On the Workmanship of God

How little I am at rest even in the greatest straits, you will be able to judge from this little book, Demetrianus, which I have written out to you in words almost unpolished, as far as my modest talent allowed, so that you might know my daily study, and so that I might not fail you as a teacher even now, but of a more honorable subject and a better teaching.

For if you proved yourself a sufficiently diligent hearer in the literary studies that train nothing but the tongue, how much more teachable ought you to be in these things that are true and concern life? To you I now declare that I am hindered by no necessity, either of circumstance or of time, from hammering out something by which the philosophers of our school, which we defend, may become better instructed and more learned for the future, although they are now in ill repute and are commonly censured for living otherwise than befits the wise and for hiding their vices under the cover of the name; vices which they ought either to have cured or to have escaped altogether, so as to show forth the blessed and incorrupt name of wisdom by a life agreeing with their precepts.

Yet, so as to instruct both ourselves and others at once, I refuse no labor. For I cannot forget myself, especially at a time when it is most necessary to remember, just as you too do not forget yourself, as I hope and wish.

For although the necessity of public affairs turns you away from true and just works, yet it cannot be that a mind conscious of what is right does not from time to time look up to heaven.

And indeed I am glad that all the things counted as goods are flowing prosperously for you, but only if they change nothing in the state of your mind. For I fear that little by little the habit and pleasantness of those things may creep into your mind, as usually happens;

and therefore I warn you, and repeating it I will warn you again and again, not to believe that those delights of the earth are great or true goods; they are not only deceptive, because uncertain, but also treacherous, because sweet.

For you know how cunning that wrestler and adversary of ours is, and at the same time often violent, as we now see. He holds all these things that can allure as snares, and indeed so fine that they escape the eyes of the mind, so that they cannot be avoided by human foresight.

So the greatest prudence is to go forward step by step, since the wood lies in ambush on both sides and secretly sets stumbling blocks for the feet.

So I urge you, as befits your virtue, either to despise, if you can, the prosperity in which you now live, or not to admire it greatly. Remember both your true Father, and in what city you have enrolled your name, and of what order you have been: you surely understand what I mean.

For I do not accuse you of pride, of which there is not even any suspicion in you; but what I say must be referred to the mind, not to the body, whose whole design was arranged so that it might serve the soul as its master and be ruled by its nod.

For it is in a way an earthen vessel, in which the soul, that is, the true man himself, is contained, and one not fashioned by Prometheus, as the poets say, but by that supreme founder and craftsman of things, God, whose divine providence and most perfect power it is possible neither to grasp with the senses nor to tell in words. Yet I will attempt, since mention has been made of body and soul, to explain the design of each, as far as the smallness of my understanding sees through it.

I think this task must be undertaken chiefly for this reason: that Marcus Tullius, a man of singular talent, in the fourth book On the Republic, when he had attempted to do it, confined a widely extending subject within narrow limits, lightly plucking only the chief points.

And lest there be any excuse why he did not follow that topic through, he himself testified that he lacked neither the will nor the care. For in the first book On the Laws, when he was touching on this same point in summary, he says thus: “This topic, as it seems to me, Scipio expressed sufficiently in those books which you have read.” Afterward, however, in the second book On the Nature of the Gods, he tried to treat this same point more fully.

But since he did not express it sufficiently even there, I will take up this duty and boldly undertake to explain what that most eloquent man left almost untouched.

Perhaps you will blame me for attempting to discuss something in obscure matters, when you see that there have been men of such rashness, those commonly called philosophers, that they searched out things which God willed to be wholly hidden and concealed, and inquired into the nature of heavenly and earthly things, which, being far removed from us, can neither be handled by the eyes nor touched by the hand nor perceived by the senses; and yet they argue about the design of all these things in such a way that they want what they put forward to seem proved and known.

Why, then, should anyone think it odious in us if we wish to examine and contemplate the design of our own body? It is plainly not obscure, since from the very functions of the members and the uses of the individual parts we may understand with how great a power of providence each thing has been made.

For God, that craftsman and parent of ours, gave man sense and reason, so that it might be evident from this that we are begotten by him, because he himself is intelligence, he himself is sense and reason.

To the other living creatures, since he did not assign this rational power, he provided beforehand how their life might nonetheless be safer. For he covered them all with their own skins, so that they might more easily withstand the force of frosts and cold.

And to the individual kinds he appointed their own defenses for repelling attacks from outside, so that either they resist the stronger with natural weapons, or those that are weaker withdraw themselves from dangers by speed of flight, or those that lack both strength and speed protect themselves by cunning or fence themselves in hiding places.

So some of them are either lifted on high by light feathers, or supported by hooves, or equipped with horns; some have weapons in the mouth, teeth, or hooked claws on their feet: none lacks a defense for its protection.

But if any fall as prey to larger ones, lest their stock nonetheless perish utterly, either they are confined to a region where larger ones cannot live, or they have received a rich fertility in breeding, so that both food may be supplied from them to the beasts that live on blood, and yet their very numbers may overcome the slaughter inflicted, for the preservation of the kind.

But man, having been granted reason and given the power of perceiving and speaking, he made without the things that were assigned to the other animals, because wisdom could supply what the condition of nature had denied him: for he set him naked and unarmed, because he could both be armed by his intelligence and clothed by his reason.

But how wonderfully those very things that were given to the dumb animals and denied to man contribute to man's beauty cannot be expressed. For if he had added to man the teeth of beasts, or horns, or claws, or hooves, or a tail, or hair of varied color, who does not feel what an ugly animal he would have been, just as the dumb animals too would be if they were fashioned naked and unarmed?

If you take from them either the natural covering of their body or the things with which they are armed from themselves, they will be able to be neither handsome nor safe; so that they seem wonderfully equipped if you consider usefulness, and adorned if you consider appearance: so wonderfully does usefulness agree with beauty.

But man, since he was fashioning him an eternal and immortal living being, he armed not outwardly like the rest but inwardly, and placed his defense not in the body but in the soul; for it was superfluous, since he had given him what was greatest, to cover him with bodily defenses, especially since they would hinder the beauty of the human body.

Hence I often wonder at the madness of the philosophers who follow Epicurus, who find fault with the works of nature so as to show that the world was not furnished and is not ruled by any providence, but assign the origin of things to indivisible and solid bodies, by whose chance collisions all things are born and have been born.

I pass over the faults they find in things belonging to the world itself, in which they rave ridiculously; I take up what belongs to the matter we are now dealing with.

They complain that man is born much weaker and more fragile than the other animals are born: that these, as soon as they have come forth from the womb, at once rise onto their feet and frisk about running, and are immediately fit to bear the air, because they have come forth into the light protected by natural coverings; whereas man, naked and unarmed, is cast out and thrown, as from a shipwreck, into the miseries of this life, unable either to move from the place where he has been poured out, or to seek the nourishment of milk, or to bear the harshness of the weather.

So, they say, nature is not the mother of the human race but its stepmother, since she has dealt so generously with the dumb animals, but has poured out man in such a way that, helpless and weak and in need of every aid, he can do nothing but foretell the condition of his frailty with wailing and tears, as one, of course, for whom so much evil remains to pass through in life.

When they say these things they are believed to be very wise, because each person thoughtlessly is ungrateful for his own condition; but I maintain that they are never so foolish as when they say this.

For considering the condition of things, I understand that nothing ought to have been made otherwise, not to say could have been, since God can do all things; but it is necessary that that most provident majesty accomplished what was better and more right.

I would like, then, to ask these critics of the divine works what they believe to be lacking in man because he is born weaker: are men therefore brought up less well? Are they carried forward less to the full strength of age? Does weakness hinder either growth or health, since reason makes up what is lacking?

“But,” they say, “the rearing of man is a matter of the greatest labors; the condition of the beasts is of course better, because when they have brought forth their young they take care only of their own feeding; from which it comes about that, their udders swelling of their own accord, the nourishment of milk is supplied to the young, and these seek it under the compulsion of nature without the mothers' concern.” What then?

