On the State of the Soul 1 part 3/11

if some things are incorporeal and others invisible, then the incorporeal things are not invisible. The incorporeal therefore must be set below every corporeal thing—because Truth says through the Apostle: The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. But you so distinguish the creating and the created substance that some things are incorporeal, others invisible. Therefore every corporeal thing is invisible, and every incorporeal thing visible. Here I myself dare to inquire: is God invisible or visible? If you deny Him to be corporeal, you do not refuse Him to be visible. If you say He is invisible, you confess Him to be corporeal.

According to this opinion therefore—which be far from you and from us—the eternal, invisible, incorporeal God either will not be incorporeal, or will be visible and will not be eternal. Yet this teacher, ignorant of patent matters, wished to think something but was unable to express it; and I judge that he meant to say that there are certain corporeal things which cannot be seen—since it is proper to everything incorporeal not to be seen—and that through this some corporeal things can be invisible, but the incorporeal cannot be otherwise than invisible. For while everything incorporeal is invisible, not everything invisible is incorporeal.

For the voice is not seen, yet it is a body; although, on account of the eminence of sight, we say that even the things which pertain to the other senses are 'seen'—as we often say: See what it sounds like, although sound pertains to hearing, not to sight; and yet we do not say thus: Hear what shines, because sight, more eminent than the other senses, abusively claims for itself what belongs to the inferior ones, while it does not mingle its own power with their powers. Wherefore all things which can be perceived by any sense of the body are both visible, if we refer all things to sight, and not all things are visible, if to each sense we render what is proper to it. Hence indeed all the principal bodies, which are called elements, are without doubt visible: we find by experience that they are perceived.

From the measured assembly of these in due proportion, by their dimensions compacted by ratio, and quickened by the soul, a living body is produced—although there are many things which are not animate and yet cannot be denied to live. But we are speaking of those things which not only live but also perceive, such as animate beings devoid of reason. Concerning these, deferring the discussion a little, we speak of ourselves. Therefore, since we consist of soul and body, and just as the body cannot be the mind, so the mind cannot be the body, the mind which perceives in the body, even though it perceives through the visible, perceives invisibly. For sight is one thing, the eye another; the ears one thing, hearing another; the nostrils one thing, smell another; the mouth one thing, taste another. Nor are hand and touch the same.

Therefore by touch we distinguish hot things and cold, but the very sense of touching we do not touch. For neither cold nor heat is there in it. And by taste we perceive sweet and bitter, but we cannot taste taste itself. For there is nothing either bitter or sweet in it. With the nostrils we receive odors, yet we do not grasp smell by smell, because smell smells nothing; and with the ears we draw in voices, but since hearing makes no sound, we do not hear hearing itself. With the eyes we behold colored shapes, and we discern them with the eyes because they are colored and formed; but sight, because it is neither colored nor formed, we do not see:

for we should see continually if sight shone, and should always hear if hearing sounded, and should perpetually smell if smell gave off fragrance, and should taste unwearyingly if taste had savor, and should touch eternally if touch touched itself. And, to be silent about the rest, if taste could be tasted, no one could be fasting; nor would there be need of external things to be applied, upon which the sense might exert itself, if it perceived itself. Therefore the member through which we perceive is one thing, and the sense by which we perceive another; for between the invisible incorporeal and the visible body there is that invisible corporeal, which in us is sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch:

these, since they are only in an animate body, by the commerce of the two diverse things are at once both corporeal and invisible—drawing from the visible body that they may be corporeal, and from the incorporeal mind that they may be invisible. Therefore, contrary to your opinion, that will not be invisible which will not be incorporeal—as though it were proper to the incorporeal to be visible and to the corporeal to be invisible—since indeed nothing of the body would be invisible, unless the invisibility of the incorporeal made that thing invisible; because in the same man, as we said above, the soul is at once the incorporeal invisible, and the invisible corporeal is that which the soul invisibly operates upon the visible body. VII. THAT THE FIVEFOLD SENSES OF THE BODY CONSIST OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS.

