Will you teach me, or anyone, whence men are animated, you who were still up to now ignorant whence wineskins, when they are inflated, are filled? Would that, just as you do not know whence is the origin of souls, so I at least might know whether it is to be known by me in this life! For if it is among those higher things which we are forbidden to inquire into and scrutinize, it is to be feared that we may sin, not by being ignorant of it, but by seeking it. Nor ought we on that account to think it is not among those higher things, because it pertains not to the nature of God, but to our own. And what of the fact that certain things among the works of God are known with more difficulty than God Himself, insofar as He can be known? For we have learned that God is a Trinity;
but how many kinds of animals He created—at least of land animals, which could enter into Noah's ark—we are still up to now ignorant, unless perhaps you have already learned this. In the book of Wisdom, too, it is written: 'For if they were able to know so much as to be able to value the world, how did they not more easily find out the Lord thereof?' Or is it that, because this is within us, it is therefore not higher than we? For the nature of our soul is more interior than the body. As if indeed the soul could not more easily come to know the body itself from outside through the eyes of that very body, than from inside through itself. For what is there in the inward parts of the body where the soul itself is not?
And yet even whatever internal and vital parts there are, it has investigated with the eyes of the body, and whatever it could learn of them, it learned through the eyes of the body. And certainly it was there, even when it did not know those things. And since our inward organs cannot live without the soul, the soul was more easily able to vivify them than to know them.
Or is it perhaps that, for the soul's knowledge, its own body is higher than itself, and therefore, if it should wish to inquire and discourse—when the seed of man is turned into blood, when into solid flesh, when the bones begin to harden, when to be filled with marrow; how many kinds there are of veins and nerves, by what coursings and windings they irrigate and bind together the whole body; whether the skin is to be reckoned among the nerves or the teeth among the bones—for they differ, in that they lack marrow—and in what the nails differ from both, since in hardness they are like the bones, but to be pared and to grow they have in common with the hairs; what is the use of those vessels not of blood but of air, which they call arteries:
—if the soul should desire to know these and suchlike things concerning the nature of its own body, is it then to be said to a man, 'Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy strength'? But if it inquires concerning its own origin, which it does not know, is that not higher nor stronger than that it should be able to grasp it?
And do you deem it absurd and contrary to reason that the soul should not know whether it was newly breathed in by God or drawn from its parents—since it does not remember this as now past, and reckons it among those things which, irrevocably, like infancy and the rest of its most recent age from the womb, it has forgotten (if indeed it was done with any consciousness of the soul when it was done)—and yet you do not deem it absurd and incongruous that the soul should not know the body subject to it, and should be wholly ignorant of that which belongs not to its past but to its present: whether it moves the veins in order to live in the body, but works the nerves as members of the body; and if that is so, why it does not move the nerves except when it wills, yet the pulse of the veins, even if it be unwilling, it plies without ceasing; from what part of the body it exercises dominion over the rest—that which they call the ἡγεμονικόν (the governing faculty)—whether from the heart or from the brain, or distributively: from the heart the motions, from the brain the sensations; or from the brain both the sensations and the voluntary motions, but from the heart the involuntary pulses of the veins; and if it does those two from the brain, why it feels even if it be unwilling, but does not move the members unless it wills?
Since, then, the soul does not do these things in the body except itself, why does it not know what it does, or whence it does it? Nor is it shameful to it that it does not know these things, and yet you deem it shameful if it should not know whence or how it was made—when it did not make itself? Or is it that, because certain persons know how and whence the soul does these things in the body, you therefore do not think that this pertains to those higher and stronger matters? But I, from this very point, raise for you a greater question: why very few know whence they do what all men do. Perhaps you will say it is because those learned the anatomical or empirical art, which the discipline of medicine contains—an art which few attain, but which the rest were unwilling to learn, though they could have, had they but willed.
Here I forbear to say why many try to learn these things and cannot, because—which is very wondrous—they are hindered by a slow intelligence from learning from others things which are done by them, in themselves and among themselves. But this very thing is the greatest question: why I do not need any art in order to know that the sun and moon and other stars are in heaven, and yet I do need an art in order to know, when I move a finger, from where I begin—from the heart or from the brain or from both or from neither—and need no teacher; and yet, that I may know what is so far above me, so high, I must wait to learn from another man whence is done by me that which is done in me.
