On the Greatness of the Soul

E. Since I see that you have plenty of leisure, I beg you to answer me about the things that trouble me—not, I think, at an unfitting time or unsuitably. For often, when I had asked you many things, you thought I should be put off by some Greek saying or other which forbids us to inquire into the things above us; but now I do not think that we ourselves are above us. So when I ask about the soul, I do not deserve to be told, “What is above us is nothing to us”; but perhaps I deserve to be told what we ourselves are. A. Enumerate briefly what you want to hear about the soul. E. I will; for these questions have been prepared by long reflection. I ask, then, where the soul comes from, what it is like, how great it is, why it was given to the body, what it becomes when it has come to the body, and what when it has left it. A. When you ask where the soul comes from, I am compelled to think of two things. For we say “where a man is from” in one sense when we want to know his homeland, and in another when we ask what he consists of, that is, of what elements and things he is composed. Which of these do you want to know when you ask where the soul is from? Do you wish to know its region, as it were, and its homeland, from which it came here; or are you asking what its substance is? E. I would like to know both; but which should be known first, I prefer to leave to your judgment. A. I believe that the soul's own proper dwelling and homeland is God himself, by whom it was created. Its substance I cannot name; for I do not think it is one of those ordinary and familiar natures which we touch with these senses of the body. For I do not think that the soul consists of earth, or of water, or of air, or of fire, or of all of these, or of some of them joined together. But just as, if you asked me what this tree consists of, I would name those four very familiar elements, of which all such things must be believed to consist; and if you went on to ask what earth itself, or water, or air, or fire consists of, I would find nothing more to say: so, when it is asked of what man is composed, I can answer, of soul and body; again, if you ask about the body, I will go back to those four elements; but if you ask about the soul, since it seems to be something simple and of its own substance, I am as much at a loss as if you asked, as was said, what earth is from. E. I do not understand how you can hold that it has a substance of its own, when you have said that it was made by God. A. In the same way that I cannot deny that earth itself was made by God, and yet I cannot say of what other bodies, as it were, earth consists. For earth is a simple body by the very fact that it is earth; and therefore it is called an element of all those bodies which are made from the four elements. So there is no contradiction in saying both that the soul was made by God and that it has a nature of its own. For this proper nature of it, its very own, God himself made, as he made the nature of fire, of air, of water, of earth, so that all other things might be composed of them.

E. For the time being I accept where the soul comes from, that is, from God; I will go over this carefully by myself, and if anything troubles me I will ask later. Now please explain what the soul is like. A. It seems to me to be like God. For you are asking, unless I am mistaken, about the human soul. E. That is exactly what I wanted you to explain: how the soul is like God, since we believe that God was made by no one, whereas you said above that the soul was made by God himself. A. What? Do you think it was difficult for God to make something like himself, when you see that even we have been granted this, in such a variety of images? E. But we seem to make mortal things, while God made the soul immortal—I think so, unless perhaps you think otherwise. A. So you would want men to make such things as God made? E. I would not say that. But just as he, immortal, made something immortal to his likeness, so we too, made immortal by God, ought to make immortal what we make to our likeness. A. You would be right if you painted a picture to the image of what you believe to be immortal in you; but as it is, you express in it the likeness of your body, which is certainly mortal. E. How then am I like God, when I can make nothing immortal as he does? A. Just as the image of your body cannot have the power that your body has, so it is no wonder if the soul does not have as great a power as he to whose likeness it was made.

E. This too is enough for the time being; now tell me how great the soul is. A. In what sense do you ask how great it is? For I do not understand whether you are asking about its extent, as it were, of breadth or of length or of strength, or of all of these together; or whether you want to know how much it is capable of. For we usually ask how great Hercules was, that is, to how many feet his stature reached; and again how great a man he was, that is, of how much power and valor. E. I want to know both about the soul. A. But the first cannot be said, or understood at all, of the soul. For the soul must in no way be supposed to be long, or broad, or, as it were, strong. These things are bodily, it seems to me, and we ask about the soul in this way from our habit with bodies. And therefore it is rightly taught in the mysteries too that whoever desires to be restored to the state in which he was made by God, that is, to be like God, should despise all bodily things and renounce this whole world, which, as we see, is bodily. For there is no other salvation of the soul, or renewal, or reconciliation to its author. Therefore I cannot answer you how great the soul is in the sense of this inquiry; but I can affirm that it is neither long, nor broad, nor strong, nor any of those things usually sought in the measures of bodies. And I will give you the reason why I think so, if you wish. E. I do wish it, and I am eagerly waiting for it; for it seems to me that the soul is as good as nothing if it is none of these. A. First, then, if you agree, I will show you that there are many things which you cannot say are nothing, and yet you cannot find in them any extents of the kind you are looking for in the soul; so that the soul may not only not seem to you to be nothing because you do not find length or anything of that sort in it, but may be thought the more precious and of greater worth the more it lacks all these. Then we shall see whether it truly has none of them. E. Use whatever order and method you wish; I am ready to listen and to learn.

A. You do well. But I want you to answer my questions; for perhaps you already know what I am trying to teach you. I believe you do not doubt that this tree is not altogether nothing. E. Who would doubt it? A. What of this? Do you doubt that justice is much better than this tree? E. That is laughable—as if there were any comparison! A. You treat me generously. But now attend to this: since it is agreed that this tree is so inferior to justice that it does not seem to you even comparable, and you have admitted that this wood is not nothing, do you wish us to believe that justice itself is nothing? E. What madman would believe that? A. Quite right. But perhaps this tree seems to you to be something because it is long in its own way, and broad, and strong; and if you took these away, it would be nothing. E. So it seems. A. What then? Does justice, which you admitted is not nothing—indeed, something far more divine and far more excellent than this—seem to you to be long? E. In no way can justice come to my mind as long or broad or anything of the kind when I think of it. A. If, then, justice is none of these, and yet it is not nothing, why does the soul seem to you to be nothing unless it has some length? E. Very well: the soul no longer seems to me to be nothing because it is neither long nor broad nor strong; but whether it really is so, you know you have not yet told me. For it may be that many things that lack these are to be highly valued; but I do not think it must straightway be believed that the soul is of this kind. A. I know that this remains for us to unravel, and I had promised to explain it next. But since the matter is very subtle and calls for eyes of the mind far different from those that human habit usually has in the actions of daily life, I advise you to go along willingly by the paths along which I think you should be led, and not to take it ill, wearied by our necessary detour, if you arrive somewhat more slowly at what you desire. First, then, I ask you whether you think there is any body that does not have, in its own measure, some length, breadth, and height. E. I do not understand what you mean by height. A. I mean that by which the interior of a body is thought of, or even perceived, if it is transparent like glass; although, if you take this away from bodies, in my opinion they can neither be perceived nor rightly be thought to be bodies at all. On this I want you to tell me what you think. E. I have absolutely no doubt that no body can lack these. A. What of this? Can you think of these three as existing anywhere but in bodies? E. I do not understand how they could be anywhere else. A. Then you think the soul is nothing other than a body? E. If we also admit that wind is a body, I cannot deny that the soul seems to me to be a body; for I think it is something of that sort. A. I grant that wind is a body as readily as if you asked me about a wave. For we perceive that wind is nothing but this air of ours moved and stirred; which can be proved in the stillest place, quite free from all winds, even with a little fan, with which we stir the air when we drive away flies, and feel a breeze. When this happens through some more hidden movement of heavenly or earthly bodies over a great space of the world, it is called wind, and it has also received different names from the different quarters of the sky. Or do you think otherwise? E. Not at all; I accept what you say as probable. But I said that the soul is not wind itself, but something of that sort. A. Tell me first whether you perceive that the wind you mentioned has some length, breadth, and height. Then we shall see whether the soul is something of that sort, so that in this way we can also find out how great it is. E. What can more easily be found to be longer and broader and higher than this air, which, when stirred, is wind, as you have now persuaded me?

A. You are right. But do you think that your soul is anywhere but in your body? E. I think so. A. Only inside, so as to fill it like a wineskin; or only outside, like a coating; or do you think it is both inside and outside? E. I hold the last thing you asked. For if it were not inside, nothing in our inner parts would have life; if it were not outside, it could not feel even a light prick on the skin. A. Why then do you ask any further how great the soul is, when you see that it is as great as the extents of the body allow? E. If reason teaches this, I ask nothing more. A. You do well to seek nothing more than reason teaches. But does this reasoning seem to you very firm? E. Since I find no other, it does. In its place I shall ask something that troubles me a great deal, whether this shape remains when the soul has left the body; for I remember that I put this last among the questions to be discussed. But since asking about the number of souls seems to me to belong to their quantity, I think it should not be passed over here. A. You think not unfittingly; but first, if you agree, let us clear up the question of its extent, which still troubles me, so that I too may learn something, if you are already satisfied. E. Ask as you wish; for that feigned doubt of yours makes me doubt in very truth about the very thing I had presumed was settled. A. Tell me, please, whether what is called memory seems to you an empty name. E. To whom could it seem so? A. Do you think it belongs to the soul or to the body? E. To doubt this too is laughable. What? Can a lifeless body be believed or understood to remember anything? A. Do you remember the city of Milan? E. Very well. A. Now, then, since mention of it has been made, do you recall how great and of what kind it is? E. I do indeed, and nothing more freshly or completely. A. So now, though you do not see it with your eyes, you see it with your mind. E. That is so. A. I believe you also remember how great a stretch of land lies between it and us now. E. I remember this too. A. So you see with your mind even the distance between the places. E. I see it. A. Since, then, your soul is here where your body is, and does not extend beyond the body's extent, as the reasoning above showed, how is it that it sees all those things? E. I think this happens through memory, not because it is present in those places. A. Then images of those places are contained in the memory. E. So I think; for I do not know what is being done there now, which I certainly would know if my mind extended as far as those places and perceived things present. A. You seem to me to speak the truth; but surely these are images of bodies. E. Necessarily so; for cities and lands are nothing but bodies. A. Have you never looked into small mirrors, or never seen your face in the pupil of someone else's eye? E. Often. A. Why does it appear much smaller than it is? E. What else would you have, but that it appear according to the size of the mirror? A. It is necessary, then, that images of bodies appear small if the bodies in which they appear are small. E. Absolutely necessary. A. Why then, when the soul is in a space as small as its body, can such great images be expressed in it that it can picture to itself cities, and the breadth of lands, and any other huge things? For I want you to consider a little more carefully how great and how many things our memory contains, which are certainly contained in the soul. What depth, then, what bay, what immensity is there that can hold these things, when the reasoning above seems to have taught that the soul is as great as the body? E. I find nothing to answer, nor can I explain well enough how much these things trouble me; and I laugh at myself a great deal for having agreed so quickly to the reasoning above, so as to fix the soul's size by the measure of the body. A. Then does it no longer seem to you something like wind? E. Not at all: for even if this air, of which wind is credibly believed to be a kind of wave, could fill this whole world, the soul can picture to itself innumerable worlds as great, and I cannot guess in what space it contains these images. A. See, then, whether it is not better to believe, as I said above, that it is neither long nor broad nor high, just as you granted me about justice. E. I would readily agree, if I were not more troubled by the question how, in turn, it can hold innumerable images of such great extents while having no length, breadth, or height of its own.

A. We shall perhaps find this out, as far as is permitted, if we first carefully examine these three, that is, length, breadth, and height. So try to think of a length that has not yet taken on any breadth. E. I can think of nothing of the kind: for if I set before my mind a spider's thread, than which we usually see nothing finer, there occur to me even in it length by itself, and breadth, and height; and whatever they may be like, I cannot deny that they exist. A. Your answer is not altogether absurd. But surely, when you understand that these three are in the spider's thread, you distinguish them, and you know how they differ from one another? E. Why should I not know how they differ? How else could I see that none of them is lacking to this thread? A. Then by the same understanding by which you distinguished these, you can also separate them and think of length alone, provided you do not turn any body over in your mind; for whatever body it is, it will not lack all these. For what I now want you to understand is incorporeal: length alone can only be understood by the mind; it cannot be found in a body. E. Now I understand. A. Then if you wish to cut this length lengthwise, as it were, in thought, you surely see that it cannot be done; for if it can, it has breadth too. E. That is plain. A. Let us, then, if you please, call this pure and simple length a line; for it is usually called by this name by many learned men. E. Call it what you like; I need not labor over names when the thing is clear. A. You do well, and I not only approve but also advise you always to delight in caring more for things than for words. But this line, which I think you now understand well, if it is extended, at one end or at both, as far as it can be extended lengthwise, you see has no end. Or is the edge of your mind less able to contemplate this? E. I contemplate it entirely, and nothing is easier. A. You see, then, that no figure can be made either, if nothing else is done but extend that line. E. I do not yet understand what you mean by figure.

