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ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
When Basil, great among the saints, departed from human life unto God, and a common occasion of mourning came upon the Churches, his sister and teacher was still living in this life; and I went to her in haste, to share with her the grief over our brother.
My soul was in deep anguish, overwhelmed with sorrow at such a loss, and I sought someone to share my tears, one who bore an equal weight of grief with me.
But she, like those skilled in horsemanship, gave me free rein for a little while to be carried away by the rush of my emotion; then afterward she set about to restrain me with reasoning, using her own reflection as a bridle to guide back the disordered part of my soul. And she brought forward to me the apostolic saying, that we ought not to grieve over those who have fallen asleep;
{Narrator} And I, with my heart still seething with grief, said: How can this be achieved among men—when there is in each person a kind of natural aversion toward death, when those who watch the dying cannot easily bear the sight, and those whom death approaches flee from it as far as they can? Indeed, even those who hold power judge death to be the ultimate sentence among wrongs and the ultimate among punishments. What device, then, could make a person regard the departure from life as nothing—even over a stranger, let alone over a loved one—when they reach the end of life? We see, I said, that all human endeavour looks to this very thing: how we might continue to remain alive.
And why is medicine held in honour among men? Is it not because it seems somehow to fight against death by its art? Breastplates, shields, greaves, helmets, defensive weapons, the circuits of city walls, iron-bound gates, the security of moats, and the like—what else are they for, but because of the fear of death? Since, then, death is by nature so fearful, how can one easily be persuaded by the one who commands the survivor to remain free from grief over the departed? {Macrina} "And what," says the Teacher, "seems to you most grievous about death itself, considered in itself? For the habit of more irrational people is not sufficient grounds for condemning it."
{Gregory} "What, then, is not worthy of grief," I said to her, "when we behold one who but lately was living and speaking suddenly become breathless, voiceless, and motionless, and all his natural senses quenched—neither sight nor hearing functioning, nor any other of the faculties by which sensation grasps things? And to such a one, though you bring fire, though iron, though you cut the body apart with a sword, though you set him before flesh-devouring beasts, though you bury him in the earth—the one who lies there is affected alike toward them all."
When, then, this change is seen in such things, and that life-giving cause—whatever it was—suddenly becomes invisible and undetectable, just as with a lamp that has gone out: the flame that was lately kindled neither remains upon the wick nor passes off to anywhere else, but withdraws into utter vanishing—how could anyone bear such a great change without grief, having nothing manifest to rest his thought upon? For having heard the words "departure of the soul,"
we see what is left behind, but we are ignorant of what has departed—both what it is in its nature, and into what it has passed; for neither earth, nor air, nor water, nor any other of the elements displays within itself that power which has withdrawn from the body.
{Gregory} While I was going through these things, the Teacher in the meantime motioned with her hand and said: {Macrina} "Does some such fear as this trouble and constrain your mind—that the soul does not remain forever, but comes to an end together with the dissolution of the body?" {Gregory} But I—for I had not yet taken my reasoning back from my grief—answered rather rashly, without giving careful thought to what was said.
For I said that the divine pronouncements seemed like commands, by which we are compelled to be convinced that the soul abides forever; yet we were not led to this teaching by any such reasoning.
Hence our griefs over the departed become all the heavier, since we do not accurately know whether this life-giving cause still exists in itself, and where, and how, or whether it does not exist at all in any way whatsoever.
{Macrina} "Leave aside," she said, "the nonsense of those outsiders, in which the inventor of falsehood, to the harm of truth, plausibly puts together deceived opinions;
{Gregory} "And how," I said, "could there come to be in us a firm and unshakable conviction that the soul abides? For I myself also perceive that human life will be bereft of the noblest of all things in life—I mean virtue—unless an unwavering faith concerning this be established firmly within us."
"For how can virtue have any place among those who suppose that the present life circumscribes existence, and that nothing more is to be hoped for after it?" {Macrina} "Then we must inquire," says the Teacher, "from what point our discourse may take a fitting starting place concerning these matters."
{Gregory} Since she gave this command, I asked her not to suppose that what we put forward was being said as a genuine contradiction, but rather for the sake of establishing the doctrine concerning the soul securely, once the objections raised against this aim had been dissolved.
"Surely," I said, "those who take the opposite side of the argument would say this: that the body, being composite, is altogether dissolved into the things of which it was composed. And when the natural union of the elements in the body is dissolved, each returns, as is likely, to what is proper to it, since the very nature of the elements, by a kind of necessary attraction, gives back what is akin to its like.
