THE BOOK OF QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE, ON THE SOUL. ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. Whether the soul be a substance, and whether corporeal, and whether it have a shape; that the soul and the spirit are one thing; that the soul and the mind are not to be separated; whether there be, and where be, what is called the 'ruling faculty' (hegemonicon); concerning the five bodily senses; that the philosophers and heretics distinguish between things of sense and things of intellect. That intellect is always present in the soul. Of the other natural properties of the soul. Whence the soul is, against the heretics who bring it down from the heavens. Against the argument of Plato, that he calls what we learn 'recollections.' On the contempt of the soul, against those who introduce it into the body after birth. Against the Platonic dogma, that the living do not come to be from the dead.
Against the opinions of Pythagoras and Empedocles concerning metempsychosis and transmigration of bodies (metensomatosis). Against the opinion of the heretics Simon and Carpocrates. On the sex of the soul and of the flesh, that they are formed together in the womb, upon this subject. On the age of the flesh and the soul. On foods, in what way they seem to pertain to the soul. That almost no soul is without a demon. In what sense the flesh is called sinful. On the good and evil of the soul. On death. On sleep, as pertaining to the treatise on death. And on the soul of Hermotimus. On Hermotimus. On dreams, how the soul experiences them, and whence they arise. On the power of death, and on the heretic Menander. That nothing of the soul remains in the body after death, as it seems to some. On the departure of the soul; on its reception; on the lower regions, and whether all souls are driven thither.
Whether souls tarry here after death, or come and go from the lower regions; whether meanwhile souls suffer anything among the dead. I. Having engaged Hermogenes solely on the question of the soul's origin, inasmuch as he presumed that this too consisted rather from the supply of matter than from the breath of God, now, turning to the remaining questions, I shall appear for the most part destined to do battle with the philosophers. Even in the prison of Socrates the state of the soul was skirmished over; I know not now whether this was first or at a fitting time for the master, though it matters nothing as to place. For what could the soul of Socrates then savour clearly, when the sacred ship had now returned, when the hemlock of condemnation had now been drained, when death was now present—surely thrown into some agitation according to nature, or driven distraught, if not according to nature?
For however placid and tranquil that soul was—which neither the weeping of a wife soon to be widowed nor the sight of children thereafter to be orphaned had bent by the law of natural affection—yet even in this it was moved: namely, in order not to be moved; that very constancy was shaken in its stand against the shock of inconstancy. But what else would any man unjustly condemned savour, save the solace of his wrong—much less a philosopher, that creature of glory, for whom a wrong is not to be consoled but rather to be insulted? Finally, after the sentence, to his wife who met him and cried out in womanly fashion, 'You have been unjustly condemned, Socrates!' he had already replied, as though from gratitude:
'But did you wish me justly condemned?' At which one need not marvel, if even in prison, eager to break the birdlimed palms of Anytus and Meletus, he asserts before death itself the immortality of the soul by a presumption necessary for the frustration of the wrong. So entirely had all that wisdom of Socrates then come from a studied composure of mind, not from the confidence of a truth ascertained. For to whom is truth ascertained without God? To whom is God known without Christ? To whom is Christ explored without the Holy Spirit? To whom is the Holy Spirit imparted without the sacrament of faith?
To be sure, Socrates could the more easily be driven by an alien spirit, since they say a demon clung to him from boyhood—truly a most wicked tutor, even though among the poets and philosophers demons are reckoned after the gods and along with the gods. For the proofs of Christian power had not yet gone forth, which alone exposes that most pernicious force, never good but rather the artificer of all error and the enticer away from all truth. But if for this reason Socrates was the wisest of men according also to the verdict of the Pythian demon—who, forsooth, was doing business for his associate—how much worthier and more constant is the affirmation of Christian wisdom, to whose breath the whole force of demons yields?