A. For the present I call it a figure when some space is enclosed by a line or lines, as if you made a circle, or joined four lines to one another at their ends so that no end was left free from joining with another. E. I think I now see what you mean by a figure; but I wish I saw as well where these things are tending, or what you mean to achieve by them, so that I may know what I am asking about the soul. A. I warned you of this at the beginning, and asked you to bear our rather long detour patiently, and I ask you to do so again. No light matter is being sought, nor one easy to come to know; for we want to know it clearly and hold it, if that can be done. For it is one thing when we believe authority, another when we believe reason. To believe authority is a great shortcut and involves no labor. If this pleases you, you will be able to read many things that great and divine men have said about these matters, as seemed necessary, for the salvation of the less skilled, by a kind of nod, as it were; and they wished to be believed by those whose minds, being either slower or more entangled, could have no other salvation. For such men, who certainly make up the greatest multitude, if they want to grasp the truth by reason, are very easily deceived by things that resemble reasons, and slip into various harmful opinions, so that they can emerge from them and be freed either never or with very great difficulty. For these, then, it is most useful to believe the most excellent authority and to lead their life according to it. If you think this safer, I not only do not resist at all, but also strongly approve. But if you cannot rein in that desire of yours by which you have persuaded yourself that you will arrive at the truth by reason, you must bear many long detours, so that nothing leads you but what alone is to be called reason, that is, true reason—and not only true, but so certain and so remote from every semblance of falsehood (if indeed such a thing can be found by man in any way) that no arguments, false or plausible, can draw you away from it. E. I shall no longer desire anything too hastily: let reason act and lead where it will, provided it leads me to the end.

A. God will bring this about, who is to be entreated about such things alone, or at least about these most of all. But let us return to the matter I had begun. Since you now know what a line is and what a figure is, tell me what I ask you: do you think any figure can be made if a line is drawn out infinitely at both ends, or at one? E. I affirm that this can in no way be done. A. What then must be done for us to make a figure? E. What but that the line not be infinite, and be drawn round in a circle so that it touches itself at the other end? For I do not see how else any space could be enclosed by one line; and unless that is done, according to your description, there will be no figure. A. What if I want to make a figure with straight lines? Can it be made of one line, or can it not? E. In no way. A. What of two? E. Not even that. A. What of three? E. I see that it can. A. So you know well and hold firmly that, when a figure is to be made with straight lines, it cannot be done with fewer than three. Or would some argument opposing you call you away from this opinion? E. Plainly, if anyone showed me that this is false, there will be nothing that I can be confident of knowing. A. Now, then, answer this: how did you make a figure with three lines? E. By joining them at their ends. A. What? Where they join, does not an angle seem to you to be made? E. Yes. A. How many angles, then, does this figure have? E. As many as it has lines. A. What? Do you make the lines themselves equal or unequal? E. Equal. A. What? Do all the angles open equally, or is one narrower or wider than another? E. I see that these too are equal. A. Can it be that in a figure made of three equal straight lines the angles are unequal, or can it not? E. In no way at all. A. What? If a figure consists of three straight but unequal lines, can the angles be equal in it too, or do you understand otherwise? E. They cannot at all. A. You are right. But tell me, please, which figure seems to you better and more beautiful: the one that consists of equal lines, or the one that consists of unequal lines? E. Who would doubt that the one in which equality prevails is better?

A. So you prefer equality to inequality? E. I do not know anyone who would not. A. Now see, in the figure completed with three equal angles, what is opposite an angle, that is, placed facing it on the other side: a line or an angle? E. I see a line. A. What then? If angle is opposite angle and line opposite line, do you not admit that equality is greater in the figure in which this happens? E. I admit it, but I do not see at all how it can be done with three lines. A. What? Can it be done with four lines? E. Certainly it can. A. So the figure consisting of four equal straight lines is better than the one consisting of three. E. Better, certainly, since equality counts for more in it. A. What then? Do you think that this figure made of four equal straight lines can also be made so that not all its angles are equal, or not? E. I see that it can. A. How? E. If two are narrower and two wider. A. Do you also see how both the narrower and both the wider are opposite each other? E. Yes, most truly and most plainly. A. You see, then, that here too equality has been kept as far as it could be. For you surely see that it cannot happen, when a figure is completed with four equal lines, that its angles are not either all equal or at least equal in pairs; and those that are equal answer each other from opposite sides. E. I see it, and hold it most firmly. A. Does not so great and so unshaken a kind of justice move you even in these things? E. How so? A. Because, I think, we call justice nothing but equity; and equity seems to be named from a kind of equality. But what is equity in this virtue, except that to each be given his own? Further, to each his own cannot be given except by some distinction. Or do you think otherwise? E. It is plain, and I entirely agree. A. What? Do you think there is any distinction if all things are equal, so that they do not differ at all from one another? E. Not at all. A. So justice cannot be preserved unless in the things in which it is preserved there is, so to speak, a certain unevenness and dissimilarity. E. I understand. A. Since, then, we admit that these figures we are discussing are unlike each other—the one consisting of three angles and this of four—though both are made of equal lines, does it not seem to you that a kind of justice has been kept: the one which cannot have the equality of opposites holds an unshaken equality of angles, while in this one, because the correspondence of opposites is so great, the law of angles admits some inequality? Since this moved me greatly, I thought I should ask you how far you were delighted by this truth, this equity, this equality. E. Now I see what you mean, and I admire it no little. A. Come now, since you rightly prefer equality to inequality, and there is no one at all endowed with human sense, I think, to whom it does not seem so, let us look, if you please, for a figure in which the highest equality can be found; for whatever it is, it will without doubt be preferred to the rest. E. I do indeed wish it, and I want to know what it is.

A. First, then, answer whether, of those figures which have been mentioned as much as seemed enough, the one that seems to you to excel is that which consists of four equal lines and as many equal angles. For, as you see, in it there is equality both of lines and of angles; and, what we did not find in the one enclosed by three equal lines, it has the equality of opposites, for, as you see, line is opposite line and angle opposite angle. E. It is as you say. A. Does it have the highest equality, or do you think otherwise? For if it has, we are looking for another in vain, as we had set out to do; but if it has not, I want this very thing to be shown to me by you. E. It seems to me to have it; for where the angles are equal and the lines are equal, I do not see where I could detect inequality. A. I think otherwise: for a straight line, until it comes to the angles, has the highest equality; but when another line is joined to it from a different side and makes an angle, do you not think this very thing is unequal? Or does the part of the figure enclosed by a line seem to you to agree in equality or likeness with the part enclosed by an angle? E. Not at all, and I am ashamed of my rashness. I was led to it because I saw that both the angles and the sides in it were equal to one another; but who would not see the great difference between those sides and the angles? A. Take another very plain indication of inequality: surely you see that both that triangular figure made of equal lines and this square one have a center. E. I see it plainly. A. What? When we draw lines from that same center to all parts of the figure, do the lines seem to you to be drawn equal, or unequal? E. Altogether unequal; for those which we draw to the angles must be longer. A. How many of these are there in the square, and how many in the triangle? E. Four here, three there. A. What? Which, again, are the shortest of all, and how many are there in each figure? E. The same number, namely those drawn to the middle of the sides. A. You seem to me to speak most truly, and there is no need to dwell on it longer here; it is enough for what we want. For you see, I think, that great equality is kept here, and yet not yet perfect in every respect. E. I see it entirely, and I am very eager to know which figure has the highest equality.

A. Which do you think it is, if not the one whose boundary agrees with itself everywhere, with no angle disturbing its equality, and from whose center equal lines can be drawn to all parts of its boundary? E. I think I now understand: for you seem to me to describe the figure bounded by one line drawn round in a circle. A. You understand rightly. Now consider this: since the reasoning above taught that a line is understood in length alone and takes on nothing of breadth, and therefore cannot be divided along the length in which it is drawn, does any figure seem to you to be found without breadth? E. In no way. A. What? Can breadth itself be without length, even when it is breadth alone, just as above we understood length without breadth; or can it not? E. I see that it cannot. A. You see this too, unless I am mistaken, that breadth can be divided in every direction, but a line cannot be divided lengthwise. E. That is plain. A. Which, then, do you think should be valued more: what can be divided, or what cannot? E. Surely what cannot. A. You prefer, then, the line to breadth. For if what cannot be divided is to be preferred, we must also prefer what can be divided less; and breadth is divided in every direction, while length is divided only crosswise, for it does not admit division lengthwise; it is therefore more excellent than breadth. Or do you think otherwise? E. Reason compels me to admit it exactly as you say. A. Now let us inquire, if you please, whether in this line of reasoning there is anything that cannot be divided at all; for it will be much better even than that line. For you see that a line can be cut crosswise innumerable times; so I leave this for you to find yourself. E. I think that cannot be divided which we were placing as the center of a figure, from which lines are drawn to the boundaries. For if it is divided, it cannot lack length or even breadth. But if it has length alone, it is no longer that from which lines are drawn, but is itself a line. And if it is also broad, it needs another center from which lines may be drawn to the boundaries of its breadth. But reason rejects both. This, then, will be what cannot be divided. A. You are right. But does not that from which a line is drawn also seem to you something of the kind, even if there is not yet a figure whose center we can understand? For I mean the beginning of a line, from which length begins, which I want you to understand as without any length. For if you understand length, you certainly do not understand where length itself begins. E. Exactly of that kind. A. This, then, which I see you now understand, is the most powerful of all the things that have been shown. For it is what admits no division. And it is called a point when it occupies the center of a figure; but if it is the beginning of a line or lines, or even the end, or when in general it marks something to be understood as without parts but does not hold the center of a figure, it is called a sign. A sign, then, is a mark without parts; a point is a mark holding the center of a figure. So it is that every point is also a sign, but not every sign seems to be a point. For I want us to agree about these names, so that we may talk around things less in our discussion; although most people call a point not what holds the center of every figure, but only what holds the center of a circle or a sphere; yet we need not labor much over words. E. I agree.

A. You surely see too how much power it has. For a line begins from it and ends in it; we see that no figure can be made with straight lines unless an angle is closed by it; further, wherever a line can be cut, it is cut through it, while it itself admits no cutting at all; no line is joined to another except through it. Finally, since reason has shown that among the other plane figures (for we have said nothing yet about height) the one enclosed by a circle is to be preferred because of its highest equality, what else regulates that very equality but the point set in the center? Much can be said of its power, but I set a limit, and leave more for you to think over yourself. E. As you think fit; for I will not be reluctant to ask if anything is too obscure; and I see moderately well, I think, that the power of this sign is great. A. Now, then, attend to this: since you have grasped what a sign is, what length is, and what breadth is, which of these seems to you to need which, without which it cannot exist? E. I see that breadth needs length, without which it cannot be understood at all. Again, I see that length does not need breadth in order to exist, but cannot exist without that sign. And it is plain that the sign exists by itself and needs none of these. A. It is as you say. But consider more carefully whether breadth can truly be cut in every direction, or whether there is some direction from which it too cannot admit cutting, though it admits more than a line. E. I do not know at all from which direction it could not. A. I believe you do not remember, for you could in no way fail to know this; so I will remind you in this way. Surely you understand breadth so as to take up nothing of height in your thought. E. Entirely so. A. Then let height be added to this breadth, and answer now whether something has also been added by which it may be cut in every direction. E. You have reminded me wonderfully. For now I see that cutting can be admitted not only from above or from below, but also from the sides, and that nothing at all is left from which division could not penetrate. So it is plain that breadth cannot be cut from those parts through which height will rise. A. Since, then, unless I am mistaken, you know length, breadth, and height, I ask whether the first two can be absent where height is present. E. I see that height cannot exist without length, but it can without breadth. A. Go back, then, to the thought of breadth, and if you have pictured it in your mind as lying flat, let it be raised up on any side, as if you wanted to draw it out through the very thinnest crack where the leaves of a closed door meet. Or do you not yet understand what I want? E. I understand what you say, but perhaps not yet what you want. A. Namely, that you answer whether breadth raised up in this way seems to you to have passed into height and lost the name and description of breadth; or whether it still remains breadth, though placed in this way. E. It seems to me to have become height. A. Do you remember, I beg you, how we had defined height? E. I remember clearly, and I am ashamed to have answered so. For even in this position breadth, raised up as it were, does not admit cutting lengthwise from top to bottom; so no inner parts can be thought of in it, though a middle and ends can be. But according to the earlier description of height, which you made me remember, there is no height at all where nothing inside can be thought of. A. You are right, and I wanted you to remember it exactly so. Therefore I now want you to answer whether you prefer the false to the true. E. To doubt about this would be incredible madness. A. Tell me, then, please: is that a true line which can be cut lengthwise; or a true sign which can be cut in any way; or true breadth which, when raised up as we said, admits cutting lengthwise from top to bottom? E. Not at all.