Now indeed whatever we touch by the senses of the body pertains so particularly to each of them, according to the things proper to each, that they do not admit others into the communion of what is their own. There is therefore among all corporeal things, without doubt, the light of the sun, as the more excellent. This pertains to that supreme element in the whole corporeal realm, which is called fire. Hence it is that even in the human body sight has received the chief place before all the senses. For from the inner heat of the heart and liver certain little fires, unwearyingly sparkling, fly up into the chamber of the head as into the heaven of our body. From these, rays poured forth through the midst of the eyes and mingled with the outer light, of the bodies upon which they have fallen—

falling back in a reflected return, they draw in the colors and shapes of those same bodies. You observe therefore the supreme fire among the elements, the most beautiful light among colors, the foremost sight among the senses. By desert and power hearing follows it, sharing in that element which the Greeks call aether: which, although it is of the nature of air, yet because it deposits, as it were, certain dregs from its highest parts downward as into a bottom, being purer and subtler, towers above this stormy air, both naturally cloud-bearing, in place and in dignity. Hence it is that the purest air makes hearing easier and able to reach farther.

For just as the eyes cannot behold without the shapes of bodies and an external light, so the ears do not perceive unless the air is either struck or blown. So also the sense of the nostrils; for just as air is tinged with sounds, that it may produce hearing in the ears, so likewise this same air is tinged with odors, that it may produce smell in the nostrils—odors which are not perceived to be naturally present in things unless air is drawn in. But that the sense of tasting can in no way operate without the aid of moisture, this gives a clear indication: that nothing savory is perceived if it is received with a dry tongue. But concerning touch I judge there is no doubting that it is most similar to the lowest of the elements, that is, to earth. Come now, that we may return to that for the sake of which we have treated these matters:

behold, sight beholds and perceives both light and other bodies through the same. Does hearing usurp anything to itself from this? Again, the passages of the ears receive sounds and formed voices. Does sight claim anything for itself from this? Through the caverns of the nostrils we take in odors of countless kinds; hearing certainly is able to perceive nothing of these. Does taste perchance share with smell in the exploration of flavors, or does touch permit anything to taste for the perceiving of rough or smooth things? Behold, the voice is not discerned by sight, the more eminent sense; light likewise is not heard; the voice certainly is not grasped by the nostrils; fragrance is not received by taste; flavor alone is perceived in the mouth. VIII. THAT EVERY SOUL HAS BEEN MADE FROM NO ELEMENT WHATEVER NOR FROM ANY BODY.

Behold, you have an all-comprising body, mingled from all the elements into the fabric of the human body by scarcely conceivable modes of that eternal music and by the ratio of harmony. Choose now from which kind of bodies the soul is, if the soul is a body. For if the soul is not from one of these, nor from some of them, nor from all the bodies, then it is not a body. But what shall I now do? Whither shall I turn, forestalled by the genius and art of this most acute and most learned disputant?

He, namely, understanding that no body can exist unless either principally created from nothing—as the elements of bodies are—or formed from these by analogical ratio, decreeing the soul to be a body, preferred that it should be fashioned from one of the principal bodies rather than composed from all. Cautious, forsooth, with his cunning genius, he was unwilling to gather the substance of the soul by a mixture of many bodies, lest, contracted from the same principles as the external body, if it were said it could likewise be formed, it should thereby seem capable of being dissolved. Wherefore he chose air, from which—or to which—he decrees the soul to be like, adding the testimony of some author of his, I know not whom, whose words are these:

There are, he says, certain spiritual natures, such as angels, archangels, and the other powers: our soul itself also, or at any rate this subtle air—yet these are by no means to be reckoned incorporeal. Are such words as these committed to parchment? Is the business which we are about carried on in this way? Setting all else aside, it will hang upon this one balance: that if reason, once examined, makes it plain that the soul is either made of air or like to air, then I will pass over—as they say, on foot—now to the opinion of my adversary, then to that of the master, begging pardon for my error.

But if, as is the case and as I myself claim for myself by the right of established truth, it shall be proved by reasoning that not only the human soul, but every soul whatsoever, not only is not made of air, but consists of no body at all, then it will be just that you either agree with us or pardon us. IX. AN ARGUMENT THAT THE SOUL HAS BEEN CREATED FROM NO BODY WHATSOEVER. It has already been made plain above that the element of fire surpasses the element of air, as in place, so also in power. This the earthly fire here clearly shows, which by a mobility scarcely comprehensible is snatched upward, as it were toward its own region, by a natural weight. But if even from this it were not granted to be recognized, it could yet be plainly understood from this: that all the air grows bright by the presence of the sun and dark by its absence. But also—

this is a matter of the greatest reason: that air suffers fire so as to grow hot, yet fire suffers nothing from air so as to grow cold. Air can be enclosed and contained in vessels of any sort, whereas this does not at all happen to fire. Fire therefore is, by clear reasoning, more excellent than air; and sight comes to us from fire—which sense is indeed common to man and beast, yet in such a way that some irrational animals are keener than men in sharpness of seeing. If therefore it cannot be denied that sight is from fire, and, according to your reasoning, the soul from air, then the eye of a beast is more eminent in the dignity of its substance than the soul of man, because the former is from fire and the latter from air.