Do not birds, whose manner is different, undertake the greatest labors in rearing, so that they sometimes seem to have something of human intelligence? For they either build their nests of mud or construct them of twigs and leaves; they sit on the eggs even without food; and since they have not been granted to feed their young from their own bodies, they carry food to them and spend whole days in running to and fro of this kind, while at night they defend, warm, and protect them.

What more can men do, except perhaps only this, that they do not drive them out when grown, but keep them joined to themselves by a lasting bond of kinship and the chain of love?

What of the fact that the offspring of birds is much more fragile than a man's, because they do not bring forth the animal itself, but that which, warmed by the brooding and heat of the mother's body, produces the animal? And even when that has been endowed with breath, being featherless and tender it lacks the use not only of flying but even of walking.

Would not a man be most foolish, then, if he thought that nature had dealt badly with birds, first because they are born twice, then because they are so weak that they must be fed by their parents with food sought through labor? But they choose the stronger examples and pass over the weaker.

I ask, then, those who prefer the condition of the beasts to their own, what they would choose if God offered them the option: whether they would prefer human wisdom with weakness, or the strength of the beasts with their nature.

Surely they are not such beasts that they would not prefer even a much more fragile condition than now, provided it be human, to that irrational strength. But, of course, these prudent men want neither man's reason with frailty nor the strength of the dumb animals without reason.

What of the fact that nothing is so conflicting and so contrary as the idea that each animal must be equipped either by reason or by the condition of nature? If it is equipped with natural defenses, reason is superfluous. For what will it devise? What will it do? What will it undertake? Or in what will it show that light of intelligence, when nature of its own accord grants what could belong to reason?

But if it is endowed with reason, what need will there be of bodily fences, since reason, once granted, can fulfill the office of nature? Reason indeed avails so much for adorning and protecting man that nothing greater or better could have been given by God.

In short, although man is not large of body, and of slight strength, and of weak health, yet because he has received what is greater, he is both better equipped and better adorned than the other animals.

For although he is born fragile and weak, yet he is safe from all the dumb animals, and all those that are born stronger, even if they bravely endure the force of the weather, cannot be safe from man.

So it comes about that reason confers more on man than nature does on the dumb animals, since in them neither great strength nor firmness of body can prevent their being either overpowered by us or made subject to our power.

Can anyone, then, when he sees that even the Lucanian oxen, with their enormous bodies and strength, serve man, complain against God, the maker of things, because he has received moderate strength and a small body, and not value the divine benefits toward himself according to their worth? That is the part of an ungrateful man, or, to speak more truly, of a madman.

Plato, I believe to refute these ungrateful men, gave thanks to nature that he had been born a human being.

How much better and saner was he who perceived that man's condition is better, than these who would rather have been born beasts! If God were perhaps to change them into those animals whose lot they prefer to their own, they would surely at once want to move back and would demand their former condition with loud cries, because strength and firmness of body are not worth so much that you should lack the use of the tongue, nor the free coursing of birds through the air so much that you should lack hands. For hands afford more than the lightness and use of wings, the tongue more than the strength of the whole body.

What madness it is, then, to prefer things which, if they were given, you would refuse to accept!

The same men complain that man is subject to diseases and untimely death. They are indignant, evidently, that they were not born gods. “Not at all,” they say, “but from this we show that man was made by no providence, because it ought to have been done otherwise.”

What if I show that this very thing was provided with great reason: that he could be troubled by diseases and that his life should often be broken off in the middle of its course? For since God knew that the living being he had made would pass to death of its own accord, he gave it frailty, so that it might be capable of death itself, which is the dissolution of nature, and so that death might find an entrance for dissolving the living being.

For if he were made of such strength that disease and sickness could not reach him, neither could death, since death is the consequence of diseases. And how could untimely death be absent from one for whom timely death had been appointed? Plainly they want no man to die until he has completed his hundredth year of age.

How can their reasoning hold together in so great a contradiction? For in order that no one could die before a hundred years, some strength that is immortal must be granted him; and once that is granted, the condition of death must necessarily be excluded.

But what kind of thing could that be which would make man solid and unassailable against diseases and blows from outside? For since he consists of bones and sinews and inner organs and blood, which of these can be so firm as to repel frailty and death?

In order, then, that man might be indissoluble before the time which they think ought to have been appointed for him, from what matter will they give him a body? All things that can be seen and touched are fragile. It remains that they seek something from heaven, since on earth there is nothing that is not weak.

Since, then, man was to be formed by God so as to be mortal at some time, the matter itself required that he be fashioned with an earthly and fragile body. It is necessary, therefore, that he admit death at any time, since he is bodily; for any body whatever is dissoluble and mortal.

They are most foolish, then, who complain about untimely death, since the condition of nature makes room for it. So it will follow that he is also subject to diseases; for nature does not allow weakness to be absent from that body which must at some time be dissolved.

But let us suppose it could happen as they wish, that men were born on the condition that no one should be subject to disease or death unless, having completed the span of his life, he had reached extreme old age:

do they not see, then, what would follow if it were so arranged: that he could in no way die at any other time at all? But if he can be kept from food by another, he will be able to die. The matter requires, then, that a man who cannot die before a fixed day should have no need of the nourishment of foods, since they can be withdrawn. But if he has no need of food, he will then be not a man but a god. So, as I said above, those who complain of man's frailty complain above all of this: that they were not born immortal and everlasting.

“No one should die except an old man.” But mortality cannot be joined with immortality. For if he is mortal in old age, he cannot be immortal in youth; nor is the condition of death foreign to him who is to die at some time; nor is there any immortality for which an end has been fixed.

So it comes about that immortality, excluded forever, and mortality, admitted for a time, place man in this condition: that he is mortal at any age. Necessity, then, fits on every side: it neither ought to have been done otherwise, nor would it have been right.

But these men do not see the consequences, because they have gone wrong once in the main point itself. For when divine providence had been excluded from human affairs, it necessarily followed that all things were born of their own accord. Hence they invented those blows and chance collisions of tiny seeds, because they did not see the origin of things.

Having thrown themselves into these straits, necessity now forced them to think that souls are born with bodies and likewise extinguished with bodies; for they had assumed that nothing is done by the divine mind. And this very thing they could not prove otherwise than by showing that there were some things in which the design of providence seemed to limp.

So they found fault with those very things in which providence has most wonderfully expressed its divinity, such as those I have mentioned about diseases and untimely death, when they ought to have considered, once these were granted, what would necessarily follow.

And what follows is what I have said: if he did not admit disease, he would need neither houses nor clothes. For why should he fear winds or rains or cold, whose force lies in bringing diseases? For this reason he received wisdom: to fortify his frailty against harmful things.

It follows necessarily that, since for the sake of retaining reason he admits diseases, he should also always admit death, because he to whom death does not come must be firm. But weakness has in itself the condition of death; whereas where firmness is, neither old age can have a place, nor death, which follows old age.

Besides, if death had been fixed for a certain age, man would become most insolent and would lack all humanity. For almost all the laws of humanity, by which we hold together among ourselves, arise from fear and the awareness of frailty.

In short, all the weaker and more timid animals herd together, so that, since they cannot protect themselves by strength, they may protect themselves by numbers; while the stronger seek solitudes, since they trust in their might and strength.

Man too, if he had in the same way sufficient strength to repel dangers and needed no one else's help, what society would there be, what reverence among one another, what order, what reason, what humanity? Or what would be more hideous than man, what more savage, what more monstrous?

But since he is weak and cannot live by himself without man, he seeks society, so that the common life may become both more refined and safer.

You see, then, that the whole design of man rests above all in this: that he is born naked and fragile, that he is afflicted by diseases, that he is punished with untimely death. If these are taken from man, reason and wisdom must also be taken away.

But I am arguing too long about very plain matters, since it is clear that nothing has ever been made or could have been made without providence. If I wished now to discuss all its works in order, the subject is infinite.

But I have undertaken to speak only of the one body of man, so as to show in it how great the power of divine providence has been, at least in those things which can be grasped and are plain; for the things that belong to the soul can neither be placed before the eyes nor grasped. Now we speak of the very vessel of man, which we see.

