On the State of the Soul 1 part 5/11

Perhaps you may add to these things and say: how is the soul here said to be a pilgrim merely on the ground that it is in a body? If we rightly believe the resurrection, in that eternal fatherland too we shall not be without bodies. Here I would have you answer: is the soul now called a pilgrim because it is in a body, or because it is in such a body?

For this body, as I have mentioned above, weighs down the soul — not indeed by that weight which can be weighed; for if it were by that, then each man would be the stronger in proportion as fasting or sickness had made his body more slender; whence this too greatly supports our reasonings, that it is clearly evident, according to that life which we have in common with the beasts, that a man's soul is more burdened by a wasted and dry body than by a well-fed and succulent one. And this happens because a wearied body is not so able to serve the nods of the mind with easy motion, and it is burdensome to the soul not by the heaviness of weight but by the difficulty of acting. And accordingly, if we consider the bestial life, which it is plain we have here, this body does not weigh down the soul:

but if we look to that life which shall be with the angels, the body weighs down the soul by occupying it and enticing it, and by fixing it upon beautiful bodies, whether through things necessary or things voluptuous, and by leading it away from the contemplation of the highest beauty. Therefore, when more than is needful is spent upon that which is needful for the body's welfare in food or drink, or when the mind is occupied with the superfluous trifles of pleasures, or when it is afflicted through the body by blows and pains, it is evident that the soul is weighed down and burdened in proportion to the multitude and difficulty of its action. And this is that pilgrimage of which the apostle says: 'While we are in the body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord.' But when he who deserves it shall have come to that transformation of the body, of which the same apostle says:

'We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed' — then the animal body, which shall not be, will not stand in the way of the soul's nods, but the spiritual body, which shall be, will serve in all things. But neither will the one covet anything unworthy, nor will the other command anything unjust; and since the holy soul is caught up to God with a chaste affection, observe that it has neither a local pilgrimage nor a local fatherland. Is God not with the soul in this life, even if the soul itself is not with God? For it is one thing to be with God, another not to be without God; because one does not come to him locally, nor depart from him locally. Accordingly, that soul is with God which sees, that is, understands God; and that soul is not with God which by no means understands God.

But God is present, without place, both to the one who understands and to the one who does not understand. Yet the soul is a pilgrim here only to the extent that, through the pleasure and pains of the body, through places or times, through phantasms and apparitions, it is called back from the contemplation of the highest good — which then will no longer be the case, when this corruptible shall have put on immortality and this mortal shall have put on immortality. Since these things are so, the soul is a pilgrim in the body, by whose corruption, weakness, and want it is separated from its fatherland, that is, from God. But I judge that a substance whose pilgrimage is local and corporeal, and whose fatherland is incorporeal and non-local, cannot truly be called either corporeal or local.

But in that one there will be no pilgrimage, who is enticed by no appetite, occupied by no resistance, hindered by no weight. It is plain, as I judge, that the soul is a pilgrim not in every body, but only in a carnal body, because the carnal body stands in the way, while the spiritual body draws near to incorporeal things. Therefore, that we may at length discourse only of our own substance, as we said before, who is able to gaze into the abysses of memory alone, and to penetrate its caverns?

In it there is for me whatever of colors and forms I have ever seen anywhere; in it whatever of words or sounds I have received through the ears; in it whatever of odors I have drawn in through the nostrils; in it whatever of tastes I have known by their diversity; in it whatever I have discerned by the report of touch; in it there are stored up for me, in a certain manner, both grammar when I discourse of dialectics, and rhetoric when of geometry, and astronomy when of music, and all these together when of arithmetic: knowing of those parts of the world which I do not see by the help of reason according to the forms of the parts which I do see, I embrace the world with an incorporeal capacity. XXIII. THAT THE INCORPOREAL SOUL SEES INCORPOREALLY THROUGH ITSELF, BUT CORPOREAL THINGS THROUGH THE BODY. But you say to me:

you do not embrace the world by memory, but the figure of the world. Even from this understand that the soul is not corporeal, since you see that it cannot perceive even corporeal things in a corporeal manner. Set over it, therefore, not by place but by force and power, is a certain eye, which, whether called spirit or mind or understanding, is one and the same, even if it is named by different names. Therefore, what the stone is to the living-but-inanimate, this the living-but-inanimate is to the animate-living; and what the inanimate-living is to the animate-living, this the animate-living is to the living-and-understanding. The irrational soul administers the animal body, namely for its welfare, and there administers

the understanding capable of reason administers the rational soul, namely for the welfare of the rational soul, while God works and administers by his sovereign power and steady motion and uninitiated hinge of substances — first that they may be, and then that they may be, according to their measure or merit, such as he determined they ought to be, who disposes the universe by nothing but justice. For just as of bodies it is fittingly said that they are here or there because of the necessity of locality, so of souls, because of their non-locality or quality, it is rightly declared that they are thus or thus. For just as to a living body a bright place or temperate air is pleasant, so to a quickening soul tranquillity in thought and security from fear is pleasant.

