On the Soul and Its Origin 4.27–4.39

What if something like this happens in the underworld, and souls recognize themselves there not in bodies but in likenesses of bodies? For when we suffer sad things, even in dreams, although that is a likeness of bodily members, not bodily members, yet it is not a likeness of punishment but punishment; so too where joyful things are felt. But since Saint Perpetua was not yet dead, perhaps you do not want a rule laid down for you from this, although it is very relevant what nature you think those likenesses of bodies we have in dreams are. And the whole case would be finished if you confessed that they are both like bodies and not bodies. But her brother Dinocrates was dead; she saw him with the wound he had had while living and from which he was brought to death. Where now is what you laboured at with such efforts, when you dealt with the cutting off of limbs, lest the soul be thought to be cut together with them? See, there was a wound in the soul of Dinocrates, which by its force, when the soul was in his body, drove it out of the body. How then, according to your opinion, when the limbs of the body are cut off, does the soul withdraw from the blow and gather itself into other parts by condensing, lest any part of it be amputated by the body’s wound, even if some limb is cut off from someone asleep and unaware? For you attribute such vigilance to it that, even when occupied with the sights of dreams, if a blow falls on one unaware by which the flesh is struck, it providently and swiftly withdraws itself, so that it cannot be struck and harmed or cut; and you do not notice, sensible man, that if the soul withdrew itself from there, the blow would not even be felt. But find what you could answer to this, how the soul snatches away its parts and hides them inward, lest, when a member of the body is cut off or struck, it too be amputated and harmed: look at Dinocrates and say why his soul did not withdraw from that place of the body which was being ravaged by a deadly wound, so that there should not happen in it what appeared on his face even after the death of the body itself. Or perhaps you now prefer that we believe these to be likenesses of bodies rather than bodies, so that, just as what is not a wound appears as a wound, so what is not a body appears as a body? For if the soul can be wounded by those who wound the body, is there nothing to fear lest it can be killed by those who kill the body? Which the Lord most plainly testifies cannot happen. And yet the soul of Dinocrates could not die from what his body died of, and it appeared as if wounded, as his body had been wounded, because it was not a body, but had in the likeness of a body also the likeness of a wound. Moreover, in the unreal body there was a real misery of the soul, signified by the shadowed wound of the body, from which it deserved to be freed by the prayers of his holy sister.

Now what sort of thing is it to say that the soul receives its form from the body and is stretched out and grows with the body’s growth, and not to notice how monstrous the soul of a young or old man will turn out if his arm is cut off in infancy? For the soul’s hand contracts itself, as you say, lest it too be amputated with the hand of the body, and shuts itself up in other parts of the body by condensing. And so that arm of the soul will be kept as short as the body’s arm was from which it had received its form, wherever it is kept, because it has lost the form by whose growth it could have grown along with it. So the soul of a young or old man who lost his hand when he was small departs having two hands indeed, because one, fleeing, was not amputated with the body, but one a young man’s or an old man’s, and the other an infant’s, as it was at first. Such souls, believe me, are not made by the form of the body but fashioned by the deformity of error. You do not seem to me able to be rescued from this error unless, with God’s help, you carefully consider the visions of dreamers and learn from them that there are some things which are not bodies but likenesses of bodies. For although the things we think of as like bodies are also of this kind, yet, as far as the dead are concerned, a more fitting conjecture is drawn from sleepers. For not in vain does holy Scripture call the dead sleepers, unless because sleep is in a way the kin of death.

Accordingly, if the soul were a body and the figure in which it sees itself in dreams were bodily, because it had been pressed out from its body, no man who has had a limb of the body amputated would see himself in dreams without it, as he lacks it, but rather always whole, because nothing of the soul itself had been amputated. But since people sometimes see themselves whole and sometimes, as they are, maimed in whatever part, what does this teach but that the soul bears, as with the other things it perceives in dreams, so too with the body, now one way, now another, not the reality but a likeness? But its joy or sadness, delight or offence, whether it is in bodies or in likenesses of bodies, is real. Did you yourself not say, and say truly, that food and clothing are necessary not for the soul but for the body? Why then did the rich man long for a drop of water in the underworld? Why did holy Samuel after death, as you too mentioned, appear dressed in his usual garment? Did the one wish to repair the ruins of his soul, as of the flesh, by the nourishment of moisture? Had the other left the body clothed? But in the one there was real distress, by which the soul was tormented, yet not a real body for which it sought nourishment; and the other could appear clothed in such a way that he was not a body, but both the soul and its dress had the likeness of a body. For the soul does not stretch and compress itself into clothes as into the members of the body, so as to be formed by them too.

