On the Soul and the Resurrection 39–61

… art is a kind of understanding, a particular movement and activity, then the sequence of what has been said has shown us, even through the objections, that the mind is something other than what appears.” Gregory: And I said: “I too say this is so, that what does not appear is not the same as what appears; but I do not yet see in this argument what is sought. For it is not yet clear to me what we should think that invisible thing to be. I have been taught by the argument that it is not material; but I do not yet know what it is proper to say about it. And this is what I most wanted to learn: not what it is not, but what it is.” Macrina: “We learn many things about many matters,” she said, “by saying that the thing sought is not this or that, thereby explaining what it is. For by calling the good man ‘free from wickedness’ we have presented him, and by naming the coward ‘unmanly’ we have made him known; and one may say many similar things. Through these we either take up the better idea by denying the bad, or conversely turn our thoughts to the worse, showing the bad by the removal of the good. Whoever considers the present argument in this way, then, would not miss the proper understanding of what is sought. And what is sought is what we must think the mind to be in its very substance. One who does not doubt that the thing of which we speak exists, because of the activity it shows us, but wishes to know what it is, would find a sufficient answer by learning that it is not what sense perceives: not colour, not shape, not resistance, not weight, not magnitude, not extension in three dimensions, not position in place, nor anything at all of what is perceived about matter, if there is anything besides these.” Gregory: But while she was still going through this, I said: “I do not know how, when all these are taken away from the account, what is sought is not wiped out with them. For to what the curiosity of comprehension can attach itself apart from these I, at least, do not see. For everywhere in our search into existing things with the examining mind, like blind men led by the hand along walls to …”

“… the door, we certainly touch one of the things mentioned, finding colour or shape or size or some other of the things you have just counted up; but when it is said to be none of these, we are led by narrowness of soul to think it is nothing at all.” Macrina: And she, protesting in the middle of the argument, said: “Alas for the absurdity! To what end this petty and earthbound judgment of existing things leads! For if everything not known by sense is removed from being, one who says this would certainly not admit even the power that presides over the universe and holds existing things in its grasp; but, taught that the divine nature is incorporeal and formless, he would by such a sequence certainly reckon that it does not exist at all. But if there the absence of these things is no limit of being, how is the human mind squeezed out of being, consumed along with the removal of bodily properties?” Gregory: “Then,” I said, “we take another absurdity from absurdities by this sequence. For our argument has come round to thinking that our mind is the same as the divine nature, if each is understood by the removal of what is found by sense.” Macrina: “Do not say ‘the same,’” said my teacher, “(for this account too is impious), but, as you were taught by divine Scripture, say that the one is like the other. For what has come to be according to the image certainly has likeness to the archetype in all things: intellectual like the intellectual, incorporeal like the incorporeal, free from all bulk like it, and escaping all measurement by dimension like it, yet something other than it in the property of its nature. For it would no longer be an image if it were in all things the same as that; but in the very things in which that is seen in the uncreated nature, this is shown by the created nature. And as often in a small fragment of glass, when it happens to lie toward a ray, the whole disc of the sun is seen, appearing in it not in its own size but as far as the smallness of the fragment can contain the reflection of the disc, so in the smallness of our nature the images of those ineffable properties of the Godhead shine out; so that the argument, led by these, neither falls away …”

“… from the comprehension of the mind’s substance, when bodily properties are purged away in examining the question, nor again puts the small and perishable on a level with the boundless and undefiled nature; but thinks the substance intelligible, since it is the image of an intelligible substance, without saying that the image is the same as the archetype. As, then, through the ineffable wisdom of God which appears in the universe we do not doubt that the divine nature and power are in all existing things, so that all things remain in being, even though, if you ask for an account of its nature, the substance of God is vastly distant from each of the things shown and conceived in creation, yet it is admitted that what differs in nature is in them: so it is not incredible that the substance of the soul too, being something other in itself, whatever it is conjectured to be, is not hindered from existing, though the elements seen in the world do not agree with it in the principle of its nature. Even in living bodies, as was said before, whose existence is from the blending of the elements, … there is no communion in the principle of substance between the simple and formless nature of the soul and bodily coarseness; yet it is not doubted that the vital activity of the soul is in them, blended with them by a principle higher than human understanding. Neither, then, when the elements in bodies have been dissolved into themselves, has that which bound them together by its vital activity perished. But as, while the compound of the elements still holds together, each part is given soul, the soul entering all the parts that fill up the body equally and alike, and one would not say that it is either solid and resistant, being mixed with the earthy, or moist or cold or of the quality opposed to cold, though it is in all these and gives the vital power to each; so, when the compound has been dissolved and has run back to its own elements, it is nothing unlikely to think that that simple and uncompounded nature is present to each of the parts even after the dissolution; and that, having once grown together with the compound of the elements by some ineffable principle, it remains forever with those with which it was mixed, in no way torn from the union that once came about for it. For it is not …