A. Have you ever, then, seen with these bodily eyes such a point, or such a line, or such a breadth? E. Never at all; for these things are not bodily. A. But if bodily things are seen by bodily eyes through a wonderful kinship of things, the mind by which we see those incorporeal things must not be bodily or a body. Or do you think otherwise? E. Very well: I now grant that the mind is not a body or anything bodily; but what, after all, is it? Tell me. A. See meanwhile whether it has been established that it lacks all that quantity which is now in question; for as to what the mind is, I am surprised that you have forgotten it was discussed between us in the earlier question. For you remember that you first asked where it came from; and I remember that we treated this in two ways: one, as if its region were being asked about; the other, whether it was from earth, or fire, or any other of these elements, or from all, or from some of them. In that question it was agreed between us that this should no more be asked than where earth comes from, or any other of the single elements. For it is to be understood that, although God made the mind, it has a definite substance of its own, which is neither earthy nor fiery nor airy nor watery—unless perhaps we are to think that God granted to earth to be nothing other than earth, and did not grant to the mind to be nothing other than mind. But if you want the mind defined for you, and therefore ask what the mind is, I answer easily. For it seems to me to be a certain substance sharing in reason, fitted to rule the body.

So attend rather to the point now in doubt: whether the mind has any quantity and, so to speak, any spatial extent. For surely, since it is not a body—for otherwise it could not perceive anything incorporeal, as the reasoning above showed—it undoubtedly lacks the extent by which bodies are measured; and for this reason such a quantity cannot rightly be believed, thought, or understood of it. But if you are troubled by how it holds in memory such great spaces of sky, land, and sea, when it itself has no quantity, this is a wonderful power, which nevertheless you can perceive from what we have found, as far as there is light in your intelligence. For there is no body, as reason has already shown, that lacks length, breadth, and height, and none of these can exist in a body without the other two; yet the mind is granted to see even a line alone with a kind of inner eye, that is, the understanding. So I think we grant that the mind is not a body in such a way that it is better than a body. Granting this, I do not think we should doubt that it is also better than a line; for it is absurd that, since those three are in a body so that it is a body, that which is better than a body should not be better than all of them. But the line itself, than which the mind is shown to be better, excels the other two because it can be cut less than they. Further, those two are cut more than the line to the degree that they spread out more into space; but a line has no space but that of length, and if that is taken away no space at all remains. Therefore whatever is better than a line must be in no space, and cannot be divided or cut at all. So, I think, we labor in vain to find a quantity of the mind, which has none, since we grant that it is better than a line. And if of all plane figures the best is the one formed by a circle, in which reason taught that nothing is better and more powerful than the point, which beyond all doubt lacks parts, what wonder if the soul is neither bodily, nor stretched out in any length, nor spread out in breadth, nor made solid in height, and yet has such power in the body that the government of all the members is in its hands, and it is, as it were, the hinge of all bodily motions in action? And since the center of the eye, which is called the pupil, is nothing but a kind of point of the eye, in which nevertheless there is such power that by it half the sky, whose extent is beyond words, can be seen and surveyed from some high place, it is not far from the truth that the mind lacks all bodily magnitude, which is made up of those three dimensions, although it can imagine magnitudes of bodies of any size. But few are allowed to see the mind by the mind itself, that is, for the mind to see itself; and it sees through understanding. For to understanding alone it is granted to see that there is nothing in reality more powerful and more magnificent than those natures which are understood to be, so to speak, without swelling. For the magnitude of the body is not absurdly called a swelling; and if it were to be highly esteemed, elephants would surely be wiser than we. But if some kinsman of theirs says that elephants are wise—for I have noticed, though with astonishment, I have noticed that men often argue about this too—he will at least grant, I think, that a little bee is wiser than an ass; and to compare their sizes would surely be worse than asinine. Or, as we were saying about the eye, who does not know that the eagle's eye is much smaller than ours? Yet with it the eagle, flying so high that it can hardly be seen by us in so much light, has been found to see a little hare hiding under a bush and a fish under the waves. But if in the senses themselves, which are not granted to perceive anything but bodily things, the size of the body counts for nothing in the matter, that is, in the power of perceiving, must we fear, I ask, that the human mind, whose more excellent and almost only sight is reason itself, by which it even strives to find itself, is nothing, if that same reason, that is, the mind itself, has proved that it lacks all magnitude by which place is occupied? Great things, believe me, great things must be thought of the mind, but without any bulk. This comes more easily to those who approach these things either well educated, kindled not by desire for empty glory but by the divine love of truth; or who, though they came to investigate them less educated, are already engaged in seeking them, if they patiently make themselves teachable to good men and turn themselves away from all habit of bodies, as far as is permitted in this life. And by a certain divine providence it cannot be that religious souls, who seek themselves and their God, that is, the truth, piously, chastely, and diligently, should lack the ability to find.

But let us now leave this question, if you please, unless something still troubles you, and pass on to other things. Whatever we have discussed about those figures, perhaps more wordily than you wished, you will see how much it will be worth for other matters, if you grant that this discussion has been helped somewhat by it. For this kind of discipline both trains the mind to perceive subtler things, so that it is not dazzled by their light and, unable to bear it, gladly flee back into the same darkness it wished to escape; and it supplies arguments, unless I am mistaken, most certain, by which, once a thing has been found and established, doubt becomes shameless, as far as man is permitted to track down such things. For I doubt less about these things than about those which we see with these eyes, which are ever at war with phlegm. For what is less to be borne or listened to than to admit that we excel the beasts by reason, and to admit that what we perceive by bodily light, which some beasts even see better, is something, but to contend that what we behold by reason is nothing? If it were said to be no more than what the eyes see, surely nothing more unworthy could seem to be said. E. I accept this most gladly and agree. But this troubles me: though it is so clear to me that the soul is not of bodily quantity that I do not know at all how I could resist those arguments or which of them I would not grant, first, why, as the body grows with age, the soul too either grows or seems to grow. For who would deny that infant children are not to be compared even with the cunning of some beasts? And who would doubt that, as they grow, reason itself in some way grows in them as well? Next, if the soul is spread out through the extent of its body, how is it of no quantity? And if it is not spread out, how does it feel a prick everywhere? A. You are asking exactly the things that have often troubled me too; so I am not unprepared to answer you as I usually answer myself. Whether well, the reason that drives you will judge; but whatever my answer may be, I certainly cannot do more, unless perhaps something better comes to mind by divine gift while we discuss. But let us proceed, if you please, in our usual way, so that, with reason as guide, you answer yourself. And first let us ask whether it is a sure argument that the mind grows with the body that, with the advance of age, a man becomes better suited to human life and more and more experienced in it. E. Go on as you wish; for I too most approve this way of teaching and learning. For somehow, when I myself answer what I was asking in ignorance, the very discovery becomes sweeter not only in substance but also through wonder.

A. Tell me, then, whether “greater” and “better” seem to you two things, or one and the same thing called by two names. E. I know that what we call greater is one thing, and what we call better is another. A. To which of these two do you think quantity belongs? E. Clearly to what we call greater. A. What about when we admit that of two figures the round one is better than the square? Does quantity make it so, or something else? E. Not quantity at all; the equality we discussed above is the cause of its excellence. A. Now, then, attend to this: whether virtue seems to you to be a kind of equality of life, agreeing with reason in every respect. For if one thing in life is at odds with another, we are offended more, unless I am mistaken, than if some part of a circle were at a greater or smaller distance from the point than the other parts. Or do you think otherwise? E. No, I agree, and I approve this which you have described as virtue. For reason should not be called or thought reason unless it is true; and he whose life agrees with truth in all things is surely either the only one, or at least the chief one, who lives well and honorably; and he who is so disposed is alone to be judged to have virtue and to live by it. A. You speak rightly. But surely you also see, I think, that the circle is more like virtue than any other plane figure. That is why we usually extol with great praise the verse in Horace where, speaking of the wise man, he says, “Brave, and in himself wholly smooth and round.” And rightly; for among the goods of the mind you find nothing more in agreement with itself in every part than virtue, nor among plane figures than the circle. Therefore, if the circle excels the others not by size of space but by a certain shape, how much more must we think of virtue that it surpasses the other dispositions of the mind not by occupying a larger place but by a divine congruence and harmony of reasons? Now when a boy makes praiseworthy progress, toward what is he said to progress more than toward virtue? Or do you not think so? E. It is plain. A. So the mind should not seem to you to progress by growing with age like the body; for by progressing it arrives at virtue, which we admit is beautiful and perfect not by any size of space but by the great strength of constancy. And if greater is one thing and better another, as you have already granted, whatever progress the soul makes with age, becoming possessed of reason, seems to me to make it not greater but better. But if size of the members did this, each would be wiser the taller or stronger he was; and you will not deny, I think, that it is otherwise. E. Who would deny that? But since you too grant that the soul progresses with age, I wonder how it happens that, though without any quantity, it is helped, if not by the extent of the members, then certainly by the extent of time.

Stop wondering, for here too I answer you by a similar reasoning. Just as size of the members offers no argument that it helps the soul, since many with slighter and shorter members are found to be wiser than some endowed with a great bulk of body, so, since we see some younger men more diligent and vigorous than most older ones, I do not see why spans of time in the ages of life should be thought to give increases to minds as they do to bodies. For even bodies, which are granted to grow with time and occupy larger spaces, are often smaller when older—not only the bodies of old men, which are contracted and diminished by length of time, but also those of boys, some of whom we notice to be smaller in body than others younger than they. If, then, times stretched to great length do not give the cause of size even to bodies themselves—but all that is the power of the seed and of certain numbers of nature, truly hidden and hard to discern—how much less must we think that the soul becomes longer by long time, because we see that it has learned much by experience and practice! But if you are troubled by the fact that we usually render what the Greeks call μακροθυμία as “long-mindedness,” you may notice that many words are transferred from the body to the mind, as from the mind to the body. For if Virgil spoke of a “wicked mountain” and “the most just earth,” words which you see transferred from the mind to bodies, what wonder if in turn we speak of long-mindedness, though only bodies can be long? But the virtue called greatness of mind is rightly understood as referring to no space, but to a certain force, that is, to the power and strength of the mind; and this virtue is to be valued the more, the more it despises. But we shall speak of this later, when we ask how great the soul is in the way it is usually asked how great Hercules was—by the excellence of his deeds, not by the bulk of his members; for so we divided the question above. Now you should remember what we have said sufficiently about the point: reason taught that it is most powerful and dominates above all in figures. And do not power and dominion display a kind of greatness? Yet in the point we found no space. So when we hear or say that a mind is great or huge, we must think not how much place it occupies but how much it can do. Therefore, if your first argument, by which the mind seemed to you to grow with the body through age, has been sufficiently examined, let us pass on to another.

E. I do not know whether we have gone through all the things that usually trouble me, and not without cause; it may be that some escape my memory. But let us see what this is, which now comes to mind: that an infant child does not speak, and attains it as it grows. A. That is easy. For I believe it seems to you that each person speaks the language spoken by the people among whom he was born and brought up. E. No one is unaware of that. A. Suppose, then, someone born and raised where people did not speak, but signified their thoughts to one another by nods and movements of the limbs: do you not think he would do the same, and not speak, having heard no one speaking? E. Please do not ask me this, which cannot happen; for what such people are there, among whom I could imagine anyone being born? A. Did you not, then, see in Milan a young man of very fine bodily appearance and most elegant manners, yet mute, and so deaf that he understood others only by movements of the body, and himself signified what he wanted in no other way? For he is very well known. And I knew a certain countryman, who spoke and had a wife who spoke, who begot about four children, or more (for I do not remember well now), sons and daughters, all mute and deaf. For they were understood to be mute because they could not speak, and deaf because they took in signs only by the eyes. E. That young man I knew well, and about those others I believe you; but where does this lead? A. Because you said you could not imagine anyone being born among such people. E. Nor do I say otherwise now; for you grant, unless I am mistaken, that these were born among people who spoke. A. I would not deny it. But since we now agree that some such people can exist, consider, please: if a male and a female of this kind were joined, and, carried by some chance to some solitary place where they could nevertheless live, begot a son who was not deaf, how would he speak with his parents? E. How do you think, except that he would return signs by gesture as his parents gave them to him? Yet a small child could not do even this; so my argument remains intact. For what difference does it make whether he attains speaking or gesturing as he grows, since both belong to the soul, which we do not want to admit grows? A. Now you seem to me to believe even that when someone walks on a rope, he has a larger soul than those who cannot do it. E. That is different; for who does not see that this belongs to skill? A. Why, I ask, to skill? Because he learned it? E. Yes. A. Why then, if someone learns something else, does it not seem to you to belong to skill? E. I plainly do not deny that whatever is learned belongs to skill. A. Did not that boy, then, learn to make gestures from his parents? E. He certainly learned. A. Then you must grant that this too belongs not to a soul enlarged by growth but to a certain imitative skill. E. I cannot grant that. A. Then not everything that is learned belongs to skill, which you had just granted. E. Indeed it all belongs to skill. A. Then he did not learn gesture, which you had likewise granted. E. He learned it, but this does not belong to skill. A. But you said a little before that what is learned belongs to skill. E. Very well, I now grant that both speaking and gesturing, because we learned them, belong to skill. Yet there are some skills which we learn while we attend to others, and others which are implanted in us by teachers. A. Which of these, then, do you think the soul acquires because it becomes larger? All of them? E. Not all, I think, but the former. A. Does not walking on a rope seem to you to be of this kind? For, I think, those who do it attain it by watching. E. So I believe; yet not all who watch these things and observe them with great eagerness can attain it, but those who submit to teachers of this thing. A. You speak very well; and this is my answer to you about speech too. For many Greeks, and people of other languages, hear us speaking more often than they watch a rope-walker; and to learn our language they are often handed over to teachers, as we are when we want to know theirs. Since this is so, I wonder why you want to attribute to increases of the soul the fact that men speak, but not the fact that they walk on a rope. E. I do not know how you are confusing these things. For one who is handed over to a teacher to learn our language knows some other language of his own, which I think he learned because his soul grew; but when he learns a foreign one, I attribute it not to an enlarged soul but to skill. A. What if the one born and raised among the mute had come late, already a young man, upon other people and learned to speak, knowing no other language? Would you think his soul had grown at the time he learned to speak? E. I would never dare to say that; and I now yield to reason, and do not think that our speaking is an argument for an enlarged soul, lest I be forced to admit that the soul attained all other skills too by growing; and if I said that, the absurdity would follow that the soul decreases whenever it forgets something.