But after death, what power of knowing souls receive when unburdened of corruptible bodies—even souls that are not good—so that they can see and recognize with inner senses both evil souls like themselves and even good ones, whether in likenesses of bodies, not bodies, or in the good or evil dispositions of the mind, in which there are no outlines of members, as it were—who could track this down? From this comes also that the rich man in torment recognized father Abraham, whose bodily figure was not known to him, the likeness of whose body, though incorporeal, the soul could retain. And who could rightly say that he knew any man except in so far as he could know his life and will, which certainly have no bulk or colours? For so we know ourselves too more surely than others, because our conscience and will are known to us. We see it plainly, and yet in it we see no likeness of a body; this we do not discern in another even when he is present, though we know, recall, and think of his face even when he is absent. But our own face we cannot know, recall, or think of in that way, and yet we say most truly that we are more known to ourselves than he is. So it is clear where the better and truer knowledge of a man lies.

Since, then, there is one thing in the soul by which we perceive true bodies—which we do with the five senses of the body—another by which, apart from these, we discern things like bodies that are not bodies—where we behold ourselves too only as like bodies—and another by which we behold, more surely and firmly indeed, things that are neither bodies nor likenesses of bodies, such as faith, hope, and love, without any colours or bulk or anything like them: where ought we rather to be, and in a way to dwell more familiarly, where to be renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created us? Is it not in what I have put in the third place? For there certainly we bear no sex nor any likeness of sex.

Now that form of a male or female soul, distinguished by male and female members, if it is not a likeness of a body but a body, is, whether you will or not, male, and, whether you will or not, female, whichever appears either male or female. But if, according to your opinion, the soul both is a body, and a living body, and has swelling and hanging breasts, and has no beard, and has a womb and genitals, which the members of a female body have, and yet is not female, shall I not say true things more consistently: it has an eye and a tongue and a finger and the other like members of the body, and all this is a likeness of a body, not a body—since each can prove what I say in himself when he imagines the bodies of absent people, and certainly prove it when he recalls the figures, both his own and others, of his dreams—while from you no example in the nature of things can be brought forward of this monster, where there is a true, living, female body and yet no female sex?

What you say about the phoenix has nothing at all to do with the matter under discussion. For it signifies the resurrection of bodies; it does not destroy the sex of souls—if indeed, as is believed, it is reborn from its own death. But I suppose you thought your speech would be too little applauded if you did not declaim at length about the phoenix, in the manner of young men. For does its body have male genitals, and it is not male, or female ones, and it is not female? But pay attention to what you are saying, what you are trying to establish and persuade us of. You say that the soul, spread through all the members, stiffened by congealing and received the whole form of the whole body from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, from the inmost marrow to the surface of the skin; and so in a woman’s body it received whatever female organs women have, and this is a true body and these are true members, and yet it is not female. Why, I beg you, in a true and living body are all the members female, and it is not female; in a true and living body are all the members male, and it is not male? Who would presume to believe, say, or teach such things? Is it because souls do not beget? Then neither are mules, male and female, male and female. Is it because souls will not be able to lie together without bodies of flesh? But this is taken away also from those who are castrated, and yet, though both the motion and the act are taken from them, their sex is not taken away, since the form of the male members, however small, remains. No one ever denied that a eunuch is male. What of the fact that, according to you, the souls even of eunuchs have their testicles whole, and, if someone’s genitals are taken away entirely, they will remain entire and wholly intact in his soul according to your opinion? For it knows how to withdraw itself, as you say, when that part of the flesh begins to be cut off, so that the form which was taken from it does not perish when that from which it was taken is amputated, but, although it congealed poured into it, is snatched away by a very swift motion and hidden within, so as to be kept safe; and yet in the underworld he is not male who brings with him the whole of the male genitals, who, when he did not have them in the body, was male on account of their mere place. These things are false, son; if you do not want there to be sex in the soul, let there not be a body either.

Not every likeness of a body is a body. Sleep, and you will see; but when you wake, discern wakefully what you saw. For in sleep you will appear to yourself as if corporeal; and that will be not your body but your soul, not a true body but a likeness of a body. For your body will lie still, the soul will walk; the tongue of your body will be silent, it will speak; your eyes will be closed, it will see; and certainly the members of your body will lie living, not dead. And so that congealed form of your soul, as you think, has not yet been drawn out as from its sheath, and yet in it the whole and entire likeness of your flesh is seen. Of this kind of bodily likenesses, which, not being bodies, appear like bodies, are all the things in the prophetic visions too which you do not understand when you read the holy books, by which are signified things that happen in times present, past, or future. You are deceived in them, not because they themselves are deceptive, but because you do not take them as they are to be taken. For where the souls of the martyrs were seen, in the same revelation a lamb was also seen as if slain, having seven horns; there horses and other animals were figured, as was fitting; there, finally, stars fell and the sky was rolled up like a book; and yet the world did not then fall. So if we take all these things wisely, although we call them truthful visions, we do not call them true bodies.