For there could be no mingling of what is of a different nature with what is alien to it; and if these things were so, it would altogether appear to be something manifold, mingled with the opposing qualities. But the manifold is not simple, but is in every case observed in composition.
But if the soul is something else beside these, where does the argument suppose it to be—since it is not found among the elements, on account of its being of a different nature from them? And since there is nothing else in the universe in which the soul might dwell, living suitably to its own nature? But that which is nowhere at all does not exist at all either."
{Macrina} And the Teacher, sighing softly at what had been said, replied: "Perhaps these and such things as these were what the Stoics and Epicureans once put forward against the Apostle when they encountered him at Athens."
"For I hear that Epicurus above all was carried along by suppositions of this kind, that the nature of existing things was conjectured to be something fortuitous and self-originating, as though no providence pervaded affairs.
And accordingly, by way of consequence, he supposed that human life too was like a bubble: a breath, as it were, being stretched around our body; and so long as the breath is held in by its surroundings, it lasts; but when the mass collapses, that which had been enclosed within is quenched along with it.
For to him the limit of the nature of existing things was the visible, and he made sense-perception the measure of his comprehension of the whole, having altogether shut up the faculties of the soul, and being unable to look toward anything intelligible and incorporeal—just like one shut up in a little house remains unable to behold the wonders of the heavens, hindered by the walls and the roof from seeing what lies outside.
For all sensible things, as many as are seen in the universe, are simply like earthen walls that wall off the more small-minded by themselves from the contemplation of intelligible things.
And seeing a garment, one infers the weaver, and through the ship one conceives the shipwright; and the builder's own hand comes into the mind of the beholders together with the sight of the building.
But those who look toward the world have dim sight as regards the One who is revealed through these things. Hence those clever and sharp arguments are put forward by those who teach the destruction of the soul:
that the body comes from the elements, and the elements from the body, and that the soul cannot exist by itself if it is neither one of these nor in these.
since, on their view, it is then no longer possible for the soul to exist along with the elements—so that they would prove our life to be nothing other than a dead thing as derived from them.
But if they do not now dispute that the soul is in the body, how can they lay down as doctrine its vanishing into the elements when the body dissolves? And then they go further and dare to assert the same even concerning the divine nature.
For how will they say that a nature intellectual, immaterial, and formless permeates things moist and soft and solid and holds existing things together in being—when it is neither akin to the things in which it comes to be, nor, because of its different kind, incapable of being in them? Then let the Divine itself, by which all things are held together, be utterly removed from their doctrine.
{Γ.} "But this very point," I said, "how could it be made beyond dispute to those who object—that all things are from God, and that existing things are held together in Him; or indeed that there is at all any Divine being transcending the nature of existing things?" {Μ.} "It would," she said, "be more fitting to keep silence about such matters, and not even to deem the foolish and impious propositions worthy of an answer, since one of the divine words forbids answering a fool according to his folly;"
rather it is from Him whom the creation of existing things sets forth through the wonders within it: the eye becomes a hearer, through the things that appear, of the wise and skillful Word that resounds in the heart.
For who is there that, beholding the harmony of the universe—the wonders of the heavens and of the things upon the earth, and how the elements, though by nature contrary to one another, are interwoven toward one and the same end through some ineffable communion, each contributing its own power to the preservation of the whole; and how the things that are unmixable and uncommunicable in the distinctness of their qualities are neither separated from one another, nor destroyed when mingled together by their opposing qualities; and how things whose nature is upward-tending are nonetheless borne downward, as the sun's heat streams down through its rays—
and the heavy bodies are lightened, being rarefied through vapors, so that even water, contrary to its own nature, becomes upward-tending, riding upon the winds through the air; and the ethereal fire becomes earth-bound, so that even the depths are not deprived of warmth; and the moisture poured upon the earth from the rains, though one in nature, generates countless varieties of growth, implanted suitably in each of the things that receive it;
and the swiftest revolution of the celestial pole, and the reverse motion of the inner spheres, and the conjunctions and the meetings, and the harmonious intervals of the stars—
the one who beholds these things with the intellectual eye of the soul—is he not plainly taught from the phenomena that a divine power, skillful and wise, manifesting itself in existing things and pervading all, fits the parts together into the whole and fills out the whole in its parts, and by one single power holds sway over the universe, itself abiding in itself [and moving about itself], never ceasing from motion, nor ever shifting to any place other than that in which it is? {Γ.} "And how," I said, "does belief in the existence of God also prove together with it the existence of the human soul? For surely the soul is not identical with God, so that if the one is agreed to exist, the other too must necessarily be conceded."