This wisdom, from the school of heaven, is freer to deny the gods of the age—a wisdom which, bidding no cock to be paid to Aesculapius, would not play false, nor introducing new demons but expelling old ones, nor corrupting youth but shaping it with every good of modesty; and therefore, enduring the unjust sentence not of one city but of the whole world for the name of a truth so much the more hated as it is the fuller, so that it drinks in death not from a cup in a semblance of pleasantness, but drains it from the gibbet and the burning alive through every device of cruelty; meanwhile in this darker prison of the age, among its own Cebes-figures and its own Phaedo-figures, if anything is to be examined concerning the soul, it will direct itself to the rules of God, certain that there is no better demonstrator of the soul than its Author.
Let it learn from God what it has from God, or else from none, if not from God. For who shall reveal what God has veiled? From whom is it to be sought? And whence it is also safest to remain in ignorance. It is better through God to be ignorant, because He has not revealed it, than through man to know, because he himself has presumed. II. Plainly we shall not deny that the philosophers have sometimes thought in accord with us; the very outcome of truth is itself a testimony. Sometimes even in a storm, when the traces of sky and sea are confounded, some harbour is stumbled upon by a fortunate error; sometimes even in the dark certain entrances and exits are lit upon by a blind good fortune; but also very many things are supplied by nature, as it were from a common sense with which God has deigned to endow the soul.
Philosophy, having got hold of this, has puffed it up to the glory of its own art, in its zeal—no wonder, if I put it so—for eloquence, being skilled to build up and pull down anything whatever, and persuading more by speaking than by teaching. It imposes forms upon things, now makes them equal, now strips them; it prejudges the uncertain from the certain; it appeals to examples, as though all things were to be compared; it lays down rules for everything, with properties differing even among like things; it reserves nothing for the divine liberty; it has made the laws of nature its own opinions. I could bear it, if it were itself natural, so that it might be proved, as a partaker of nature, to share in the condition of that partnership.
It has indeed seemed to itself to have drawn also from what they think to be sacred writings, because antiquity reckoned very many authors even as gods—much more as divine beings—such as the Egyptian Mercury, to whom Plato especially attached himself; such as the Phrygian Silenus, whose huge ears Midas received when he was brought to him by shepherds; such as Hermotimus, to whom the people of Clazomenae, when he had died, dedicated a temple; such as Orpheus, such as Musaeus, such as Pherecydes the teacher of Pythagoras.
But what if the philosophers have also fallen upon those writings which among us are condemned under the confession of being apocryphal—since we are certain that nothing is to be received which does not accord with the genuine prophetic furnishing, already brought forth in that very age—seeing that we should also remember the false prophets, and much earlier the apostate spirits, who by the cunning of wits of this kind too have equipped the whole face of the age?
Finally, even if it is credible that every investigator of wisdom has, out of the business of curiosity, approached the very prophets, nevertheless you would find more diversity among the philosophers than fellowship; since even in that fellowship their diversity is detected, inasmuch as whatever things are true and consonant with the prophets they either commend from another source or divert to another purpose, with the greatest injury to the truth, which they cause either to be assisted by falsehoods or to give patronage to them.
This, then, is what may set us and the philosophers at variance, especially in this subject: that sometimes they clothe common opinions in their own argumentations, in some places contrary to our rule; sometimes they fortify their own opinions with common argumentations, in some places agreeable to their rule—so that truth is well-nigh shut out from philosophy by the sorceries it works upon her;
and therefore, being under pressure from an adversary of truth by both these titles of fellowship, we are constrained both to free common opinions from the argumentations of the philosophers and to separate common argumentations from their opinions, by recalling the questions to the writings of God—excepting plainly those which, without the snare of any prejudice, it will be permissible to take up for simple testimony, since from rivals too a necessary testimony is sometimes had, if it does not profit the rivals. Nor am I ignorant how great a forest of this material there is among the philosophers, in proportion also to the number of their very commentators: how many varieties of opinion, how many wrestling-schools of theories, how many offshoots of questions, how many entanglements of solutions.