For since we are said to think in the heart, and know what we think without any other man knowing it, yet we ourselves do not know in what part of the body we have the very heart in which we think, unless we learn it from another who does not know what we think. Nor am I unaware that, when we hear that we should love God with our whole heart, this is not said of that little particle of our flesh which lies hidden beneath the ribs, but of that power by which our thoughts are made—which is rightly called by this name, because, just as motion does not cease in the heart, whence the pulse spreads itself everywhere through the veins, so we never rest from turning something over in thought.
But nevertheless, since all sense is present to the body from the soul, why is it that even in darkness and with eyes closed we count our outward members by the bodily sense which is called touch, yet by the interior presence of the soul itself—by which it is at hand to all things that it vivifies and animates—we know none of our inward organs from within; and I judge that no one knows this: not the empiric physicians, nor the anatomists, nor the dogmatists, nor the methodists, but no man. And whoever shall have attempted to learn these things, not in vain is it said to him: 'Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy strength.'
For they are not higher than our stature can reach, but than our conjecture can comprehend; and stronger than the force of human intelligence can penetrate. And yet it is not the heaven of heavens, not the dimension of the stars, not the measure of sea and lands, not the lower hell—it is we ourselves, we who are not strong enough to comprehend ourselves; we surpass, as higher and stronger, the small measure of our own knowledge; we cannot contain ourselves, and yet we are certainly not outside ourselves. Nor on that account are we to be compared to the beasts, because we do not thoroughly discover what we are; and do you think we are to be compared to the beasts if we have forgotten what we were, if indeed we ever knew it? For neither is my soul now being drawn from parents nor breathed in by God:
whichever of these He did, He did it then, when He created me; He does it not now of me or in me. That deed is done and finished; it is neither present to me nor recent. Nor do I even know this: whether I knew it and have forgotten it, or whether not even then, when it was done, could I have perceived and known it. Behold, now, now while we exist, while we live, while we know that we live, while we are most certain that we remember and understand and will—we who boast that we are great knowers of our own nature—are utterly ignorant of what our memory or understanding or will avails.
A certain friend of mine from youth, Simplicius by name, a man of excellent and marvellous memory: when he was asked by us what verses Virgil had put next-to-last in each of his books, straightway, quickly and from memory, he answered. We even asked him to say the lines above those: he said them. And we believed he could recite Virgil backwards; from whatever passage we wished, we asked him to do it: he did it. Even in prose, from whatever oration of Cicero he had committed to memory, we wished him to do this: as far up as we wished, he followed it upwards, verse by verse. When we marvelled, he called God to witness that he had not known he could do this before that experiment.
Thus, as far as pertains to his memory, his mind then came to know itself, and whenever it might come to know it, it could not do so except by attempting and experiencing; and yet before he attempted, that same man was himself. Why, then, did he not know himself? Often we presume that we shall retain something in memory, and thinking that we shall, we do not write it down; and afterwards, when we wish, it does not come into our mind, and we repent that we believed it would come and did not bind it with letters, lest it should escape; and suddenly again, when we are not seeking it, it comes to mind. Were we not ourselves, then, when we were thinking of it? And yet we are not that which we were, when we cannot think of it.
What is it, then, that in some way I know not we are withdrawn and denied to ourselves, and again in some way I know not we are brought forth to ourselves and restored to ourselves, as though we were other persons and were elsewhere, when we seek and do not find what we placed in our memory, and cannot ourselves reach ourselves, as though placed elsewhere, and then do reach ourselves when we find it? For where do we seek save with ourselves? And what do we seek save ourselves, as though we were not in ourselves and had withdrawn somewhere from ourselves? Do you not attend and shudder at so great a depth? And what else is this than our own nature—not such as it was, but such as it now is? And behold, it is more sought than comprehended. Often I have thought I would understand a question set before me, if I thought about it;
I thought about it and could not; often I did not think about it, and yet I could. Therefore the powers of my own intelligence are assuredly not known to me, and I believe they are not known to you either. But perhaps you despise me for confessing, and on this account too will compare me to the beasts. Yet I do not cease to warn, or, if you deem it not worthy, at least to admonish, that you should rather acknowledge the common infirmity in which strength is perfected, lest by presuming things unknown as known you be unable to reach the truth. For I think there is something which you too seek to understand and cannot, and yet you would not seek it, unless you hoped you could. And by this you too do not know the powers of your own intelligence, you who profess knowledge of your own nature and do not with me confess ignorance.