“… because the compound is dissolved, that what is not compounded is in danger of being dissolved together with the composite.” Gregory: And I said: “No one would deny that the elements come together with one another and separate from one another, and that this is the constitution and dissolution of the body. But since a great distance is conceived between each of these things that are of different kinds from one another, both in their position in place and in the difference and property of their qualities, when the elements have come together with one another in the subject it follows that this intellectual and unextended nature which we call soul is naturally bound to the united whole; but if these are separated from one another and go wherever nature leads each, what will happen to the soul when its vehicle is scattered in many places? Like a sailor whose merchant ship has broken up in a shipwreck, unable to swim after all the parts of the ship scattered over the sea in different places (for, catching hold of whatever comes to hand, he will leave the rest to be carried by the waves), in the same way the soul, not having a nature that can be split with the separation of the elements, if it is inseparable from the body, will certainly grow fast to one of the elements and be cut off from the others; and the sequence of the argument gives no more reason to think it immortal because it lives in one than mortal because it is not in the many.”

Macrina: “… to be present to each of the things with which it once grew together through blending, not split along with the opposition of the elements. For it is not because these are thought to be far from one another in distance of place and particular property that the unextended nature labours when joined to things separated in place; for even now it is possible for the mind at once to contemplate heaven and to stretch out in its inquiries to the ends of the world, and the contemplative part of our soul is not torn apart when it is stretched to such lengths. Nothing, then, hinders the soul from being present equally to the elements of the body, both when they are blended through their concurrence and when they are released through their dissolution. For as, when gold and silver are fused together, an artistic power is seen which fused the materials, and if the one is melted away again from the other, the principle of the art remains no less in each, and the material has been divided but the art has not been cut along with the material (for how could the indivisible be divided?), by the same reasoning the intellectual nature of the soul too is seen in the concurrence of the elements and is not separated when they are dissolved; it remains in them, and, extending along with them in their separation, is not cut off nor broken into small pieces according to the number of the elements. For this is proper to bodily and extended nature; but the intellectual and unextended nature does not admit the effects of extension. The soul, then, is in those things in which it once came to be, no necessity tearing it away from its union with them. What, then, is gloomy in this, if the visible is exchanged for the invisible? And why is your mind so set against death?” Gregory: And I, recalling the definition she had given of the soul in the earlier discussion, said that that account did not sufficiently show me the powers seen in the soul. “For it says that it is an intellectual substance and produces in the organic body a vital power for the activity of the senses. But our soul is not active only in scientific and contemplative thought, working this in the intellectual part of its substance, nor does it govern only the sense organs for their natural activity; but much movement of desire and much of anger is seen in our nature; and since each of these exists in us in general …”

“… we see the movement of both advancing into many and varied differences in their activities. For one can see many things led by the desiring part, and many again that spring from the cause of anger; and none of this is body; and what is incorporeal is certainly intellectual; and the definition declared the soul to be something intellectual. So one of two absurdities emerges from the sequence of the argument: either anger and desire are other souls in us and a multitude of souls is seen instead of one, or not even the thinking part in us is to be thought a soul. For the intellectual, fitting all of them equally, will either prove them all souls or exclude each of them alike from the property of soul.” Macrina: “You too,” she said, “are asking, as is natural, a question already asked by many others: what we should think the desiring and the spirited parts to be, whether they are of one substance with the soul and coexist from the first with its constitution, or are something else besides it that comes upon us later. For that these are seen in the soul is agreed by all equally; but what we should think about them the argument has not yet found exactly, so as to have a firm belief about them; the many still waver uncertainly among different opinions about them. If the outside philosophy, which treated these things systematically, were truly sufficient for proof, it would perhaps be superfluous to set the discussion of the soul before our inquiry. But whereas they went forward with freedom in their contemplation of the soul according to what appeared to follow, we have no share in this freedom, I mean of saying what we please, since we use holy Scripture as the rule and law of every doctrine; necessarily looking to it, we accept only what agrees with the aim of what is written. Leaving aside, then, the Platonic chariot and the pair of horses yoked to it, which do not have the same impulses toward each other, and the charioteer over them, by all of which he philosophizes in a riddle about such things concerning …”