In the beginning, when God was fashioning the living creatures, he did not want to roll them up and gather them into a round shape, so that they could easily both move to walk and bend themselves in any direction; but from the very top of the body he drew out the head. Likewise he drew out certain members to a greater length, which are called feet, so that, planted on the ground with alternating movements, they might carry the living creature wherever the mind had led or the need of seeking food had called it.

And from the little vessel of the body itself he made four projections: two behind, which in all creatures are feet; and likewise two next to the head and neck, which supply various uses to living creatures. For in cattle and wild beasts they are feet like the hind ones, but in man they are hands, which were made not for walking but for making and holding.

There is also a third kind, in which those front limbs are neither feet nor hands but wings, in which feathers set in order provide the use of flying. So one design has different forms and uses.

And in order to hold the very bulk of the body firmly together, he fitted together, as it were, a keel of larger and short bones bound to one another, which we call the spine; and he did not want to form it of one continuous bone, lest the living creature should lack the ability to walk and to bend itself.

From about its middle part he stretched out ribs, that is, transverse and flat bones, in opposite directions, gently curved and drawn together almost into a circle, by which the inner organs are covered, so that those parts which needed to be softer and less strong might be protected by the embrace of that solid framework.

And at the top of that structure, which we have said is like a ship's keel, he placed the head, in which the government of the whole living creature was to be; and this name was given to it, as Varro indeed writes to Cicero, because the senses and nerves take their beginning (capiant) from it.

And the limbs which we have said were drawn out from the body for the sake of walking, or making, or flying, he willed to consist neither of too long bones, for the sake of quick mobility, nor of too short ones, for the sake of firmness, but of few and large bones.

For they are either two, as in man, or four, as in the quadruped; yet he did not make them solid, lest sluggishness and weight should slow them in walking, but hollow, and filled within with marrow for preserving the vigor of the body. And again he did not finish them stretched out evenly, but rounded their ends into thicker knobs, so that they could both be more easily bound with sinews and turned more safely; whence they are named vertebrae (vertibula).

He covered those knobs, firmly solidified, with a certain smooth lid, which is called cartilage, so that they might bend without friction and without any sense of pain. Yet he did not shape them all in one way. For some he made simple and round like a ball,

in those joints only in which the limbs needed to move in every direction, as at the shoulders, since the hands must be moved and turned in either direction; but others broad and even and rounded on one side, and that in those places where the limbs needed only to bend, as at the knees and elbows and the hands themselves.

For just as it was both becoming and useful for the hands to move in every direction from the place where they spring, so surely, if the same thing happened to the elbows too, such movement would be both superfluous and ugly.

For then the hand, having lost the dignity it now has, would look like a trunk because of excessive mobility, and man would be plainly snake-handed, a kind of thing wonderfully produced in that most enormous beast.

For God, who willed to show his providence and power by a wonderful variety of many things, since he had not stretched out the head of that animal so far that it could touch the ground with its mouth, which would have been horrible and hideous, and because he had so armed the mouth itself with protruding teeth that, even if it did touch, the teeth would take away the ability to feed, drew out between them, from the top of the forehead, a soft and flexible member with which it could grasp and hold anything, lest either the projecting size of its teeth or the shortness of its neck should hinder its means of taking food.

I cannot be kept at this point from refuting the folly of Epicurus again; for all the ravings of Lucretius are his. He, to show that animals were born not by any craftsmanship of the divine mind but, as he usually says, by chance, said that at the beginning of the world certain other countless living creatures of wonderful shape and size were born, but that they could not survive, because either the ability to take food or the means of coupling and begetting had failed them.

Evidently, in order to make room for his atoms, he wanted to exclude divine providence. But since he saw that in all things that breathe there is a wonderful design of providence, what vanity was it, confound it, to say that there were monstrous animals in which design was lacking?

Since, then, all the things that we see were born with design (for nothing but design can bring about the very fact of being born), it is plain that nothing at all could have been produced without design.

For it was provided beforehand, in fashioning each and every one, how far they might use the service of their members for the necessities of life, and how far, their bodies being joined, the offspring brought forth might preserve all living creatures kind by kind.

For if a skilled architect, when he has decided to build some great building, first of all considers what the whole of the finished building will be, and measures beforehand what place awaits a light weight, where a mass of great load is to stand, what the intervals of the columns will be, what or where the courses and outlets and receptacles

of falling waters will be: these things, I say, he provides beforehand, so that whatever is necessary to the work when finished may be begun together with the very foundations; why should anyone think that God, in contriving living creatures, did not provide beforehand the things necessary for living before he gave life itself? It could certainly not exist unless the things by which it exists had first been made.

So Epicurus saw the skill of the divine design in the bodies of living creatures; but in order to accomplish what he had rashly assumed before, he added another piece of raving consistent with the first.

For he said that neither were the eyes born for seeing, nor the ears for hearing, nor the feet for walking, since these members were born before there was any use of seeing and hearing and walking; but that the functions of all these arose from the members once born.

I fear that refuting monstrous and ridiculous things of this kind may seem no less foolish; but I am glad to play the fool, since we are dealing with a fool, lest he think himself too clever. What do you say, Epicurus?

Were the eyes not born for seeing? Why, then, do they see? “Their use appeared afterward,” he says. So they were born for the sake of seeing, since they can do nothing but see. Likewise, for what purpose the other members were born, the use itself shows: which surely could in no way exist unless all the members had been made so orderly and so providently that they could have a use.

For what if you were to say that birds were not born for flying, nor wild beasts for fierceness, nor fish for swimming, nor men for wisdom, when it is plain that living creatures serve that nature and function for which each was produced?

But evidently he who has lost the very sum of truth must always go astray. For if all things are born not by providence but by chance collisions of atoms, why has it never happened by chance that those first principles came together so as to produce a living creature of such a kind that it would hear with its nostrils, smell with its eyes, and see with its ears?

For if the first elements leave no kind of arrangement untried, such monsters ought to be produced daily, in which both the order of the members would be reversed and their use far different.

But since all kinds, and all the members in each, keep their own laws and orders and the uses assigned to them, it is plain that nothing was made by chance, since the arrangement of the divine design is perpetually preserved.

But we shall refute Epicurus elsewhere; now let us discuss providence as we began.

God, then, bound and tied together with sinews the solid frame of the body, which is called the bones, knotted and joined to one another, so that the mind might use them like reins whether it wished to run forward or to hold back, and indeed might govern and turn the mass of the whole body with no labor and no effort, but by the slightest movement.

These he covered with flesh as suited each place, so that the solid parts might be enclosed and protected. Likewise he mingled veins with the flesh itself, like streams distributed through the whole body, so that moisture and blood running through them might water all the limbs with life-giving juices. And having shaped this flesh in the manner fitting for each kind and each place, he covered it with a skin laid over it, which he either adorned with beauty alone, or covered with bristles, or armed with scales, or decked with splendid feathers.

But this is a wonderful contrivance of God: that one arrangement and one form display countless varieties of appearance. For in almost all things that breathe there is the same sequence and order of the limbs:

first the head, and joined to it the neck; then the breast attached to the neck, and the shoulders projecting from it; the belly clinging to the breast; then the genitals set beneath the belly; and in the last place the thighs and feet.

And not only do the limbs keep their course and position in all, but so do the parts of the limbs. For in the head alone the ears hold a fixed seat, the eyes a fixed seat, and likewise the nostrils, the mouth too, and in it the teeth and tongue. Though all these are the same in every living creature, yet there is an infinite and manifold diversity of shapes, because the things I have mentioned are drawn out longer or shorter and bounded by variously differing lines. What then?

Is it not divine that, in so great a multitude of living things, each animal is most beautiful in the form of its own kind, so that if anything were transferred in turn from one to another, nothing would necessarily seem more hindering for use, nothing uglier to look at? As if you were to give the elephant a long neck or the camel a short one, or add feet or hair to serpents, in whom the length of a body stretched out evenly required nothing else than that, their backs marked with spots and borne up on smooth scales, they should glide in slippery tracks with winding coils.