What shall I say of the will, where free choice is certainly preached by us? Indeed the most blessed apostle Peter wished to lay down his life for the Lord—he plainly wished it; for he was not deceiving God by promising it, but he did not know how great powers the will itself had: accordingly so great a man, who had come to know that Jesus was the Son of God, lay hidden from himself. We know, therefore, that we will or do not will something; but our will, even when it is good, how much it avails, how great powers it has, to what temptations it yields and to what it does not yield—if we do not deceive ourselves, beloved son—we do not know.
See, therefore, how many things—not past, but present—concerning our nature we are ignorant of, and that not only as regards the body, but even as regards the inner man; and yet we are not compared to the beasts. And you, because I am not wholly ignorant of the past origin of my soul, but do not fully know it—for I know it was given to me by God, and yet is not of God—did you think me worthy of so great a reproach? And when could I recount all the things we do not know concerning the nature of spirit and soul? Where we ought rather to cry out to God what he cried out in the psalm: 'Thy knowledge is become wonderful from me; it hath prevailed, I shall not be able to reach unto it.'
For why did he add 'from me,' unless because from himself he conjectured how incomprehensible was the knowledge of God, since he was not able to comprehend himself? The apostle was caught up into the third heaven and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter; and whether this had befallen him in the body or out of the body, he says that he does not know—and he does not dread being compared by you to the beasts. He knew that his spirit was in the third heaven, was in paradise, and yet whether he was in the body he did not know. And certainly the third heaven and paradise were not the apostle Paul himself; but his body and soul and spirit—that was himself. Behold, he knew great, high, and divine things which he himself was not;
and this he did not know, which pertained to his own nature. Who would not marvel at so great an ignorance of himself amid so great a knowledge of hidden things? Who, finally, would believe it, unless He who does not deceive said this: 'What we should pray for as we ought, we know not'? Where our intention ought most of all to be, that we may stretch ourselves out toward the things that are before; and if I have forgotten anything of my origin among the things that are behind, you compare me to the beasts—when you hear the same apostle saying: 'Forgetting the things that are behind, stretched out toward the things that are before, I follow according to my intention toward the palm of the supernal calling of God in Christ Jesus'! Or is it perhaps that, because I have said this too:
'What we should pray for as we ought, we know not,' you judge me to be laughed at and deem me like unto irrational living creatures? And perhaps that would be more tolerable. For since by right and sound judgment we prefer our future things to our past, and prayer is necessary to us not on account of what we were, but on account of what we shall be, it is assuredly far more grievous not to know what we pray for than how we came into being. But let it come into your mind, where you read this; or, by reading it again, recall it, and do not cast at me the stone of this reproach, lest it reach one to whom you do not wish it to reach. For that very Doctor of the Gentiles, the apostle, said: 'For what we should pray for as we ought, we know not'—which he taught not only by word, but also demonstrated by his own example.
For, contrary to his own advantage and to the perfecting of his salvation, he prayed in ignorance that the thorn of the flesh might depart from him, which he said had been given to him lest he be exalted by the greatness of his revelations. And because the Lord loved him, He did not do what he ignorantly asked; yet nonetheless, where he says, 'For what we should pray for as we ought, we know not,' he presently added: 'but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession with unspeakable groanings. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what the Spirit desireth, because He asketh for the saints according to God'—that is, 'makes the saints ask'—that Spirit, assuredly, whom God sent into our hearts crying, 'Abba, Father,' and in whom we cry, 'Abba, Father'; for both are said: that we received the Spirit crying,
'Abba, Father,' and that we received the Spirit in whom we cry, 'Abba, Father'—so that it might be explained how he said 'crying,' that is, 'making us cry,' so that by His acting we cry. Therefore let Him teach me this too, when He wills, if He knows it to be expedient for me, that I may know whence I derive my origin according to the soul. But let that Spirit teach me this, who searcheth the deep things of God, not a man who does not know whence a wineskin is inflated. Yet far be it that I should on this account compare you to the beasts; for you did not know this, not because you could not, but because you had not attended to it.