Likewise, just as a dark place and a rough touch are penal to the body, so to the mind are instability of thinking and the straits of dread. The soul, therefore, is moved not through places, but in accordance with the diversity of its affections, both delightfully and penally. Yet this is plain, that the soul without body can incorporeally, through its affections, be properly either soothed or afflicted, while the body without the soul can perceive neither pleasant nor penal things. It belongs, therefore, to the embodied soul to perceive corporeal things through the body, and to it, apart from the body, to see incorporeal things. Therefore, just as an inanimate body perceives nothing, so the mind without a body does not perceive all corporeal things.

Hence it is that even while it administers the body and gives it sense, if ever it is lifted up into that highest and ever-abiding object, it in a certain manner forsakes the corporeal senses and withdraws from them without place, so that it does not see what is set before it, does not hear what sounds beside it, does not understand the page it has run through in reading. The soul is present, so as through the eye to gather up the signs of the letters and to join them, combined into syllables, and to distinguish them through words; and it is not present, so as to know what it has accomplished through these. I read something aloud; another, who fixes the mind's eye upon it, understands me as I pronounce; but I myself do not know what I have read, because the soul, intent without place upon something else, has gone away.

Finally, when I return to my very self, whether of my own accord or being admonished, it is I myself who indeed return, and it is I myself to whom I return; and I was not with myself, because I returned to myself through an interval not of place but of time; and I was not outside myself, because I could not be without myself. The soul itself is there, so as through the eye to see the things that are read, and it is not there, so as to understand the things that are read. Or does it not often happen in practice that, applying our sight without any reading of any kind, or applying our hearing without anyone's narration — although it would be very easy for these same things to be understood no less than seen and heard — we yet grasp by either sense the sounds and signs, while we do not understand what these same things signify?

And yet again, when we turn the mind's gaze back upon that which had not been understood, we comprehend this same thing without any difficulty. XXIV. THAT THE SOUL IS NOT ONE THING AND MEMORY, THOUGHT, OR WILL ANOTHER, SINCE THESE SAME THINGS ARE ONE SOUL. But you add and say: the state of the soul is one thing, and the affection of thought that is born of the soul is another. For which reason this rather is to be supposed: that if ever it imagines something to itself, it is rather occupied with its own motions within itself; and if there is anything else which it seems to behold, it is rather depicted to it in the mirror of remembrance.

You think this to be its nature, not its penalty; and therefore your soul is deceived in the recognition of itself, because it embraces, as if for itself, the things that are adverse to it, and, being affected through the senses of the body, it is so far entangled by the mockeries of deceptions in error, that it seeks itself as though it were absent from itself, although it is itself the very thing that seeks. For the soul is not that which is sought, but that whereby it seeks: for whatever it seeks is outside itself, nor has it any need to seek save what is not with it. But it is itself with itself, since without itself it is nothing; therefore it ought not to have sought itself, since it could not exist without itself. Wherefore, when it seeks itself not without itself, it necessarily falls upon something else, because it cannot find itself without itself.

This is that delusion, which whoever understands grieves, and grieving groans, and laments with the prophet, saying: 'All the day long I go about in sadness, because my soul is filled with delusions.' But it is in the memory that the soul suffers delusions of this kind, from which it could fan up and bring forth none of its phantasms, had it not drawn these same in from the forms of bodies through the corporeal senses. For whether it imagines to itself the very things it has drawn in through the body, or from the things it has seen conjectures and fashions the things it has not seen, yet it is certain that it can by no means imagine, within a certain belly of memory, anything except those things which it has received through the body.

And these things are to it not natural, but penal — so that, since, enticed by corporeal allurements, it flowed down from the highest good, which is God to it, into the body, having been persuaded it may justly suffer within its very self that which it unjustly loved outside itself. Do not, therefore, seek to persuade me that that is the soul by which you rather see it disturbed. For if it had remained in the sublimity of its former state, from which it slipped of its own accord, never would the flesh have lusted against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh; and if the true man, that is, the rational soul, had understood its own honor, namely the image of God, it would never have been compared to senseless beasts of burden, that is, so as to live after the manner of animals.