{Μ.} She said: "It is said by the wise that man is a kind of little world, containing within himself these same elements with which the universe is filled."
"And if this argument is true—and it seems to be—then perhaps we should not need any further ally to confirm for us what we have supposed concerning the soul."
"For just as, while we apprehend the whole world through sense-perception, we are led by the very activity of our senses to the conception of that reality and thought which lies beyond sense; and the eye becomes for us an interpreter of the all-powerful Wisdom, which is contemplated within the universe and which through itself reveals the One who, in accordance with it, encompasses the universe—
so also, when we look toward the world within us, we have no slight starting points for inferring, through the things that appear, the hidden reality as well.
But it is possible to infer the Wisdom that transcends the universe, by means of the wise and skillful rational principles contemplated in the nature of existing things, in this harmony and ordered arrangement;
but what knowledge of the soul could come, through the things displayed in the body, to those who track down the hidden by means of the things that appear? {Μ.} "And above all," said the virgin, "to those who, in accordance with that wise precept, desire to know themselves;
for the soul itself is the teacher of our suppositions concerning the soul—namely that it is something immaterial and incorporeal, acting and moving in a manner suited to its own nature, and displaying its own motions through the bodily organs."
"For this organic structure of the body is no less present even in those who have been deadened through death; yet it remains motionless and inactive, since the soul's power is no longer in it."
"It moves only when sensation is present in the organs, and when through sensation the intelligent power pervades them, setting the sensory organs in motion by its own impulses toward whatever it intends."
{Γ.} "What, then," I said, "is the soul? If by some definition its nature can be sketched, so that through the description we might gain some understanding of the subject at hand."
And the teacher said: {Μ.} "Different people have declared themselves differently on the subject, each defining it according to his own view; but our own opinion concerning it is as follows:
The soul is a created essence, a living essence, intellectual, which of itself imparts to an organic and sensitive body a vital power and a power capable of apprehending sensible things, so long as the nature receptive of these holds together."
"For how is it," she said, "that this man, laying the touch of his fingers upon the artery, hears in a manner—through the sense of touch—nature crying out to him and recounting its own afflictions: that the malady is at its height in the body, that the disease has set out from these particular organs, and that the inflammation extends to such-and-such a degree? And he is taught other such things by the eye as well, looking both at the posture in which the patient lies and at the wasting of the flesh."
"And the inner condition is signified both by the hue of the complexion—being sallow and bilious—and by the cast of the eyes, which of their own accord incline as toward the things that grieve and pain."
"Likewise hearing too becomes a teacher of such things, recognizing the affliction by the rapid panting of the breath and by the groan that is emitted together with respiration."
"One might say, too, that not even the sense of smell escapes the notice of the skilled physician regarding the affliction, but that through the particular quality of the breath he recognizes the malady hidden in the inner organs."
"Now if there were not some intelligent power present to each of the sense-faculties, what would the hand of itself have taught us, were not the mind guiding the touch toward knowledge of the matter? What would hearing, severed from the understanding, have contributed—or the eye, or the nostril, or any other sense-organ—toward the recognition of what is sought, if each of these existed alone by itself? But what is truest of all, and is recorded as having been well said by one of those educated in outside learning, is that it is the mind that sees and the mind that hears."
"For if one were not to grant this to be true, then tell me: when you look at the sun—as you have been taught by your teacher to look—why do you say that its size is not as great as it appears to most people, in the diameter of its disk, but that in measure it exceeds the whole earth many times over? Is it not because, having followed in thought through the appearances—by means of its particular motion, its temporal and spatial intervals, and the causes of eclipses—you confidently declare that this is so? And when you observe the moon's waning and waxing, the appearance teaches you other things concerning the shapes of that body: that it is of itself without light by its own nature, and that it travels the orbit nearest to the earth;
but it shines from the sun's rays, as happens naturally with mirrors, which—receiving the sun upon themselves—give back not their own beams, but the sun's light reflected back from the smooth and glittering surface.