A. You understand well; and, to tell you the truth, the soul is rightly said to grow, as it were, by learning, and on the contrary to be diminished by unlearning, but by a transferred word, as we showed above. Yet we must beware lest, when it is said to grow, it seem to occupy a larger space of place; rather, the more skilled has a greater power for acting than the less skilled. But it matters greatly what sort of things it learns, by which it seems in some way to be increased. For just as in the body there are three kinds of growth—one necessary, by which the natural proportion of the members is filled out; a second superfluous, by which something, though health remains intact, differs from the other members by an increase, through which it sometimes happens that people are born with six fingers, and many other things which, being excessive beyond the usual, are called monstrous; a third harmful, which when it occurs is called a swelling, for members are said to grow in this way too, and they really do occupy a larger place, but with good health overthrown—so in the mind there are, as it were, natural increases, when it is said to be increased by honorable disciplines suited to living well and happily. But when we learn things that are more wonderful than useful, though often handy for some purposes, they are nevertheless superfluous and to be counted in that second kind. For if a certain flute player, as Varro reports, so delighted the people that he was made king, we ought not therefore to think that our mind should be increased by that art; just as we would not want to have teeth larger than human, even if we had heard that someone who had such teeth killed an enemy by biting. But the harmful kind of arts is that by which the health of the mind is wounded: for to judge dishes wonderfully by smell and taste, and to be able to tell in which lake a fish was caught, or how many years old a wine is, is a pitiable kind of skill; and when by these arts the soul seems to have grown, as it were—the soul which, neglecting the mind, has flowed away into the senses—it must be judged to have done nothing but swell, or even waste away.

E. I accept this and agree; and yet I am not a little distressed by the fact that the soul, as far as we can look into it in a newborn child, is unskilled in all things and dull. For why did it bring no skill with it, if it is eternal? A. A great question indeed, a great one, and I do not know whether any is greater, is the one you raise; and on it our opinions are so opposed that to you the soul seems to have brought no skill with it, while to me, on the contrary, it seems to have brought all skills, and what is called learning seems nothing but remembering and recollecting. But do you see that this is not the time to inquire whether this is so? For we are now trying to make it clear, if possible, that the soul is not called small or great according to spaces of place; its eternity, if it has any, we shall examine at the proper time, when we begin to treat, as far as is lawful, the question you put fourth: why it was given to the body. For what does it matter to such a quantity of it whether it always was or not, or always will be, or that it is now unskilled, now skilled? We proved above that long time does not give the cause of size even to bodies; and it is very well known that skill can be absent in those who are growing, and is often found in those who are growing old; and many other things have been said that are enough, I think, to show that the soul does not become larger with the size of the body which age brings.

So let us see, if you please, what your other argument amounts to: that touch is felt by the soul through the whole extent of the body, though we hold the soul to be of no extent. E. I would let us pass on to that now, if I did not think something should be said about strength. For what is this, that bodies increased by age give the soul greater strength, if the soul does not become greater with them? For although virtue is usually thought to belong to the soul and strength to the body, I would never deny strength to the soul, since I see that there is none in lifeless bodies. It must not be denied that the soul uses strength through the body, as it uses the senses; yet since these are functions of a living being, who would doubt that they belong rather to the soul? Since, then, we see greater strength in somewhat bigger boys than in infants, and then adolescents and young men excel in strength day by day, until it diminishes again as the body grows old, this is no slight indication, it seems to me, of a soul that grows with the body and then grows old with it. A. What you say is not altogether absurd. But I usually think that strength lies not so much in the size of the body and the increases of age as in a certain training and shaping of the members. To prove this to you, I ask whether you think that one who walks more persistently than another and tires less is of greater strength. E. So I hold. A. Why then, as a boy, did I cover much more distance without tiring, when I was trained in walking by my eagerness for fowling, than as a young man, when I had taken myself to other studies in which I was compelled more to sit, if greater strength is to be attributed to advancing age, and through it to a growing soul? Then, in the very bodies of wrestlers, trainers look most expertly not at bulk and size but at certain knots of the muscles, the tautness of the sinews, and the whole build of the body in proportion with itself, and from these rather they gather signs of strength. Yet all these count for little unless the force of skill and training is added. It has often been seen too that men of huge body are beaten by slight and short ones, whether in moving or in carrying weights, or even in wrestling itself. For who does not know that any Olympic victor tires on a journey sooner than some traveling peddler, who could be crushed by one of his fingers? Therefore, if we call strengths great not all alike, but some suited to one thing and others to another; and if the build and shape of bodies count for most, more than their size; and if training brings so much that it has been very widely believed that a man, by lifting a little calf every day, brought it about that he could lift and hold it even when it was a bull, without feeling the greater weight, which was being added little by little: then the strength of a more advanced age in no way shows that the soul has grown with the body.

But if the larger bodies of animals have somewhat more strength by the very fact that they are larger, the cause is that by the law of nature smaller weights yield to greater ones: not only when they are borne to their own place by their own tendency—as moist and earthy bodies move to the middle place of the world, which is the lowest, and airy and fiery bodies, in turn, upward—but also when, by some engine, or throw, or push, or repulse, they are forced by an outside force to go where they would not be borne of their own accord. For if you drop from on high two stones of unequal size, even at the same time, the larger reaches the ground sooner; but if the smaller is placed under it and is inevitably caught by it, it certainly yields and is carried down to the ground together with it. Again, if the larger is thrown down from above and the smaller is thrown upward against it, when they meet the smaller must be struck back and recoil. And lest you think this happens because the smaller was being forced upward against nature while the other sought its own place with greater impetus, have the larger thrown upward to meet the smaller thrown down toward the earth: you will see the smaller nonetheless repelled and forced toward the sky, but by the very rebound falling off to another side, so as to be carried down where the way is clear. Again, if both, not by natural motion but thrown against each other by two men fighting, as it were, on a field, collide in the middle of the space, who would doubt that the smaller will yield to the larger, back toward the side from which it came and toward which the other was moving? Though this is so—that is, though smaller weights, as was said, yield to greater—it matters greatly with what impetus they are driven at each other. For if the smaller, launched with greater impetus as if by some powerful engine, strikes a larger one that was thrown more weakly or is already losing force, although it bounces back from it, it nevertheless slows it or even drives it back, in proportion to the blows and weights. With these things set down and understood, as far as the present business requires, see now whether what are called strengths in animals agree with this reasoning. For who denies that the bodies of all animals are endowed with their own weight? This weight, moved by the impulse of the soul in whatever direction it inclines, counts for much by its own size. But the soul's impulse, to move the weight of the body, uses the sinews as its engines; and dryness and moderate heat invigorate the sinews and make them more mobile, while moist cold loosens and weakens them. So in sleep, which physicians say, and prove, is cold and moist, the limbs grow languid; the effort of those just awakened is much weaker; and therefore nothing is more broken and nerveless than the lethargic. But it is plain that some in frenzy, whose sinews are stretched and hardened beyond measure by sleeplessness, by the strength of wine, and by acute fevers—that is, by so many hot things—struggle and do many things with greater strength than in sound health, though their body is thinner and slighter from the illness. If, then, what are called strengths come about from the impulse of the soul, from a certain mechanism of the sinews, and from the weight of the body: the will supplies the impulse, which becomes readier through hope or daring, but is blunted by fear, and much more by despair (for in fear, when some hope remains, greater strength usually appears); the mechanism is fitted by a certain configuration of the body, regulated by the balance of health, and strengthened by diligent exercise; the weight is given by the bulk of the members, which age and nourishment acquire, but nourishment alone restores. One who excels equally in all these is admirable for strength, and one is weaker than another the more these fail him. And it often happens that one with a persistent impulse and a better mechanism, though he moves a small weight of body, conquers another endowed with greater bulk. And again, sometimes the bulk is so great that, even if moved with weaker effort, it nevertheless crushes a small adversary striving much more vigorously. But when it is not the weight of the body, nor the regulation of the sinews, but the impulse itself, that is, the mind, that yields—so that a man altogether stronger, but more timid, is overcome by one altogether weaker, but bolder—I do not know whether this should be attributed to strength. Unless someone says that the soul has certain strengths of its own, by which greater daring or confidence is produced in it; and when these are present in one and absent in the other, then it is understood how far the mind surpasses its body, even in what is done through the body. Therefore, in an infant child only the impulse to pull or push something is intact, while the sinews are unfit because of their new and less perfect formation, flabby because of the moisture which abounds at that age, and weak for lack of all exercise, and the weight is so small that it does not press heavily even when thrown by another, and is more suited to receiving harm than to inflicting it. Who, then, having seen that the years have supplied all these things that were lacking, and recognized that strength was given through them, would rightly and prudently think that the soul has grown because it uses them as they become greater day by day? For such a man, if he saw small, light reeds, shot as far as possible with a slack bow by some young man whom he could not see because of a curtain between them, go not far and soon fall back; and a little later saw arrows, now heavy with iron and lively with their feathers, shot from a fully stretched string, seek the most distant sky; and if he were assured that both were done with equal effort by the man, he would think that the man had grown in so short a time and been increased in strength. What could be said more perverse? Then, if the soul grows, see how ignorant it is to believe that its increases come from the strength of the body, and not to believe that they come from abundance of learning; since to the former it only supplies the impulse, while the latter it alone possesses. But if we think the soul grows when strength is added, it must be thought to diminish when strength is taken away. And strength is taken away in old age, taken away in the labor of studies; and at these very times learning is usually heaped up and built up; and in no way can anything be increased and diminished at the same time. So greater strength at a greater age is no argument for a growing soul. Many other things can be said; but if you are already satisfied, I set a limit, so that we may pass on to other matters. E. I am fully persuaded that greater strength does not come from the soul's having grown. For, to omit the other things you have subtly said, not even a frenzied man would say that the soul grows through madness and bodily disease while the body itself diminishes—though everyone knows that he has much greater strength than a healthy man usually has. Hence it seems to me that all we wonder at, when strength beyond expectation is found in someone, lies chiefly in the sinews. So, I pray you, now take up the question to which I am wholly directed: why does the soul, if it does not have a size of as great extent as the body, feel everywhere in it when it is touched?

