, I ask, is it said "whether it is," when every knowledge that reveals a thing removes ambiguity and does not permit doubt? But I think this ambiguity has been so placed because not all things are of substances, but some are found which show proofs of them. For example, if it is asked whether good is a substance or not, we answer that it is not a substance, but a privation of evil. For rightly it is asked in the first question whether it is body or spirit, and in the subsequent one it is asked what it is like, whether the body is animate or inanimate, the spirit rational or irrational. Rightly, therefore, have the three kinds of questions been defined, about which we have now spoken, I think, briefly enough. Now let us also see how many kinds of bodies there are.

Although it contains innumerable species under itself, there are nevertheless three genera: body that lives and feels, body that lives and does not feel, and body that neither lives nor feels. But I consider this genus of body, which neither lives nor feels, to be the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—which are principal and simple, from which all bodies that are compacted are composed, that is, the living and feeling bodies of animals, and the living but not feeling bodies of trees, shrubs, and herbs. For this reason, let us inquire more intently, with God’s help, into what clearly differs among them and what they have in common. For we wish, with the Lord inspiring and assisting, not only to examine His creation, but also, ascending to the creative substance through those things that have been made, to perceive it with the intellect; and even if we do not attain to understanding its substance and knowing what it is, at least we may hold most clearly what it is not.

Therefore, every body is subject to quantity and quality; but in a subject body, body is not present. For body is a subject, not in a subject, because body is a substance, not an accident. Accidents, however, are in substances, not substances themselves. Thus quantity and quality are accidents of body: quantity is in measures, quality in colors. Being this itself is not the same as being quantitative, nor is being this itself the same as being qualitative, because even when color changes, the body remains, and in a diminished body, the quantity that was first is no longer present; and for this reason, being large is not the same as magnitude, nor being long the same as length, nor being wide the same as width, nor being colored the same as color itself. Body also has measure, number, and weight; hence holy Scripture says that God arranged all things in measure, number, and weight. But I see that this is to be referred in another way to the rational spirit, which must be discussed in what follows. Now, however, let us explain what we have begun concerning body. For just as we said that being large is not the same as magnitude, so too measure is not the same as the measurable, nor number the same as the numerable, nor weight the same as the weighable. It is diminished, therefore, since in its whole part it has up and down, it has right and left, it has front and back. It moves through time and place, and it does not judge but is judged; it is divided infinitely into parts.

Now let us see what it is that the body is animated but not sensitized. For that which both receives and gives life is better matched to life; for life, which is not less in a part than in the whole, and is not less for a smaller part, nor gives a larger part to a greater and a smaller part to a lesser, is not body, but spirit. The spirit of a beast, which does not subsist after the body, is to be passed over there, so that we may come to the rational spirit. Therefore, spirit does not have quantity; if it were long or wide, it would rightly be called quantifiable. For it is prudently distinguished and separated from body, because it is not subject to quantity, although it is subject to quality. Disciplines accrue to the mind, and justice and injustice, chastity and lust accrue to it. For there are four principal virtues, that is, prudence and temperance, fortitude and justice. For the mind is not the same as prudence, nor the just mind the same as justice, nor the temperate mind the same as temperance, nor the strong mind the same as fortitude. It is one thing to be a mind, another to be a just mind. For when I say "just mind," I understand two things: I would say this of prudence and temperance and fortitude, because a mind can exist without being endowed with virtues, but if it does not have them, it follows that it has vice. For it is gathered that the subject is always the mind, either to vices or to virtues, and that it is subject, as we have said, to disciplines, which cannot exist without it.