Not without reason does he who judges the soul to be airy think it local and affirm it to be enclosed within the prison of the body. You must therefore now choose one of two alternatives: either a soul worse than the sight of a beast, if it be airy, or one not airy, if more excellent. You see how easily the fiction of unlearned presumption has vanished—not to mention that it is most easy to argue countless things upon this point. For surely, if it is airy, then its darkness is the departure of this corporeal sun, and its light the arrival of this same sun. And that will be false which the evangelist declares, saying: He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world; and that which the prophet speaks under the person of sinners:

therefore the light of righteousness did not shine upon us, and the sun did not rise upon us. Had not these men, living in this world, seen this corporeal sun? But were their incorporeal eyes seeking an incorporeal sun? It seems very strange indeed, if this light has eyes which it enlightens, while that true light has none; or if it has them—as it truly does, whereby the incorporeal can be seen—then it is not only not airy, but I judge it to be not corporeal at all. X. THAT A SUBSTANCE ALREADY FORMED CANNOT BE CALLED MATTER. What now is the nature of that which you believed ought to be enjoined upon the reader at the very beginning of your disputation, that he should prepare his mind to ponder those subtler matters?

You attempt to lead our rational mind away from the highest to the lowest, from the incorporeal to the corporeal; and, as though teaching us to prepare the eye of the mind for subtle things, a little after you add and say: that whatever has been created seems to be matter, which you decree to be corporeal. If a creature is still matter, then man is not yet formed, because it is said to God: who created man from formless matter. But the world is full of forms, whether of less or of more beautiful quality or kind; matter, however, is formless, and the world is formed; therefore a creature is not matter. XI. THAT EVERYTHING, WHETHER INCORPOREAL OR CORPOREAL, WHATSOEVER IT IS, HAS BEEN CREATED.

After these things you argue and say that for this reason nothing incorporeal has been created: because whatever is comprehensible to its maker cannot be incorporeal. Under this reasoning, then, God Himself is unknown to Himself: for if for this reason He created nothing incorporeal—lest anything created should exceed the knowledge of the Creator—since nothing, whether corporeal or incorporeal, has come into being except by the preceding knowledge of the Creator (seeing that He made nothing in ignorance), then He is, before all things, ignorant of Himself—He who incorporeally surpasses every substance which He created, and through this is greater than Himself, who is not capable of grasping Himself.

Since this cannot be said by reason, the consequence is that He did not for this cause create anything incorporeal—lest anything created should be incomprehensible to Himself—since He, the supreme incorporeal, cannot be unknown to Himself. See with how little effort the warmth of truth melts away the frosts of frigid words. And since you can neither distinguish matter from the created, the formed from the formless, nor spirit from air, you nevertheless declare the image of God as though one well versed in the chief matters, you who are proved ignorant of the least. And now, compelled most of all by a poverty of testimonies, you append a certain chapter from some work of Saint Jerome—which it is agreed you have not understood—wherein he says: they suppose that the orbs of the stars are embodied spirits.

It is not doubtful that everyone who 'supposes' is in doubt. But you say that blessed Jerome is reporting the opinion of certain persons concerning embodied spirits: who, if he follows perchance the opinion of those who suppose, that is, of those who doubt, and since you too follow the same, and since the doubt of one who supposes proceeds from nothing but ignorance—acknowledge that to us who seek the truth you have brought, in place of the one knowledge you promise, the ignorances of many. For since you use, as though it were a most approved testimony, that of one who, doubting concerning those whose testimonies he uses, brings forward as doubters those whom he employs as witnesses, what must be judged of your power to pronounce, who, being yourself now the third doubter from a doubtful author of your doubting author, are yourself in doubt? XII.

THAT, NOT UNDERSTANDING THE PHILOSOPHERS, HE SUPPOSED THE ORBS OF THE STARS TO BE EMBODIED SPIRITS, AND DECREES THAT ANGELS ARE BODIES. This, however, I find that the philosophers say—who in certain disputations assert that the very orbs of the moon and sun are quickened by incorporeal spirits under a certain divine mind. But you must acknowledge that this same testimony not only avails nothing for your opinion against us, but rather avails very much against the same on our behalf. This befell you because, by not understanding the philosophical opinion, you set it down, forsooth, on your own side—the very opinion which, rightly understood, can support none but our side alone.