In four-footed animals, moreover, the same maker drew the column of the spine, led down from the top of the head, further out beyond the body and tapered it into a tail, either so that the shameful parts of the body might be covered because of their foulness or protected because of their tenderness, or so that certain small and harmful creatures might be driven off from the body by its motion. If you take this limb away, the animal becomes imperfect and weak.

But where there is reason and a hand, it is no more necessary than a covering of hair: so fittingly does each thing suit its own kind that nothing uglier could be devised than a naked four-footed beast or a hair-covered man.

Yet although man's very nakedness is wonderfully conducive to beauty, it did not suit the head as well. So he covered it with hair, and since it was to be at the top, he adorned it like the crowning summit of a building. This ornament is not gathered into a circle or made round in the shape of a cap, lest it be unsightly with some parts bare, but is spread out in some places and drawn back in others, as befits each place.

So the brow fenced round about, the hair spreading from the temples in front of the ears, the upper part of the ears encircled like a crown, and the whole back of the head covered, display an appearance of wonderful comeliness.

And it is beyond belief how much the design of the beard contributes, whether to distinguishing the maturity of bodies, or to the difference of the sexes, or to the comeliness of manliness and strength, so that it seems the design of the whole work could not have held together at all if anything had been made otherwise.

Now I will show the design of the whole man, and explain the uses and forms of the individual members of the body, both those that are exposed and those that are hidden.

When, then, God had determined to make man alone of all the animals heavenly, and all the rest earthly, he raised him upright for the contemplation of heaven and made him two-footed, so that he might look toward the place from which his origin is; but those others he bent down to the ground, so that, since they have no expectation of immortality, they might be cast with their whole body toward the earth and serve their belly and their fodder.

And so man's upright bearing, his lofty stance, and a countenance shared with God the Father and near to him bear witness to his origin and his maker. His almost divine mind, because it has been allotted dominion not only over the living creatures on earth but also over its own body, is placed at the top of the head as in a lofty citadel, and watches over and surveys all things.

This hall of the mind God did not form drawn out and extended, as in the dumb animals, but like an orb and a globe, because the roundness of a sphere belongs to perfect proportion and shape.

There, then, the mind and that divine fire are covered as by a heaven. And when he had covered its highest summit with a natural garment, he furnished and at the same time adorned the front part, which is called the face, with the services of the necessary members.

And first, he enclosed the balls of the eyes in hollow openings (from this boring, Varro thinks, the forehead, frons, was named), and he willed that there be neither fewer nor more than two, because for beauty no number is more perfect than two; just as he made two ears also. It is beyond belief how much beauty their doubleness displays, both because each side is adorned by its likeness to the other, and so that voices coming from either side may be gathered more easily.

For their very shape too was fashioned in a wonderful manner, because he did not wish their openings to be bare and unfenced. That would have been both less comely and less useful, since the voice could fly past the narrow openings of simple holes, unless the openings themselves held it in, caught by the hollow curves and kept by the echo, like those little funnels which are put in place to fill vessels with narrow mouths.

These ears, then, which received their name from drinking in (hauriendis) voices (whence Virgil: “and with these ears I drank in the voice”), or because the Greeks call the voice itself audē from hearing, and so by a change of letter aures are named as if audes, God the craftsman did not wish to form of soft skin, which, hanging and flabby, would take away their beauty, nor of hard and solid bones, lest, being immovable and rigid, they be unfit for use; but he devised something between the two, so that a rather soft cartilage should bind them and they should have a firmness at once suitable and flexible.

In these the office of hearing alone is placed, just as the office of seeing is in the eyes. Of these the subtlety is especially inexplicable and wonderful, because he covered their orbs, which resemble gems, with translucent membranes on the side where seeing was to happen, so that the images of things placed opposite, shining back as in a mirror, might pass through to the inmost sense.

Through these membranes, then, that sense which is called the mind looks through at the things that are outside, so that you may not suppose that we see either by the impact of images, as the philosophers argue, since the office of seeing must be in that which sees, not in that which is seen, or by a tension of the air together with the eye's line of sight, or by an outpouring of rays; for if that were so, we would see more slowly than we turn our eyes, until the stretched air with the line of sight, or the rays poured out, reached what was to be seen.

But since we see in the same moment of time, and often, even while doing something else, we nevertheless behold everything placed before us, it is truer and plainer that it is the mind which looks through the eyes at the things set opposite, as through windows covered with translucent glass or mica.

And for this reason a person's mind and will are often discerned from the eyes. Lucretius, to refute this, used a most foolish argument. “For if,” he says, “the mind sees through the eyes, it would see better with the eyes torn out and dug away, since doors torn out together with their posts let in more light than if they were closed.”

No doubt it was his own eyes, or rather those of Epicurus who taught him, that were dug out, so that he did not see that eye sockets dug out, torn fibers of the eyes, blood flowing through the veins, flesh growing out of the wounds, and finally scars drawn over them can let in no light at all; unless perhaps he wished eyes to be born like ears, so that we should see not so much with eyes as with holes: than which nothing could be made uglier to look at or more useless in use.

For how little we could see if the mind looked out from the inmost recesses of the head through the tiny chinks of holes! As, if someone wished to look through a hemlock stalk, he would certainly see no more than the bore of the stalk itself takes in.

And so for seeing there was need rather of members rounded into orbs, so that the sight might spread out widely, and of members set in the front of the face, so that they might freely behold all things.

Therefore the inexpressible power of divine providence made two orbs most alike and bound them in such a way that they could not turn right round, yet could move and bend within measure. And he willed that the orbs themselves be full of pure and clear fluid, in the middle of which sparks of light should be kept enclosed, which we call pupils, in which, pure and fine, the sense and faculty of seeing is contained.

Through these orbs, then, the mind directs itself in order to see, and by a wonderful arrangement the sight of both eyes is mingled and joined into one.

At this point I would like to rebuke the emptiness of those who, wishing to show that the senses are false, collect many cases in which the eyes are deceived, among them this too: that to madmen and drunkards everything appears double; as if the cause of that error were obscure. For it happens precisely because there are two eyes.

But hear how this happens. The sight of the eyes depends on the attention of the mind. And so, since the mind, as was said above, uses the eyes as windows, this happens not only to the drunk or the insane but also to the sane and sober. For if you bring something too close, it will seem double; for there is a fixed interval and distance at which the lines of sight of the eyes meet.

Likewise, if you call the mind back as if to think, and relax the attention of the mind, then the sight of the two eyes is drawn apart and each begins to see separately. If you direct the mind again and aim the sight, whatever seemed double comes together into one.

What wonder is it, then, if the mind, dissolved by the poison and power of wine, cannot direct itself to see, just as it cannot direct the feet to walk when the sinews are numb and weak; or if the force of madness raging in the brain breaks apart the harmony of the eyes? This is so true that one-eyed men, if they become insane or drunk, can in no way come to see anything double.

Therefore, if the reason is plain why the eyes are deceived, it is manifest that the senses are not false: either they are not deceived, if they are pure and sound, or, if they are deceived, the mind is still not deceived, since it knows their error.

But let us return to the works of God. So that the eyes might be better protected from injury, he hid them under the covering of the eyelids (cilia), from which Varro holds that eyes (oculi) were named.

For the lids themselves (palpebrae), to which their mobility, that is, their fluttering (palpitatio), gave the name, are fenced with hairs standing in a row and provide a most seemly enclosure for the eyes. Their constant movement, closing with incomprehensible speed, both does not hinder the continuity of seeing and refreshes the gaze.

For the eye's surface, that is, that translucent membrane, which must not be dried out and parched, grows dull unless, wiped with constant moisture, it keeps its gleam. What then?

Do not the ridges of the eyebrows, adorned with short hairs, provide both a sort of rampart and bulwark for the eyes, lest anything fall on them from above, and beauty at the same time? From their meeting point the nose rises and, stretched out as if along an even ridge, both separates and protects the two eyes at once.