A. Very well, let us take up what you wish; but I need you to be much more attentive than you perhaps think you need to be. So be as present as you can, and answer me: what does this sense seem to you to be which the soul uses through the body? For it is called sense in the proper meaning of the word. E. I usually hear that there are five senses: of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching; more than that I do not know what to answer. A. That division is very old and much repeated in public speeches. But I would like you to define for me what sense itself is, so that by the same definition all of those would be included, and nothing else that was not sense would be understood in it; but if you cannot, I do not press you. For you can certainly do what is enough: either refute or approve my definition. E. In this way perhaps I shall not fail you, as far as I am able; though even this is not always easy. A. Attend, then: I think that sense is the soul's not being unaware of what the body undergoes. E. I like this definition. A. Stand by it, then, as if it were yours, and defend it while I refute it for a little while. E. I will defend it, certainly, if you help me; if not, I already dislike it, for it was not without reason that you thought it needed refuting. A. Do not depend too much on authority, especially mine, which is none; and, as Horace says, “Dare to be wise” (Epist. 1.2.40), lest fear subdue you before reason does. E. I fear nothing at all, however the matter proceeds; for you will not let me err. But begin now, if you have anything, so that I am not worn out by delay rather than by opposition. A. Tell me, then, what does your body undergo when you see me? E. It certainly undergoes something; for my eyes, unless I am mistaken, are parts of my body; and if they underwent nothing, how would I see you? A. But it is not enough to persuade me that your eyes undergo something unless you also show what they undergo. E. What else but sight itself? For they see. If you asked me what a sick man undergoes, I would answer sickness; what one who desires undergoes, desire; one who fears, fear; one who rejoices, joy. Why then, when you ask what one who sees undergoes, should I not rightly answer, sight itself? A. But one who rejoices feels joy. Or will you deny it? E. No, I agree. A. I would say this of the other passions too. E. So I hold. A. But whatever the eyes feel, they see. E. I would in no way grant that: for who sees pain, which the eyes often feel? A. It is clear that you are talking about the eyes: you are well awake. So see whether, as one who rejoices feels joy by rejoicing, so one who sees feels sight by seeing. E. Could it be otherwise? A. But whatever one who sees feels by seeing, he must also see. E. He need not: for what if he feels love by seeing—does he also see love? A. Most cautiously and most shrewdly said; I am glad you are hard to deceive. But now attend: since we have agreed that not everything the eyes feel, nor everything that is felt by seeing, is seen, do you think this at least is true, that everything that is seen is felt? E. Unless I grant this, how can what we see be called sense? A. What? Do we not also undergo everything we feel? E. Yes. A. Then if we feel everything we see, and undergo everything we feel, we undergo everything we see. E. I do not resist. A. So you undergo me, and I in turn you, when we see each other. E. So I think, and reason forces me to this insistently. A. Hear the rest: for I believe it would seem to you most absurd and most foolish if someone affirmed that you undergo some body there where the body you undergo is not. E. It seems absurd, and I think it is as you say. A. What of this? Is it not plain that my body is in one place, yours in another? E. It is plain. A. But your eyes feel my body; and if they feel it, they certainly undergo it; and they cannot undergo it where what they undergo is not; and yet they are not where my body is: so they undergo it where they are not. E. I granted all those things which I saw it would be absurd not to grant; but this last, which was concluded from them, is so much more absurd that I would rather agree that I granted one of them rashly than that this is true; for I would not dare to say even in my sleep that my eyes feel where they are not. A. See, then, where you fell asleep: for what could have slipped past you so unguardedly, if you were awake as you were a little before? E. Indeed, I am carefully going over this very thing and turning it over in my mind; yet nothing appears clearly enough that I regret having granted, unless perhaps that our eyes feel when we see; for perhaps it is sight itself that feels. A. Indeed it is so: for sight stretches itself outward and darts out through the eyes as far as it can in every direction, to survey what we perceive. Hence it sees rather where the thing it sees is, not where it bursts out from in order to see. So it is not you who see, when you see me? E. What madman would say that? I certainly see, but I see by sight sent out through the eyes. A. But if you see, you feel; if you feel, you undergo; and you cannot undergo anything where you are not; but you see me where I am; therefore you undergo where I am. But if you are not where I am, I do not know at all how you dare to say that I am seen by you. E. By sight, I say, stretched out to the place where you are, I see you where you are; but I admit that I am not there. But just as, if I touched you with a rod, it would certainly be I who touched, and I would feel it, and yet I would not be where I touched you; so, when I say that I see by sight, although I am not there, I am not therefore forced to admit that it is not I who see. A. So you granted nothing rashly: for your eyes too can be defended in this way, whose rod, as it were, is sight, as you say; and that conclusion is not absurd, that your eyes see where they are not. Or do you think otherwise? E. It is just as you say; for I have now also noticed that if the eyes saw where they are, they would also see themselves. A. You would say more correctly not “also themselves” but “only themselves.” For where they are, that is, the place they hold, they alone hold; neither is the nose where they are, nor anything near them; otherwise you too would be where I am, because we are next to each other. Since this is so, if the eyes saw only where they are, they would see nothing but themselves. But since they do not see themselves, we are compelled to agree not only that they can see where they are not, but that they cannot see at all except where they are not. E. There is nothing here that makes me doubt. A. So you do not doubt that they undergo where they are not. For where they see, there they feel: for seeing itself is feeling, and feeling is undergoing; therefore where they feel, there they undergo. But they see elsewhere than where they are: therefore they undergo where they are not. E. It is wonderful how true I think this is.

A. Perhaps you think rightly. But answer, I beg you, whether we see everything we come to know through sight. E. So I believe. A. Do you also believe that everything we come to know by seeing we come to know through sight? E. This too I believe. A. Why then do we often, by seeing smoke alone, come to know that fire, which we do not see, is hidden beneath? E. You speak the truth; and now I do not think that we see whatever we come to know through sight: for, as you have taught, by seeing one thing we can come to know another which sight has not reached. A. What? Can we not see what we perceive through sight? E. In no way. A. So perceiving is one thing, knowing another? E. Altogether different: for we perceive the smoke, which we see, and from it we know that the fire, which we do not see, is beneath. A. You understand well. But you surely see that when this happens our body, that is, the eyes, undergoes nothing from the fire, but from the smoke, which alone they see. For we have already agreed above that seeing is perceiving and perceiving is undergoing. E. I hold it and agree. A. So when something is not hidden from the soul through an affection of the body, this is not straightway called one of the five senses mentioned, but only when the affection itself is not hidden from it. For that fire, neither seen nor heard nor smelled nor tasted nor touched by us, is nevertheless not hidden from the soul once the smoke is seen. And though this not being hidden is not called sense, because the body underwent nothing from the fire, it is nevertheless called knowledge through sense, because it was inferred and discovered from an affection of the body, though a different one, that is, from seeing something else. E. I understand, and I see very well that this agrees with and supports that definition of yours which you gave me to defend as mine: for I remember that you defined sense as the soul's not being unaware of what the body undergoes. So we call the seeing of the smoke sense, for the eyes, which are parts of the body and bodies, underwent it by seeing; but the fire, from which the body underwent nothing, though it was known, we do not call sense. A. I commend your memory and your understanding that follows well; but that defense of the definition is tottering. E. Why, please? A. Because you do not deny, I think, that the body undergoes something when we grow or grow old; and it is plain that we do not perceive this by any sense; yet it is not hidden from the soul. So something the body undergoes is not hidden from it, and yet this cannot be called sense. For by seeing things larger which we had once seen smaller, and by seeing as old men those who are known to have been young men and boys, we infer that our bodies undergo some such change even now while we are speaking. Nor are we deceived in this, I think; for I would sooner say that I am deceived in what I see than in understanding that my hair is growing now, or that my body is changing moment by moment. But if this change is an affection of the body, which no one denies, and is not now perceived by us, and yet is not hidden from the soul, because it is not hidden from us, then the body undergoes, as I said, what is not hidden from the soul, and yet it is not sense. Therefore that definition, which ought to include nothing that was not sense, since it included this, is certainly faulty. E. I see nothing left for me but to ask you either to define it otherwise or to repair this one, if you can; for I cannot deny that it is faulty, by this reasoning which I strongly approve. A. It is easy to correct it, and I want you to dare to do it; for you will, believe me, if you have well understood where it goes wrong. E. Where else than in including what does not belong to it? A. How exactly? E. Because it cannot be denied that a body growing old, even in a young man, undergoes something; and when we know this, something the body undergoes is not hidden from the soul, and yet it cannot be perceived by any sense: for I neither see that I am growing old now, nor perceive it by hearing, smell, taste, or touch. A. How then do you know it? E. I gather it by reason. A. On what arguments does your reason rest? E. That I see others old, who were young as I now am. A. Is not the sense by which you see them one of the five? E. Who denies it? But from seeing them I infer that I too am growing old, though I do not see it. A. What words, then, do you think should be added to that definition to perfect it, since there is no sense unless the affection of the body is not hidden from the soul, yet not in such a way that the soul understands it through another affection or through anything else? E. Say that, please, a little more plainly.

A. I will humor you, and much more gladly when you hold back than when you hurry; but be wholly attentive, for what I am going to say will be useful for many things. A definition contains nothing less and nothing more than what it has undertaken to explain; otherwise it is altogether faulty. Whether it is free from such faults is tested by conversion, which will become plainer to you by these examples. If you asked me what a man is, and I defined him thus, “Man is a mortal animal,” you should not straightway approve the definition because what was said is true; but, putting before it the little word “every,” you should convert it and see whether it is true when converted too: that is, whether, just as it is true that every man is a mortal animal, so it would be true that every mortal animal is a man. Finding it otherwise, you should reject the definition for the fault of including what does not belong to it; for not man alone is a mortal animal, but also any beast. This definition of man is therefore usually perfected by adding “rational” to “mortal”: for man is a rational mortal animal; and as every man is a rational mortal animal, so every rational mortal animal is a man. The former definition, then, was faulty by containing more, for it contained the beast along with man; this one is perfect, for it holds every man and nothing more than man. But a definition is faulty by holding less if you add “grammarian”: for although every rational mortal animal that is a grammarian is a man, yet many men who are not grammarians are not contained by this definition; and for this reason it is false in the first proposition, but true when converted. For it is false that every man is a rational mortal animal that is a grammarian; but it is true that every rational mortal animal that is a grammarian is a man. But when the statement is true neither in the first proposition nor in the conversion, it is surely more faulty than each of these; such are these two: “man is a white animal,” or “man is a four-footed animal.” For if you say every man is a white animal, or a four-footed animal, you say what is false, and also if you convert it. But they differ in this, that the first applies to some men, for many men are white, while the second applies to none, for no man is four-footed. For the present you have learned this much for testing definitions, how they are judged by proposition and conversion; there are many other things of this kind that are taught, full of words and of obscurities, which I will try to have you learn little by little when it seems opportune. Now turn your mind to that definition of ours and, when you have examined it with more skill, correct it. For we had found that, though it was the definition of sense, it included something else that was not sense, and therefore was not true when converted. For perhaps it is true that every sense is an affection of the body not hidden from the soul, as it is true that every man is a mortal animal; but as it is false that every mortal animal is a man, because the beast is one too, so it is false that every affection of the body not hidden from the soul is sense; because our nails are growing now, and this is not hidden from the soul, for we know it; and yet we do not perceive it, but know it by inference. Just as, then, “rational” was added to that definition of man to perfect it, and by this addition the beasts, which were contained along with him, were excluded, and by such a definition we include nothing but man, and every man: do you not think something should also be added to this one, by which what it holds that does not belong to it may be separated, so that nothing is understood in it but sense, and every sense? E. I do think so, but I do not know what can be added. A. Every sense is certainly an affection of the body not hidden from the soul; but this statement cannot be converted, because of that affection of the body by which it grows or diminishes with our knowing it, that is, so as not to be hidden from the soul. E. That is so. A. What? Is this affection not hidden from the soul through itself, or through something else? E. Plainly through something else; for it is one thing to see that the nails are larger, another to know that they are growing. A. Since, then, growing itself is an affection which we reach by no sense, while the size we perceive has been brought about by that affection and is not the affection itself, it is plain that we know such an affection not through itself but through something else. If, then, it were known to the soul not through something else, would it not be perceived rather than inferred? E. I understand. A. Why then do you doubt what should be added to that definition? E. Now I see that it should be defined so that sense is an affection of the body not hidden from the soul through itself: for every sense is this, and all this, I think, is sense. A. If this is so, I admit that the definition is perfect. But let us test it, if you please, whether it does not totter by that second fault, as did the definition of man to which “grammarian” was added. For you must remember that it was said that man is a rational mortal animal that is a grammarian, and that this definition fails in being true when converted while false in its first statement. For it is false that every man is a rational mortal animal that is a grammarian, though it is true that every rational mortal animal that is a grammarian is a man. So this definition is faulty because it holds nothing but man, but not every man; and this one, in which we glory as perfect, is perhaps of that kind. For although every affection of the body not hidden from the soul through itself is sense, yet not every sense is that. You may understand this thus: beasts certainly perceive, and almost all are strong in those five senses, as far as nature has granted to each. Or will you deny that? E. Not at all.

