On the Greatness of the Soul

Contents

Reading pages: 1–9 · 10–17 · 18–23 · 24–29 · 30–32 · 33–36

1. 1Evodius lists his questions about the soul; Augustine answers the first: the soul's home is God who made it, and its substance is simple and proper to itself, not made of the four elements.
2. 2The human soul is like God, made in his likeness, though, like a portrait compared with its subject, it lacks its maker's power.
3. 3The 'greatness' of the soul cannot be a bodily size, since length, breadth, and strength belong to bodies; Augustine undertakes to show that things without such extent are not nothing.
4. 4Justice is not nothing though it has no length or breadth, so the soul need not be nothing for lacking them; Evodius proposes that the soul is something like wind, which Augustine shows to be moving air with bodily extent.
5. 5Evodius first holds that the soul fills the body inside and out and is as large as it, but the vast images held in memory, of Milan and of whole worlds, show that the soul cannot be measured by the body.
6. 6Augustine leads Evodius to think of length without breadth, a line, which can only be grasped by the mind and can be extended without end.
7. 7Defining a figure as space enclosed by lines, Augustine explains that believing authority is a short and safe way for most, but one who insists on reason must accept the long detours of true and certain reasoning.
8. 8A figure needs at least one curved line or three straight ones; in the triangle equal sides go with equal angles, and Evodius judges the figure with equal sides the better and more beautiful.
9. 9The square, with opposite sides and angles answering each other, has more equality than the triangle, and the way each figure keeps what equality it can shows a kind of justice, since justice is equity and requires distinction.
10. 10Even the square lacks perfect equality, since sides differ from angles and lines from the center to its edge are unequal.
11. 11The circle has the highest equality; a line, divisible only crosswise, excels breadth, and the indivisible sign or point, the beginning of a line and center of a figure, excels both.
12. 12The point is the source and measure of lines and figures; breadth depends on length and length on the point, and true breadth, line, and point, as defined, are not the bodily things we see.
13. 13Since the mind sees incorporeal things that bodily eyes cannot, it is not a body; Augustine defines it as a substance sharing in reason, fitted to rule the body.
14. 14The mind, being better than a body and even than a line, has no spatial quantity, yet like the indivisible point or the tiny pupil it has great power; size counts for nothing, and those who seek truth devoutly will find it.
15. 15Augustine defends the value of the geometric discussion, and Evodius raises two objections: the soul seems to grow with the body, and it feels a touch anywhere in the body.
16. 16'Greater' differs from 'better': as the circle excels by its form, not its size, so virtue, the harmony of life with reason, makes the soul better, not larger, as it progresses with age.
17. 17Time no more enlarges the soul than size does: words like 'long-suffering' and 'greatness of mind' are transferred from bodies, and the soul's greatness, like the point's, is a matter of power, not space.
18. 18Speech, like gesture or rope-walking, is learned and belongs to skill, not to a growth of the soul, as the example of deaf-mutes and of late learners shows.
19. 19The soul 'grows' by learning only in a transferred sense, and, as with the body, its growth may be natural (good disciplines), superfluous (curious arts), or harmful (refinements of sense pleasure).
20. 20Evodius asks why the newborn soul has no skills if it is eternal; Augustine holds that learning is recollection but defers the question, since it does not bear on the soul's size.
21. 21Bodily strength does not prove that the soul grows with the body, since strength depends on training and build rather than size or age.
22. 22Strength comes from the will's impulse, the condition of the sinews, and the body's weight, as the physics of falling and colliding weights illustrates; its growth with age therefore shows no growth of the soul.
23. 23Augustine proposes a definition of sense, the soul's awareness of what the body undergoes, and through the example of sight, which reaches out like a rod, shows that the eyes perceive and are affected where they are not.
24. 24Knowing by inference, as of fire from smoke or of growing older, differs from sensing; since the body's growth is known but not sensed, the definition of sense must be refined.
25. 25Augustine explains how definitions are tested by conversion and, with Evodius, refines the definition of sense to an affection of the body known to the soul directly, then asks whether it covers every sense.
26. 26Since beasts sense but lack reason and knowledge, the definition of sense seems to exclude them; Evodius, wishing to grant beasts knowledge, retracts his view that knowledge requires reason and argues that some knowledge precedes reason.
27. 27Augustine distinguishes reason, the constant sight of the mind, from reasoning, its searching movement, and knowledge, its seeing; since seeing is worth more than looking, granting beasts knowledge without reason would rank them above men.
28. 28The dog's recognition of Ulysses shows only a power of sense strengthened by habit; Augustine digresses to urge the soul to withdraw from the senses, become a child again to God, and be re-formed to his image by his grace.
29. 29The definition of sense seems to fail completely: if what is 'not hidden' belongs to knowledge, and sense is not knowledge, the definition fits no sense at all; Evodius jokingly accuses Augustine of collusion, and Augustine promises a defense.
30. 30The definition of sense stands, since 'not being hidden' is common to sense and knowledge; and since sight perceives where the eyes are not, the soul, which gives the eyes this power, is not confined to a place, so touch does not prove the soul is spread through the body.
31. 31Evodius objects that cut-up lizards and centipedes go on moving, as if the soul were divided; Augustine tells of such an experiment with a centipede and answers that a hidden cause should not overturn conclusions already firmly proved.
32. 32As a word's meaning, its 'soul', is not divided when its sound is, though parts like luci and fer of Lucifer keep a meaning, so a cut worm's soul is not divided though its parts live; Augustine sets aside the question of the number of souls and turns to the soul's power.
33. 33Augustine describes the soul's power in seven steps: animating the body, sensation, the human arts, virtue, tranquillity, the approach to God, and the contemplation of truth, in which the soul knows God, the truth of the Church's teaching, and the certainty of the resurrection.
34. 34Since nothing created is nearer to God than the soul, the soul must worship no creature, only the one unchangeable God; other souls are to be loved, imitated, and helped, and true religion reconciles the soul to God and makes it free.
35. 35Augustine names the seven acts of the soul three ways: animation, sensation, art, virtue, tranquillity, approach, contemplation, with two further series of names.
36. 36God rules all things by an unbreakable law in which the soul's free choice, punishments, and rewards all serve the beauty of the whole; true religion binds the soul back to God through the higher acts, and the remaining questions are briefly answered.