But I have also inspected medicine, the sister, as they say, of philosophy, which claims this business for itself as well. Why not? seeing that the study of the soul might seem to pertain more to it, through the care of the body. Hence too it very greatly opposes its sister, in that, by handling the soul as it were face to face in its own dwelling, it knows it the better. But let the ambition of each for pre-eminence look to it. Philosophy has had the liberty of genius, and medicine the necessity of its craft, for prolonging discussions about the soul: things uncertain are widely inquired into, things presumed are still more widely disputed.
As great as is the difficulty of proving, so great is the labour of persuading; so that with good reason that gloomy Heraclitus, observing the vaster mists among the examiners of the soul, out of weariness of the questions declared that he had by no means found the boundaries of the soul, though he traversed every road. But for the Christian few things are needful for the knowledge of this matter. For things certain always lie in few, and it is not permitted him to inquire further than what it is permitted to find; for the apostle forbids endless questions. Moreover, it is not permitted to find more than what is learned from God; and what is learned from God is the whole. III. And would that it had been necessary for no heresies to exist, that thereby the approved might shine forth.
We should experience nothing at all with the philosophers concerning the soul either—those patriarchs, so to speak, of the heretics—since by the apostle too, already then, philosophy was foreseen as a shattering of truth; for at Athens, having made trial of that garrulous city, when he had tasted all the hucksters of wisdom and eloquence there, he thence conceived that forewarning edict. For accordingly the doctrine of the soul too has been shattered by the philosophizing teachings of men who mix water with wine: some deny that the soul is immortal, others affirm it more than immortal, some dispute about its substance, others about its form, others about each of its dispositions;
these derive its condition from one source, those carry off its end to another quarter, according as either the prestige of Plato or the vigour of Zeno or the tenor of Aristotle or the stupor of Epicurus or the sorrow of Heraclitus or the frenzy of Empedocles has persuaded them. Divine doctrine has failed, I suppose, in rising from Judaea rather than from Greece. And Christ erred, forsooth, in sending fishermen rather than a sophist to the proclamation.
If therefore any things in this manner darken the bright and pure air of truth with the fumes of philosophy, these must be cleared away by Christians, who both strike at the original—that is, philosophical—argumentations and set against them the heavenly—that is, the Lord's—definitions, so that both those things by which the heathen are captured by philosophy may be destroyed, and those by which the faithful are shaken from heresy may be beaten back. One encounter having now been decided against Hermogenes, as we said before—because we vindicate the soul as being from the breath of God, not from matter—being fortified there too by the ineffaceable rule of the divine determination:
'and God,' it says, 'breathed the breath of life into the face of man, and man became a living soul'—assuredly from the breath of God; concerning this nothing more need be revolved; it has its own heading and its own heretic. From the rest I shall bring in a beginning here. IV. ON THE INNATE. After the definition of its origin, the question of its condition presents itself. For it follows that, having professed the soul to be from the breath of God, we should reckon a beginning to it. This Plato excludes, wishing the soul to be innate and uncreated. But we teach that it is both born and made, from the constitution of its beginning. Nor shall we straightway err in saying both, because, namely, one thing is 'born' and another 'made'—the latter belonging as it were to inanimate things, the former to animate.
But distinctions, by having their own places and times, sometimes also have interchanges of passivity. So it admits that 'making' be put also for 'to be,' since everything that in any way receives being is generated. For even the maker himself can be called the parent of what is made; so too Plato uses the term. Therefore, as far as concerns our faith in the soul as made or born, the philosopher's opinion has been driven off, by the authority of prophecy also. V. Let them summon some Eubulus and Critolaus and Xenocrates, and in this place Plato's friend Aristotle. Perhaps they will be built up rather toward taking away the corporeality of the soul, if they do not, on the contrary, look at others—and indeed more of them—who vindicate a body for the soul.