For if they had said that spirits were corporeal, then upon the authority of those same persons—who do not define but rather suppose—the whole hinge of your argumentation would nonetheless totter. But since they said that spirits were not doubtfully but knowingly, not corporeal but embodied, is it not discerned that whatever is 'embodied' is not 'corporeal'? Otherwise they would have said spirits were corporeal, not embodied; because that is corporeal which the incorporeal spirit animates, but that is incorporeal whereby a body is animated.

Therefore, since they have clearly distinguished the body that is given life from the incorporeal principle that gives it life, it seems to me that this advocate of the body either has not understood the philosophical judgment concerning incorporeal substance, or by no means ought to have put it forward on his own behalf under the very name of the holy Jerome. He goes on and adds: 'If the angels,' he says, 'and even the heavenly bodies are said to be unclean in comparison with God, what then must man be reckoned to be?' As far as I can see, this most violent disputant does not understand even this. For he believes the angels to be of a single substance, so that he may have a better opinion of the stars, which he judges to be embodied spirits.

For what else will the learned man Jerome be judged to have said here, except that the bodies of angels far surpass human bodies in their nimbleness and power? Likewise, when he said 'if the angels,' and added 'and even the heavenly bodies,' he wished two things to be understood: angels, and heavenly bodies; for since angels are embodied spirits, there are in heaven certain things which are bodies only. Thus he plainly shows that no body, however supreme in place, however powerful in motion, can be set above incorporeal beings. Again, making a graded comparison, he says that man so cannot be compared with the divine that not even an angel can. He distinguishes besides body and flesh, for although all flesh is also body, not every body is flesh.

Whence the apostle says: 'There is one flesh of birds, another flesh of fishes, and another of men. And there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,' plainly showing that the earthly body is also flesh, but the heavenly body is not also flesh. Lest perhaps it be fitting to apply here that which he recalls the same Jerome to have said: 'They suppose the orbs of the stars to be embodied spirits,' so that those very stars, or the bodies of angels, are indeed heavenly bodies, while those spirits which are embodied in them are not corporeal—just as we also say that God was made flesh, and just as the human soul itself is indeed embodied with flesh when it undertakes the flesh to be governed. And to it, however much that befalls which Scripture testifies, saying:

'The body which is corrupted weighs down the soul'—yet it is not to be believed that the soul is thereby turned into body, however much it be burdened by the weight of the flesh; for neither will the body ever be changed into the nature of the soul, however much it be moved by the soul that quickens it—otherwise it would not be a body. Whence that which the apostle said, 'and there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,' whether he wished it to be understood of angels, or of the stars, or of any earthly bodies whatsoever—about which there is no question—will appear from what follows. For without distinction he soon adds and says: 'The glory of the heavenly is one, and that of the earthly another.' And in order plainly to show what those heavenly bodies might be:

'There is,' he says, 'one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead'—teaching, namely, that there will be in the resurrected bodies a difference according to the diversity of their merits, just as there is a disparity in the quality of the stars. Here, without any ambiguity, the teacher of the gentiles, disputing solely about the resurrection of human bodies, made use of comparisons of this kind. For thus he enters upon the matter of this passage: 'Someone will say, how do the dead rise? And with what kind of body do they come?'

And from this passage right up to that comparison concerning the stars, he pursues this very subject without the interposition of any other matter, making no mention of the soul—lest, namely, anyone should by perverse judgment suppose that what he discoursed about the differences of the sun, the moon, and the stars—heavenly bodies indeed—had been said about souls. CHAPTER XIII: CONCERNING THE RESURRECTION. Now therefore, if the human body—earthly and mortal, that is—will be transformed into such glory that, according to the apostle, it becomes from carnal a spiritual body, who says:

'It is sown a natural body, it will rise a spiritual body'—and the human soul is even now spiritual, yet so that it is a body—then human flesh will be transferred into the dignity of the soul when it has been made a spiritual body; and the soul which has justly ruled over the body, which has piously and justly served the Lord, which has faithfully believed in God, or perhaps even known him, having had its flesh made equal to itself, will itself likewise be advanced in nothing as regards the quality of its substance. And where is that saying: 'Not he who has cleansed the eye of the flesh, but he who has cleansed the eye of the heart, shall see God'? For 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' Therefore perhaps the body will be made blessed according to its measure, and the soul likewise according to its measure.