But you perhaps, although the things sought concerning the origin of souls are higher than whence we derive and return breath, nevertheless trust that you have learned these same higher things from the holy Scriptures—through which, by faith, we have learned those things which no human intelligences could trace out. For it is assuredly far more excellent to know that the flesh will rise again and will live without end, than whatever the physicians could learn by scrutinizing in it—things which the soul perceives by no sense, though by its presence it quickens all that it knows not; and it is far better to know that the soul which shall have been reborn and renewed in Christ will be blessed in eternity, than whatever we do not know concerning its memory, understanding, and will.
But these things which I have called more excellent and better we could in no way know, unless we believed the divine oracles. Perhaps, then, you suppose that you trust these oracles, so that you may not hesitate to bring forth a defined opinion concerning the origin of souls. First, if that were so, you ought not to have attributed to human nature itself the fact that a man knows how to inquire and discourse concerning his own quality and nature, but to the gift of God; for you said: 'Wherein does a man differ from a beast, if he knows not this?' What need, then, is there to read anything, in order that we may know this, if by that very thing whereby we differ from a beast we ought already to know it?
For just as you read me no book in order that I may know that I live—for my nature has it so, that I cannot but know this—so, if that also is a matter of nature, why do you bring forth to me on this matter testimonies of the Scriptures which I should believe? Do only those differ from the beast who read them? Are we not so created that we differ from the beasts even before we can attain to any letters? What is it, I ask, that you so arrogate to our nature, that by that very thing whereby it differs from the beast it should already know how to inquire and discourse concerning the origin of souls, and again make it so devoid of this knowledge that it cannot know it in a human way, unless it believe divine witnesses? And then, in this too you are deceived.
For the divine testimonies which you wished to bring to bear on the solving of this question do not disclose it. It is another thing that they demonstrate—that without which we truly cannot live piously—namely, that we have God as the giver, creator, and fashioner of our souls. But how He does it—whether by breathing them newly, or by drawing them from parents—they do not express, except concerning that one soul which He gave to the first man. Read diligently what I wrote to our brother, God's servant Renatus; for there, because I showed this, it was not necessary to write it here also.
But you would wish me to define what you yourself defined, so that I might be thrust into such straits as those into which you yourself were thrust, when against the catholic faith you spoke so many and so great things, that, if you faithfully and humbly recall and consider them, you would assuredly see how much it would have profited you had you known that you do not know what you do not know, and how much it profits you if even now you know it. For if intelligence pleases you in the nature of man—since, in truth, if it did not have it, we should, as far as pertains to souls, in no way differ from the beasts—understand what you do not understand, lest you understand nothing at all, and do not despise the man who, that he may truly understand what he does not understand, understands that he does not understand this. But whence it was said in the sacred psalm:
'Man, when he was in honour, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and was made like unto them'—read and understand, so that you may rather humbly beware of this reproach yourself than proudly cast it at another. For this was said of those who reckon this life alone to be life, living according to the flesh and hoping for nothing after death, like the beasts—not of those who neither deny that they know what they know, and confess that they do not know what they do not know, and more safely understand their own infirmity than presume upon their own strength. Let not, therefore, my aged fear displease your youthful presumption, my son.
For I, if I cannot come to know this which we seek concerning the origin of souls—neither with God nor with any spiritual man teaching me—am more ready to defend how rightly God has willed that we should not know this, as He has willed many other things, than rashly to say what may be either so obscure.
so that not only can I not bring this to the understanding of others, but I cannot even understand it myself, or else it may actually assist the heretics who for this reason attempt to persuade men that the souls of little children are pure from all guilt — namely, lest that same guilt should run back and return upon God its author, on the ground that He had forced innocent souls (souls for whom He foreknew that not even the laver of regeneration would come to their aid) to be sinful by giving them to sinful flesh, with no grace of baptism about to help them, by which they might be freed from everlasting condemnation, seeing that countless souls of infants depart from their bodies before they are baptized. But let this be far from us.
24:270
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so that, being unwilling to refute this, I should say the very things you yourself have said: 'that the soul has deserved to be defiled through the flesh and to be sinful, though it had no prior sin whereby it could rightly be said to have deserved this,' and 'that even without baptism original sins are dissolved,' and 'that the kingdom of heaven too is granted at the last to the unbaptized.' Were I not afraid to utter these and suchlike poisons of the faith, perhaps I would not be afraid to define something on this matter.