But a most careful discussion of this kind of bodily likenesses would need a longer treatise: whether angels too, good or bad, appear in this way when they appear in the form of men or of any bodies, or whether they have some true bodies and are seen rather in their reality; or whether in sleep or in ecstasy they are seen in these not as bodies but as likenesses of bodies, while to people awake they present true bodies to be seen and, if need be, even touched. But I do not think these questions should be pursued and treated in this book. Let enough now have been said about the incorporeal soul. If you prefer to believe it corporeal, you must first define what a body is, lest perhaps, when we agree about the thing itself, we labour in vain about the name. Yet I think you now wisely notice how many absurdities have followed for you in thinking of such a body in the soul as those which all learned people call bodies, that is, those which by extension in length, breadth, and height occupy spaces of place, smaller with their smaller parts and greater with their greater.

It remains to show how, although what is properly called spirit is not the whole soul but something of it—as the apostle says, “and may your spirit and soul and body be whole”, or, much more expressly, that in the book of Job, “You have released my soul from my spirit”—yet the whole soul too is called by this name; although this question seems much more one of names than of things. For since it is agreed that there is something in the soul which is properly called spirit, apart from which it is properly called soul, there is no longer any contention about the things themselves, especially since I too say that what is properly called spirit is what you also say, namely that by which we reason and understand, when these are spoken of distinctly in the way the apostle says, “and may your spirit and soul and body be whole.” This spirit he seems also to call mind, when he says, “With the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” For the same thought is: “And the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh”; so that what he called mind there is understood to be what he calls spirit here—not, as you think, that the whole mind, consisting of soul and spirit, is so called, which I do not know where you read. For we do not usually call our mind anything but our rational and intellectual part. And therefore when the same apostle says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind”, what else did he say than “Be renewed in your mind”? For so the spirit of the mind is nothing other than the mind, as the body of the flesh can be nothing other than the flesh. For this too is written: “in stripping off the body of the flesh”, where he calls the flesh the body of the flesh. He does indeed also speak in another way of man’s spirit, which he distinguishes altogether from the mind: “For if I pray in a tongue,” he says, “my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.” But we are not now speaking of this spirit, which is distinguished from the mind—it has its own question, and a difficult one; for the divine Scriptures name spirit in many ways and in different meanings—but of the one we are now dealing with, by which we reason, understand, and are wise: it is agreed between us that it is properly called spirit in such a way that it is not the whole soul but something of it. Yet if you deny that the soul too is spirit because its intelligence is distinctly called spirit, you could deny that the whole seed of Jacob is called Israel because, apart from Judah, the ten tribes, which were then in Samaria, were also distinctly called Israel. But what need is there to dwell on this longer?

Now notice how we may show more easily that what is soul is also called spirit. When you hear or read what is written of the Lord’s death, “and bowing his head he gave up the spirit”, you want it understood as though the whole were signified by a part, not that what is soul can also be called spirit. But so that I can prove what I say more readily, I will call you yourself as a witness more quickly and conveniently. For you defined spirit in such a way that beasts appear to have not spirit but soul; for they are called irrational because they do not have the power of understanding and reason. Hence, when you were admonishing man to know his own nature, you spoke thus: “For since the good God created nothing without reason, and brought forth man himself as a rational animal, capable of understanding, possessed of reason, and lively in sense, to arrange with prudent order all things devoid of reason.” By these words you sufficiently asserted, what is altogether most true, that man is possessed of reason and capable of understanding, which animals devoid of reason certainly are not. Hence also by divine testimony you compared those who do not understand to beasts, which certainly do not have understanding; as is also written in another place: “Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.” This being so, notice also in what words you defined and described the spirit when you strove to distinguish it from the soul. “This soul,” you say, “which has its origin from the breath of God, could not be without its own sense and inmost understanding, which is the spirit.” And a little later: “And although the soul ensouls the body,” you say, “yet what feels, what is wise, what is vigorous must be the spirit.” Likewise a little later: “The soul will be one thing,” you say, “and the spirit another, the wisdom and sense of the soul.” By these words you indicate sufficiently what you think the spirit of man is, namely our rational part, by which the soul perceives and understands—not as things are perceived by the senses of the body, but as that inmost sense is, from which “sententia” (judgment) is named. In this we are without doubt set above the beasts, because they are devoid of reason. Beasts, then, do not have spirit, that is, understanding and the sense of reason and wisdom, but only soul. For of them too it was said, “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls”, and, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul.” So that you may know most fully and plainly that what is soul is also called spirit in the manner of the divine oracles, the spirit of a beast is spoken of; and certainly beasts do not have that spirit which your love defined, distinguishing it from the soul. Hence it is plain that by a general term the soul of a beast could rightly be so called, as we read in the book of Ecclesiastes: “Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of man goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward into the earth?” Likewise in the devastation of the flood it is written: “And all flesh died that moved on the earth, of birds, of cattle, of beasts of burden, and of wild animals; and every creeping thing that moves on the earth, and every man, and all things that have the spirit of life”; where, all evasions of doubt removed, we understand spirit to be a general name for the soul. The meaning of this name extends so widely that even God is called spirit; and this airy breath, although it is corporeal, is called in the psalm the spirit of the storm. Therefore I think that what is soul is also called spirit—according to that saying, “You will take away their spirit, and they will fail”, and again, “Their spirit will go forth, and they will return to their earth”, that is, the body to its dust. So the soul’s name “spirit” comes from its being spiritual; the name “soul” from its ensouling, that is, giving life to, the body. I judge that, admonished by these testimonies of the divine pages which I have mentioned, where even the soul of a beast, which has no understanding, is read as called spirit, you will deny it no longer. Therefore, if you grasp and take to heart also what has been argued about the incorporeal soul, there is no reason for me to displease you in having said that I know it to be not body but spirit, since it is both shown not to be a body and called spirit by a general name.

Therefore, if you take and read these books, written to you with lavish love, with love in return, if you listen to yourself too at the beginning of your first book and strive, as you said, not to defend your opinion if it is found improbable, beware above all of those eleven things about which I warned you in the previous book: do not say that the soul is from God in such a way that he created it neither from nothing nor from something else but from his own nature; or that he gives souls through infinite time and so always, just as he who gives always is; or that the soul lost through the flesh some desert which it had before the flesh; or that the soul regains its ancient condition through the flesh and is reborn through the very flesh through which it had deserved to be defiled; or that the soul deserved to be sinful before any sin; or that infants who die without the baptism of regeneration reach forgiveness of original sins; or that those whom the Lord predestined to baptism can die before it and what the Almighty predestined not be fulfilled in them; or that what is written, “He was snatched away, lest wickedness should change his understanding”, and the rest belonging to this sense, was said of those who die before they are baptized; or that some of the mansions which the Lord said are many in his Father’s house are outside the kingdom of God; or that the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ should be offered for those who have left the body unbaptized; or that some of those who die without the baptism of Christ are received into paradise for the meantime and afterward also attain the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven. Beware above all of these, son, and do not delight in being surnamed Vincentius, if you want to be the victor over error; and when you do not know something, do not think you know it, but, in order to know, learn not to know. For in the hidden works of God one sins not by being ignorant, but by rashly asserting unknown things as known and putting forward and defending false things as true. As for my ignorance whether human souls are made new or from the parents—though it is not lawful to doubt that they are made by God the Creator, not from his own substance—that it either ought not to be blamed, or ought to be blamed by him who can also remove it by teaching; and that souls have within them incorporeal likenesses of bodies but are not themselves bodies; and that, with the distinction between soul and spirit kept, the soul is also called spirit in a general way—I think I have persuaded your charity of these things; but if I could not persuade you, those who read will rather judge whether I said what ought to have persuaded you.

If perhaps you wish to know other things which seem to me to need correction in your books—and there are very many—do not find it burdensome to come, not as a disciple to a master, but as one in his prime to an old man, the strong to the weak. For although you ought not to have published them, yet each one who is corrected is reproved by his own confession with greater and truer glory than he is praised by the mouth of anyone who errs. And yet I would not believe that, at the reading of those books, all your hearers and praisers either held before, or came to agree with you in, these things which sound doctrine rejects; rather, their mental sight dazzled by the very rush and flow of your reading, they could not notice these things sufficiently; or at any rate even those who could notice them praised in you not the most limpid truth of the matters, but the abundance of words and the facility and gifts of your talent. For eloquence is often proclaimed and loved in the promise of a young man, even if he does not yet have the maturity and faith of a teacher. Therefore, so that you may think rightly and what you say may not only delight others but also build them up, you must take care of your words, putting aside the applause of others.