But it is shown not to have its own light by this: that when it comes to stand directly opposite the sun, diametrically across, it is illumined over the whole disk that faces toward us;
but since it traverses the orbit in which it lies more swiftly within its own smaller circuit, before the sun has once completed its own course it goes around its own orbit more than twelve times.
the position directly opposite remains continuous throughout the dense part of its circuit, making the whole part of the moon turned toward us illumined by the sun's rays; but likewise, whenever it comes to the sides of the sun—since the hemisphere of the moon that always faces toward the sun is encompassed by the casting of the rays—the part facing us is of necessity cast into shadow, the brightness being transferred from the part unable to look toward the sun onto the part that is ever turned toward it; until, having passed beneath the sun's orbit in a straight line, it receives the ray upon its back, and thus, with the upper hemisphere illumined all around, it renders invisible the part facing us, since that part is in its own nature wholly without light and unillumined;
But if it again passes by the sun in the proper motion of its course, and comes to the side of the ray, the part that a little before was dark begins to glimmer, as the ray moves from the part already illumined toward the part hitherto unseen.
"Do you see how sight becomes a teacher for you, though it could not of itself have furnished you with the contemplation of such things, unless there were something looking through the eyes—something which, using the things known by sense as guides, slips through the things that appear to reach the things unseen? Why need one add the geometrical methods which, through sensible figures, lead us by the hand toward things beyond sense, and countless others besides, by which there comes to be, through the things accomplished bodily within us, an apprehension of the intellectual essence hidden in our nature?" {Γ.} "But what," I said, "if—just as the materiality is common to the sensible nature of the elements, while there is much difference according to the distinctive feature in each kind of matter (for their motion is from opposite directions, the one being upward-tending and the other weighing downward; and the form is not the same, and the quality differs in some respect)—what if one were to say that there is, in accordance with this principle, some power consubstantial with these, which produces these intellectual imaginings and motions out of a natural property and power? Such as the many things we see being effected by mechanicians, in which matter, skillfully arranged, imitates nature—not only displaying the likeness in shape, but also coming to be in motion, and mimicking a kind of utterance, with the vocal part of the machine resounding—and yet nowhere in these productions do we contemplate any intelligent power working in each case the shape, the form, the sound, the motion."
"If we were to say these things concerning this mechanical instrument of our nature too—that it comes to be without any intelligent essence being blended in according to its distinctive character, but rather that some motive power is implanted in the nature of the elements within us, and that such an activity is a result existing of itself—
would this prove that intellectual and incorporeal essence of the soul, or rather that it does not exist at all?" {Μ.} And she said: "The illustration is an ally to the argument, and the whole construction of the objection brought against us will contribute not a little toward the certainty of the things we have conceived."
{Γ.} "How, then, do you mean this?" {Μ.} "Because," she said, "the very fact of knowing how to handle and arrange soulless matter in such a way that the art deposited in the machines comes near to becoming, in place of a soul, present in the matter—through which it mimics motion and sound and shapes and the like—this would be a proof that there is something of such a kind in man, by which it is naturally able, through its contemplative and inventive power, both to conceive these things within itself and to construct the machines beforehand in the understanding, and then thus to bring them into operation through art, and through the matter to display the thought."
then by reasoning he investigated beforehand how air might be introduced into the contrivance, examining the nature of the elements: that there is no void among existing things, but that the light is reckoned 'empty' only by comparison with the heavier, since the air, considered in itself according to its own subsistence, is full and complete.
The proof is that an amphora plunged into a pool does not fill with water at once, but at first floats, because the air trapped within holds the hollow vessel up toward the surface, until the amphora, pressed down by the hand of the one drawing water, sinks into the depth and so receives the water through its mouth.
For a kind of struggle between the two elements is seen at the mouth of the vessel: the water, forced down by its own weight, presses into the hollow and flows in, while the air trapped within the hollow is squeezed back out through that same mouth against the water, and rushing upward it beats the water back, making it surge and foam at the rim by the force of the breath (the rushing air).
For having fashioned a hollow chamber out of airtight material, and having enclosed on every side the air within it so that it cannot escape, he introduces water through an opening into the hollow, measuring out the quantity of water according to the measure of the need; then in this way he gives it passage to the adjacent pipe in the direction opposite to the air, and the air, forcibly compressed by the water, becomes a stream of breath;
Is it not plainly shown through these visible phenomena that there is in man a mind, something other than what appears—a mind which, by the invisible and intellectual character of its own nature, first frames these things within itself by its conceptions, and then in this way, through the service of matter, brings into the open the design that was formed within? For if, according to the argument set against us, such marvelous inventions were to be reckoned to the nature of the elements, then the contrivances would surely have come together for us spontaneously;
nor would the water have been forced through a tube by the pressures of art, which drives its motion upward, contrary to nature, for the sake of the device's effect;
and art is a kind of thought, a kind of movement and activity—then through these very opposing examples the sequence of what has been said has demonstrated that the mind is something other than what appears.