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But when there is in your mind that which belongs to your thought and your love, if you remember those things as great as they are, your mind is as great as they are; and when you think your love or your mind, if you think them as great as they are, your thought is as great as they are; and if you cherish your mind or your thought according to its measure, these and your love are surely equal. And if these single things, all together, should love or think or remember themselves, the three taken wholly together would be no greater than the whole mind likewise recollecting, or the whole thought knowing, or the whole love cherishing. That these are in you — or rather that you are these — you will know when I shine upon you, if you bring to Me those eyes by which I deign to be seen.
By no means does even an incorporeal being see Me unless it be purified — so why do you suppose that I can be seen by you, if you are a body? I and the Father and our Love are one God; you, rational mind and your word or love, are one man, made after the likeness of your Author, not after His equality — created, indeed, not begotten; you yourself are formed, not the former. Withdraw from those things which are beneath you, less fully formed — that is, less fair than you are — and draw near to the Form that forms, that you may become fairer, and ever join yourself to her; for the more you press yourself upon her with the weight of love, the more abundantly you will receive of beauty from her. From her, that is, you will obtain the unchangeable state of this image — from her from whom you took your beginning.
These and such things Truth speaks to the ear of the heart, admonishing us inwardly, that — since we were made after the likeness of the incorporeal God, not after the likeness of the corporeal world — we should know ourselves to be incorporeal, not only because we are like to the incorporeal God, but also because we are unlike the corporeal world. XXVII. THAT THE SOUL CAN BE PRESENT IN SPIRIT EVEN WHEN ITS OWN BODY IS ABSENT. Behold, concerning the state and the vision of the rational soul, having rather briefly touched the causes of arguments — infinite because of the greatness of the question — than sufficiently discussed them, I judge that I have given a sufficient answer concerning the non-spatiality and incorporeality of the soul.
Now, since you clearly understand that corporeal vision is so far unlike and set so far below, be no longer tossed about by this uncertainty: as if, when you think of your dear one — absent, as you yourself say — you therefore believe him to be absent because he does not appear to you bodily; for if he is dear to you in that part of himself in which you are both men, and in which you love one another with mutual love, then he is as present to you as you yourself are to yourself. For whatever you are substantially, that he is. But the vision of the intellect is of the soul: if you see yourself, you see him who is nothing other than you — who, if he were present bodily, would surely give you recognition of himself through the signs of the body.
Through which signs, if perchance you had received that indication by which you might rather recognize him to be your enemy, your soul, struck back by the unlikeness of affections, would in a certain way recoil from his soul; and being in one place bodily and on the very same spot — if it may so be said — you would surely be sundered enough by the diversity of your wills. Since this is so, I do not think that minds are torn asunder by separation, which we see can be separated even when bodies are joined. And accordingly it is of little account that bodies hinder the mutual representations of minds, if either the image of God is not sought through them in oneself, or the souls themselves are not sought. For it is wretched and much contrary to truth, that the image of God — that is, the true man — should be sought through the body rather than through itself.
But it is sought and recognized through itself, if it is sought through the image of God; and the image of God is every rational soul. Accordingly, he who seeks in himself the image of God seeks both himself and his neighbour; and he who, by seeking it in himself, has come to know it, recognizes the same in every man. But you not without cause complain that you have your dear one absent — in whom you love a body, nor can you love anything but a body in him whom you believe to be nothing but a body. Love your God; love in your God your dear one, the image of your God. Let him, by likewise loving God, love you in God. If you both seek the One, you reach toward the One, you will be ever in one another's presence, because you stand fast in the One.
But I do not see how it could come to pass that bodies set in one place could be present to one another, and yet minds present in one cannot be present to one another. But since this book demands an end — in that, with some things touched only on the surface, however many I have, in zeal for brevity, left out, yet I have not, given the excellence of the subject, passed over all that must hereafter be argued — let us begin those at the opening of the second volume. OF CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS, ON THE STATE OF THE SOUL: BOOK TWO. I. THAT ALL THINGS ARE MORE EASILY DISCERNED BY THE COMPARISON OF CONTRARIES.
To me, often pondering by what means the most excellent Truth has suffered itself to have so many enemies, after much treatment of this same question there appeared — as I think — a not improbable reason: namely, that all things are better discerned by the comparison of contraries. Thus indeed light set against darkness, thus life against death, thus truth against falsehood, gives more delight. It was fitting, therefore, that these oppositions, according to their qualities, should obtain patrons that share their part, so that neither the defender of the false should be wanting, nor the asserter of the true be idle; and so it would come about that neither would the former, hidden, do more harm, nor would the latter grow numb in idleness. II. HOW THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE WORLD TRACKED DOWN THE TRUTH AND STEP BY STEP CAME ALL THE WAY TO GOD.