Hence comes that tumult of corporeal images before its eyes, ever thrusting itself forward, so that whenever it strives by reasoning toward either itself or its God, it is always called off to corporeal things by the phantasms of the body. For when you say that the soul is one thing and the soul's thought another, you might perhaps better have said that those things which it thinks about, when it does not think about itself, are not the soul, but that the thought itself is nothing other than the soul; because that which you said must be supposed — that the soul is wont to rest to such a degree that it thinks nothing at all — is altogether lacking. For the soul can indeed vary its thoughts, but it cannot not think.

But what is that which we call dreaming, except that not even when the body is wearied and dissolved into sleep is the soul's power free from thoughts? But it is wholly there where it thinks, because it wholly thinks. But you are deceived about the state of the soul above all for this reason: that you believe the soul to be one thing and the soul's powers another. For what it thinks is its accident, but that whereby it thinks is its substance. This indeed you ought to acknowledge concerning the will. For just as the whole soul is thought, so the whole soul is will; and that which wills perfectly wills wholly; and, as was said above, whatever willing belongs to it is an accident, but the willing itself is its substance.

Hence also in the sacred Scriptures the perfect will, according to whether that which it willed in such or such a way is damnable or praiseworthy, is so judged. So in the Gospel the Lord says: 'Whoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.' And on the good side, in another place, by the voices of the angels it is said: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.' Behold, love, as you suppose, is a certain portion of the mind; but, as reason teaches, it is the whole mind. If, then, I love anything with my whole love, do I not love that very thing with my whole soul? And where is room for that which is said: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul,' if love is thought to be a part of the soul?

For if the soul loves with a part of itself, it certainly does not love wholly. But if it loves wholly, then beyond doubt the whole is love. For it is said, and truly said, that 'God is love'; but that love is such that it can neither itself love anything but the good, nor can anything be loved through it except well. But this love, which is the human soul, on account of the mutability of its affections, can both, toward higher things, which to it God alone is, burn with heavenly charity, and, toward lower things, melt away in damnable love. Yet whatever it loves, if it loves with its whole love, it loves wholly; and, when it loves wholly, the whole is love — which unity is not in the body, that is. XXV.

AN EXAMPLE FROM GEOMETRY, ARITHMETIC, AND DIALECTIC, TO INSTRUCT THE READER IN THINGS THAT ARE OBSCURE, AS TO WHAT THE SOUL SEES THROUGH ITSELF AND WHAT THROUGH THE BODY. But you say: when it thinks of its absent beloved, does it not, as if he were beheld in person, satisfy its desires? This, as I conjecture and as I clearly prove, is the chief cause of all that has driven you, unawares, to call the soul corporeal. From the senses of the body, I pray, lift yourself up a little while, and, if you are able, perceive what and how great is the power of seeing in the mind; and, if you can, distinguish the mind's sight from the body's. The body certainly sees nothing, because it surely perceives nothing apart from the soul; and through this, the mind sees corporeal things through the body, incorporeal things through itself.

Let us now set these very matters aside, so far as the present subject demands, in order that we may make evident what are the mind's sights through the body, and what it discerns without the body. For whoever has been even somewhat instructed, I believe, will know in the geometric discipline what a point is and what a line. But because among those who shall deign to read these things there may be one who does not know, let us inquire by discoursing a little upon this very matter. A line is — as most learned and excellent men have not only said but proved by reasoning — a simple length, which can by no means be found in a body, on the ground that every body is long in length, yet is not itself length, nor can it be long in such a way as not to be at the same time broad and high.

Wherefore, as they say, even if you should conceive a spider's thread, since it is certainly a body, you have not conceived length alone; for it has, in proportion to its measure, a breadth and a height of its own, inseparable from its length. Therefore, if — as truth compels us to confess — length is something other than breadth, let us, setting breadth aside, conceive length alone. But I know well that to perceive this same thing clearly belongs not to many; for when the philosopher Marcius too denied to the mathematician Adrastus that he could see it, since he saw the lines of carpenters too grossly, Adrastus said: 'It is surely no wonder that you have eyes like a carpenter's, but a genius unlike Pythagoras'.'