The former will be changed so that it serves the spirit in all things at its beck, the spirit against which it has often stubbornly resisted; and the latter will be changed so that it may see God, after whom it has panted with the burning of chaste love. And since the apostle distinguished spirit, soul, and body, saying: 'that your whole spirit and soul and body'—because after the resurrection life is not to be lived in an animal manner, namely where there is no eating or drinking, no sleeping nor mating—the whole animal body will pass into a spiritual body, because the whole soul too will pass into spirit, and the whole body will be spiritual on account of the indwelling spirit.

Indeed that spirit, if in this life it lusted against the flesh and did not yield to the flesh that lusted against it, will rightly for all eternity feel nothing of difficulty from that whose difficulties it overcame by the power of heavenly aid; nor will it be fitting that he be made equal to the Lord who unwillingly yielded to that flesh, and that he remain in the condition of a slave who willingly conquered. Wherefore it is given us to understand that, just as in this life the substance of the human soul incorporeally precedes the animal body in its own dignity, so after the resurrection and the recompense it will precede the spiritual body. But everything that is more excellent than a spiritual body is not, as I judge, a body at all:

Therefore, according to the treatise of this necessary friend of mine—who decrees that the angels are bodies only—the angelic nature will be inferior to the human substance. For by divine authority we hold it certain that the bodies of the saints, which will be deemed worthy to be changed into glory, are to be made equal to the angelic bodies, since the Lord says: 'And they will be as the angels in heaven.' If, then, the angels are spiritual bodies only and of one substance, and the human body is advanced to the dignity of the angelic body, man will be made equal to the angel in the quality of the body, but will excel in the dignity of the spirit. But if this seems absurd—as it surely does—then the angelic substance is twofold, just as is the human substance:

having a body of complete agility and the greatest beauty, which it shows to men when it is commanded to appear; and having something incorporeal, by which it always sees God, according to that gospel saying in which it was said: 'For their angels always behold the face of my Father.' CHAPTER XIV: THAT SPIRITUAL THINGS CAN BY NO MEANS BE SEEN WITH CORPOREAL EYES. But I am greatly astonished how any Christian, and especially one in the position of a teacher, can determine that God—who is to be contemplated and is universal—can be seen locally by any beautiful, any sublime body, a body nonetheless; since to see God is to understand him. But that the understanding is not local, we know even by understanding it; for if the understanding is local, then that which is understood will also be local.

For nothing is local that is not itself also a place. But if the understanding is local, and God is in it because God is therein understood, then God is local. And since that is repugnant, we ought to understand that man consists of the corporeal and the incorporeal, both to be reformed for the better; that the angel consists of both body and spirit, formed with a pre-eminent dignity among creatures. For its spirit is more powerful than every created spirit, and its body, made from the most excellent of all elements, is more sublime, according to that prophetic saying in which the angelic substance is without doubt declared to be twofold, where it is said: 'Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a burning fire.'

But that fire is not spirit, and that spirit is likewise not fire, is manifest, because here nothing is to be taken allegorically, as in that passage where the Lord says: 'I have come to send fire upon the earth,' when he was speaking of the Holy Spirit. For it is not lawful to believe that human souls are inflamed to divine love by partaking of the angelic spirit, because man is good by the same gift by which the angel is good, and by the same gift each is blessed. Both desire that same thing by the same will, namely by the same spirit; both perceive this same thing by an incorporeal capacity; and man, angel, and God become one spirit, according to the apostle who says: 'He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit.'

But I do not see in what way a body could be tempered together with the incorporeal, so that it might rightly be called one spirit. For if the soul is a body, then the corporeal will be changed so that it can be one with the incorporeal; and thus we are necessarily brought back to that argument by which something incorporeal is said to have been able to be created. For if something can become incorporeal from the corporeal, it could also have been created from nothing—unless perhaps it be said that the immutable God, as it were, becomes corporeal, so that he can be one with a body. But let the faith of certain lost men hold this, since, if it is good for an angel or a man to cleave to God, the immutable Creator will not be deteriorated toward the creature, but the mutable creature will advance toward the Creator. Whence in the gospel the Lord says:

'Father, may these be one in us, just as we also are one.' CHAPTER XV: THAT ALL CORPOREAL THINGS BECOME GREATER BY THE JOINING OF THEMSELVES, AND MANY RATHER THAN FEW; BUT ALL INCORPOREAL THINGS ARE NEITHER INCREASED IN BEING MANY NOR DIMINISHED IN BEING SINGLE. Nor indeed is it permitted to believe that the conjunction of any bodies imitates the unity of the Trinity, or can be inconfusably mingled with it. For it is plainly clear that any single body is doubled by the joining of an equal body, that there is in it up and down, right and left, front and rear, and that there is in it, according to the measure of its magnitude, length, breadth, and height.