Below also, the not unseemly swelling of the cheeks, rising gently like hills, makes the eyes safer on every side; and the supreme craftsman provided that, if any rather violent blow should come, it would be repelled by these prominences.

The upper part of the nose, as far as the middle, is formed solid; but the lower part is softened by attached cartilage, so that it can be handled for the use of the fingers.

In this member, simple though it is, three offices are set: one of drawing breath, another of catching smells, the third that the waste of the brain may flow down through its passages. With how wonderful, how divine a design God built these very passages, so that the opening of the nose should not disfigure the appearance of the face!

This would plainly have happened if one single opening lay open; but he fenced it off and divided it, as though a wall were drawn down the middle, and made it most beautiful by its very doubleness.

From this we understand how much the number two, made firm into a single, simple joining, avails for the perfection of things. For although the body is one, still it could not consist wholly of single members, unless there were parts on the right and on the left.

So, just as the two feet and likewise the hands not only serve some use and purpose, of walking or of working, but also give an admirable form and grace, so in the head, which is as it were the summit of the whole divine work, hearing has been divided by the supreme craftsman into two ears, sight into two eyes, and smell into two nostrils; because the brain, in which the faculty of sensation lies, though it is one, is nevertheless separated into two parts by a membrane coming between.

And the heart too, which seems to be the dwelling of wisdom, though it is one, has two chambers within, in which the springs of living blood are held, divided by a partition between them; so that, just as in the world itself the sum of things, whether double out of simple or simple out of double, both governs and holds together the whole, so in the body all things framed of two parts might present an inseparable unity.

How useful and how seemly the form of the mouth is, and its opening laid open crosswise, cannot be told: its use consists in two offices, taking food and speaking.

The tongue, enclosed within, which by its motions divides the voice into words, is the interpreter of the mind; yet it cannot by itself alone fulfill the task of speaking unless it strikes its tip against the palate, unless it is helped either by striking the teeth or by pressing the lips. The teeth, however, contribute more to speaking:

for infants do not begin to speak before they have teeth, and old men, having lost their teeth, so stammer that they seem to have rolled back again into infancy.

But these things belong only to man, or to birds, in which the tongue, pointed and vibrating with fixed motions, expresses countless modulations of song and various measures of sound.

It has, moreover, another office too, which it uses in all animals, not only in the dumb ones: it gathers the food crushed and ground by the teeth, and, having rolled it into a ball, presses it down by its own force and passes it on to the stomach. So Varro thinks the name lingua was given from binding (ligando) the food. It also helps beasts in drinking:

for, stretched out and hollowed, they draw up water, and, having caught it in the curve of the tongue, lest it flow back through slowness and delay, they slap it against the palate with swift movement. This tongue, then, is covered by the hollow of the palate as by a vault, and God has walled it round with the fence of the teeth as with a wall.

The teeth themselves, lest, bare and exposed, they be a horror rather than an ornament, he graced with soft gums, which are named from begetting (gignendis) the teeth, and then with the covering of the lips. Their hardness, as in a millstone, is greater and rougher than in the other bones, so that they might be sufficient to grind food and fodder.

How seemly he cut apart the lips themselves, which before were as it were joined together! The upper one he marked, just below the middle of the nostrils, with a slight hollow like a valley; the lower one he gently turned outward for comeliness.

As for perceiving taste, whoever thinks that this sense lies in the palate is mistaken. For it is the tongue by which tastes are perceived, and not the whole of it: the parts of it on either side, which are more tender, draw in taste with the finest senses. And although nothing is taken away from the food or from the drink, still the taste penetrates to the sense in an indescribable way, by the same means by which the perception of smell takes nothing from any substance.

How comely the rest is can hardly be expressed: the chin drawn down gently from the cheeks and so closed off below that a lightly impressed division seems to mark its outermost point; the neck straight and smooth; the shoulders let down from the neck like gentle ridges; the arms strong and braced with sinews for strength; the vigorous might of the prominent muscles with their notable swellings; the useful and seemly bend of the elbows.

What shall I say of the hands, the servants of reason and wisdom? The most skillful craftsman fashioned them with a flat and moderately hollowed palm, so that whatever must be held can rest in it fittingly, and he ended them in fingers, in which it is hard to decide whether beauty or usefulness is the greater.

For the number, perfect and complete, the most seemly order and gradation, the flexible bending of the matching joints, and the round shape of the nails, which with their hollow coverings enclose and strengthen the tips of the fingers lest the softness of the flesh give way in holding, provide great adornment.

But this is wonderfully fit for use: that one finger, separated from the others, arises together with the hand itself and spreads out earlier in the opposite direction, and, presenting itself as if to meet the others, possesses all the power of holding and doing, either alone or chiefly, as ruler and governor of all; whence it also received the name pollex, because it excels (polleat) the rest in force and power. It has two joints standing out,

not three like the others, but one is joined to the hand by flesh for the sake of beauty; for if it too had been separated by three joints, an ugly and unseemly appearance would have taken the comeliness from the hands.

Now the breadth of the chest, lofty and exposed to the eyes, displays a wonderful dignity of bearing. The reason for this is that God seems to have formed man alone as though lying on his back (for hardly any other animal can lie on its back), but to have fashioned the dumb animals as though lying on their sides and pressed them down toward the earth. Therefore their chest is narrow, withdrawn from view, and turned down toward the earth, but man's is open and upright, because, being full of reason given from heaven, it ought not to be lowly or unseemly.

The nipples too, slightly prominent and ringed with small, darker circles, add some grace: given to women for nourishing their young, to men only for adornment, lest the chest seem shapeless and as it were mutilated. Below this lies the flat of the belly, which the navel marks almost in the middle with a not unseemly sign, made for this purpose, that through it the fetus may be nourished while it is in the womb.

It follows necessarily that I should begin to speak of the internal organs too. To these not beauty, since they are hidden, but an incredible usefulness has been assigned, since it was needful that this earthly body be nourished by some juice from food and drink, just as the earth itself is by rain and dew.

The most provident craftsman made a receptacle for food in the middle of the body, so that, once the food was digested and liquefied, it might distribute the life-giving juices to all the members.

But since man consists of body and soul, the receptacle I spoke of above supplies nourishment to the body alone; to the soul he gave another seat. For he made a kind of organ, soft and porous, which we call the lung, and he did not form it in the manner of a bag, lest the breath be poured out all at once or blow it up all at once.

And so he made the organ solid indeed, but inflatable and able to hold air, so that it might take in the breath little by little as the life-giving wind spreads through its porous substance, and give it back again little by little as it releases itself from it. For this very alternation, the drawing of breath in and out, sustains life in the body.

Since, then, there are two receptacles in man, one of air, which nourishes the soul, the other of food, which nourishes the body, there must be two pipes through the neck, one for food and one for breath; the upper of these carries from the mouth to the stomach, the lower from the nostrils to the lung.

Their nature and design are different. For the passage from the mouth is made soft and always closed upon itself, like the mouth itself, since drink and food, because they are bodily, make room for their own passage by moving and opening the gullet.

The breath, on the other hand, which is incorporeal and fine, because it could not make room for itself, received an open passage, which is called the windpipe. It consists of bending and soft bones, like rings fitted to one another in the manner of a hemlock stalk and joined together,

and this passage always stands open. For the breath can have no rest from moving: and because it is always coming and going, it is checked, as by something set in its path, by a part of a member usefully let down from the brain, whose name is the uvula, lest, rushing in with force, it should either harm the tenderness of its dwelling by drawing in some pestilent air, or carry the whole violence of harm to the inner receptacles. For this reason also the nostrils are open only a little; and they are called nares because through them either smell or breath never ceases to swim (nare).

Yet this breathing pipe opens not only to the nostrils but also into the mouth, at the far regions of the palate, where the tonsils of the throat, facing the uvula, begin to rise into a swelling.

The cause and reason of this is not obscure. For we would not have the faculty of speech if, just as the passage of the gullet opens only to the mouth, so the windpipe opened only to the nostrils.