And since it is given by nature to the race of mortals that they more strongly seek what is hidden, more eagerly desire what is denied, more dearly love what is more slowly attained — so that truth is loved the more ardently the longer it is desired, the more laboriously it is sought, the more slowly it is found — hence it came to pass that philosophers also, of excellent genius, with manifold learning, with conflicting opinions, through long ages seeking after this same truth, have ever existed from Pythagoras the Italian or Thales the Ionian onward, who, while others dissented, perceived in some part of their work something worthy of so great a search. Whence even the Teacher of the Gentiles judges the philosophers not so much ignorant of the truth as he accuses them of being despisers of the truth they had come to know, saying:
The invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made — His eternal power also and divinity — that they may be without excuse, because, when they had known God, they did not glorify Him as God. Therefore they knew, and the human mind entered into the secret of the hidden Godhead; and having transcended all corporeal things and marvelled, it saw Him to be the Creator of the universe — He who not only went before all corporeal things, as the irrational soul does, nor excelled this too, as the rational soul does, but who at once surpassed all these by a power far beyond comparison. For the mind saw that a body is moved through places and times, since it either passes from place to place or changes its age by the passing of time.
And so it halted a little within itself, and beholding its own power not without awe, it doubted whether something above itself was to be sought, or whether it must stand fast in itself. But, doubting, it could not doubt that it was not God, because the cause of its doubt was ignorance, and none save the ignorant would be in doubt, whereas God would be ignorant of nothing, and through this could not doubt. Moreover, it observed that it both necessarily was ignorant and consequently in doubt, with this added: that, even though it were not subject to motion through place, it was moved in time through affection; nor would it be the chief stay of things — that which could be moved either by place or by time — since nothing could be moved except through another, while that in which the universe should stand would itself stand fast in its very self.
Thus, reasoning more deeply upon its own Author, it came to know that which I recorded in the former book, and it saw that nothing can be moved except by the unmoved; and so it saw that the soul necessarily stands fast in order that it may move the body through time and place, but that God stands fast in His very self — He who moves the soul through time, and the body alike through place and through time.
And since the Beginning can have no beginning — which is likewise to be thought concerning immensity and eternity, because, just as it began from nothing, so it stands fast in nothing — and since one cannot go from the lowest things, which is all body, to the highest, which is God, without some mean, the soul found that it was rightly the mean set between the extremes, in that it neither existed like to any of the bodies, since it was the likeness of God, nor could be made equal to that same God, because, even though it had begun from Him, it was not of Him. It observed also that, in the fulness of things, according to truth there is one thing that judges and is not judged, another that judges and is judged, another that is judged and does not judge:
according to truth, God judges and is not judged of; the soul judges and is judged; bodies are judged and do not judge. And the one that judges errs least when it cleaves to Him according to whom it judges, but errs most when it sinks down to that about which it judges. It understood also, on account of the unchangeable force of contraries — as darkness to light, as nothingness to essence — that body is in like manner contrary to the incorporeal; and it saw that the likeness of any thing cannot be in its contrary, because, namely, the unmoved order of things does not allow that anything dead should live, that the blind should see, that there should be at once substance and nothingness.
Here, then, understanding that there is in the human soul something not unlike to God — because He is the illuminating light and the soul the illuminable light — it decreed it to be incorporeal without doubt, adding this: that if the soul were a body, and this same were the likeness of God, then God would be corporeal. And it justly preferred, on account of the likeness of the Creator, to exalt the creature, rather than, on account of that same likeness, to humble the Creator — knowing for certain that the bond is indissolubly knit, that two like things are either both incorporeal or both corporeal.
It observed also that among substantial things there are some not only unlike in appearance but even contrary in natural force, as are water and flame, and that these nevertheless are corporeal; and hence it would be a marvel if two unlike and contrary things, such as water and flame, could be at once corporeal, while two like and agreeing things, such as God and the soul, could not be at once incorporeal. III. HE USES THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AS WITNESSES CONCERNING CORPOREAL AND INCORPOREAL THINGS, SETTING FORTH THE EXAMPLE OF THE CAMEL AND THE ANT.