Nor do I speak only of those who fashion it out of manifest corporeal elements—as Hipparchus and Heraclitus out of fire, as Hippo and Thales out of water, as Empedocles and Critias out of blood, as Epicurus out of atoms (if atoms too press corporeal masses together from their coming together), as Critolaus and his Peripatetics out of some fifth substance I know not what (if that too is body, because it encloses bodies)—but I adduce even the Stoics, who, by preaching a spirit, will readily persuade us that the soul, well-nigh with us, since breath and spirit are close to each other, is nonetheless a body. Finally Zeno, defining the soul as a spirit sown in, sets it out in this way. That, he says, on whose departure the animal dies is a body;
but on the departure of the in-sown spirit the animal dies; therefore the in-sown spirit is a body; therefore the soul is a body. Cleanthes too holds that the likeness to parents in their children answers not only in the lineaments of the body but also in the marks of the soul—in the mirror, that is, of manners and dispositions and affections; and that the soul takes on both likeness and unlikeness of body, and that the soul therefore is a body, being liable to likeness or unlikeness. Likewise that the passions of corporeal and incorporeal things do not communicate with one another;
moreover, that the soul suffers with the body, grieving together with it when it is injured by blows, wounds, ulcers; and the body with the soul, sickening together with it when it is afflicted by care, anguish, love, through the diminution of a shared vigour, whose shame and dread it attests by blushing and pallor. Therefore the soul is a body, from the communion of corporeal passions. But Chrysippus too extends his hand to it, laying down that corporeal things cannot be left behind at all by incorporeal, since they are not even touched by them (whence also Lucretius: 'for nothing can touch or be touched save body'); but that the body, when left behind by the soul, is affected by death. Therefore the soul is a body, which, unless corporeal, would not leave behind the body. VI. These things the Platonists confound with subtlety rather than truth.
'Every body,' they say, 'must be either animate or inanimate. And if indeed it is inanimate, it will be moved from without; but if animate, from within. Now the soul will neither be moved from without, as being not inanimate, nor from within, as being itself rather that which moves the body. And so it does not appear to be a body, since it is not moved by the form of corporeal things from some quarter.' To this we shall marvel first at the incongruity of the definition, which appeals to things that do not apply to the soul. For the soul cannot be called an animate or inanimate body, since it is itself that which either makes a body animate, if it is present, or inanimate, if it is absent from it. And so what makes cannot be the thing itself, so as to be called animate or inanimate.
For the soul is named by the name of its own substance. (3.) But if it does not admit of being called an animate or inanimate body—that is, the soul—how shall it be summoned to the form of animate and inanimate bodies? Next, if it belongs to a body to be moved from without by something—but we have shown above that the soul too is moved by another, when it prophesies, when it raves, certainly from without, since by another—rightly shall I recognize as a body that which will be moved from without by another according to the proposition of the example. But indeed, if to be moved by another belongs to a body, how much more to move another? Now the soul moves the body, and its efforts appear outwardly, without.
For it is by the soul that the feet are driven into walking, the hands into contact, the eyes into gazing, the tongue into utterance—as it were by a signet-like motion agitating the surface from within. Whence this incorporeal force of the soul? Whence for an empty thing to propel solid things? But how do the corporeal and intellectual senses appear divided in man? They say that the qualities of corporeal things—as of earth, as of fire—are reported to the corporeal senses, as to touch, as to sight; but that incorporeal qualities are met by the intellectual senses, as of kindness, as of malice. Therefore it is established that the soul is incorporeal, whose qualities are apprehended not by the corporeal but by the intellectual senses. Plainly so, if I do not exclude this step of the definition.
For behold, I show that incorporeal things too are subjected to the corporeal senses—sound to hearing, colour to sight, odour to smell—by whose example the soul too approaches the body, lest you say that these are reported through the corporeal senses for the reason that they approach corporeal things. Therefore, if it is established that incorporeal things too are apprehended by corporeal things, why should not the soul also, which is corporeal, be reported by incorporeal things? Assuredly let the definition be excluded. Among the more notable argumentations there will also be this: that they judge every body to be nourished by corporeal things, but the soul, as incorporeal, by incorporeal things—namely by the pursuits of wisdom.