So divine skill opened a path for the voice out of that breathing pipe, so that the tongue might perform its service and, by its strokes, cut up the unhindered flow of the voice into words. If this passage is in any way blocked, it must make a person mute; for whoever thinks there is another cause why men are mute is certainly mistaken.

For they do not, as is commonly believed, have a tied tongue; but they pour out that vocal breath through the nostrils as if lowing, because the voice has either no passage at all to the mouth, or one not so open that it can send out a full voice.

This usually happens by nature, but sometimes it also happens by accident that, through some disease, this entrance is blocked and does not pass the voice on to the tongue, and makes the speaking mute. When this happens, the hearing too must be blocked, so that, since it cannot send out the voice, it cannot even let it in. This passage, then, was laid open for the sake of speaking.

It also provides this: that when we take the baths, since the nostrils cannot bear the heat, the hot air may be drawn in by the mouth; likewise, if phlegm from a chill should happen to close the breathing passages of the nostrils, we may draw air through the mouth, lest the breath be strangled when its power of passage is blocked.

But when the food taken into the belly and mixed with the moisture of drink has been thoroughly cooked by heat, its juice, spread through the members in an indescribable way, waters and quickens the whole body.

How wonderful a work of God, too, are the manifold coils of the intestines and their length rolled back upon itself and yet held fast by a single band! For when the belly has sent out of itself the softened food, it is pushed little by little through those windings of the inner parts, so that whatever juice is in it, by which the body is nourished,

may be distributed to all the members. And yet, lest they should stick and stop anywhere (which could have happened because of the windings of the coils themselves, often turning back on themselves, and could not have happened without ruin), he smeared them on the inside with a thicker juice, so that the waste of the belly might more easily slide toward its exits along a slippery path.

This design too is most subtle: that the bladder, which birds do not have the use of, although it is separate from the intestines and has no pipe by which to draw urine from them, is nevertheless filled and swollen with moisture.

How this happens is not difficult to see. The parts of the intestines that receive food and drink from the belly are more open than the other coils and much thinner.

These embrace and surround the bladder; and when the food and drink, mixed together, reach these parts, the dung becomes thicker and passes on, but all the moisture is strained through that thin tissue, and the bladder, whose membrane is equally thin and fine, absorbs and collects it, so as to send it out where nature has opened an exit.

Since we are speaking of the internal parts, something must also be said about the womb and conception, lest we seem to have passed anything over: things which, although they lie hidden in secret, cannot be hidden from perception and understanding.

In males the vessel that holds the seed is double, a little further in than the receptacle of the shameful fluid. For just as there are two kidneys and likewise two testicles, so there are two seminal vessels, yet joined in one structure: this we see in the bodies of animals when they are cut open.

But the one on the right holds the male seed, the one on the left the female; and in general, in the whole body, the right side is male and the left female.

Some think that the seed itself flows together into the genital vessel and thickens there from the marrow only, others from the whole body; but how this happens the human mind cannot comprehend.

Likewise in women the womb divides into two parts, which spread out in opposite directions and curl back like a ram's horns. The part that turns back to the right is male, the part that turns to the left, female.

Varro and Aristotle, then, think conception happens in this way. They say that seed is present not only in males but also in females, and that for this reason children are often born like their mothers; but that the women's seed is purified blood. If this is rightly mixed with the man's, both, thickened and curdled together, take shape; and first of all the heart of the human being is formed, because in it is all life and wisdom; and finally the whole work is completed on the fortieth day. These things were perhaps gathered from miscarriages.

In the young of birds, however, there is no doubt that the eyes are formed first, as is often discovered in eggs. Hence I judge that it cannot be but that the forming begins from the head.

They think that likenesses in the bodies of children arise in this way: when the seeds, mixed together, grow into one, if the man's has prevailed, the child turns out like the father, whether male or female; if the woman's has prevailed, the offspring of either sex corresponds to the mother's likeness.

And of the two, that one prevails which has been more abundant; for it in some way embraces and encloses the other. Hence it often happens that the child displays the features of one parent only.

But if the mixture was even, from equal seed, the features too are mixed, so that the shared offspring seems either to resemble neither, because it does not have all from one, or both, because it has borrowed a part from each.

For in the bodies of animals we see either the colors of the parents blended and a third produced, like neither of those who begot it, or those of both so expressed that a harmonious mixture varies through the whole body with members of different colors.

Different natures also are thought to arise in this way: when the seed of male stock happens to fall into the left part of the womb, the opinion is that a male is indeed born, but because he was conceived in the female part, he has something feminine in him beyond what manly dignity allows: either striking beauty, or excessive fairness, or smoothness of body, or delicate limbs, or short stature, or a thin voice, or a weak spirit, or several of these.

Likewise, if seed of the female kind has flowed into the right part, a female is indeed born, but since she was conceived in the male part, she has in her something of manliness beyond what the nature of her sex permits: either strong limbs, or excessive height, or dark color, or a hairy face, or an unlovely countenance, or a strong voice, or a bold spirit, or several of these.

But if the male seed reaches the right side and the female the left, both offspring turn out rightly, so that the women retain in all respects the comeliness of their nature, and the men keep manly strength in mind as well as body.

But how wonderful is this very ordinance of God, that for the preservation of each kind he devised two sexes, male and female, so that, joined to one another through the allurement of pleasure, they might provide successive offspring, lest the condition of mortality extinguish every kind of living thing.

But more strength has been given to males, so that women might more easily be brought to bear the marital yoke. So the man is called vir because there is greater force (vis) in him than in the woman, and from this virtue (virtus) received its name.

Likewise woman (mulier), as Varro explains, is from softness (mollitia), a letter being changed and removed, as if mollier. When she has conceived and the birth is already beginning to approach, her swelling breasts are filled with sweet juices, and for the nourishment of the newborn her fruitful bosom overflows with springs of milk. For it was not fitting that a wise creature draw its nourishment from anywhere but the heart. And this itself was most skillfully arranged, that a white and rich fluid should water the tenderness of the new body until it is both furnished with teeth and strengthened in its powers to take stronger food. But let us return to our subject, so as to explain briefly the rest that remains.

I could now set out for you the wonderful design of the genital members themselves too, were it not that modesty called me back from speech of this kind; so let the parts that are shameful be veiled by us with the garment of modesty.

As far as this matter is concerned, it is enough to complain that impious and profane men commit the greatest wickedness, who turn this divine and admirable work of God, provided and made with inconceivable design for the continuation of the race, either to the most shameful gain or to the shameful works of obscene lust, so that they now seek nothing else from a most holy thing than empty and barren pleasure. What then?

Do the remaining parts of the body lack design or beauty? How fit for the office of sitting is the flesh gathered into the buttocks! And it is also firmer than in the other members, lest, under the pressure of the body's weight, it give way to the bones.

Likewise the length of the thighs, drawn down and strong with broader muscles, so as to bear the body's burden more easily; and as it gradually narrows, the knees bound it, whose seemly joints give the feet a bend most fitting for walking and sitting.

Likewise the legs are not drawn out evenly, lest an unseemly form disfigure the feet, but are both strengthened and adorned by the rounded calves swelling gently and gradually tapering.

In the soles of the feet the design is the same, but yet far different from that in the hands. Since they are, as it were, the foundations of the whole work, the wonderful craftsman did not form them in a round shape, lest man be unable to stand or need other feet for standing, like the four-footed animals, but made them more extended and longer, so that by their flatness they might make the body stable; from which they received their name (plantae).

The toes are just as many as the fingers of the hands, showing beauty more than any greater use, and therefore joined, short, and arranged in gradation. The largest of them, since there was no need for it to be separated from the rest as in the hand, has been brought into line, yet so that it seems to stand apart from the others in size and by a moderate gap.

This handsome kinship of theirs strengthens the pressure of the feet with no slight help; for we cannot spur ourselves to run unless, with the toes pressed into the ground and pushing against the earth, we take our impulse and spring. I think I have explained everything whose design can be understood; now I come to things that are either doubtful or obscure.