Having therefore, as far as I could, ranged through the volumes of the philosophers who employ reasonings of this kind, and having rejected the common throng of the obscure, I have chosen the more weighty among them, who might testify to the truth in the present case — whose opinions it is, indeed, a thing of abundance to bring forward, not because we are lacking in our own, but because it is the more wonderful that our own should fight against us and strangers should battle on our behalf. Nor truly would it be to my mind to pluck anything borrowed from these, had not this friend of the body, by the mere mention of the philosophical name, displayed to us certain bugbears of a more profound knowledge.
From these, then, whom he calls against the truth, let him receive the voice of truth; and let him first hear the war-trumpet of twofold Greece — the many-sounding clarion of the Pythagoreans and the clarion of Plato — and let him not swell with the empty vanity of names alone, but grow fat with the manifold truth of their reasonings. Of the Pythagoreans, therefore, since Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, the opinion must be sought from those who came after.
Among whom I find that Philolaus of Tarentum flourished most especially, who, discoursing very obscurely in many volumes upon things to be understood and what each thing signifies, before he decides about the substance of the soul, wonderfully discusses measures, weights, and numbers according to geometry, music, and arithmetic, affirming that through these the whole universe came into being — agreeing, of course, with that Scripture in which it is said to God: 'You have ordered all things by measure, weight, and number'; which opinion, indeed, drawn from the divine reading, I marvel was cast at us by our adversary. For he speaks in these words:
God, who made all things out of nothing — which, as He established them in work, so He embodied in matter — set quantity upon all things (among which the soul too is reckoned), just as He distributed weight, number, and measure. Mark well, O good appraiser of my words, this learned and eloquent teacher of the present age: he will have nothing incorporeal created, and he calls everything corporeal 'embodied' (incorporatum). Into what, I ask, is that embodied which is a body? If perchance you have put 'in-' for 'not,' so that you would have 'incorporatum' understood as 'not embodied,' you grant us of your own accord more than we wish — for if the Author of things did not embody all that He made, then whatever things are, are without body.
For indeed that which is and is also without body must needs be incorporeal — which the Greeks more elegantly call asōmaton. But if you have simply used a preposition of this sort, you have unwittingly run into the truth, yet through that same ignorance you have slipped on one point only: that you said all things are 'embodied,' whereas it is sufficiently established that the substance of the twofold creation is so composed by a most ordered law that everything created is incorporeal and 'embodied,' but not everything is corporeal and animate. And on this account a body could not be called 'embodied' as if sent into a body, because embodiment pertains, beyond all ambiguity, to that nature which both, before it was embodied, was not a body, and, after it was embodied, is not a body.
But if you said 'all things are embodied' perhaps in that sense in which it could indeed plainly be said, even if it ought not, that all things were made corporeal, you have fallen away at once both from the propriety of the word and from the reckoning of truth; because if every creature is corporeal, nothing is incorporeal; but if anything incorporeal has been created, not every creature is corporeal. But this is one and the same cause that has involved you in manifold error: namely, a great ignorance of things and a marvellous presumption of knowledge. For hence it comes that you either believe embodied spirits to be a body, or likewise define bodies to be incorporeal. In these so dialectical conclusions of yours, let there ever come to your mind the disgrace of that deep error which you reckon must be branded upon others.
Let the divine word also move you: that one must first lay aside one's own beam, in order to be able to take away another's mote. Therefore, since you do not provoke as though they were doubtful of the fray, but strike down the quiet with the sword-point of reviling, and have said that measure, weight, and number are set upon all parts of the creation — since these are agreed to be present together in all bodies, and you decree the soul to be a body — I ask what is the measure of this soul, what its number, what its weight. If the measure of the living body makes the measure of the quickening soul — because the outer body, like some vessel, encloses the soul as if it were some lesser body — then the soul's quantity, as you say, must be reckoned according to the quantity of the body.
O, if it should fall to me to speak of these things with you hand to hand and openly, I would surely deal liberally, would yield you not a few things of my own right, nor would I straightway question you about man; but first I would ask of you, as a favour, that, being skilled in things, you would confess by a plain answer whether you would reckon the souls of the ant and the camel by providence or by mass. If by providence, it would be clearer than light that the soul of the camel so excels the soul of the ant that the camel is almost as much smaller than the ant in mind as it is greater in body. If mass had pleased you in a comparison of this sort, I would surely repeat the same and would no less inquire: if the measure of the soul is the measure of the body, why does the camel grow brutish below the measure of its body, and the ant thrive above the measure of its body?