A. What? Do you not grant this, that there is no knowledge except when something has been perceived and known by firm reason? E. I grant it. A. But a beast does not use reason. E. This too I grant. A. Then knowledge does not fall to the beast. But when something is not hidden, it is certainly known; so beasts do not perceive, if every sense is an affection of the body not hidden from the soul through itself. Yet they do perceive, as was granted a little before. Why then do we hesitate to reject that definition, which could by no means embrace every sense, since it has excluded the senses of beasts? E. I admit I was deceived when I granted you that there is knowledge when something is perceived by firm reason. For when you asked this, I was looking only at men; for I can neither say that beasts use reason nor deny them knowledge. For the dog, I think, knew its master, whom it is said to have recognized after twenty years—not to speak of countless other cases. A. Tell me, I beg you: if two things were put before you, one which is to be reached and the other through which you could reach it, which of these do you value more, and which do you prefer to which? E. Who doubts that the one which is to be reached is better? A. Then, since knowledge and reason are two things, do we reach reason through knowledge, or knowledge through reason? E. Both, as far as I think, are so bound together that one can be reached through either. For we would not reach reason itself unless we knew that it was to be reached. So knowledge went before, so that we might reach reason through it. A. What! Is that very knowledge which you say goes before reached without reason? E. I would never say that, for that is the height of rashness. A. Through reason, then? E. Not so. A. Through rashness, then? E. Who would say that? A. Through what, then? E. Through nothing, because knowledge is implanted in us. A. You seem to me to have forgotten what we agreed above, when I asked whether you thought there was knowledge when something is perceived by firm reason. For you answered, I think, that this seemed to you to be human knowledge; but now you say that a man can have some knowledge of a thing he has perceived by no reason. And who does not see that nothing is more opposed than these two: that there is no knowledge except when something is perceived by firm reason, and that there is knowledge of something perceived by no reason? So I want to know which of these you choose; for both cannot possibly be true. E. I choose what I have just said; for I admit that I granted the earlier statement rashly. For since we are seeking the truth between us by reason, and this is done by asking and answering, how could reason arrive at the conclusion in which it ends unless something were first granted? And how could what was not known be rightly granted? So, unless this reasoning found something known in me, relying on which it might lead me to the unknown, I would learn nothing at all through it, nor would I call it reason at all. Therefore you refuse in vain to agree with me that before reason there is necessarily some knowledge in us, from which reason itself takes its beginning. A. I will humor you, and, as I have resolved, I will let you correct yourself whenever you regret something you granted; but please do not abuse this license and attend carelessly when I ask, lest things constantly granted badly make you doubt even those that are granted well. E. Go on rather to the rest. For although I will add to my watchfulness whatever I can (for I am ashamed to fall from my opinion so often), I shall never be deterred from resisting this shame and correcting my slip, especially with you lending a hand. For obstinacy is not to be taken up merely because constancy is to be desired.

A. May that constancy come to you as quickly as possible; so pleasing an opinion you have expressed. But now be as fully present as you can for what I want. I ask you what difference seems to you to exist between reason and reasoning. E. I am not well able to distinguish them. A. Consider this, then: whether you think that in a man already grown, or a mature man, or (to remove all ambiguity) a wise man, reason is present without interruption while his mind is sound, as good health is in the body while it is free from disease and wounds; or whether, like walking, sitting, speaking, it is present at one time and absent at another. E. I think reason is always present in a sound mind. A. What of this? When, through things that are granted and plain, either by questioning another or by connecting one thing with another, we bring ourselves to the knowledge of something, does it seem to you that we, or any wise man, always do this? E. Not always: for, as I think, not every man, nor every wise man, is always seeking something by discussion, either with himself or with another; for one who seeks has not yet found, so if he always seeks, he never finds. But the wise man has already found—to say nothing else—wisdom itself, which, when he was foolish, he was seeking, perhaps by discussion, or in whatever other way he could. A. You speak rightly. So I want you to understand that this is not reason, when through what is granted and known we are led to something unknown: for this, as we have already agreed, is not always present in a sound mind, but reason is always present. E. I understand; but where does this lead? A. Because a little before you said that I ought to agree with you that we have knowledge before reason, because reason relies on something known while it leads us to the unknown. But now we have found that it is not to be called reason while this is being done; for a sound mind does not always do this, though it always has reason. But this may perhaps rightly be called reasoning; so that reason is a certain sight of the mind, and reasoning the search of reason, that is, the movement of that sight through the things that are to be seen. So the latter is needed for seeking, the former for seeing. And so, when that sight of the mind which we call reason, cast upon some thing, sees it, this is called knowledge; but when the mind does not see, though it directs its sight, it is called want of knowledge or ignorance. For not everyone who looks with these bodily eyes sees, as we very easily notice in the dark. From this it is clear, I think, that looking is one thing and seeing another; and these two, in the mind, we call reason and knowledge—unless something troubles you against this, or you think these things have been distinguished too unclearly. E. This distinction pleases me very much, and I gladly agree. A. See now, then, whether you think we look in order to see, or see in order to look. E. Of this not even a blind man would doubt: looking is for the sake of seeing, not seeing for the sake of looking. A. It must be admitted, then, that seeing is to be valued more than looking. E. It must altogether be admitted. A. Then knowledge too more than reason. E. I see that it follows. A. Do you hold that beasts are better or happier than men? E. God forbid such monstrous madness. A. You are right to shudder; but your opinion forces us to it: for you said that they have knowledge and do not have reason. But man has reason, by which knowledge is reached with difficulty. But even granting that it is reached easily, how will reason help us to think we should be preferred to beasts, when they have knowledge, and this has been found to be of more value than reason?

E. I am altogether compelled either not to grant knowledge to beasts or to make no objection to their being rightly preferred to me. But please explain what that is which I mentioned about the dog of Ulysses; for, moved by admiration for it, I barked so emptily. A. What do you think it is but a certain power of perceiving, not of knowing? For many beasts surpass us in sense—the cause of which this is not the place to inquire into—but God has set us above them in mind, reason, and knowledge. Yet that sense, with the help of habit, whose power is great, can distinguish the things in which such souls delight; and the more easily because the soul of beasts is more fastened to the body, whose senses they are, which it uses for food and for the pleasure it takes from that same body. But the human soul, through reason and knowledge, which we are discussing, because these are far more excellent than the senses, withdraws itself from the body as far as it can, and more gladly enjoys the pleasure that is within; and the more it declines into the senses, the more it makes man like a beast. Hence it is that even wailing babies, the further they are from reason, the more easily they distinguish by sense the touch and closeness of their nurses, and cannot bear the smell of other women with whom they have not been familiar. Therefore, although one thing has come out of another, I gladly linger on this discourse, by which the soul is warned not to pour itself out into the senses beyond what necessity compels, but rather to gather itself back from them to itself, and to become a child again to God: which is to become a new man by putting off the old, with which, because God's law was neglected, it was necessary to begin; and nothing truer or more hidden than this is contained in the divine Scriptures. I would like to say more on this, and to bind myself, so that, while seeming to teach you, I would be doing nothing else than giving myself back to myself, to whom I owe myself most; and so to become for God, as Horace says, “a slave who is his master's friend.” This cannot happen at all unless we are re-formed to his image, which he gave us to guard as something most precious and most dear, when he made us such for ourselves that nothing could be preferred to us but himself. Nothing seems to me more laborious than this activity, and nothing more like rest; yet the mind cannot undertake or complete it except with the help of him to whom it is given back. Hence it is that man must be re-formed by the clemency of him by whose goodness and power he was formed. But we are compelled to return to our subject. So see whether you are now convinced that wild animals do not have knowledge, and that all that image of knowledge, as it were, which we admire, is the power of perceiving. E. I am convinced indeed; and if anything needs to be inquired into more carefully about this, I shall look for another time; now I want to know what you conclude from it.

A. What else do you think but that that definition of sense, which before tottered because it included something more than sense, now totters by the contrary fault, because it could not include every sense? For wild animals have sense but do not have knowledge; and whatever is not hidden is known; and everything that is known certainly belongs to knowledge. On all these points we have already agreed. Either, then, it is not true that sense is an affection of the body not hidden from the soul, or beasts lack it because they lack knowledge. But we grant sense to beasts; therefore that definition is faulty. E. I admit I find nothing with which to resist. A. Take another point that should make us still more ashamed of this definition. For you remember, I think, that a third fault of definition was shown you, than which nothing is more shameful: when it is true in neither direction, like that definition of man, “man is a four-footed animal.” For whether one says “every man is a four-footed animal” or “every four-footed animal is a man,” whoever says and affirms it is surely mad, if he is not joking. E. You speak the truth. A. What? If this definition of ours too is caught in this fault, do you think there is anything that more deserves to be hissed off and banished from the mind? E. Who would refuse? But I would not want, if it can be helped, to be detained here too so long and tossed about with little questions. A. There is nothing to fear, for the business is now finished. Or are you not yet persuaded, from when the difference between wild animals and men was discussed, that perceiving is one thing and knowing another? E. On the contrary, entirely. A. So sense is one thing, knowledge another. E. That is so. A. But we do not perceive by reason, but by sight, or hearing, or smell, or taste, or touch. E. I agree. A. And everything we know, we know by reason; so no sense is knowledge. But whatever is not hidden belongs to knowledge; so not being hidden belongs to no sense, just as no man can rightly be called four-footed. Therefore this definition of ours, which you took up, has been convicted not only of invading another's territory and leaving nothing of its own right, but of having nothing at all of its own and occupying wholly what belonged to another. E. What then shall we do? Will you let it leave the court like this? For although I gave it such defense as I could, you composed the very formula of the suit that deceived us. And I, though I could not win, appeared in good faith, which is enough for me; but you, if you are charged with collusion, what will you do—you by whom it was both brought forward to argue boldly and attacked so as to yield shamefully? A. Is there any judge here from whom I need fear anything for this definition or for myself? I wanted to refute you privately, as if called in as a legal adviser, to instruct you, so that when it comes to court you may stand ready. E. Is there, then, something you can offer for this definition, which you commend to me, so very weak, to defend and protect rashly? A. There certainly is.

E. What is it, I beg you? A. That although sense is one thing and knowledge another, not being hidden is common to both; just as, though man and beast differ very greatly, to be an animal is common to both. For whatever appears to the soul is not hidden, whether through the balance of the body or through the purity of understanding; and the former sense has claimed for itself, the latter knowledge. E. Then that definition remains safe and approved? A. It does remain. E. Where then was I deceived? A. When I asked whether everything that is not hidden is known; for you assented to this question rashly. E. What then would you have had me say? A. That it is not straightway knowledge if something is not hidden, but only if it is not hidden through reason; but when it is not hidden through the body, it is called sense, if the affection of the body is not hidden through itself. Or do you not know that it seemed to some philosophers, and very acute ones, that not even what is grasped by the mind deserves the name of knowledge unless the grasp is so firm that the mind cannot be moved from it by any reasoning? E. I accept this most gratefully. But please, since what sense is has been explained, I think, most subtly, let us go back to that question for whose sake we had undertaken to explain this. For I had brought forward an argument by which I would prove that the soul is as great as its body, from the fact that it feels one touching it from the head to the tip of the big toe, wherever you touch; and from there we were carried, perhaps necessarily, to the definition of sense, so full of delays. So now show me, if you please, the fruit of so much work. A. There is a fruit indeed, and a very rich one; for all that we were seeking has been accomplished. For if sense is an affection of the body not hidden from the soul through itself—which we discussed longer than you wished, in order to hold it most firmly—do you remember that we found that the eyes perceive where they are not, or rather undergo there? E. I remember. A. You also granted, unless I am mistaken, and do not now doubt that it had to be granted, that the soul is much better and more powerful than the whole body. E. To doubt this I think impious. A. Come then: if the body can undergo something where it is not, because of a certain blending with the soul, as was found to happen to the eyes in seeing, do we think the soul, through which the eyes themselves have such power, so gross and sluggish that an affection of the body would be hidden from it if it did not lie there where the affection itself occurs? E. This conclusion moves me greatly, so greatly that I am altogether astonished, and do not find not only what to answer but even where I am. For what shall I say? That it is not sense when an affection of the body is not hidden from the soul through itself? What else will it be, if not this? That the eyes undergo nothing when we see? That is most absurd. That they undergo where they are? But they do not see themselves, and where they are there is nothing but themselves. That the soul is not more powerful than the eyes, when their power is the soul's own? Nothing is more insane. Or must it be said that it is more powerful to undergo where a thing is than where it is not? But if this were true, sight would not be more excellent than the other senses. A. What of this: when the eyes undergo some blow, or something falling into them, or a disturbance of their moisture, they undergo it where they are; and this is not hidden from the soul, and this affection is called not sight but touch; and yet the eye could undergo such things even in a lifeless body, where the soul, from which the affection would not be hidden, was absent. But what the eye cannot undergo unless the soul is present, that is, what it undergoes by seeing—this alone it undergoes where it is not. From this, to whom does it not appear that the soul is contained in no place? For the eye, which is a body, undergoes outside its own place only what it would never undergo without the soul. E. What then shall I do, I beg you? Can it not be concluded from these reasonings that our souls are not in our bodies? And if so, do I not know where I am? For who takes from me that I myself am a soul? A. Do not be troubled, but rather be of good cheer. For this thought and consideration invites us to ourselves, and, as far as is permitted, tears us away from the body. As for what has seemed to you, that the soul is not in the body of a living creature, although it seems absurd, there have not been lacking very learned men who held this, nor do I think they are lacking now; but, as you yourself understand, the matter is very subtle, and to discern it the edge of the mind must be well purified. Now consider rather what else you can bring forward to prove that the soul is long or broad or anything of that kind: for you feel that your argument from the sense of touch does not reach the truth, nor has any force to prove that the soul is spread through the whole body like blood. Or, if you now have nothing more to bring forward, let us see what remains.