But not even this step will stand, when Soranus too, that most accomplished author of methodic medicine, replies that the soul is nourished by corporeal things as well—indeed that when failing from lack of food it is for the most part propped up thereby. Why not? seeing that, this being taken away, it slips wholly out of the body. So Soranus himself too, having most fully treated of the soul in four volumes, and having tried out all the opinions of the philosophers, vindicates a corporeal substance for the soul, even though he defrauded it of immortality. For it is not for all to believe what belongs to Christians. As therefore Soranus himself shows by facts that the soul is nourished by corporeal things, let the philosopher likewise exhibit it as fed by incorporeal things.
But no one ever poured honeyed water from the eloquence of Plato into a soul hesitating about its departure, or crammed in crumbs from the minute talk of Aristotle. And what will so many and so great souls of savages and barbarians do, to whom the nourishments of wisdom are lacking, and yet who, untaught, are strong in prudence, and who—without academies and Attic porticoes and the prison of Socrates, in short, fasting from philosophy—nonetheless live? For the nourishments of studies profit not the substance itself, but the discipline, because they do not make the soul fatter, but more adorned. But it is well too that the Stoics affirm the arts to be corporeal. So even thus the soul is corporeal, if it is believed to be nourished by the arts too.
But the excessive strain of philosophy is often wont not even to look out for what lies before its feet (so Thales into the well), and is wont, from not understanding its own opinions, to suspect a corruption of health (so Chrysippus turning to hellebore). Some such thing, I suppose, befell it when it denied that two bodies could be in one, being alienated from the observation and reconsideration of pregnant women, who bear not single bodies daily, but even two and three within the compass of one womb. There is found even in Greek civil law a certain woman who brought forth five, the mother of all her sons at once, the multiple parent of a single birth, the numerous mother of a single womb, who, packed with so many bodies—I might almost say a whole people—was herself the sixth body.
The whole condition of things will bear witness that bodies destined to proceed from bodies are already there whence they proceed. That which is from another must needs be a second thing. But nothing is from another, unless, while it is being begotten, there are two. VII. As far as concerns the philosophers, let these things suffice, since as far as concerns our own people they are more than enough; to whom the corporeality of the soul will shine forth in the Gospel itself. In the lower regions the soul of a certain man grieves and is punished in the flame and is tortured in the tongue, and from the finger of a happier soul implores the solace of dew. Do you deem that a mere image—that end of the rejoicing poor man and the mourning rich man? And why is the name of Eleazar there, if the matter is not in truth? But even if it is to be believed an image, it will be a testimony of truth.
For if the soul had no body, the image of the soul could not contain the image of a body, nor would Scripture speak falsely of bodily members, if there were none. But what is that which is carried down to the lower regions after its separation from the body, which is held fast there, which is reserved for the day of judgement, to which Christ also descended by dying (I suppose, to the souls of the patriarchs), if the soul is nothing beneath the earth? For it would be nothing, if it were not a body; since incorporeality is exempt from every kind of keeping, immune both from punishment and from comfort. For that by which one is punished or comforted must be a body; and I shall treat of this more fully and more fittingly.
Therefore, if the soul in the prison or lodging of the lower world enjoys beforehand any torment or solace, in fire or in Abraham's bosom, the corporeality of the soul will be proved. For that which is incorporeal suffers nothing, having nothing through which it can suffer; or if it has, that will be a body. For inasmuch as everything corporeal is capable of suffering, to that extent whatever is capable of suffering is corporeal. VIII. It is, moreover, abrupt and absurd to exclude anything from the reckoning of corporeal things merely because it does not correspond to the other examples of corporeal things. And where then are the distinct properties peculiar to each, by which the magnificence of the Author is marked out in the very diversity of His works, so that they are as separate as they are alike, as friendly as they are also rivals?