Perhaps the words would fail you which now, in safety, fly grandly for you. These very things I would set before you with a twofold lot, and would give you your choice of which you preferred. If you had chosen the mass of the body, I would set against it the very tiny body of the ant; but if the vigour of mind, I would prove this same to be no vigour at all according to mass — of which I would show that there is nothing in that corporeal greatness of the camel. Hence too I would cast at you that saying of Maro, most truly spoken of the little bees: 'Mighty spirits they ply within a narrow breast.' Now when I had begun to discourse concerning the state of man, I would surely demand of you — a new geometer — a ten-foot measuring rod, not a judgement, that I might discern the genius of any persons whatsoever.
And if perchance you had wished to use that refuge — saying that invisible things cannot be measured by visible — I would at once reply that, from the greatness of the body which encloses the mind, one could measure the mind which fills the body. If you had said it could not, I would most insistently ask why it could not be done from one kind of body which could be done from all. If you had granted that it could, I would say to you in prophetic speech: 'Go to the ant, O sluggard, and emulate by beholding her ways' — that is, her acts of providence — unless perchance we are to believe that we were admonished by the heavenly oracle on this account, that we should seek the science of walking from the ant. Let not, in this discourse, the care of walking trouble you, but the skilfulness of acting, that...
Just as ants, mindful of winter, gather together a huge heap of grain and store it up safely, so do you, O man — man fallen by the sin of the first-formed parent into a likeness of irrational creatures — lest your flight take place in winter, take care by the warmth of faith and by the devotion of works, and at the same time understand that the great souls of the little ant and the little bee are not confined within their small bodies. For nothing great in place is contained in a tiny thing of place; and the bee has a small body yet a great soul: therefore it is not contained by the body, and so it is outside itself. But nothing can exist outside itself, and therefore it is wholly within the body — yet a great corporeal thing is not contained by a small corporeal thing, because it fills a place as great as each thing of place is great.
Therefore either the soul is non-spatial and thereby incorporeal, or it will not be wholly with itself. But nothing can exist except with itself; therefore non-spatially a great thing exists within a small thing. The soul, then, is not spatial, and nothing non-spatial is corporeal: therefore it is not corporeal. But whatever is not corporeal must not be reckoned by bulk; therefore the greatness of the soul is not derived from the greatness of the body. Now let us see how you would escape: the little bee denies you the greatness of the body, the camel denies you the greatness of the soul. See now whether by reasonings of this sort the opinion that pleased you does not totter, and whether the greatness of the soul is not subject — like corporeal quantities — to numbers, weights, and measures, since the soul both, though small, holds the whole within the great, and, though great, does not overflow within the small.
But perhaps the soul cannot be measured corporeally, yet can be weighed. Let him who dares say this claim that he can know how many pounds the soul may weigh, who holds and grasps how many feet it measures in length. The traces of numbers in bodies, however, are discerned in three ways. In the first place, that a body, whether greatest or smallest, must be one, which clearly belongs to it from number. In the second place, that it consists of parts, which parts indeed, as we have already said, are right and left, up and down, forward and backward.
In the third place, that, according to the aforesaid diversity of parts, every body can be cut into parts, of which likewise any part whatever of the body, by reason of the primordial power of number, will be both one body and will consist of just as many parts and can likewise be cut into parts. Only consider this: whether, since the soul of any living being is one, this same soul can be divided, so that again any portion of the soul would itself be a soul, just as any portion of a body is a body. Since I think no man in his right mind can say this, no time need be wasted in discussing these matters, which are of their own nature so clear that they would seem rather to be obscured by argument. CHAPTER IV. ON THE MEASURE, NUMBER, AND WEIGHT OF THE BODY.
Now, unless you scorn it, turn your mind to this still more, that the divine power of measure, weight, and number may be unfolded to you — so far as it deigns to be seen by you. For we read it said to God: 「Thou hast ordered all things in measure, number, and weight」 (Wisdom 11:21); and you have used this testimony above all to this end, that you might thereby have it proved that certain corporeal quantities are implanted also in our souls. Let us therefore see where in the world this measure, this weight, this number existed, and when they began to be, so that God might form all things, as it were, after the pattern of these. If nothing is uncreated except the Creator, then these were created.
If they are created, then God did not order all things by measures, numbers, and weights, since indeed He did not form these very things according to those; but it is unlawful to oppose divine authority — therefore all things were created by numbers, weights, and measures. Measure, then, weight, and number were not created: for not all things were created according to the same, if these too were created. Here, by all of us, [effort must be made].