E. I would perhaps have nothing, if I did not remember how much we used to wonder as boys at lizards' tails quivering when cut off from the rest of the body. I can in no way persuade myself that this movement happens without the soul; nor do I understand how it can be that the soul has no extent, when it can be cut off along with the body. A. I could answer that air and fire, which are held in the earthy and moist body by the presence of the soul so that a blending of all four elements may come about, when they escape upward and free themselves after the departure of that same soul, move those little bodies the more violently the fresher the wound from which they suddenly burst out; and that then the movement grows languid and finally ceases, as what escapes becomes less and less, until it has flown off entirely. But I am called back from this by what I took in with these eyes almost later than can be believed, but certainly not later than I should have. For when we were recently on a country estate in Liguria, those young men of ours who were then with me for the sake of their studies, lying on the ground in a shady place, noticed a little creature with many feet crawling—a long worm of a sort, I mean. It is commonly known, but what I am going to tell I had never observed in it. One of them, turning round the stylus he happened to have, struck the animal in the middle; then both parts of the body went off from the wound in opposite directions, with such speed of their feet and no weaker effort than if they were two animals of this kind. Terrified by this marvel and curious about the cause, they eagerly brought those living pieces to us, where Alypius and I were sitting together. And we, not a little moved, watched them run on the tablet in whatever direction they could; and one of them, touched with the stylus, twisted itself toward the place of the pain, while the other felt nothing and went about its own movements elsewhere. What more? We tried how far this would go; and we cut the worm, or rather by now the worms, into many parts: they all moved in such a way that, had we not done it ourselves and had the fresh wounds not been visible, we would have believed that so many had been born separately and each had lived on its own. But what I then said to those young men, when they looked at me intently, I am afraid to say to you now. For we have now gone so far that, unless I answer you otherwise with something that holds probably for my case, our great effort, fortified by so long a discussion, would seem to have been pierced through by one little worm and to have succumbed. I had instructed them to keep to the course of their studies as they had begun; so they would come more suitably some day to seeking and learning these things, if the matter should prompt them. But if I wanted to set out what I discussed with Alypius after they left, when each of us, according to his small capacity, recalled and conjectured and inquired, we would have to say far more than has been said from the very beginning with so many windings and turnings. Yet with you I will not keep silent about what I think. If I had not already known many things about the body, about the form that is in the body, about place, about time, about motion—things which are discussed most subtly and abstrusely because of this very question—I would lean toward giving the palm to those who say that the soul is a body. Therefore I warn you again and again, as I can, not to rush rashly into the books or the discussions of very talkative men who trust too much in these bodily senses, until you correct and make firm the steps that lead the soul to God himself; lest you be turned away from that most secret and most tranquil dwelling of the mind, from which it is now a pilgrim while it dwells here, more easily by studies and labors than by inertia and sloth. But now hear, against what troubles you so much, as I feel, not the strongest of many arguments, but the shortest; and not what seems to me more probable than the rest, but what I could choose as more suited to you. E. Tell me, I beg you, as quickly as you can. A. First I say this: even if the cause is completely hidden why these things happen when certain bodies are cut up, we should not straightway be so disturbed by this one thing as to think false so many things that seemed to you above clearer than light. For it may be that the cause of this is hidden from us, either because it has been concealed from human nature, or because it is known to some man who cannot be asked by us, or even because we ourselves are of such ability that he could not satisfy us if asked. Is it fitting, because of this, that whatever we have learned most firmly on the contrary side, and admit to be most true, should slip from us and be wrested from us? But if those things remain intact which, when questioned, you answered were certain and beyond doubt, there is no reason for us to fear this little worm childishly, even if we cannot give the cause of its vitality and multiplicity. For if you were firmly and unshakably convinced about someone that he was a good man, and you caught him at a banquet of robbers whom you were pursuing, and by some chance he died before you could question him, you would suppose any cause rather than crime and complicity for his association and banqueting with criminals, even if it always remained hidden from you. Why, then, since by so many arguments set out above, and most firmly approved by you, it has been made plain to you that the soul is not contained in place and therefore is of no such quantity as we see in bodies, do you not suspect that there is some cause why some animal lives in all its parts when cut up—but not that the soul could be cut up with the body? And if we cannot find it, should we not rather seek the true cause than believe a false one?

Next I ask you whether you think that in our words the sound itself is one thing and what is signified by the sound another. E. I think both are the same. A. Tell me, then, where the sound itself comes from when you speak. E. Who doubts that it comes from me? A. So the sun comes from you when you name the sun? E. You asked me about the sound, not about the thing itself. A. So the sound is one thing and the thing the sound signifies another; but you had said both are the same. E. Very well, I now grant that the signifying sound is one thing and the thing signified another. A. Tell me, then, whether, knowing the Latin language, you could name the sun in speaking if the understanding of the sun did not precede the sound. E. In no way could I. A. What? If, before the name itself comes from your mouth, wishing to utter it you keep yourself silent for a while, does there not remain in your thought what another will hear when the voice expresses it? E. It is plain. A. What? Since the sun itself is of such great size, can that notion of it which you hold in thought before the voice be seen to be long, or broad, or anything of the kind? E. In no way. A. Come now, tell me: when the name itself bursts from your mouth, and I, hearing it, think of the sun, which you thought of before the voice and with the voice itself, and which now perhaps we both think of, does not the name itself seem to you to have received from you, as it were, a meaning which it would carry to me through the ears? E. It does. A. Since, then, the name itself consists of sound and meaning, and the sound belongs to the ears, the meaning to the mind, do you not think that in the name, as in a living being, the sound is the body and the meaning, as it were, the soul of the sound? E. Nothing seems to me more alike. A. Attend now, whether the sound of the name can be divided into letters, while its soul, that is, the meaning, cannot—since this is what you answered a little before seemed to you neither broad nor long in our thought. E. I entirely agree. A. What? When that sound is divided into single letters, does it seem to you to keep that meaning? E. How can single letters signify what the name made of them signifies? A. But when the sound, having lost its meaning, has been torn apart into letters, do you think anything else has happened than that, the body being torn to pieces, the soul has departed, and a kind of death of the name has occurred? E. I not only agree, but so gladly that nothing in this discussion has delighted me more. A. If, then, you have seen clearly enough in this comparison how the soul need not be cut when the body is cut, hear now how the very pieces of the body can live when the soul has not been cut. For you have already granted, and rightly, I think, that the meaning, which is, as it were, the soul of the sound while the name is uttered, cannot in any way be divided by itself, while the sound itself, which is, as it were, its body, can. But in the name “sun” the division of the sound was made in such a way that no part of it kept any meaning. So we considered those letters, the body of the name being torn apart, as lifeless members, that is, as lacking meaning. Therefore, if we find some name which, when divided, can signify something even in its single parts, you must grant that not an altogether total death, as it were, has been brought about by such a cutting, since the members, considered separately, will seem to you to signify something and, as it were, to breathe. E. I will grant it entirely, and I urge you to sound out that very thing. A. Hear it: for while I attend to the neighborhood of the sun, whose name we treated above, Lucifer comes to my mind; which, split between the second and third syllables, signifies something in its first part when we say luci (“by light”), and so lives in this more than half of the body of the name. The last part too has a soul: for you hear it when you are told to carry something. For how could you obey if someone said to you, Fer codicem (“Carry the book”), if fer signified nothing? When luci is added to it, it sounds Lucifer and signifies a star; but when it is taken away, it still signifies something, and so it keeps, as it were, its life. But since there are place and time, by which all things that are perceived are occupied—or rather which they occupy—what we perceive by the eyes is divided through place, what we perceive by the ears through time. For just as that little worm occupied more place whole than any part of it did, so Lucifer takes up a longer stretch of time when said than if only luci were said. Therefore, if this part lives by its meaning in that diminution of time which was made when that sound was divided, though the same meaning was not divided (for it was not the meaning that was extended through time, but the sound), so we must think that, when the worm's body was cut, although a part lived in a smaller place by the very fact that it was a part, the soul was not at all cut, nor made smaller in a smaller place, even though it possessed at once all the members of the whole animal, stretched through a larger place. For it held not the place itself, but the body which was moved by it; just as that meaning, not extended through time, nevertheless gave life to and filled, as it were, all the letters of the name, each possessing its own duration and time. Be content meanwhile, I ask, with this comparison, by which I feel you have been delighted. But do not expect at present the things that can be argued most subtly about this, so that satisfaction is given not by comparisons, which often deceive, but by the things themselves. For so long a discussion must be concluded, and your mind must first be prepared by many other things you lack to look into and discern these matters, so that you may understand most clearly whether what is said by certain very learned men is so: that the soul by itself can in no way be divided, but can be divided through the body. Now hear from me, if you will, or rather recognize through me, how great the soul is, not in extent of place and time, but in force and power; for so, if you remember, we set out and divided the question long ago. As for the number of souls, I do not know what to answer you, since you thought this belonged to this question. For I would sooner say that it should not be asked at all, or at least should be postponed by you for now, than say either that number and multitude do not belong to quantity or that so involved a question could be resolved for you by me now. For if I say that there is one soul, you will be troubled, because it is happy in one person and wretched in another, and one thing cannot be happy and wretched at once. If I say it is at once one and many, you will laugh; and I do not easily find how to suppress your laughter. But if I say only that there are many, I will laugh at myself, and I will bear being displeasing to myself less easily than being displeasing to you. Hear, then, what I promise you can well hear from me; but what is so burdensome either to both of us or to one of us that it might perhaps overwhelm us, do not wish either to take up or to lay on. E. I yield entirely, and I wait for you to set out, as far as you think it can suitably be treated with me, how much the soul is capable of.