It is agreed that there are many things in the body whose force and design no one can perceive except him who made them.

Or does anyone think he can tell what use, what effect that thin, translucent membrane has by which the belly is netted round and covered?

What of the twin likeness of the kidneys (renes)? Varro says they are so called because streams (rivi) of the shameful fluid rise from them; which is far otherwise, since they cling on either side of the spine, lying back, and are separate from the intestines. What of the spleen? What of the liver?

These organs seem to have been thickened as if out of disturbed blood. What of the most bitter liquid of the gall? What of the ball of the heart? Unless perhaps we shall think we must believe those who hold that the passion of anger is seated in the gall, of fear in the heart, and of joy in the spleen.

The office of the liver itself, they will have it, is to cook the food in the belly by its embrace and its warming; some think that the desires for sexual pleasures are held in the liver.

In the first place, the sharpness of human perception cannot see into these things, because their offices lie hidden in secret, and when laid open they do not show their uses. For if it were so, perhaps the gentler animals would have either no gall at all or less than wild beasts, the more timid would have more heart, the more lustful more liver, the more playful more spleen.

So, just as we perceive that we hear with the ears, see with the eyes, and smell with the nostrils, we would certainly perceive that we are angry with the gall, desire with the liver, and rejoice with the spleen.

But since we do not at all perceive where these passions come from, it may be that they come from elsewhere and that those organs do something else that we do not at all suspect; and yet we cannot prove that those who argue these things say what is false. But everything that belongs to the motions of the mind and the soul I judge to be of so obscure and deep a design that it is beyond man to see it clearly.

This, however, ought to be certain and beyond doubt: that so many things, so many kinds of organs, have one and the same office, to keep the soul in the body. But what task has been assigned properly to each, who can know except the craftsman, to whom alone his work is known?

And what account can we give of the voice? The grammarians and philosophers indeed define the voice as air struck by breath, from which words (verba) were named: which is plainly false.

For the voice is not produced outside the mouth but within; and so that opinion is more like the truth, that the breath, packed together, when it has been dashed against the obstacles of the throat, produces the sound of the voice: as when we send breath down into an open hemlock stalk set against the lip, and the breath, echoing and rolling back from the bottom in the hollow of the stalk, while it grazes the descending breath as it meets it, produces a sound as it strives toward the exit, and the wind, springing back into vocal breath, is given life of itself.

Whether this is true, God the craftsman may see. For the voice seems to arise not from the mouth but from the inmost chest. Indeed, even with the mouth closed, a sound, such as it can be, is sent out from the nostrils.

Moreover, a voice is not produced by the greatest breath with which we pant, and it is produced whenever we will with a light and unconstrained breath. It has not, therefore, been grasped in what way it arises, or what it is at all.

And do not think that I am now slipping into the opinion of the Academy, since not all things are incomprehensible. For just as it must be admitted that many things are unknown, which God willed to exceed man's understanding, so there are still many that can be both perceived by the senses and grasped by reason.

But we shall have a full debate against the philosophers. Let us, then, complete the course we are now running.

Who does not know that the nature of the mind too is incomprehensible, except one who has none at all, since it is not known in what place the mind itself is or of what kind it is? Various views, therefore, have been argued by the philosophers about its nature and place.

But I will not conceal what I myself think; not that I affirm it is so, which is the part of a fool in a doubtful matter, but so that, the difficulty of the matter being set out, you may understand how great is the greatness of the divine works.

Some have held that the seat of the mind is in the breast. If that is so, how worthy of wonder it is that a thing placed in an obscure and dark dwelling should move in so great a light of reason and understanding; and also that the senses come together to it from every part of the body, so that it seems to be present in any region of the members!

Others have said its seat is in the brain. And they have certainly used probable arguments: namely, that what held the government of the whole body ought rather to dwell at the top, as in the citadel of the body, and that nothing is loftier than that which governs the whole by reason, just as the Lord and ruler of the world himself is on high;

then, that the members serving all the senses, that is, of hearing, seeing, and smelling, are placed in the head, and the paths of all of them lead not to the breast but to the brain; otherwise we would necessarily perceive more slowly, until the faculty of perceiving had come down by a long road through the neck all the way to the breast.

These indeed either do not err much, or perhaps do not err at all. For the mind, which holds dominion over the body, seems to be placed at the top of the head, like God in heaven; but when it is engaged in some thought, it seems to pass to the breast and withdraw as if into some secret inner chamber, so as to draw out and bring forth counsel as from a hidden treasury.

And so, when we are intent on thinking and the mind, being occupied, has hidden itself in the depths, we usually neither hear what sounds around us nor see what stands before us.

If this is so, it is certainly to be wondered at how it happens, since no path lies open from the brain to the breast; but if it is not so, it is nonetheless to be wondered at that by some divine design it comes about that it seems to be so.

Or can anyone not wonder that that living and heavenly sense, which is called mind or spirit, is of such mobility that it does not rest even when it is asleep; of such speed that in one point of time it can survey the whole heaven, if it wishes, fly over the seas, travel through lands and cities, and, in short, set before its own sight whatever it pleases, however far and wide removed?

And does anyone wonder if the divine mind of God, extended through all parts of the world, runs through them and rules all things, governs all things, present everywhere, spread everywhere, when so great is the force and power of the human mind shut up within a mortal body that it cannot in any way be held in even by the walls of this heavy and sluggish body to which it is bound, from granting itself, impatient of rest, a free power of roaming?

Whether, then, the mind dwells in the head or in the breast, can anyone comprehend what power of reason brings it about that that incomprehensible sense clings either to the marrow of the brain or to that twofold blood enclosed in the heart? And may he not gather from this very fact how great the power of God is, that the mind does not see itself, either of what kind or where it is; and even if it saw, still could not perceive how an incorporeal thing has been joined to a bodily one?

Or even if the mind has no place, but runs about spread through the whole body (which may be so, and was argued by Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, since perception is present in any part of the body), still what the mind itself is, or of what kind, cannot be understood, since its nature is so subtle and fine that, poured into the solid organs, it is mingled with all the members with a living and, as it were, burning sense.

But beware of ever thinking probable what Aristoxenus says: that there is no mind at all, but that the power of sensation arises from the structure of the body and the joining of the organs, like harmony in a lyre. For musicians call harmony the tension and concord of strings in complete measures without any clash of the notes.

They hold, then, that the spirit exists in man in the same way as harmonious melody exists in a lyre: namely, that the firm joining of the individual parts of the body and the vigor of all the members agreeing in one produce that sensitive motion and tune the spirit, as well-stretched strings produce a harmonious sound;

and just as in a lyre, when something is broken or slackened, the whole order of the music is disturbed and dissolved, so in the body, when some part of the members has contracted a flaw, everything is destroyed, and when all is corrupted and disturbed, sensation dies, and this is called death.

But if he had had any mind, he would never have transferred harmony from the lyre to man. For a lyre cannot play of its own accord, so that there should be any comparison or likeness in it to a living being; but the spirit both thinks and moves of its own accord.

If there were anything in us like harmony, it would be moved by an outside blow, as strings are by hands; for without the handling of the musician and the stroke of the fingers they lie mute and inert.

But no doubt he needed to be struck by a hand to come to his senses at some point, because his mind, badly put together out of his members, was numb.

It remains to speak of the soul, although its design and nature cannot be perceived. Yet we do not therefore fail to understand that the soul is immortal, since whatever is always vigorous and moves of itself and cannot be seen or touched must be eternal.

But what the soul is has not yet been agreed among the philosophers, and perhaps never will be. Some have said it is blood, others fire, others wind, from which the soul (anima) or spirit (animus) received its name, because in Greek wind is called anemos. Yet none of them seems to have said anything.

For if the soul seems to be extinguished when the blood is poured out through a wound or consumed by the heat of fevers, it does not follow at once that the essence of the soul is to be placed in the substance of blood; as if the question arose what the light we use is, and the answer were that it is oil, since when the oil is used up the light goes out, although they are certainly different, but one is the food of the other. The soul, then, seems to be like light: it is not itself blood, but is fed by the moisture of the blood, as light is by oil.

Those who thought it fire used this argument: that while the soul is present the body is warm, and when it departs the body grows cold. But fire both lacks sense and is seen and burns when touched; while the soul is endowed with sense, cannot be seen, and does not burn. From this it appears that the soul is something like God.

But those who think it wind are deceived by this, that we seem to live by drawing breath from the air. Varro defines it thus: “The soul is air taken in by the mouth, warmed in the lung, tempered in the heart, spread through the body.”

These things are most plainly false. For I do not say that the design of such things is so obscure to us that we do not understand even this, what cannot be true. Or if someone told me that the sky is of bronze or of glass, or, as Empedocles says, frozen air, should I at once agree, because I do not know of what material the sky is made? For just as I do not know this, so I do know that.

The soul, therefore, is not air taken in by the mouth, because the soul comes into being long before air can be taken in by the mouth. For it is not put into the body after birth, as some philosophers think, but immediately after conception, when divine necessity has formed the fetus in the womb; for it lives within the womb of its mother to such a degree that it both increases in growth and, with frequent kicks, longs to leap out. Indeed, a miscarriage must follow if the living creature has died within.

The remaining parts of the definition amount to this, that during those nine months in which we were in the womb we would seem to have been dead. None of these three opinions, then, is true.

Yet those who held these views are not to be called so false as to have said nothing at all; for we live by blood and heat and breath together. But since the soul exists in the body with all these united, they did not express properly what it is, because it can no more be expressed than seen.

Another question follows, itself also inextricable: whether soul (anima) and mind (animus) are the same, or whether that by which we live is one thing and that by which we perceive and are wise is another. Arguments are not lacking on either side. Those who say they are one follow this

reasoning: that there can be no living without sensation and no sensation without life, and therefore what cannot be separated cannot be different, but whatever it is has the function both of living and of perceiving. For this reason two Epicurean poets use animus and anima indifferently.

But those who say they are different argue thus: that it can be understood from this that the mind is one thing and the soul another, because the mind can be extinguished while the soul is unharmed, as usually happens to the insane; likewise, because the soul is put to sleep by death, the mind by sleep, and indeed in such a way that it not only does not know what it is doing or where it is, but is even deceived by the contemplation of false things.

How this happens cannot be seen through; why it happens can. For we can in no way rest unless the mind is held occupied by the images of visions. And the mind lies hidden, overcome by sleep, like a fire put to sleep under a covering of ash: if you stir it a little, it blazes up again and as it were awakens.

It is distracted, then, by images, until the members, watered by sleep, are refreshed. For while the senses are awake, the body, though it lies motionless, is still not at rest, because sensation burns in it and flickers like a flame and holds all the limbs bound to itself.

But once the mind has been drawn away from its attention to contemplate images, then at last the whole body is released into rest.

And the mind is drawn away by blind thought, when, as the darkness closes in, it begins to be alone with itself. While it is intent on the things it is thinking of, sleep suddenly creeps up, and thought itself gradually turns aside into the nearest images: so it begins also to see the things it had set before its eyes.

Then it goes further and finds distractions for itself, so as not to interrupt the most healthful rest of the body. For just as by day the mind is distracted by true visions so that it may not fall asleep, so by night it is distracted by false ones so that it may not be woken; for if it saw no images, it would have either to stay awake or be put to sleep by perpetual death.

For the sake of sleep, therefore, the faculty of dreaming was given by God, and indeed in common to all living creatures; but this especially to man, that when God gave that faculty for the sake of rest, he kept for himself the power of teaching man future things through dreams.

For histories often testify that there have been dreams whose outcome was immediate and wonderful, and the answers of our prophets consisted in part of dreams.

Therefore they are neither always true nor always false, as Virgil testifies, who held that there are two gates of dreams. But those that are false seem to be for the sake of sleep; those that are true are sent by God, so that by this revelation we may learn of impending good or evil.

This too may come into question: whether the soul is generated from the father, or rather from the mother, or indeed from both. But I claim this question by my own right from the realm of the doubtful.

For none of these three is true, because souls are sown neither from both nor from either. For a body can be born from bodies, since something is contributed from each; but a soul cannot be born from souls, because nothing can come away from a thing fine and incomprehensible.

And so the method of sowing souls is subject to one and only God. In short, “we are all sprung from heavenly seed; for all there is that same father,” as Lucretius says. For from mortals nothing can be generated but what is mortal. Nor ought he to be thought a father who in no way perceives that he has poured out or breathed a soul from his own; nor, if he did perceive it, does he hold in his mind when or how it happens.

From this it appears that souls are not given by the parents but by one and the same God and Father of all, who alone holds the law and method of birth, since he alone brings it about. For the earthly parent's part is nothing but to emit or receive, with a sensation of pleasure, the fluid of the body in which is the material for birth: at this work man stops and can do nothing more. And that is why they pray that sons may be born to them: because they do not make them themselves.

All the rest now belongs to God: namely, conception itself, the forming of the body, the breathing in of the soul, a safe delivery, and whatever afterwards serves to preserve a human being. It is his gift that we breathe, that we live, that we flourish.

For besides the fact that by his kindness we are sound in body, and that he supplies us with food from various things, he also bestows wisdom on man, which an earthly father can in no way give. And so fools are often born of the wise, and the wise of fools: which some assign to fate and the stars.

But this is not the place to discuss fate; it is enough to say that, even if the stars contain the power of bringing things about, nonetheless all things are done by God, who both made and ordered the stars themselves. Foolish, then, are those who take this power away from God and assign it to his works.

He willed, then, that whether we use this heavenly and glorious gift of God should be in our power: for having granted this, he bound man himself by the sacred pledge of virtue, by which he might obtain life.

For great is the power of man, great his reason, great his sacred pledge: and whoever does not desert it nor betray his faith and devotion, he is blessed; he, in short, to finish briefly, must be like God. For whoever measures man by the flesh is mistaken: for this little body in which we are clothed is the receptacle of man. For man himself can be neither touched nor seen nor grasped, because he lies hidden within this which is seen.

If he has been more delicate and soft in this life than his reason demands, if, despising virtue, he has given himself over to the desires of the flesh, he will fall and be pressed down to the earth; but if, as he ought, he has readily and steadfastly defended his upright state, which he received by lot, if he has not been a slave to the earth, which he ought to tread underfoot and conquer, he will merit eternal life.

These things, Demetrianus, I have set forth to you for the time being in few words, and perhaps more obscurely than was fitting, because of the constraints of circumstances and the times. You must be content with them, as you will read more and better things if favor comes to us from heaven. Then I will urge you to the teaching of the true philosophy both more plainly and more truly.

For I have resolved to commit to writing as many things as I can that bear on the state of the blessed life, and indeed against the philosophers, since they are pernicious and dangerous for confounding the truth.

For an incredible power of eloquence and subtlety in argument and discussion could easily deceive anyone. These we shall refute, partly with our own weapons and partly with weapons taken from their disputes with one another, so that it may be clear that they have brought in error rather than removed it. Perhaps you wonder that I dare so great a deed.

Shall we then allow the truth to be extinguished or suppressed? I for my part would rather fail even under this burden. For if Marcus Tullius, the unique pattern of eloquence itself, was often overcome by the unlearned and ineloquent, because they were nevertheless striving for what was true, why should we despair that truth itself will prevail by its own force and clarity against deceptive and captious eloquence?

They indeed are accustomed to profess themselves patrons of the truth; but who can either defend a thing he has not learned, or make plain to others what he himself does not know?

I seem to promise a great thing; but there is need of a heavenly gift, so that the ability and the time may be granted us to carry out what we have proposed.

And if life is to be desired by a wise man, I would certainly desire to live for no other reason than to accomplish something worthy of life, which may bring usefulness to readers, if not for eloquence, since the stream of eloquence in us is thin, yet for living: which is most necessary.

When this is accomplished, I shall think I have lived enough and fulfilled the duty of a man, if my labor has freed some people from errors and directed them to the heavenly path.