“… the soul; and whatever the philosopher after him, following appearances systematically and examining with care the questions now before us, declared, showing by them that the soul is mortal; leaving aside all those before and after them, both those who philosophized in prose and those in rhythm and metre, let us make the inspired Scripture the aim of our discussion, which lays down that nothing should be thought peculiar to the soul that is not also proper to the divine nature. For he who said that the soul is a likeness of God declared that whatever is foreign to God is outside the definition of the soul; for likeness could not be preserved in things that differ. Since, then, nothing of this kind is seen together with the divine nature, one could not reasonably suppose that these are of one substance with the soul either. To establish our doctrines too by the art of dialectic, through syllogistic and analytic science, we shall decline, since such a kind of argument is rotten and suspect for the demonstration of truth. For it is plain to all that dialectical subtlety has equal strength on either side, both for overturning truth and for accusing falsehood. Hence we often regard truth itself with suspicion when it is brought forward with some such art, as though the cleverness about it were deceiving our mind and the truth had been missed. But if one will accept an argument that is unadorned and stripped of all dress, we shall speak as far as we can, bringing our contemplation of these things according to the sequence of Scripture’s guidance. What, then, do we say? That this rational animal, man, is capable of mind and knowledge, as has been attested even by those outside our faith; and the definition would not so describe our nature if it saw anger and desire and all such things as of one substance with our nature. For one would not give a definition of any other subject by stating the common instead of the proper.

“Since, then, the desiring and the spirited are seen equally in irrational and rational nature, one could not reasonably characterize what is proper by what is common. But how can what is superfluous and to be rejected in describing a nature have the force, as part of the nature, to overturn the definition? For every definition of a substance looks to what is proper to the subject; whatever is outside what is peculiar is disregarded as foreign to the definition. Yet the activity of anger and desire is admitted to be common to all rational and irrational nature; and everything common is not the same as what is peculiar. It is necessary, then, not to reckon these among the things by which human nature is specially characterized. But as one who sees in us the sentient and the nourishing and growing powers does not thereby undo the definition given of the soul (for it is not because this is in the soul that that is not), so one who considers the movements of anger and desire in our nature would not reasonably fight against the definition as showing the nature defectively.” Gregory: “What, then, should we think about this?” I said to my teacher. “For I am not yet able to see how it is fitting to disown things that are in us as foreign to our nature.” Macrina: “You see,” she said, “that there is a battle of reason against these, and an effort to free the soul from them as far as one can … And there are some in whom the effort has succeeded, as we hear of Moses, that he was superior to anger and desire, the history bearing witness to both: that he was meek above all men (meekness shows freedom from anger and estrangement from wrath), and that he desired none of the things about which we see the desiring part at work in most people. This would not have happened if these things were nature and belonged to the definition of the substance. For one who has come to be outside his nature cannot remain in being. But if Moses both was in being and was not in these things, then these are something other than nature, and not nature. For if that is truly nature in which the being of the substance is grasped, while estrangement from these lies in our power, so that their removal is not only no loss but even a gain to the nature, it is clear that they are among the things seen from outside …”

“… these passions belong to the nature and are not its substance. For the substance is what it is; but anger is thought by many to be a boiling of the blood around the heart; by others, a desire to pay back pain to the one who began it; as we would take it, anger is an impulse to harm the one who provokes. None of these fits the definition of the soul. And if we define desire by itself, we shall call it a longing for what is lacking, or a yearning for the enjoyment of pleasure, or grief at a desired thing not in one’s power, or a kind of attachment to the pleasant whose enjoyment is not present. All these and the like show desire, but do not touch the definition of the soul. So too all the other things seen about the soul which are seen as opposite to each other, such as cowardice and boldness, grief and pleasure, fear and contempt, and all such, each of which seems akin to the desiring or the spirited part, but describes its own nature by its own definition. For boldness and contempt suggest a kind of expression of the impulse of anger, while the state arising from cowardice and fear is a kind of lessening and slackening of the same. Grief draws its material from both: the weakness of anger, in the impossibility of avenging oneself on those who have caused pain, becomes grief; and despair of what is desired and the loss of what is pleasing produce this gloomy disposition in the mind. And the idea seen opposite to grief, I mean pleasure, is likewise divided between anger and desire; for pleasure equally leads each of them. All these are about the soul, but are not the soul; they are like warts growing out of the thinking part of the soul, which are thought to be its parts because they have grown on it, yet are not what the soul is in its substance.” Gregory: “And yet we see,” I said to the virgin, “no small contribution to the better arising from these …”