A. O that we could both question about this some most learned man—and not only that, but also most eloquent, and altogether most wise and perfect! How he would explain, by speaking and arguing, what the soul can do in the body, what in itself, what with God, to whom, when most pure, it is nearest, and in whom it has its supreme and whole good! But now, since there is no one else for this task, I dare not fail you; and there is this reward, that while, unlearned, I explain what the soul can do, I safely test what I myself can do. First of all, however, let me cut off a very broad and boundless expectation of yours, lest you think I will speak of every soul; I will speak only of the human soul, which alone we ought to care about, if we care about ourselves. This soul, then, first—as anyone can easily notice—gives life to this earthly and mortal body by its presence; it gathers it into one and holds it in one, and does not allow it to flow apart and waste away; it causes nourishment to be distributed evenly through the members, each being given its own; it preserves its harmony and measure, not only in beauty but also in growing and begetting. But these things can be seen to be common to man with plants too; for we say that these also live, and we see and admit that each of them is preserved in its own kind, nourished, grows, and begets. Climb, then, another step, and see what the soul can do in the senses, where life is understood more evidently and plainly. For we must not listen to a certain impiety, plainly rustic and more wooden than the very trees whose patronage it takes up, which believes that the vine feels pain when the grape is plucked, and that such things not only feel when they are cut, but also see and hear; of this sacrilegious error there is another place to speak. Now, as I had begun, consider the power of the soul in the senses and in the very motion of the more manifestly living creature, in which we can have no fellowship with things fixed by roots. The soul directs itself into touch, and by it perceives and distinguishes hot, cold, rough, smooth, hard, soft, light, heavy. Then it judges innumerable differences of tastes, smells, sounds, and shapes, by tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing. And in all these it accepts and seeks what accords with the nature of its body, and rejects and flees the contrary. It withdraws from these senses at fixed intervals of time and, restoring their motions as if by a kind of holiday, turns over within itself, in crowds and in manifold ways, the images of things it has drawn in through them; and all this is sleep and dreams. Often too it delights in the ease of motion by frisking and roaming, and without labor orders the harmony of the members; for the union of the sexes it does what it can, and from a twofold nature it labors to make one by fellowship and love. It works together not only to beget offspring but also to cherish, protect, and nourish them. It binds itself by habit to the things among which the body acts and by which it sustains the body, and is separated from them with difficulty, as if from members; and this power of habit, not broken even by separation from the things themselves and by an interval of time, is called memory. But again no one denies that the soul can do all these things in beasts too. Rise, then, to the third step, which is now proper to man; and think of memory, not of things grown in by habit, but of innumerable things committed to it and retained by attention and by signs: so many arts of craftsmen, the cultivation of fields, the building of cities, the manifold marvels of various buildings and undertakings; the invention of so many signs in letters, in words, in gesture, in every kind of sound, in paintings and sculptures; the languages of so many peoples, so many institutions, so many new things, so many restored; so great a number of books and of every kind of record for keeping memory, and so great a care for posterity; the ranks of offices, powers, honors, and dignities, whether in families, or in the state at home and at war, or in profane or sacred ceremonies; the power of reasoning and devising, the rivers of eloquence, the varieties of poems, the thousand forms of make-believe for the sake of play and jest, the skill of making music, the precision of measuring, the discipline of numbering, the conjecture of the past and the future from the present. These are great and wholly human. But this wealth is still common partly to learned and unlearned, partly to good and bad souls. Look up, then, and step onto the fourth step, from which goodness begins and all true praise. For from here the soul dares to set itself above not only its own body, if it moves some part of the universe, but even above the whole universal body; and not to consider the goods of that body its own goods, and, comparing them with its own power and beauty, to distinguish and despise them; and hence, the more it delights in itself, the more to withdraw itself from filth and to make itself wholly spotless, most pure, and most adorned; to strengthen itself against everything that tries to move it from its purpose and resolve; to value human society highly, and to wish nothing for another that it would not wish to happen to itself; to follow the authority and precepts of the wise, and to believe that through these God speaks to it. In this so splendid activity of the soul there is still labor, and a great and very fierce conflict against the troubles and the allurements of this world. For in the very work of purification there lurks a fear of death, often not great, but often very violent: not great when it is most firmly believed (for to see whether this is true is granted only to a thoroughly purified soul) that all things are governed by so great a providence and justice of God that death cannot befall anyone unjustly, even if perhaps an unjust man has inflicted it. But death is greatly feared at this step when that truth is believed the more weakly the more anxiously it is sought, and is seen the less, the less tranquillity there is because of fear—tranquillity which is most necessary for investigating the most obscure things. Then, the more the soul feels, by the very fact that it progresses, how much difference there is between the pure and the defiled, the more it fears that, when this body is laid aside, God may be less able to bear it defiled than it can bear itself. But nothing is more difficult than both to fear death and to restrain oneself from the allurements of this world, as the dangers themselves demand. Yet so great is the soul that it can do even this, with the help, of course, of the justice of the supreme and true God, by which this universe is sustained and ruled; by which also it has come about that all things not only are, but are such that they could not at all be better. To this justice it most piously and most safely entrusts itself, to be helped and perfected in so difficult a work of its cleansing. When this has been accomplished, that is, when the soul is free from all corruption and washed of its stains, then at last it holds itself within itself most joyfully, and fears nothing at all for itself, nor is it distressed about anything for its own sake. This, then, is the fifth step: for it is one thing to achieve purity, another to hold it; and the activity by which the soul restores itself when defiled is altogether different from that by which it does not allow itself to be defiled again. At this step it conceives in every way how great it is; and when it has conceived this, then indeed with a great and incredible confidence it advances toward God, that is, toward the very contemplation of truth, and that most high and most hidden reward for which it has labored so much. But this activity, that is, the desire to understand the things that truly and supremely are, is the soul's highest looking, than which it has none more perfect, better, or more upright. This, then, will be the sixth step of activity: for it is one thing for the very eye of the soul to be cleansed, so that it does not look in vain and rashly and see wrongly; another to guard and strengthen its health; another, now, to direct a serene and upright look toward what is to be seen. Those who wish to do this before they have been cleansed and healed are so beaten back by that light of truth that they think there is not only nothing good in it but even very much evil, and deny it the name of truth, and with a kind of lust and pitiable pleasure flee back into their darkness, which their sickness can bear, cursing the medicine. Hence, by divine inspiration and in a most orderly way, the Prophet says: “Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” For the right spirit, I believe, is that by which the soul cannot turn aside and err in seeking truth. This is certainly not renewed in it unless the heart has first been made clean, that is, unless thought itself has first restrained and purified itself from all desire and from the dregs of mortal things. Now in the very vision and contemplation of truth, which is the seventh and last step of the soul—and no longer a step, but a kind of dwelling to which one arrives by those steps—what joys there are, what enjoyment of the supreme and true good, what breath of serenity and eternity, what shall I say? Certain great and incomparable souls have said it, as far as they judged it should be said, souls whom we believe to have seen and to see these things. This I now plainly dare to say to you: if we hold most steadfastly the course which God commands us and which we have undertaken to hold, we shall arrive, through the Power and Wisdom of God, at that supreme cause, or supreme author, or supreme principle of all things, or by whatever other name so great a reality can more fittingly be called. When this is understood, we shall truly see how all things under the sun are vanity of the vain. For vanity is deceit, and “the vain” are understood as the deceived, or the deceiving, or both. Yet one may discern how great a distance there is between these things and those that truly are; and how all these things too were nevertheless created by God as their author, and in comparison with those are nothing, but considered in themselves are wonderful and beautiful. Then we shall recognize how true are the things we were commanded to believe, and how excellently and wholesomely we were nourished by mother Church, and what is the usefulness of that milk which the apostle Paul declared he had given the little ones to drink: a food which it is most useful to receive while one is nursed by one's mother; shameful when one is already grown; pitiable to spit out when it is needed; a mark of wickedness and impiety ever to find fault with it or hate it; but to handle and dispense it suitably is full of praise and love. We shall see also such great changes and alternations of this bodily nature, as it serves the divine laws, that we shall hold even the resurrection of the flesh, which some believe too slowly and some do not believe at all, as so certain that it will not be more certain to us that the sun, when it has set, will rise. And those who mock the man taken up by the most powerful, eternal, unchangeable Son of God as the example and firstfruits of our salvation, and his birth from a virgin, and the other miracles of this history, we shall despise as we would children who, seeing a painter paint with pictures set before him to look at, think that a man cannot be painted unless the painter looks at another picture. And so great is the pleasure in contemplating truth, in whatever measure each can contemplate it, so great the purity, so great the sincerity, so unquestionable the trustworthiness of things, that one would think he had never known anything before, when he seemed to himself to know; and, so that the soul may be less hindered from cleaving wholly to the whole truth, death, which was formerly feared, that is, complete flight and escape from this body, is desired as the highest gift.

You have heard how great the force and power of the soul is. To sum it up briefly: just as it must be admitted that the human soul is not what God is, so it must be held that nothing among all the things he created is nearer to God. And therefore it is divinely and uniquely handed down in the catholic Church that no creature is to be worshiped by the soul (for I prefer to speak in the words in which these things were made known to me), but only the very Creator of all things that are, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things; that is, the unchangeable principle, the unchangeable wisdom, the unchangeable love, the one true and perfect God, who never was not and never will not be, who never was otherwise and never will be otherwise; than whom nothing is more hidden, nothing more present; who is found with difficulty where he is, and with more difficulty where he is not; with whom not all can be, and without whom no one can be; and whatever more incredible, yet more fitting and apt, we men are able to say of him. This God alone, then, is to be worshiped by the soul, neither separately nor confusedly. For whatever the soul worships as God, it must think better than itself. But neither the earth, nor the seas, nor the stars, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor anything at all that can be touched or seen with these eyes, nor finally the sky itself, which cannot be seen by us, is to be believed better than the nature of the soul. On the contrary, sure reason proves that all these are far inferior to any soul whatever, if only lovers of truth dare to follow it most steadfastly and attentively as it leads them by unaccustomed and therefore steep ways. But if there is anything else in nature besides those things that are known to the senses and that occupy some space of place—than all of which we have said the human soul is more excellent—if, then, there is anything else among the things God created, part of it is inferior and part equal: inferior, like the soul of a beast; equal, like that of an angel; but better, nothing. And if at any time some one of these is better, this comes about by the soul's sin, not by its nature. Yet by sin it does not become so much worse that the soul of a beast is to be preferred or compared to it. God alone, then, is to be worshiped by it, who alone is its author. But any other man, however wise and perfect, or indeed any soul at all that is possessed of reason and most blessed, is only to be loved and imitated, and to be given what befits it according to its merit and rank. For “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve” (Deut 6:13; Matt 4:10). But let us know that help is to be given to kindred souls who err and are in trouble, as far as is permitted and commanded, in such a way that, when this very thing is done well, we understand that God does it through us. Nor let us claim anything as our own, deceived by the desire for empty glory, by which one evil we are plunged from the highest to the lowest. Nor let us hate those oppressed by vices, but the vices themselves; not those who sin, but the sins themselves. For we ought to wish all to be helped, even those who have harmed us, or wish to harm us, or wish us to be harmed in any way. This is the true, this the perfect, this the only religion, by which to be reconciled to God belongs to the greatness of the soul about which we are inquiring, and by which it makes itself worthy of freedom. For he frees from all things, whom to serve is most useful for all, and to please whom in his service is the perfect and only freedom. But I see that I have almost gone beyond the bounds of my purpose, and have said many things to you for so long without any questioning; nor do I regret it. For since these things are scattered through so many writings of the Church, although we seem to have gathered them not unsuitably, they still cannot be fully understood unless each one, acting bravely in the fourth of those seven steps, keeping piety, and acquiring health and strength to grasp them, investigates all things one by one most diligently and shrewdly; for in all those steps, which we might better call acts, there is a distinct and proper beauty.

For we are inquiring about the soul's power, and it may be that it does all these things at once, but it seems to itself to do only what it does with difficulty, or at least with fear; for it does this much more attentively than the rest. Going upward, then, let the first act, for the sake of teaching, be called animation; the second, sensation; the third, art; the fourth, virtue; the fifth, tranquillity; the sixth, approach; the seventh, contemplation. They can also be named in this way: of the body; through the body; about the body; toward itself; in itself; toward God; with God. They can also be named thus: beautifully of another; beautifully through another; beautifully about another; beautifully toward the beautiful; beautifully in the beautiful; beautifully toward beauty; beautifully with beauty. About all these you will ask later, if anything seems to need explaining. For now I wanted to mark them with names so many times, so that you would not be troubled when others call the same things by other names, or divide them otherwise, and for that reason reject either these or those. For the same things can be named and divided in innumerable ways, most rightly and subtly; but in so great an abundance of ways each uses the one he thinks fitting.

So the supreme and true God, by an inviolable and incorruptible law by which he rules all that he founded, subjects the body to the soul, the soul to himself, and so all things to himself; and in no act does he desert the soul, whether in punishment or in reward. For he judged it most beautiful that whatever is should be as it is, and be so ordered in the degrees of nature that no deformity in any part should offend those who consider the universe; and that every punishment and every reward of the soul should always contribute something in proportion to the just beauty and arrangement of all things. For free choice has been given to the soul; and those who try to shake it with trifling reasonings are so blind that they do not even understand that they say these very empty and sacrilegious things by their own will. Yet free choice was not given to the soul in such a way that, attempting anything whatever by it, it could disturb any part of the divine order and law; for it was given by the most wise and most invincible Lord of all creation. But to see these things as they should be seen belongs to few, and no one becomes fit for this except by true religion. For true religion is that by which the soul binds itself again by reconciliation to the one God, from whom it had, as it were, broken itself off by sin. Religion, then, binds the soul in that third act and begins to lead it; it cleanses it in the fourth; re-forms it in the fifth; leads it in in the sixth; feeds it in the seventh. And this happens sooner in some, later in others, as each is strong in love and merits; but God does all things most justly, most moderately, most beautifully, in whatever way those with whom he deals have willed to be. As for the consecrations of infant children, how much they profit is a most obscure question; yet it must be believed that they profit somewhat. Reason will find this out when it ought to be sought; although I have brought forward many other things too, which are for you to seek some day rather than to know now. This will be done most usefully if they are sought with piety as guide. Since this is so, who can justly be indignant that the soul was given to act in and govern the body, since so great and so divine an order of things could not be better connected? Or who would think he should ask what it becomes in this mortal and fragile body, since it was justly thrust into death because of sin, and can also excel here by virtue? Or what it will be after this body, since the punishment of death must necessarily remain while sin remains, and God himself, that is, truth itself, is the reward of virtue and piety? Therefore, if you are now willing, let us at last end so long a discussion, and give our attention most watchfully and most religiously to fulfilling God's commandments; for there is no other escape from such great evils. But if anything has been said by me more obscurely than you would wish, commit it to memory and ask about it at another, more suitable time. For he who is the Teacher of all from above will not fail us when we seek. E. For my part, I was so affected by this discourse that I thought it wrong to interrupt it. And if this measure of discussion pleases you, and those three questions that remained seemed to you to be touched on so briefly for the present, I will yield to your judgment; and hereafter, for investigating such great matters, I will watch for a more suitable time, not only because of your occupations, but also when I myself am better prepared.