Indeed, the philosophers themselves declare that the universe is composed of contraries, according to the friendship and enmity of Empedocles. So then, even though corporeal things stand over against incorporeal, they too differ so among themselves that the difference enlarges their species without changing their genus, so that they remain corporeal, thus manifold in the glory of God while varied, thus varied while diverse, thus diverse while to some belongs one sense of qualities, to others another, while to some belong these foods, to others those, while some are invisible, others visible, while some are heavy, others light. For they say that on this very ground the soul must be pronounced incorporeal, because when it has departed the bodies of the dead become heavier, whereas they ought to be lighter, once the weight of one body has been removed, if the soul were a body.
"For what," says Soranus, "if they should deny that the sea is a body, because out of the sea a ship is rendered motionless and heavy?" How much stronger, then, is the body of the soul, which afterwards carries about with the lightest mobility a body of such great weight! But even though the soul is invisible, it is so both according to the condition of its body, and the property of its substance, and also according to the nature of those to whom it has been allotted to be invisible. Owls do not know the sun with their eyes; eagles so bear it that they judge the nobility of their offspring by the boldness of their pupils; otherwise they will not rear as degenerate the one whom the ray of the sun has turned away. Thus a thing is invisible to one and not to another, which is not on that account incorporeal, because its power does not prevail equally over all. For the sun is a body, since it is fire;
but that which the eagle acknowledges, the owl denies, yet without prejudice to the eagle. In the same degree also the body of the soul is invisible to the flesh, but perhaps visible to the spirit itself. Thus John, made to be in the Spirit of God, beheld the souls of the martyrs. IX. ON ITS SHAPE. Since we assert that the soul has a body of its own quality and of its own kind, this very condition of its property will already prejudge, concerning the other accidents of corporeity, either that these are present, which we have shown to be a body—but themselves of their own kind, according to the property of the body—or that even if they are not present, it belongs to its property that there should not be present in the body of the soul what is present in other bodies.
And yet we shall profess, not inconsistently, that all the more solemn attributes, and those in every way owed to corporeity, belong to the soul also: such as habit, such as limit, and that threefold dimension, I mean length and breadth and height, by which the philosophers measure bodies. What now, that we also ascribe a shape to the soul, though Plato is unwilling, as though the immortality of the soul were thereby endangered? For he asserts that everything shaped is composite and structured; and everything composite and structured is dissoluble;
but the soul is immortal, therefore indissoluble, inasmuch as it is immortal, and unshaped, inasmuch as it is indissoluble; but on the other hand composite and structured, if it is shaped—as though shaping it in another manner by intellectual forms, beautiful through justice and the disciplines of philosophy, but deformed through the contrary arts. But we inscribe upon it bodily outlines as well, not only from confidence in its corporeity by estimation, but also from the constancy of grace by revelation. For since we acknowledge spiritual gifts, after John we too have merited to attain to prophecy. There is today among us a sister who has been allotted the charismata of revelations, which she experiences in church during the Lord's solemnities through ecstasy in the Spirit;
she converses with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and she sees and hears mysteries, and discerns the hearts of some, and receives remedies for those who desire them. Now, according as the Scriptures are read, or psalms are sung, or addresses are delivered, or petitions are offered, so from thence are materials supplied for her visions. It happened that we were discoursing about something concerning the soul, when that sister was in the Spirit.
After the solemnities were over and the congregation dismissed, as she is accustomed to report to us what she has seen (for these things are also most diligently examined, that they may be tested), she said, "Among other things, a soul was shown to me in bodily form, and a spirit was seen, but not of an empty and void quality, rather one that even promised to be grasped, tender and shining and of an aerial colour, and in form altogether human." This was the vision. And God is witness, and the Apostle a competent surety of the charismata that were to be in the church; then too, if the matter itself shall have persuaded you concerning particulars, you may believe. For if the soul is a body, without doubt, among those things which we professed above, likewise the property of colour will belong to every body. What other colour, then, will you reckon for the soul than one aerial and shining?