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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).
But since our nature is something most poor, and needy of all things that pertain to its own constitution, it not only suffers a lack of its own air and spirit (for the breath which fosters the inward heat ever flows in from without unto the preservation of the animal), but also providently fits to itself from without the supports of nourishment which may relieve the body's burden; therefore it strives to supply its want by foods and drinks, implanting in bodies a certain appetitive force for that which is lacking, and an expulsive force for that which is superfluous, and thereby furnishing no small co-operation of nature toward fostering the heart's burning.
For since we have reported that the heart is more peculiarly the chief of such members, according to the reason rendered above—namely that it cherishes each thing by the heat of its own spirit—therefore our Former has appointed it most efficient in all respects, so that no part may be approved as idle or empty in the dispensation of the whole body: and behind its back indeed it draws the lung to itself by continual motion, and spreads open its passages for the reception of air, and again pressing it down prepares to breathe out what has been received; while in its forward parts, pressing close upon the belly, it heats it and renders it apt for its proper operations—not rousing it to the resumption of spirit, but impelling it to the reception of the food befitting it.
Very near to each other are joined the entrances of food and of spirit; they are stretched out lengthwise the one toward the other, and are separated by an equal measure at the upper boundary, yet so that they are coupled together and are closed by one mouth of entrance. Whence the entrance of food is effected by the one, and of spirit by the other; but in the deep recesses of the inward parts this conjoined passage by no means continues knit together throughout, for the heart, set in the midst of the boundary of both, grants to the one breath, and to the other its faculty for receiving food; while the fiery nature, fittingly, seeks out matter which it may consume, which it necessarily produces also around the belly, the receiver of foods.
For in so far as it is made fiery by the nearness of heat, in so much the more does it ever demand foods that may nourish the heat. And the desire of this we more fittingly call appetite. But if the belly should receive sufficient matter, not even thus does the operation of the fire rest quiet.
For just as in a smelting-furnace it effects a certain coalescing of the whole matter, and dissolving and intermingling all things, refunds it, as through a certain strainer, to the passages that follow; then, separating the coarser part from the purer, it leads the finer substance through certain channels to the entrances of the liver, but the muddy sediment it delivers to the broader passages of the intestines—which, turning it about in manifold convolutions, it retains the food in the bowels for no short time, lest, driven by a direct course, the food too easily and soon move the animal's appetite for eating, and, after the manner of the irrational creatures, man should never desist from this occupation.
And since the co-operation of heat is proved to be most necessary to the liver, that the moisture might be turned into blood, while this member is separated from the heart by no very small interval according to its position (for I do not think it would have been possible that one principle and root of the vital power should be straitened by the nearness of another principle)—yet, lest anything in the dispensation of the body should be marred by the distance of the hot substance, a sinewy channel, which those skilled about this matter call the artery, receiving from the heart the seething spirit, conducts it to the liver, and there, annexed near the entrance by which the moist things are received, and heating that same moist substance, inserts into it something of igneous vigour by continued heat.
Hence the appearance of blood is suffused with a ruddy heat; and thence two connected rivulets, in the manner of pipes, each receive their own—the one indeed spirit, the other blood—whereby the moist substance, by the motion of heat, may run forth with an easy gliding. And when the whole body has been refreshed, it is disseminated manifoldly into many beginnings of rivulets, which are cut through the whole body; and the two principles of the vital powers, intermingled together—whether that which diffuses heat, or that which diffuses moisture throughout the body everywhere—administer, as it were a certain necessary tribute of their own, and that which holds the chief place principally in the vital yoke.
But this force is beheld to reside in the membranes of the brain, from which the motion of all the joints, the gathering-together, and the vigour of the whole unbidden spirit, sprinkled into the several members, shows our earthen statue to be efficacious and self-moving by some contrivance. For that of heat which is most pure, and that of moisture which is most fine, by a certain mingling and tempering of both powers united together, nourish and re-warm the brain through vapours, from which again a thinned exhalation passes on to the members toward that which is purer; for those things are contained in the brain which also from the higher parts
reach down into the depth in the manner of a pipe, and, extending itself altogether through the joints that follow it and the marrow inserted into it, ends at the extremity of the whole spine of the back; and then, presiding over the bones and sinews, and likewise over the principles of the frames and the marrows, as it were some charioteer, it bestows upon each the power and impulse toward standing still or moving. Therefore it seems to me also to have received a surer fortification. For in the head indeed it is shown to be surrounded by double bones, but in the knots, or in the eminences of the ribs, and by the manifold, hardly shaped interlacings, it is moreover preserved in all stability by that same guardianship by which is held that which, holding the third place, is contained therein.
But likewise will one conjecture this also concerning the heart, that just as a certain spine, solidified into a fixed mass, so the heart is fortified round about by the defences of the bones. For in its hinder part it is fenced on both sides by the spine of the back and the shoulder-blades; and on both sides it is bound by the chain of the ribs, which, encompassing its middle, defends it from all suffering; while in its forward part the breast and the soft-hanging junction of the neck impart to it on all sides a fortification against those things which from without can inflict molestation.
And just as we observe in agriculture, when either the rains from the heavens or the streams of rivulets moisten that which is subject to them—and let some origin, for the sake of our comparison, be supposed, which nourishes a thousand diversities of trees and the manifold species of those things which the earth produces, of which both the form and the quality and the property of colour is shown to be in great difference in each one: since, therefore, there are things which one moisture nourishes in one field—as, for example, that force which moistens each several thing—
it nourishes—being one, as I said, and simple in its own nature—yet the property of those very things which are nourished from it is turned into diverse species and qualities: this same thing grows bitter in wormwood, and is changed into the deadly juice of hemlock, and in another it does another thing—in balsam, in saffron, in the poppy. For of these one is hot, another cold, another possesses a certain middle quality. In the laurel also, and in the mastic-tree, and the like, it is fragrant.
But in figs and pears it renders sweetness; likewise through the vine the grape-cluster, and from it wine flows down, and the juice of the apple, and the redness of the rose, and the whiteness of the lily, and the blue of the violet, and the dyes of the hyacinth and the purple tinctures, and all whatsoever we behold to arise from the earth out of one and the same moisture, are turned into so many differences according to form and species and quality.
Something of this kind too has been wonderfully perfected by nature in this our animate field—or rather by the Lord, the Former of our nature—namely bones, cartilage, veins, arteries, sinews, junctures, flesh, skin, fat, muscles, hairs, nails, eyes, nostrils, ears, and all the other thousand things separated one from another by diverse properties: one species of nourishment, according to the likeness of its own nature, the nutriments, so that, as it approaches the several subjects, the food is also changed according to whatever member it draws near to, imparting its own woven-in force of vigour. For if it has come to the places of the eyes, it is tempered to their use, and is divided about the tunics of the pupils and the eyelids.
If it has flowed into the hearing, it is mingled to the nature of the ears according to its quality, and coming to the lip it becomes lip, and is compacted in the bone, and softens in the marrow, and is armed in the sinews, and is stretched out on the surface of the skin, and passes to the nails, and accomplishes the most subtle springing-forth of the hairs through most fitting exhalations; which, if indeed they emerge through tortuous passages, generate curled and reflexed hairs; but if the progression of the vapours has been made through straight channels, the hairs are born produced and straight.
But our discourse has been led far away from its purpose, while we pursue the works of nature more deeply, having attempted to describe in what manner and out of what things the several parts consist for us—whether those which pertain to the good life, or also whatever other things we have perceived to be, together with these, according to the first order of our division. For our purpose was to show that this seed-like matter of our constitution is neither an incorporeal soul nor a lifeless body, but that, from living and animate bodies, a living and animate thing is laid down in the first formation; which, when human nature receives it, it contains, as it were a certain nourishment, by the fosterings and nutriments proper to it. And this is fittingly led back according to either part, and receives the increments of each.
Soon, through this skilful and orderly formation, it shows the woven-in effect of the soul, at first appearing more obscurely, then shining forth with the perfection of the instrument—just as we perceive in sculptors of stones, where it has been determined to pre-form the appearance of some living thing in the stone. And he who has proposed this first indeed cuts off the stone from its kindred matter, then cutting away its superfluities, by the change of the first shaping he adumbrates that which he has proposed, so that even one unskilled may, through that which appears, without difficulty conjecture the intention of the craftsman.
Again, unfolding it more fully, he draws quite near to the likeness of that whose pursuit he is set upon; then thereafter, in the very matter diligently and entirely demonstrating the species, he leads the art to its end; and it is a lion, or a man, or something else, which was to be made by the craftsman, which a little before was shapeless stone—not that the matter is blotted out by the species, but that the species is proved to be impressed upon the matter through the art. In this manner, whoever thinks also concerning the soul will by no means deviate from the path of reason; for nature, working over all things more artfully, and taking to itself matter of the same kind, has formed a living statue out of a portion of man.
For just as the species followed upon the working of the stone—at first indeed more obscure, but afterwards more perfect when the work itself was finished—so also in the sculpting of this instrument the species is declared, imperfect in the imperfect by the proportion of the subject, and in the perfect subsisting whole and perfect. But in the beginning it was perfect, had not nature been vitiated by malice. And therefore the communion which has accrued to us toward the passible and animal generation does not, in our constitution, forthwith cause the divine image to shine out, but by a certain way of consequence, through the material properties of the soul, man is led to perfection and consummation.
A doctrine of this kind the blessed Apostle also intimates in the Epistle to the Corinthians, saying: When I was a little child, I spoke as a little child, I was wise as a little child, I thought as a little child; but when I became a man, I did away with the things that were of a little child—not that anything else enters in within the perfect man besides that which was understood in the little child, so that the childish mind is done away and a manly one is nonetheless introduced; but the same self is in the one indeed imperfect, and in the other displays the effect of its own perfection;
for just as we confess that whatsoever things are born and grow do live, while all things that partake of life and are quickened by natural motion no one would say to be in any wise lifeless—yet we do not say that such a life as this is partaker of the perfect soul; in the same way, in shrubs a certain vital operation, carried even unto motion, could not attain to sensible motion; and likewise, through growth, a certain power coming to the irrational creatures did not itself attain to the perfection of reason, and does not at all receive the grace of intellect: therefore we define the true and perfect soul of man to be that which is recognized to be vigorous through all its effects.
But if anything else shares in life, we profess it to be animate by a certain customary abuse of language — not because a perfect soul is present in it, but because certain parts of an animal operation exist within it, which (as we learn) have come to us also through a kind of fellowship in passibility, according to the mystical account of Moses the lawgiver, which he set forth concerning the generation of man. And therefore the blessed Paul, offering counsel to those who were able to hear him, urges them to lay hold of perfection, and he supplies the manner by which his aim may be attained, saying: 'Putting off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, who is renewed unto the knowledge according to the image of him that created him.'
But let us return once more to the divine grace by which God created man in the beginning — He who said: 'Let us make man to our image and likeness,' to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. Here ends the book of the holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, On the Image, containing the sequel to those things which were left by his brother, the blessed Basil, in the Hexaemeron.