We must strive with all the powers of thought, that by whatever means it can be recognized that the principal weight is not that which is weighed but that by which a thing is weighed; nor that the principal number is that which is numbered but that by which a thing is numbered; nor that the measure is that which measures but that by which a thing is measured — just as likewise greatness is not the great thing, nor equality the equal thing, nor beauty the beautiful thing. For nothing created is great in itself, but a thing is called great by comparison with a smaller. Hence it is that we call a mountain small and a grain of millet large, and a fly large and an ox small. But when we come to the very creative Greatness itself, since it cannot be compared, it is neither greater nor smaller.
So too, in these principal forms, which Plato calls Ideas, the reasoning is the same. For according to the same law of squaring we fashion both a square board and a square marketplace; and although the marketplace is a larger square, it is nonetheless not more square. From this you ought to take an indication of that unweighed weight, and immeasurable measure, and innumerable number, which three together — coeternal, ever indivisible, everywhere and wherever wholly present — are one God. For all bodies, by which we either number or weigh or measure anything, are both numerable and weighable and measurable.
For both in numbers there is in bodies a fixed limit, and in the little weight of the balance there is a fixed weight, and in the ten-foot rule there is a fixed measure, from whose magnitude one may run back, even down to ounces and half-ounces and to the very least, below which there is nothing; and likewise advance beyond, even to the greatest things and to the spaces of the very world itself, now inaccessible to the senses. For whatever is finite has a fixed limit of magnitude. Accordingly the whole mass of the world, since it is compacted out of finite bodies — inasmuch as one body sets a limit to another — is itself without doubt finite, and therefore also measurable.
And if beyond this the human mind conceives any spaces, it does not doubt that into them, by that very reckoning of measure, something can be sent through corporeal forms — which indeed clearly could so be done in truth, if there were any place outside the world. But since no place can exist outside all place, a spatial measure does not reach to where there is no place; and although there is lacking that which could be measured, there yet remains that by which it could be measured, because for a finite measurable thing the immeasurable measure does not fail. To this extent indeed the principle of weight does not perish when that which can be weighed ceases, and number is not bounded by the finite numerable thing.
Therefore, if the splendor of immense light glimmers upon us with some radiance, you will of necessity here be admonished, so that, laying aside for a little the deceit of carnal visions, you may tell us: of what bodily ten-foot rule is the form visible to any eye of ours? But since you will not deny — unless perhaps you are too much vexed — that this is contemplable by the body, I consequently ask: that immeasurable measure of which we spoke above, do you say it is discernible by the soul or by the body? But may the truth not so abandon anyone that he would contend that things divine are visible to the body; since he recognizes that bodies cannot be seen by it except when ensouled, or — to speak more truly — understands that the soul rather perceives through the body than that the body perceives anything by itself. Twofold, therefore, is the power of seeing:
The soul sees measure, weight, and number by itself; it sees measurable, numerable, and weighable things through the body. Therefore through the body it sees those things which are like the body, that is, corporeal things, but it sees incorporeal things by itself, to which it is itself like. Now, if you please, since all things have been ordered in measures, weights, and numbers, let us seek the signs of these same in created things. The lowest of all the elements is certainly earth. For in a sphere that is clearly the lowest which is the center, since in the outermost parts of a sphere there is no lowest point.
Therefore any part of the earth, great or small, or a tiny pebble, or a most minute speck of dust which cannot be touched by a visible point, have both measure according to their own scale and number according to the reckoning of parts by which the upper differ from the lower, the right from the left, the front from the back; whence even the smallest can be divided into two, because it is a body. But the weight of it is observed from this: that this very smallest particle, lifted up from its origin and dropped into water — that is, into the higher element — does not rest in untiring motion until by its natural weight it is carried down to the floor of the earth.
Keep to this path of reasoning in the remaining bodies, since even a droplet of water, which you have lifted on a dipped finger, has of course measure according to the scale of its magnitude, and number according to the distance of its parts; by the law of weight, if you release it into the air, it does not settle until it has reached its own place. The reckoning of air also is the same: none of it can be held under water or borne above fire, but, if by any means this happens, by the necessity of weight it either naturally bursts upward from below or sinks down of its own accord from above. That air is measurable, and numerous according to the number of its parts, is clear from this, I think: that it has already been established that the corporeal world can be measured, of which air is the third part.