But the slower-witted are not on that account to be despaired of, provided that we yield to authority where perchance we do not grasp the reasoning. This length, then, of which I had begun to speak, when it has been begun by a point and ended by a point, is called by the Greeks 'grammē', by us a 'line'. Now then, if you have been able to recognize what length without breadth is, and have formed a line bounded by length, set two equal lines opposite to each other, facing one another; and when you have done this, understand that you have not made a figure with two equal lines. For it is called a figure when, with equal or unequal lines touching one another at their ends, a space is enclosed.

Therefore, by two equal lines placed apart, not touching at their ends, a figure is not closed; but by three equal lines a triangular figure is made — and this is an eternal and unchangeable principle, clearly evident to every human mind, even one not admonished. For can it ever come about that, by three equal lines which mutually touch one another at their ends, anything but a triangle should be made?

Either this is now more true than it once was, or it began at some time to be true, or it will at some time cease to be true; or else it is not easier for the corporeal world to perish — whose swelling, place-bound shapes are surely the image of those non-spatial, incorporeal forms — than for any of these forms to be varied in appearance, or shifted in place, or grown old with age, or in any way whatever altered. Therefore, lest I drag you through all the minutiae of this discipline, and lest I hold your attention upon the reckonings of plane figures or cubes or pyramids, let us, on account of the perfection of the circle, speak briefly of but a single figure, as we have done thus far. A circle is made from a single line.

But you will now justly be reminded that a line — being without breadth and height — is more perfect, and yet it has something within itself more perfect than itself. For the point is, in the first place, the origin of the line: from it the line begins and in it the line ends, while the point itself can neither be seen to arise from anything nor to be ended. For among figures the point holds the same place as the unit among numbers. Therefore this line, which can be cut crosswise, cannot be split lengthwise; for surely if it were split it would have breadth, and when it is to be cut it is severed at a point, whereas the point itself is not severed. Length, then, is more perfect than breadth, because breadth admits of division both crosswise and straight along.

Breadth is more perfect than height, because height can not only be cleft and cut, but can also be severed from the side. Therefore height cannot exist without breadth and length; and where these three are, there is, beyond doubt, a body. Breadth cannot exist without length; length can exist without all these, but it cannot exist without the point. Yet the point always exists without these, and needs nothing whatever in order to be, since of the unit there can be no beginning. The circle, then, is made by one and the same curved line; but just as in triangles and quadrangles there are points at the angles, by which the structure of the figures is established, so in the circle its centre will be held by a point, that the circle may be formed in fixed proportion.

For when you have fixed one arm of the compass and swung the other round from the centre on the outside, observe as much as you can the power of the centre, how from the stationary arm it governs that arm which is carried round, and there, where it is not present locally, it potentially shapes the circle. Here, if you direct upon it the cleansed edge of your mind, it should already begin to glow faintly for you what the soul is. And what manner of thing is this too: that, if we consult the bodily sense, two equal lines may be believed capable of being drawn side by side through the middle of a circle, while manifest reason proves that by no means can two lines be drawn through the same middle unless one be shorter? It seems to me, just as was made clear above concerning the triangle, that here too the principle of the circle stands stable under indissoluble and eternal laws.

Now I would have you tell me this: if the soul beholds these things spatially, what is the reason that, when I set about forming for myself something round, triangular, or square out of bodies in the west, the same notion of round or square is not lacking to me without any bulk or motion — while at the same point of time, according to the very same law of round and square, another in the east is able to fashion their equals out of bodies? Do you not see, even from these things which the soul beholds, what the vision of the mind is? Do you understand that the intelligible and the intelligent can in no wise be sundered? Do you also mark what difference there is between those forms which we discern with the body and these which we behold with the mind — that these are the everlasting world, of which this world is an image? Whence it was divinely said:

For the fashion of this world passes away. Do you also see that, whereas to know the lengths, breadths, and heights of bodies is of almost no moment, there is something else which is enough — concerning which the Apostle says that we ought to know what is the breadth and length, the height and depth? For what will it profit me anywhere to search out the height of the corporeal heaven, to pry into the intervals of the spread-out stars, or the paths of the circles, or the distances of the several bodies; what to know the dimensions of the earth or to penetrate the depths of the abyss? Of these things, as I judge, the Apostle did not wish to admonish me — things which are not only toilsome but even harmful, if, when through them one ought to pass on to things eternal and ever-abiding, one clings and lingers in them instead.