“… for the virtuous. For desire was Daniel’s praise, and Phinehas appeased God by his anger; we have learned that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and we have heard from Paul that the end of godly grief is salvation; the Gospel urges on us contempt of dangers, and not being afraid of terror is nothing else than a description of boldness, which is listed among good things by Wisdom. By such examples, then, the word shows that we should not think such things passions; for they would not be taken up to help in achieving virtue …” Macrina: And my teacher said: “I seem myself to be the cause of such confusion in your reasonings, since I did not divide the discussion of this so as to give the inquiry a consistent order. Now, then, as far as possible, an order will be devised for the inquiry, so that, the contemplation proceeding in sequence, such objections may have no place against us. We say that the power of the soul which contemplates and judges and surveys existing things is proper to it and according to its nature, and that through this godlike grace it preserves the image in itself; since reason conjectures that the divine, whatever it is by nature, lies in these things: in surveying all things and distinguishing the good from the worse. But those things of the soul that lie on the border, inclining by their nature to either of the opposites, whose particular use leads to an outcome either good or the opposite, such as anger or fear or any such movement in the soul without which human nature cannot be seen, these we reckon have come upon it from outside, because no such feature is seen in the archetypal beauty. Let our account of these be set out as in an exercise, so that it may escape the insults of those who listen in order to slander. The word relates that the divine set out upon the making of man by a certain road and order of sequence …”

Macrina: “For when the universe had been constituted, as the history says, man did not come to be on the earth at once; the nature of the irrational creatures came before him, and the plants before them. By this the word shows, I think, that the vital power is mingled with bodily nature in a certain sequence, first entering things without sense, then advancing to the sentient, and then going up to the intellectual and rational. Of existing things, then, some are bodily and some intellectual; of the bodily, some are animate and some inanimate; by animate I mean what shares in life; of the living, some live with sense and some lack it; again, of the sentient, some are rational and some irrational. Since, then, sentient life could not exist without matter, nor could the intellectual come to be in a body otherwise than by being grafted onto the sentient, for this reason the making of man is related last, as of one who has embraced every form of life, both that seen in plants and that seen in irrational creatures. Being nourished and growing he has from the life of plants; for this can be seen in them too, nourishment being drawn in through roots and given off through fruits and leaves; being governed by sense he has from the irrational creatures; but the thinking and rational is unmixed and peculiar in this nature, seen by itself. And as nature has the power of drawing in what is necessary for material life, which in us is called appetite (and we say this belongs to the natural form of life, since one can see in plants too certain impulses working naturally, when they are filled with what is proper to them and swell toward growth), so too the things proper to irrational nature were mingled with the intellectual part of the soul. Theirs, it says, is anger, theirs is fear, theirs are all the other things that work in us in opposition, except the rational and thinking power, which alone is the special mark of our life, having in itself, as was said, the imitation of the divine stamp. But since, according to the argument already given, the rational power cannot come to be in bodily life except by arising through the senses, and sense existed before in the nature of irrational creatures …”

“… so that through the one our soul necessarily comes to have fellowship also with what is joined to it. And these are what are called the passions arising in us, which were not allotted to human life for any evil purpose; otherwise the Creator would be the cause of evils, if the necessities of sins had been laid down in our nature from there. Rather, by the particular use of choice, such movements of the soul become instruments either of virtue or of vice; as iron, shaped by the craftsman’s judgment, is formed into whatever the purpose of the one working it has set, becoming a sword or some farming tool. If, then, reason, which is the special mark of our nature, holds rule over what has been introduced from outside, as the word of Scripture showed in a riddle when it commanded man to rule over all the irrational creatures, none of these movements would work in us in the service of vice: fear would produce obedience, anger courage, cowardice caution, and the impulse of desire would procure for us the divine and undefiled pleasure. But if reason lets go the reins and, like a charioteer entangled in his chariot, is dragged behind it, carried wherever the irrational movement of the yoked animals takes him, then the impulses turn into passion, as can be seen in the irrational creatures too. For since reason does not preside over their naturally implanted movement, the angry animals destroy one another, led on by anger; and the bulky and strong ones gain no good of their own from their strength, becoming the property of the rational because of their lack of reason; the activity of desire and pleasure is busy with nothing lofty; nor is anything else seen in them carried on by reason toward what is profitable. So too in us, if these things are not led by reasoning to what is fitting, but the passions prevail over the rule of the mind, man passes over to the irrational and senseless, being made a brute instead of thinking and godlike by the impulse of such passions …”