How much better, therefore, that I should not discourse separately about the soul and affirm what I do not know, but rather hold in simplicity what I most clearly see the Apostle to have taught: that from one man all men who are born of Adam go into condemnation, unless they be so reborn in Christ as He has appointed that they be reborn, before they die in the body — those whom the most merciful Bestower of grace has predestined to eternal life, who is also to those whom He has predestined to eternal death the most just Requiter of punishment, not only on account of those sins that men willingly add, but also, even if infants add nothing, on account of original sin. This is my determination in this question: that the hidden works of God keep their own secret, while my faith remains unharmed.
Now then, so far as the Lord deigns to grant, I must also reply to that place where, speaking of the soul, you repeated my name and said: 'For we do not, as Augustine, that most skilled bishop, professes, allow it to be incorporeal and the same as spirit.' First, therefore, let us discuss whether the soul is to be reckoned incorporeal, as I have said, or corporeal, as you say; and then whether it too is called spirit according to our Scriptures, although properly not the whole of it is called spirit, but some part of it. And first I should wish to know how you define what a body is. For if there is no body except what consists of fleshly members, then neither will the earth be a body, nor the heaven, nor a stone, nor water, nor the stars, nor anything of this kind;
but if a body is whatever consists of greater and lesser parts of its own occupying greater and lesser expanses of place, then these things which I have mentioned are also bodies: air is a body, this visible light is a body, and, as the Apostle says, all celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies. But whether the soul is anything of such a kind is inquired most scrupulously and most subtly. Yet you — for which I congratulate you most heartily — affirm that God is not a body; but again you make me anxious, when you say: 'If the soul lacks a body, so as to exist, as some hold, as an airy and futile substance of empty vacuity.' For by these words of yours you seem to believe that everything which lacks a body is of an empty substance.
But if that is so, how do you dare to say that God lacks a body and yet not fear lest it follow that He is of an empty substance? Further, if God too lacks a body — which you have already confessed — and yet far be it from you to say that He is of an empty substance, then not everything that lacks a body is of an empty substance. And therefore he who says the soul is incorporeal is not obliged to have it seem to be of an empty and futile substance, since he confesses that God too, who is not anything empty, is at the same time incorporeal. But see how great a difference there is between what I say and what you suppose me to say. For I do not even say that the soul is of an airy substance: otherwise I would be confessing it to be a body.
For air indeed is a body, according to all who, when they speak of bodies, know what they are speaking of. But you, because I called the soul incorporeal, supposed that I said it was not only of empty vacuity but, for this very reason, an airy substance — whereas I said both that it is not the body which air is, and that what is filled with air cannot be empty. Your very wineskins could not warn you of this. For what else but air is compressed into them when they are inflated? And so far are they from being empty that by that same fullness they even bear up weights.
But if perhaps a breath seems to you to be one thing and air another — whereas air in motion is itself a breath, as can also be shown by a fan being waved — at any rate, take any hollow vessels whatever, which you think are empty, and, so that you may know they are full, press them down into water from the side by which they are filled, and see how no moisture can enter into them, the air by which they are full driving it back. But when they are placed with their mouth turned upward, or on their side, then they receive liquid, if any is poured in or enters, as the air goes out and escapes where an exit lies open. This could be more easily demonstrated by the deed done in your presence than in writing.
But we must not linger here any longer, since whether you understand the nature of air to be corporeal or do not understand it, you nevertheless ought not to suppose that I have said the soul is even airy, but wholly incorporeal — which you too confess God to be, whom you do not dare to call anything empty, yet cannot deny to be of an omnipotent and immutable substance. Why, then, do we fear lest the soul be of empty vacuity if it be incorporeal, when we confess that God is incorporeal and do not say that He is of empty vacuity? And so the Incorporeal was able to create the incorporeal soul, just as the Living created the living, though the Immutable created the mutable and the Omnipotent created what is far unequal to Himself. But why you should be unwilling for the soul to be a spirit, and should wish it to be a body, I do not see.
For if it is not a spirit because the Apostle distinctly named the spirit, saying: 'and may your whole spirit and soul and body,' then by the same reasoning it is not a body, because he distinctly named the body also; but if you affirm that the soul is also a body although the body is distinctly named, then allow that it is also a spirit although the spirit is distinctly named. For the soul ought to seem to you much more to be a spirit than a body, since you confess that spirit and soul are of one substance, but you do not say that soul and body are of one substance. By what reasoning, then, is the soul a body, when its nature and that of body are different, and yet is not a spirit, when its nature and that of spirit are one and the same?