Now turn back and observe that everything long is made long by length, while length itself cannot be called long — just as everything chaste is made chaste by chastity, while chastity itself can in no way be called chaste. When, therefore, you desire to contemplate pure length, or when you fix the eye of your mind upon a triangle or a hexagon, cast off as far as you are able, and flee not only everything corporeal but whatever can be like the corporeal; and when you have seen a triangle formed by three points and three lines, or a circle formed by a point or a line, incorporeally and non-spatially, behold also the power and pre-eminence of numbers, and understand that all that is corporeal is made numerable by numbers, but the numbers themselves cannot be numbered.

For who could worthily, I will not say utter, but even conceive, how number — though it be from one, and through one, and in one — yet has no beginning or end of that One? For if we should say that the unit is the beginning of number, what shall we say to be the beginning of the unit itself? Behold, you have the beginning of number in the beginning, so that from it number arises. But now, if we wish to count, we add one to one that there be two, and one to two that there be three, and one to three that there be four; and thereafter, as often as we have multiplied the one, so often, as it were, many single ones are gathered into a sum — so that ten taken ten times are named a hundred, and twenty taken twentyfold, and a hundred taken a hundredfold, and a thousand taken a thousandfold — that you may recognize that every number is through one, even as it proceeds from one.

But this is plain: that one cannot come to an end of number, which simply has none, because beyond every number — which is from one, and through one, and in one — there is always the One. Yet these are three, when we say from one, and through one, and in one — equally eternal, alike non-spatial, everywhere whole, ever equal to the same Infinite, since no one is truly greater than one, nor one less. These are the things that begin, lead on, and perfect numbers; themselves neither begun, nor numbered, nor finished — I believe, because of the wisdom of God there is no number. For since number is from one, and through one, and in one, and cannot be numbered save in three ways — so that by the same number we begin, count, and finish — it is itself the whole ternary, through which every number is.

Behold what dwells in the human soul; behold what it has been granted to see with the eye of the heart. Whither do we flee apart, whither are we drawn asunder, why are we, within our very selves, outside ourselves? Why do we seek our homeland spatially — the homeland from which we departed surely not by walking but by sinning? Why do we believe that darkness shines — darkness which, to see it, is in truth not to see at all? Truth assuredly we seek: do not suppose that it ought to be sought through spaces of place, nor that it is to be found through anything corporeal. He will sufficiently separate himself from the body — not only by touching but also by thinking — who will cleave to this Truth. Surely we seek what is non-spatial; let us not, I pray, seek it through the spatial. Truth itself has made for itself a likeness that shares in itself.

Let us bring to Him in ourselves that which He made, and let us not revile our God by saying to Him: You could not make anything like Yourself — since, if I am a body, I am not like You — because by our very selves He will convict us. XXVI. THE SECRET SPEECH OF GOD TO THE SOUL, HOW IT OUGHT TO INQUIRE OF ITSELF. For Truth speaks to me in silence and says to me: You who surely believe yourself to be a body — whence do you use an incorporeal word? Your word, that is, your thought, is one thing, I believe; the voice of the word is another; another is what sounds, another is what is understood. For just as the voice can exist without the word, so the word exists without the voice.

Yet your word uses a certain garment of voice, that it may sound in the ears, just as I used the garment of flesh, that I might be seen by men; and when you speak, the service of the voice goes only as far as the ear, but the word passes non-spatially through to the soul, because, just as it reaches him to whom you speak, so it surely does not depart from you. And if one alone hear you speaking, your whole word is with you, the whole with him; and if two hear, they hear the whole; and if many, the whole; and to all the whole, and to each the whole, and to you the whole. Do not lose in yourself so great a gift of Mine, My likeness, which I most kindly bestowed upon you, so that, by such means as you might reach toward Me, you should not seek Me outside yourself.

No one comes to the Father except through Me, and no one comes to Me except him whom My Father has drawn; and no one comes to Me or to the Father unless love be poured forth in his heart through the Holy Spirit, who is given only to him who rightly believes, rightly hopes, and rightly seeks. Unto this Trinity — that we are one God — you, O man, were made, when it was said: Let us make man after Our image and likeness. Look in upon yourself, from yourself, O human soul, and remember yourself. See your mind, see your word, see your will. For all that you think is in the mind, and what you wholly and at once remember, you wholly and at once think and wish to think and remember — that is, you love to have mind and thought.

Therefore when you embrace your thought together with the mind — that is, when you remember that you think — you surely comprehend your whole thought with your whole mind, and you think your whole love or your whole mind with your whole thought, when you think that you love or remember; and with your whole love you cherish that same whole mind and that same whole thought, when you cherish that you remember and think. Yet there is no one who, while remembering and thinking, does not also cherish this very act of loving it: