Saint Augustine
THE SOUL DIMENSION
Translation: Souza Campos, EL de Teodoro
Publisher Niterói – Rio de Janeiro – Brazil
2017
In this dialogue 1 , St. Augustine's interlocutor asks him six questions. To deal more deeply with the third, that of the greatness of the soul, the holy doctor first distinguishes two types of greatness: one consisting of spatial extension and the other of power and virtue. The first, being an attribute of the body, cannot suit the soul, which is incorporeal. In this way, the greatness of the soul consists in its virtue.
1 Written in early 388 AD.
St. Augustine identifies seven degrees in this magnitude, to which he relates all the power of the human soul, whether in its relations with the body, with itself, or before God.
Chapter 1
1 . Evodio: — Seeing you with free time, I ask you to answer some questions that trouble me. Not without reason and without purpose; at least I believe. Generally, when I cover you with too many questions, you drive me away with some Greek maxim that forbids us to look for what is above us. But today I don't think we're above ourselves. In questioning you then about the soul, I do not deserve to hear: "What do we care what is above us?" 2 But maybe I deserve to know what we are.
2 Maxim of Socrates: a uper emas ti pros emas.
Augustine: — Tell in a nutshell what you want to know about the soul.
Evodius: — I will, because everything has been prepared in my mind for a long time. I would ask you then where does the soul come from, what it is, its dimension, why it is joined to the body, what it becomes when it is joined to it and after leaving it.
Chapter 2
2 . Augustine: — The question of where the soul comes from has, necessarily, a double meaning. In effect, asking where human beings come from, when one wants to know their homeland, and asking where they come from, when one wants to know from which elements, from which parts they are composed, are two questions with very different meanings. In which of these senses should you answer when you ask where does the soul come from? Do you want to know from which region, so to speak, from which homeland it came to us, or what is its substance?
Evodio: — Actually, I'd like to know over and over, and as for the question that should have priority, I'd prefer you to evaluate.
Augustine: — I believe that the soul has a certain dwelling, a certain homeland in God himself who created it. Its substance I cannot classify, as I do not believe it to be of the natures that enter into our uses and our knowledge and which we access through the bodily senses. The soul does not seem to me to be made up of earth, water, air, fire. Not all these elements and not even a mixture of some. If you were to ask me what this tree is formed from I would enumerate the four well-known elements that it must be believed to be composed. But if you were to ask me where the earth, water, air and fire come from, I would have nothing more to answer. So, when you investigate what a human being is composed of, I can say that it is a soul and a body. If, in addition,you ask me particularly in relation to the body, I use the four elements and if it is in relation to the soul, as it seems to me to be something simple and to have a substance of its own, I could not be more embarrassed than if you asked me where does the earth come from, as I said just now.
Evodius: I don't understand why, after saying that the soul is made by God, you say that it has a substance of its own.
Augustine: I cannot deny that the earth is made by God, although it is impossible for me to say what, so to speak, the other elements that compose it. The earth is a simple body and, therefore, it is earth. For this reason, too, it is considered an element of all bodies that are formed by the four elements. It is not, therefore, a contradiction to say that the soul is made by God and that it has a substance of its own, since the nature that belongs to it properly was made by God, like that of fire, air, water and that of the land, which must all enter into the composition of the others.
Chapter 3
3 . Evodius: — Right now I know where the soul comes from, that is, from God. I will reflect on all this alone and carefully, and if I encounter any difficulties I will look for it later. But how do you explain its nature?
Augustine: — The soul seems to me to be similar to God, because, if I'm not mistaken, you speak of the human soul.
Evodius: That is precisely what I want to know. Explain how the soul is like God, because we believe that God was made by no one. The soul, as you have just said, is the work of God.
Augustine: Do you think it was difficult for God to do something that seemed to you, when so many kinds of images demonstrate to you that we ourselves have an identical power?
Evodius: But we only do mortal things, whereas God made the soul immortal, as I believe; unless you think differently.
Augustine: Would you then like human beings to do what God did?
Evodius: — It's not what I said. But how God, who is immortal, made, in his likeness, immortal beings. So we, who he created immortal, should give immortality to what we do in our likeness.
Augustine: — Your reflection would be fair, if you could paint a picture in the likeness of what you believe is immortal in you. But you put in it the likeness of your body and your body is surely mortal.
Evodius: What resemblance do I then have to God, since I cannot, like him, do anything immortal?
Augustine: Just as the image of your body cannot be as valuable as the body itself, likewise, it is no wonder that our soul does not have the same power as the One in whose image it was made.
Chapter 4
4 . Evodio: — Enough for the moment. Say now what is the dimension of the soul.
Augustine: In what sense do you ask what is its dimension? Do you mean the space, as it were, that it occupies in width and length or its strength or these three properties together, or do you want to know its power? For, when we speak of the greatness of Hercules, we ask ourselves how many centimeters his height rises or what is the power and strength of this man.
Evodius: — I would like to know both one thing and the other, as far as the soul is concerned.
Augustine: But neither word nor thought can apply the first sense to the soul at all. It cannot, in any way, be described in terms of width, length and strength, as all these qualities are corporeal. It seems to me that it is because we have bodies that we are in the habit of speaking in this way about the soul. This is also why the mysteries rightly recommend contempt for everything corporeal and the renunciation of this world that we see, which is also corporeal, to the one who wants to return to being as God made him, that is, like Him. Otherwise, the soul cannot be saved, renew itself or reconciled with its Author. What is the dimension of the soul? I cannot, therefore, answer in the sense of your question, but I can assert that it is neither long nor broad nor robust and has none of the properties we measure in bodies.And I will explain to you the reason for my opinion, if you so wish.
Evodius: Certainly I wish and wait impatiently, for it seems to me that the soul is nothing, if it is nothing like that.
Augustine: First of all, then I will show, if you so wish, that there are a great number of objects which you cannot say are nothing, and yet you do not find in them the characteristics you seek in the soul. In this way, the soul won't seem to you to be anything, because you don't find length in it or something similar. But you will find her more precious and more worthy of your esteem, because you don't have all that. We'll see next if she really doesn't have any of that.
Evodius: — I adopt whatever order and method suits you, and I am ready to listen and instruct myself.
Chapter 5
5 . Augustine: — Well then! But, answer my questions, maybe you already know what I'm trying to teach you. You don't doubt, I think, that this tree is absolutely nothing.
Evodius: Who would doubt that?
Augustine: Now, do you doubt that justice is far superior to this tree?
Evodius: — This is ridiculous! As if it were possible to make such a comparison!
Augustine: — You accompany me kindly. But keep listening. Surely this tree is so inferior to justice that no comparison seems possible to you. Furthermore, you have agreed that this tree is not pure nothingness. Would you agree then that justice itself is nothing?
Evodius: — Who had brought dementia to this level?
Augustine: — Very well. But perhaps this tree seems to you to be something precisely because it is large in its own way or broad or robust, or that without these qualities it would be nothing?
Evodio: — That's what it seems to me.
Augustine: — So justice, which is something quite different, according to your opinion, and is even something much more divine than this tree and much more precious, does justice seem long to you?
Evodius: — When I think of justice, the length, the breadth, or anything similar cannot come to mind.
Augustine: If, then, justice is none of these, and yet it is nothing, why should the soul seem to you nothing if it has no length?
Evodius: — Let's go! Even if there were no length and no breadth in the soul, that wouldn't be a reason for it to seem like nothing to me. But, you know you haven't said yet that she doesn't really have any of that.
Chapter 6
6 . Augustine: — I know the point that remains for us to clarify and which I promised to explain to you later. But, as the matter is very subtle and requires an intellectual acumen well above what human beings need to use daily in life's affairs, I advise you to follow the paths in which it seems good to lead you docilely and that you don't get tired of the necessary detours for us to arrive later than you would like to the desired end. I would ask you first if there is any body that does not have, according to its species, length, width and depth?
Evodio: — I don't understand how deep you speak.
Augustine: — I'm talking about the one that allows us to suppose or even perceive through the senses — if the body is transparent like glass — something inside the body. I believe that without this depth one would not be able to perceive or even suppose any body. I want you to tell me your opinion on this.
Evodius: I do not at all doubt that these properties are a necessary attribute of all bodies.
Augustine: Do you think that only bodies have these three properties?
Evodius: — I don't know how they could be anywhere else.
Augustine: — So you don't believe that the soul is different from a body?
Evodius: If we admit that the wind is a body, the soul, I can't deny it, seems to me corporeal. I think she is something similar to that.
Augustine: — That the wind is a body, I agree as easily as I would with the waves of the sea. We feel that the wind is nothing more than churned and agitated air. This is what we feel in a quiet place and sheltered from any wind. Whereas, by warding off flies with a light fan, we strike the air, whose breath we feel. But, when this phenomenon happens by the hidden movement of celestial or terrestrial bodies through the great spaces of the world, we say that this is the wind. He even received different names according to the different parts of heaven. Does something else occur to you?
Evodio: — I don't think differently. What you say I see as likely, but I didn't say the soul is a breath. I said she looks like this.
Augustine: — Then tell me if you think that the wind you mentioned has, in any way, length, breadth and depth. We will see next whether the soul is something analogous to this. In this way we will be able to find out what its dimension is.
Evodius: — Where is it easier to find length, breadth, and depth than in this air which you have convinced me that the wind forms through agitation?
Chapter 7
7 . Augustine: — What you say is fair. But, do you think your soul is only in your body?
Evodius: — Without a doubt.
Augustine: — Is it inside, as if filling a wineskin, or just outside, like a garment? Or do you think she is both indoors and outdoors?
Evodius: — I believe in this last hypothesis. If the soul were not on the inside, we would have no life in the bowels, and if it were not on the outside, we would not feel, even slightly, a thorn through the skin.
Augustine: Why then still look for the measure of the soul, since you see it big enough to accommodate the space occupied by the body?
Evodius: If that's what reason shows, I'm not looking for anything else.
Augustine: — You do well not to look for anything other than what reason teaches. But does this reason seem unshakable to you?
Evodius: — Yes, when I can't find another one. But, I will look for you instead. What intrigues me a lot is whether it exists in the same form after leaving the body, as I remember posing this question as the last one to be discussed. However, as the question of the number of souls seems to me to belong to greatness, I don't think we should move on to another.
Augustine: — Your opinion is not without foundation. But first, please explain to us about the space it occupies, as this still worries me and perhaps I can learn something then, if you are already satisfied.
Evodio: —Ask as you like, because this simulated doubt puts me in a real doubt, which I believed was already exhausted.
Chapter 8
8 . Augustine: Tell me, please, if what we call memory seems to you to be a word empty of meaning.
Evodius: Who would that look like?
Augustine: Do you believe that it belongs to the soul or the body?
Evodius: The doubt about this is ridiculous. Who could believe that a corpse has memory or intelligence?
Augustine: — Do you remember the city of Milan then?
Evodius: — I remember it very well.
Augustine: Now, since we've talked about it, do you remember its greatness and its configuration?
Evodius: — I remember perfectly. No memory is fresher and more complete for me.
Augustine: — Not seeing it with the eyes, do you then see it with the mind?
Evodius: — Yes.
Augustine: You also see, I assume, how far away she is from us in the present.
Evodius: — Yes too.
Augustine: — You see then in the mind this same spatial distance.
Evodius: Yes.
Augustine: Since then your soul is in your body and it doesn't extend beyond the space it occupies, how does it manage to see all this?
Evodius: — This happens through memory, I think, not because the soul is present in these places.
Agostinho: — Are the images of these places engraved in memory then?
Evodio: — That's what I think, but I don't know what happens there. I wouldn't ignore it if my mind reached out to places and saw them present.
Augustine: What you say seems to me to be true, but these images really represent bodies.
Evodius: That's necessary, as cities and lands are just bodies.
Chapter 9
9 . Augustine: — Have you ever seen little mirrors or seen your face in someone's irises?
Evodius: Yes, often.
Augustine: Why does it look so much narrower there than it actually is?
Evodius: — Would you like to see in a different way than the mirror's dimension allows?
Augustine: — Is it necessary then that the images of bodies appear to us narrowed, just as the bodies that send them back to us are narrow?
Evodius: It is absolutely necessary.
Augustine: - Why the soul, being in a space as limited as its body, can reflect such large images, such as cities, the extension of continents and everything that can be imagined of more vast? Pay close attention, I beg you, to the great and numerous things that contain our memory and yet are contained in our soul. What precipice, what abyss, what immensity could all this contain? However, reason seems to show us all the time that the soul is proportional to the body.
Evodio: — I have nothing to answer and I cannot express how much it impresses me. I even find it rather ridiculous to have agreed so readily with the argument that it made me limit the measure of the soul to the body.
Agostinho: — Doesn't she seem to you to be one more thing like the wind?
Evodius: Not at all, for the air, which the wind appears to be the flow, can fill the whole world. The soul has the faculty of representing innumerable worlds as great as this one. I cannot imagine in what space these images are contained.
Augustine: — See, then, if it isn't better to believe that it is, as I said above, without length, without width, without depth, as you rightly agreed.
Evodius: — I would gladly agree, were I not even more curious to know how it can contain the innumerable images of such large spaces, lacking itself length, breadth, and depth.
Chapter 10
10 . Augustine: Perhaps we will understand, as far as possible, if we look closely at these three properties: length, width and depth. Try to imagine a length that has no width.
Evodius: — I can't imagine such a thing, for if I fix my attention on a spider's thread — the thinnest object we commonly see — I find in it an essential length, a width, and a depth. Whatever they are, I cannot deny they exist.
Augustine: — Your answer is not so far-fetched, but as soon as you discover these three properties in a spider's thread, you undoubtedly discern each of them. Do you understand how they differ?
Evodio: — How can you not see how they differ? Could you see it another way, that none of them are absent from that thread?
Augustine: The very act that made you discern this can help you to abstract, to just imagine the length, as long as you don't fix your attention on any body. In fact, whatever the nature of a body, it cannot be deprived of any of these properties. What I want to make you understand is abstract, as the isolated length can only be understood by the mind; isolated it is not found in the bodies.
Evodius: — Now I understand.
Augustine: — This length then, in vain would you like to divide it lengthwise. Clearly you couldn't do it. If you could, there would also be width.
Evodius: — It's obvious.
Augustine: If you like, let's call this pure and simple length a line. This, in fact, is what many thinkers commonly call it.
Evodius: —Call it what you like. When things are clear, there is no need to worry about names.
Chapter 11
11 . Augustine: — Well then! Not only do I approve of you, I also encourage you to prefer to be more careful with things than with words. But this line, which you sufficiently understand, I think, you do not see that it will have no end, if, by one end or the other, it is prolonged as long as possible; wouldn't your mind be effective enough to see her?
Evodius: — I see perfectly. Nothing is easier.
Augustine: You see then too, that no figure can be formed if we limit ourselves to prolonging the line.
Evodio: — I still don't understand what you mean by figure.
Augustine: At the moment I call a space enclosed by one or several lines figure. So, make a circle or join four lines at their ends so that there is no one that is not connected to the other.
Evodius: — I think I see what you call a figure. But, I hope that I can also see the objective that we are looking for, that is, the conclusion that you will draw from all of this, to reach what I am looking for with regard to the soul.
Chapter 12
12 . Augustine: — I warned you and even asked you from the beginning to patiently bear the deviations we take. Again I make the same request.
This topic that we are dealing with is not of little importance nor is it easy to understand. We want to get a complete and lasting sense of it, if possible.
It is one thing to believe in authority and another to report to reason. Believing in authority is a much shorter expedient and requires no work. You can, if you prefer, read, on the questions that concern us, many reflections that great and holy people thought necessary and that they wrote as inspiration in favor of the ignorant. They wanted their words to be believed by those whose minds were too slow or too confused had no other means of salvation. If these, who form the vast majority, wanted to arrive at the truth through reason, they would be easily deceived by the analogy of reasonings and would adopt diverse and harmful opinions, to the point where they could no longer get out, or very difficult.
It is therefore very useful for them to report to a higher authority and conform their lives to it. If you think this is the most correct, I am far from contradicting you and I give you complete approval.
If, however, you cannot control the desire that leads you to seek the truth through reason, it is necessary to go through long and numerous circuits, in order to only follow the reason that deserves this name, that is, the true reason. This reason must be not only true, but so certain, so alien to any semblance of falsehood, that if anyone can get at it, no false or misleading arguments can separate it.
Evodius: — I will not rush into my desires. May reason walk and lead me wherever it pleases, as long as we get there.
Chapter 13
13 . Augustine: That will be the work of God. It is unique, or at least mainly, in these matters that it should be invoked.
But let us return to the point I have already made. If you understand what a line is and what a figure is, please answer me this question: do you think you can form any figure by extending a line to infinity, either at one end or at the other?
Evodius: I say that this is by no means possible.
Augustine: What must we do then to form a figure?
Evodius: Now that the line is not infinite, but curved in a circle, so as to touch at some point? I don't see how a space can be encircled any other way with a line, and if we don't, there won't be a figure, by its own definition.
Augustine: But if I wanted to form a figure with straight lines, could I do it with just one?
Evodius: — Not at all.
Augustine: — And with two?
Evodius: — Not either.
Augustine: — And with three?
Evodius: — I see you can.
Augustine: You understand well then and are convinced that to make a figure with straight lines you need at least three. But if given any reason, would you abandon your opinion?
Evodius: In fact, if someone proves to me that this is false, there will be nothing else I am confident I can know.
Augustine: Now, answer me how, with three lines, will you make a figure?
Evodius: — Joining these three lines together at the ends.
Augustine: — But don't you think that at the junction there is an angle?
Evodius: Yes.
Augustine: So how many angles is this figure made of?
Evodius: — The same as lines.
Augustine: — Do you make equal or unequal lines?
Evodius: — Equal.
Augustine: Do the angles have the same opening, or is one sharper or more open than the other?
Evodio: — I see they are the same too.
Augustine: — Is it possible or impossible that in a figure formed by three straight and equal lines, the angles are unequal?
Evodius: — Absolutely impossible.
Augustine: — It's true. But tell me, please, which figure looks better and more beautiful to you? The one that is formed by equal lines or the one that has uneven lines?
Evodius: Who would hesitate to give preference to that which prevails for equality?
Chapter 14
14 . Augustine: — So you prefer equality to inequality?
Evodio: — I don't know who wouldn't.
Augustine: — Watch now; in a figure with three equal angles, what is opposite the angle, that is, what is placed in front of the other side, is it a line or an angle?
Evodio: — I see it's a line.
Augustine: If an angle were opposite an angle, a line against a line, wouldn't you have to recognize that equality is preferable in figures where this happens?
Evodius: — I do, in fact. But, I don't see at all that this is possible with three lines.
Augustine: But is that possible with four lines?
Evodius: That's quite possible.
Augustine: — So a figure composed of four straight lines is preferable to one with only three lines?
Evodius: It's quite preferable, since it's where equality in its strength reigns.
Augustine: And this figure composed of four lines, do you think or not that it can be made in such a way that the angles are not all the same?
Evodius: — I see it's possible.
Augustine: — How?
Evodius: — If two are more closed and two more open?
Augustine: You also see how they are opposite to each other; the two most closed and the two most open?
Evodius: That is true and quite evident.
Augustine: Here too you see equality preserved, as far as possible. You see, in fact, that it is impossible, in a figure formed by four equal lines, not to have all angles, or at least two equal angles, and that all that are equal are opposite and correspond.
Evodius: — I see it and take it for granted.
Chapter 15
15 . Augustine: — In all this, aren't you surprised to find justice so great and so inviolable?
Evodius: — How?
Augustine: — Why do we call what is impartial justice?
Now, impartiality seems to take its name from a certain equality.
But what does the virtue of impartiality consist of, if not giving each one what belongs to him, with the help of discernment? Do you have a contrary opinion?
Evodius: That is clear and I hasten to agree.
Augustine: Do you think there was a distinction, when all things are equal and there is no difference between them?
Evodius: — I don't think so.
Augustine: — Then cannot justice be observed, if there is, as it were, inequality and difference between the different objects, in relation to which it is observed?
Evodius: — I understand it that way.
Augustine: - But, since it is necessary to recognize that the figures we are dealing with are different from each other - that is, the one with only three angles and the one with four angles, although both are formed by similar lines - you don't think that justice was observed here? For, in the figure in which the equality of opposites is not seen, the equality of angles is invariably found, and in the figure which presents the equality of opposites so precisely, a certain inequality in the angles is found. Impressed by all this, I thought it was good to ask you what pleasure this truth, this impartiality, this equality gives you.
Evodio: — I understand what you say and my admiration is not small.
Augustine: — So you rightly prefer equality to inequality, and in my opinion there is absolutely no sane person who is not of this opinion. Let us then, if it pleases you, seek a figure in which the most perfect equality is found. Whichever it is, we shall without hesitation prefer it to any other.
Evodio: — I agree and want to know which one it is.
Chapter 16
16 . Augustine: Answer me first and tell me if in these figures, which we seem to have said enough, the one that is made up of four equal lines and four equal angles seems better to you, as it has, as you see, equal lines and equality of angles. Furthermore, it has what we don't find in the one formed by three equal angles: parity of opposites. You see that in this line is opposite to line and angle to angle.
Evodius: — It's true. How do you say.
Augustine: — Is there, in your opinion, perfect equality? If there is perfect equality here, we don't have to look elsewhere, as was our intention and if there isn't, I want you to show me.
Evodius: — That equality seems to me to be here, because I don't see possible inequality where there are equal angles and equal lines.
Augustine: — For me, I am of another opinion, as there is perfect equality in the straight line until it reaches the angles. But when another line comes from another direction to join it and make an angle, don't you think there's inequality? Does that part of the figure that is closed off by the line seem similar to and equal to that which is limited by the angle?
Evodius: — Not at all. I am ashamed of my recklessness. I was driven to this by equal angles and equal lines.
But, who doesn't see a big difference between angles and sides?
Augustine: There's also another pretty impressive indicator of inequality here: you certainly recognize that the triangle figure with equal sides and the square figure have a middle.
Evodius: — I recognize it perfectly.
Augustine: — Now, from this medium, let's take lines to all parts of the figure. Do these lines look equal or unequal to you?
Evodius: Unequal, of course, because those that go to the angles are necessarily longer.
Augustine: — How many are in the square and how many are in the triangle?
Evodius: —Four there and three here.
Augustine: — Which are the shortest of all and how many in each picture?
Evodius: All those that go halfway to the sides.
Augustine: Your answers seem very fair to me and we don't need to stay here any longer. This is enough for our purpose, for you understand, it seems to me, that there is great equality here, but it is not, however, absolutely perfect.
Evodius: — I see this fully and am impatient to meet the figure who presents this perfect equality.
Chapter 17
17 . Augustine: Don't you think that it is the one whose configuration does not vary at the ends, whose equality is not broken by any angle, and from the middle of which all the extreme parts of the equal lines can be reached?
Evodius: — I think I understand, for you seem to describe the figure that forms a single circular line.
Augustine: — Very well understood. Reason taught us above that the line extends only its length and that it has no width. Hence it follows that it cannot be divided longitudinally. Do you then believe that a figure without width can also be found?
Evodius: — Not at all.
Augustine: And this width, it can have no length, since it is only width, just as we understand length without width? Or this can't be?
Evodius: — I see it can't be.
Augustine: — You understand then, if I'm not mistaken, that a width can be divided in all directions and that a line is indivisible in width.
Evodius: That's obvious.
Augustine: But, in your opinion, which is preferable: what is divisible or what is indivisible?
Augustine: Surely, what is indivisible Augustine: So you prefer the line to the width. For if the indivisible is preferable, then it becomes necessary to prefer the less divisible. However, the width is divisible in all directions and the length is only transversely divisible and does not undergo longitudinal division.
It is therefore preferable to width. Or do you think differently?
Evodius: — Reason forces me to admit what you said.
Chapter 18
18 . Augustine: Another question now, if possible. Is there anything in this matter that is totally indivisible? That would be much better than the line, because a line, you see, can transversely split to infinity. Then examine and respond.
Evodius: For me, I see as indivisible the point we put in the middle of the figure and from where the lines to the end start. For, if it is divisible, it cannot be without length or without width. But if there is length in it, it cannot be the point from which the lines start; he is the line itself. And if there is also width in it, another means is needed from which the lines will start towards the ends of that width. Now, reason rejects both hypothesis. The point is therefore indivisible.
Augustine: — Well said. But, don't you see anything similar at the beginning of where the line starts, even when we don't see it as the middle of a figure? I call the beginning of a line the point where length begins, and I want you to picture it as having no length at all. Because if you guess a length, you don't see the very point from which the length starts.
Evodius: That's the way it is, absolutely.
Augustine: — What you understand then is the main thing that we have examined here. This is, in fact, what is not divided.
It is called the quant point in the middle of the figure. When it gives rise to the line or lines, when it ends or indicates what must be supposed without parts without, however, being in the middle of the figure, it is called a sign. The sign is, therefore, an indivisible mark and the dot a mark that stands in the middle of a figure. So every dot is a sign, but not every sign is a dot. This is the meaning I want us to attribute to these names, in order to avoid too many turns in the debate. Many, however, call a point, not the middle of every figure, but only the middle of the circle or sphere. However, let us not be so careful with words.
Evodius: — I agree with that.
Chapter 19
19. Augustine: Surely you also see the power of the point. It is through him that the line begins and through him that it ends. We also see that no figure can be formed by straight lines without forming an angle. Then, whichever part the line may be cut off, it is by the stitch, while it itself cannot be divided at all. It is also not possible to join one line to another, if it is not through the stitch. Finally, as reason has taught us to prefer to all flat figures — as we have not yet said anything about depth — the one that is circumscribed by the circle, because of its perfect equality, where does the measure of this equality come from, if it is not the dot placed in the middle? Its power can be talked at length, but I stop here and your reflections may understand much more than I have said.
Evodius: That sounds good to me and I wouldn't dislike researching if I encounter any difficulties. So I see a little bit, I think, that there is great power in this sign.
Chapter 20
20 . Augustine: Now that you know the sign, the length and the width, consider which of these properties is part of the other and which could not exist without the other.
Evodius: — I see that width needs length, without which it cannot be understood. I still see that the length doesn't need the width to exist, but it is impossible without the sign.
As for the sign, it is evident that it exists by itself and does not need anything else.
Augustine: — This is how you say. But, consider more carefully, whether it is true that the width can be cut in all directions, and whether there is no place where, in turn, it does not admit any division, even if it does admit it more than the line.
Evodius: — I completely ignore where this is not possible.
Augustine: — I don't think you remember, because surely you can't ignore it. I will then remind you. Do you understand width well without admitting any depth?
Evodius: Yes, perfectly.
Augustine: — Then add depth to that width and tell me if that addition gives you material that can be divided up everywhere.
Evodius: Your warning is very fair. I see now that you can divide the width, not only at the top or the bottom, but also at the sides, and that there is absolutely nothing in it that is not divisible. Hence it is evident that the width is indivisible in the parts where the depth must be formed.
Chapter 21
21 . Augustine: — Now that you know, if I'm not mistaken, the length, the width and the depth, tell me if the length and the width might not exist in every place where there is depth.
Evodius: — I see that depth cannot exist without length, but that it can exist without width.
Augustine: — Then return to your idea of width and if you imagine it close to the earth, raise it on one side, as if you wanted to pass it through the narrow gap of two closed doors. Do you understand my purpose?
Evodius: — I understand your words, but perhaps not your purpose.
Augustine: — I want you to answer me whether the width thus established becomes depth and whether it has lost the figure and name of width. Is it still wide despite its new setup?
Evodius: — It seems to me that she has become depth.
Augustine: Do you remember then how we defined depth?
Evodius: — I remember this very well and am ashamed of my answer, for the width thus configured does not admit, at its base, division in length. In this way, thought does not show us anything inside it, even if it shows us a means and extremities. But, according to the definition of depth you reminded me of, there is no depth where nothing inland can be imagined.
Augustine: — Very well said and that's what I wanted you to remember. So answer me now whether you prefer truth or falsehood.
Evodius: — The doubt here would be an unbelievable dementia.
Augustine: So please tell me if it is a true line, one that can be divided in some way. Or a true width, one which, raised as we supposed, can be divided at the bottom of its length.
Evodius: — None of that.
Chapter 22
22 . Augustine: — Have you ever discovered then, with the eyes of the body, a point like that, a line like that, or a width like that?
Evodius: Never, actually. None of this is corporeal.
Augustine: But if, by virtue of a wonderful sympathy of nature, corporeal objects are perceived by the eyes of the body, is it not necessary that the mind, which perceives incorporeal objects, should not be corporeal and neither should the body? What do you think?
Evodius: — Continue. I agree that the mind is neither a body nor anything corporeal. Tell me, finally, what she is.
Augustine: — See first if it is of nature not to have the kind of grandeur that we are dealing with here, for in our first question we have examined what it is. I'm amazed you forgot about that. You remember, no doubt, that you asked where she comes from and we considered that in two ways. We first examine what is the region, so to speak, of the mind. Then, if it is formed of earth, or of fire, of only one of these elements, of all or only of some. There we agreed that this question should not be raised, such as knowing where the earth comes from or any other particular element. The mind is the work of God. But we must understand that there is a particular substance which is neither earth nor fire nor air nor water. Unless perhaps we are not to believe that God gave the earth to be just earth and gave the mind to be just the mind.But if you want to have the definition of mind and so ask me what it is, this is easy for me to answer. The mind seems to me to be a substance endowed with reason and fit to govern the body.
Chapter 23
23 . Then, pay special attention to the question that currently concerns us, which is whether there is a greatness for the mind and, so to speak, a physical space.
It is not a body, otherwise it could not see any incorporeal objects, as we demonstrated above. So, it does not occupy the space that makes bodies measurable and so it is impossible to believe, nor imagine nor understand that it has a corporeal greatness. If you are amazed that the mind, which has no dimensions, can nevertheless embrace with memory the vast spaces of the heavens, the earth and the seas, this is because it is endowed with prodigious strength, as you will show, in light of your intelligence, the points on which we agree.
Indeed, if it is true, as reason has proved to us, that there is no body without length, breadth, and depth; if neither of these dimensions can really exist without the other two, and let our minds see only the line; with the inner eye which is intelligence, we can, I believe, admit that the mind is not corporeal and that it is superior to any body. That admitted, there is no doubt, I believe, that it is also superior to the line.
It would be absurd, in fact, that with these three dimensions necessarily entering into the nature of every body, what is superior to the body is not superior to all of them.
But the line, which is certainly inferior to the mind, has the advantage over the two others, because it is less divisible. Now the two others are more divisible than the line because they extend farther into space. However, the line only occupies space in its length and, suppressed this space, it no longer exists. Hence it necessarily follows that everything above the line is not contained in any space and thus does not suffer division or sharing.
It is, therefore, a useless job, in my opinion, to look for the dimension of the mind. This is a dimension that does not exist, as we agree that the mind is above the line. And if, of all the flat figures, the most perfect is the circle; if, in the light of reason, we have nothing better and more powerful in the circle than the point, where there is undoubtedly no part; Why be surprised that our soul is not corporeal, has no extension as its length, open as its breadth, nor is it consistent as its depth? And that it is superior to the body, to the point that it alone governs all the members and is like the pivot on which all the body's movements revolve?
Chapter 24
24 . The center of the eye, which is called the pupil, is but a point of the eye and its strength is such, however, that from above a mound it can encompass at a glance half the sky, whose space is immeasurable.
Soul It is not, therefore, improbable that the mind does not have the corporal extension that consists of the three dimensions and that it can, however, encompass with thought all bodies, whatever their magnitude.
But, it is only granted to a small number to see the mind through the mind itself, that is, how the mind sees itself, for it sees itself through intelligence. Only, in fact, can the intelligence see that, in the whole universe, there is nothing more beautiful and more impressive than the natures whose existences appear to us, as it were, without volume. For it is not without reason that all corporeal greatness is called volume, and if it were worthy of any value, elephants would, in our opinion, be the wisest of animals.
Now, if someone, worthy of being one of them, told us that elephants are wise (as I have seen, no doubt astonished, but anyway, I have seen people ask this question many times), at least he would agree with us that a weak bee has more wisdom than an ass, yet comparing the size of these two animals would be more like the latter.
Or, to return to what we said about the eyes, who doesn't know that the eagle's eye is much narrower than ours? Yet when he soars high in the air, when in full light we can barely make out, his eye shows him—and here's the proof—the baby hare hiding in a thicket and the fish beneath the waves.
If the dimension of bodies does not matter for the faculty of feeling, even when it comes to the senses that can only feel corporeal things, it is to be feared, I ask you, that the human mind, whose most penetrating gaze is, so to speak, the only reason, through which she seeks to see herself, is nothing but nothing; if it is this very reason that proves to her that she is not endowed with any physical dimension?
Believe me, it is necessary to suppose in our soul a greatness, but a greatness that is by no means material. This is made easier for already evolved minds, who approach these studies not because they are greedy for vain glory, but because they are inflamed with divine love for truth. Or to those who dedicate themselves to these researches, although less exercised in questions of this type, when they show themselves docile towards the good people and distance themselves from corporeal things, as far as is allowed in this life.
Now, it is impossible for divine Providence to refuse these people the means of getting to know one another, as well as for their God to tell the truth to religious souls who seek piously, with simplicity and dedication.
Chapter 25
25 . But, please, if you don't have any more difficulties, let's leave this question here. Everything we've said about the figures — longer perhaps than you'd like — will serve us a lot for the rest. You will see, if you agree that this discussion has received some light. This kind of study prepares the mind to understand a more subtle argument. If not, struck by the very bright light it produced and unable to bear the glare, it could plunge again into the darkness from which it wanted to escape.
In it we also find, if I am not mistaken, very solid arguments that do not allow us to doubt, without daring, what we have found and established; at least insofar as this matter of investigation is within reach of the human being.
As for me, I doubt these things less than those we see with those eyes that always have to defend against moods.
What more unbearable to understand than proclaiming our superiority in reason over animals; proclaim at the same time that this superiority is discovered for us by corporeal light; that certain animals see it even better than we do; and yet to reject as nothing everything that reason discovers for us?
Nor could one conceive of anything more undignified than representing these truths as similar to what we see with the eyes of the body.
Chapter 26
26 . Evodio: — These remarks please me singularly and I subscribe to them with great pleasure. But here's what disturbs me: the soul not having a corporeal dimension is so clear to me that I don't know how to resist the arguments you've just demonstrated, nor how to reject a single one of them. First, why does the soul grow with age or at least seem to grow like the body? Who could deny, in fact, that young people cannot resist comparison with certain animals in regard to cunning? Who could also deny that reason develops in them when they develop themselves? Then, if the soul occupies the entire length of the body, how can it have no dimensions? If it doesn't extend all over her body, how does she feel the best stimulation?
Augustine: — Many times these questions also tormented me. That's why I'm ready to give you the answers I gave myself. Whether they are good or not I leave it to the reason that drives you. Whatever its value, I cannot say in advance, unless during the debate some divine light comes to mind. But let's go on, please, in my way, so that in the light of reason you can answer yourself. First, let us investigate whether it is possible to present as certain proof that the mind grows with the body, the fact that the human being acquires more aptitude with age and an ever-increasing skill in the affairs of human life.
Evodius: — Be as you wish. For me, I really appreciate this method of teaching and learning. I really don't know how it happens that, in giving the answer that I sought my ignorance, wonder adds a new pleasure to discovering the truth.
Chapter 27
27 . Augustine: — Tell me if bigger and better seem to you two different things or are they one and the same thing under different names?
Evodio: — I know that bigger is different for us than better.
Augustine: Which of the two do you assign dimensions to?
Evodius: — What we call the greatest.
Augustine: And when we say that, between the circle and the square, the circle is more perfect than the square, is it the dimension or something else that produces this result?
Evodius: — It is by no means the dimension. It is the equality mentioned above that communicates this superiority.
Augustine: See if virtue doesn't seem to you to be a certain equality of life perfectly in keeping with reason. For the inconsequences we encounter in life shock us more, I think, than the sight of a circumference in which one part would be separated from the point by a more or less great interval than the other parts. Is not true?
Evodius: — Perfectly. I agree with you and recognize the virtue in the description you gave. For one should only call reason or look as such, what is true. Furthermore, it surely exists only in the one whose life is perfectly in accordance with the truth and who lives a completely good and honorable life. Only those who live in these conditions deserve to be seen as endowed with virtues and who lead a virtuous life.
Augustine: — This is to speak with justice. But no doubt you also know, I think, that, of all the flat figures, the circle seems to be the most virtuous. Hence the habit of applauding the verse of Horace, who says, speaking of the sage: He is strong and completely withdrawn into himself, like a round and polished surface 3 . This is fair, for there is nothing more in accord with itself among the gifts of the soul than virtue and nothing like the circle among the figures. If, then, it is the conformation and not the extension in space that gives the circle its superiority, what shall we say of virtue, which is superior to all other dispositions of the soul, not because of great physical dimensions, but because of a perfect and divine conformity to reason?
3 Book II Sat. 7, V, 60.
Chapter 28
28 . Augustine: And when you congratulate a child on his progress, what is said to have made progress, if not in virtue? Is not true?
Evodius: — It's obvious.
Augustine: — Then the progress of the mind must not seem like the growth that age gives the body, for its progress tends towards virtue, which does not find its beauty and perfection in the extension of space, but in a great force of harmony. And if, as you said, what is greater differs from what is more perfect, whatever progress the soul makes with age, when it becomes rational it does not seem to me to become larger, but better. If the greatness of the soul depended on the dimensions of the body, wisdom would be measured by the height or strength of the limbs. Now you will not deny that it is otherwise.
Evodius: — Who would dare deny that? However, as you yourself agree that the soul progresses with age, I wonder how, having no dimension, it is helped, not by the size of the limbs, but by the length of time.
Chapter 29
29 . Augustine: — Let's forget about your astonishment. Here, too, I will answer for an analogous reason. The size of the body is of no use to the soul, as many people with short, thin limbs have more wisdom than others whose bodies are endowed with vast proportions. Thus, we see in some young people more wit and vivacity than in most elders. Thus, I do not understand how time is intended to make the mind grow as it does the body.
The body itself, which is given to grow over time and occupy a larger space, generally shortens over the years. We see this not only in old people who age contracted and shortened their height, but also among children who are smaller in body than other younger children.
If then a long period of time is not a cause of greatness even for the body, and if this cause is in the power of the germ and certain elements of nature which are difficult to know, even less should we think that the soul grows according to the measure of the time, when we see that she learns a lot through use and habit.
Chapter 30
30 . If you find it strange that we translate by long-suffering what the Greeks call makrotumian, it is good to note that we generally apply expressions to the soul that belong to the body and to the body expressions that belong to the soul.
If Virgílio, when talking about a mountain, says it is bad and about the earth that it is fair 4 , these are expressions transferred from the soul to the body. Why be surprised then when we employ long-suffering, when only bodies can have length?
Among the virtues, what we call greatness of the soul does not reveal the idea of space, but of a certain strength, that is, generosity, the power of the soul; a virtue all the more esteemed the more it despises things. But we shall speak of this later, when we examine the greatness of the soul, customarily regarded as the greatness of Hercules: according to the excellency of deeds and not according to the volume of the limbs. This is, in effect, the plan we adopted.
4 Eneid. book XII, v. 687. Georg liv. II, v. 460.
The important thing at this point is to remember what we have said sufficiently about the point: reason has shown us to have the greatest power and the highest level among the figures. However, we did not find any space at the point.
When we then hear or say greatness, elevation of spirit, our thinking must not imagine a physical occupied extent, but power.
So then, if you feel that we have sufficiently clarified the first objection you raised to show that the mind grows with age and with the body, let us move on to another.
Chapter 31
31 . Evodius: — I don't know if we've addressed all the objections that commonly plague me, or if my memory has forgotten a few. However, let us examine the one that comes to mind now, which is the fact that children do not speak at a young age and only acquire this faculty when they grow up.
Augustine: — This is easy to solve. You know, I think, that everyone speaks the language of the environment in which you were born or raised.
Evodius: Nobody ignores that.
Augustine: - Now imagine a person born and raised in an environment where nothing was said, where nothing was used, to express their thoughts, signs and gestures. Don't you think that this person will act the same way and say nothing, having not heard anyone's word?
Evodio: — Don't ask me, I beg you, about what is impossible. Where would there be people like that and how can you imagine a child born among them?
Augustine: — Didn't you then see in Milan a young man with an elegant bearing, an exquisite education, but who, nevertheless, was mute and so deaf that he understood others only through the movements of his body and could not express his will in any other way? He is very well known there. I also met a peasant who spoke, his wife spoke too, they had around four children, boys and girls; maybe there were more as I don't remember the number very well. All were mute and deaf. They were mute because they couldn't speak and deaf because they could only understand signs through their eyes.
Evodius: — I met the first one. As for the others, I believe you. But why remember these cases?
Augustine: — Why did you say that you couldn't imagine the birth of a child among people like that?
Evodius: —I said and confirmed it. But, if I'm not mistaken, you said that these children were born among people who spoke.
Augustine: — I don't deny it. But, since we mutually agree that it is possible to be born such people, imagine, I ask you, that a man like that would be united with a woman like that. May chance put them in a lonely situation where they can live, however.
May they have a child there who is not deaf. How will this child speak to his parents?
Evodius: — How do you think he'll do it? Will he not use the signs and gestures he has seen them do? But since this would be impossible for a very young child, my objection remains intact. What does it matter if growth gives the child the power to speak and sign, when both are the domain of the soul, to whom we refuse growth?
Chapter 32
32 . Augustine: So you believe that when a person dances on the rope, he has a superior soul to those who do not know how to do it?
Evodius: — This is something else. Who doesn't see that there is art here?
Augustine: — Why art? Wasn't it because the dancer learned?
Evodius: — It's true.
Agostinho: — So why don't you also see art when you learn something else?
Evodio: — I don't deny that there is art in everything you learn.
Augustine: — Didn't that child then learn to make gestures from his parents?
Evodius: — She learned, it's true.
Augustine: You have to agree then too that this is not the effect of soul growth, but of some imitation art.
Evodio: — I can't make that concession.
Augustine: — So, everything you learn is not an object of art, as you admitted?
Evodius: It is certainly an art object.
Augustine: — So this child did not learn his gesture, as you had equally admitted?
Evodio: — She learned it, but that's not art.
Augustine: But you have just attributed everything you learn to art.
Evodius: — Well then. Let's see. I agree that talking and gesturing belong to art, because that's what you learn. However, there are arts that we acquire by observing what is before our eyes and arts that are taught to us by masters.
Augustine: — What are the arts that the soul knows, just because it grows? All?
Evodius: Not all, but the first ones.
Agostinho: — Doesn't walking on the rope seem to be included in them? For it seems to me that, for those who do, this is acquired by watching.
Evodio: — I think so too. However, of those who observe this exercise and contemplate it more carefully, not all can acquire this skill, as they lack masters.
Augustine: — You speak very wisely, for that is what I can answer with regard to language. Many Greeks and others also hear us speak a foreign language more often than they see someone walking on the rope. And to learn our language, they usually hire a teacher, just as we do to learn theirs. I am amazed then that you want to attribute human language to soul growth and not walking on ropes.
Evodius: — I don't know how you confuse these two things, because anyone who hires a teacher to learn our language already knows his language, and he learned it, I think, as his soul grew. But, learning another one, I attribute not to soul growth, but to art.
Augustine: If, then, a person born and raised among mutes, entering later, already in adolescence, into other people's society, there learning their language without having yet known any other, you would think that their soul grows at the same time as does she learn the language?
Evodius: — I wouldn't dare go there. I choose reason and I don't think language is proof of soul growth. For then I would be forced to admit that the soul only acquires knowledge of all the arts by growing, and hence the absurdity that, for the soul, to forget is to decrease.
Chapter 33
33 . Augustine: — Very well understood. In fact, for the soul, learning is growing in a certain sense, while unlearning is decreasing. But this is a metaphor, as shown above. However, when talking about its growth, it is necessary to avoid understanding it as the occupation of a larger physical space. It must be considered that the force of action is greater in an educated person than in an ignorant one. There is, therefore, a great difference in the objects it apprehends and which seem to develop it.
In fact, physical growth is of three types. In one, which is necessary, the members reach the natural dimension. In another, which is superfluous, it happens that, without harming health, some members have a disproportionate development in relation to others. Hence it happens that people are born with six fingers and other similar things that go beyond the common measure and are called monstrous. The third type of growth—which is actually harmful—is called swelling. When it happens, the members actually grow and occupy a wider space, but at the expense of health.
Likewise, we see in the mind some natural growths of some kind when it acquires honest knowledge whose aim is a good and happy life. But learning things that are more brilliant than useful, even if they may serve on occasion, this is also a superfluous growth, because if a flute player, as Varron says, knew how to please the people so much that they made him king, we shouldn't, however, seeing this type of art as a way to make our soul grow.
It would be disgusting indeed to have teeth larger than human teeth, because we hear that a person who had them killed his enemy by biting him.
Those that ruin the health of the mind are called dangerous arts. Evaluating a meal by its odor and taste, to be able to tell which lake a fish was caught in or what year a wine is from, is a deplorable skill. When it is the arts like this that owes the growth of a soul that has neglected the spirit to devote itself to the senses, we must see in it a swelling or even a weakening.
Chapter 34
34 . Evodio: — I accept these ideas and subscribe to them. However, I am not completely satisfied, for as far as we can see, the soul of a newborn child is ignorant of everything and has no reason. Why, if it is eternal, does it not bring with it some knowledge?
Augustine: — You raise a big, a very big question. I don't even know if there's a bigger one. Our ideas about this are so contradictory that it seems to you that the soul does not bring with it any knowledge, whereas in my view it brings them all 5 and what we call learning is nothing but remembering. But, see, this is not the time to verify if this is really so 6 .
What concerns us now is to see if it is possible that it is the physical extent that causes a soul to be called great or small.
As for its eternity, if it has one, the time to deal with it will be when we deal, in the measure of our strength, with the fourth question you asked: why is the soul united with the body?
5 Retr. Book I, chap. VIII, no. 2.
6 This question was specially treated by St. Augustine in his book The Master.
What does it really matter to the question of its greatness, whether it has always existed or not, and whether it will always exist, and why is it both ignorant and endowed with science?
We have proved above that longer time does not produce greater greatness in the bodies themselves. It is clear that a person who grows up may not know anything, whereas an elderly person is generally quite educated.
Several other considerations have sufficiently proved, I think, that the soul does not grow at the same time as age gives the body its development.
Chapter 35
35 . Augustine: Let us examine then, if you agree, the value of your other objection. Namely: that over the entire surface of the body, the soul is sensitive to touch, even if we do not assign it a dimension.
Evodius: — I would let you go through with that objection, if I didn't want to say a few words about the forces. Why, indeed, do bodies that have grown with age give the soul greater strength, if the soul does not grow with them?
That we call virtue in the soul what we call strength in the body, I would never consent to separate it from the strength of the soul, for I see none in a lifeless body. It is, therefore, impossible to deny that corporeal forces are at the service of the soul, just as the senses are. And since they are vital functions, who could doubt that they are not the domain of the soul?
So, then, as we see in children who have already grown stronger than in younger ones, and among teenagers and young people the strengths increase every day, until they diminish with the aging body; this does not seem to me to be a small indication that the soul grows and ages with the body.
Chapter 36
36 . Augustine: — Not everything is absurd in what you said. But I'm not in the habit of putting the strengths in the body's greatness and the growths of age more in a certain exercise and in the conformation of the limbs. And, to prove that this is so, I ask you if walking longer than someone else and feeling less tired seems to you to be the effect of greater forces?
Evodius: — I believe it is.
Agostinho: — Why then, when I was a child and exercised by walking, hunting with passion, I effortlessly took a much longer journey than before, when, as a teenager, I dedicated myself to the studies that forced me to be sedentary, whether it is true that greater forces should be attributed to the growth of age and, because of that, to the growth of the soul?
The very masters who train the fighters do not consider their bodies to be mass or height, but rather the better shaped arms and muscles, which seem like knots to protrude and, in the whole body, I don't know what, that their eyes Trained people mostly discover evidence of strength.
All this would be little, however, if the vigor that art and training give to it were not added. Many times one even sees men of great height defeated by small and frail men, whether moving bales, or carrying them, or even in the fight. Who doesn't know that a winner of the Olympic Games will be tired sooner on the march than the fair trader, who would knock him down with his fingertips?
If then we call great, not just any force indistinctly, but those that are more suitable for a certain objective, if the body's features and configuration are superior to its dimension, if the exercise has such power that the famous story was believed. of a man who carried a calf every day and who was also able to lift it and carry it when it became an ox, without feeling the overload that gradually increased; this in no way proves that the strengths we acquire with age are a sign that the soul grows with the body.
Chapter 37
37 . If in the bodies of large animals we find forces provided by their size, the house is in the law of nature that makes the smallest weights yield to the heaviest burdens. This happens first when, by their own movement, bodies take the place that suits them. Thus, the wet and terrestrial bodies descend to the middle of the world, that is, to the inferior region, and the aerial and fiery bodies ascend to the superior region.
This phenomenon also happens when, under the impulse or repulsion of a machine or a shock, they are forced by a foreign force to go where they would not spontaneously go.
Throw two unequally sized stones from a height. Even though you cast them simultaneously, the heaviest one lands the fastest. But if you put the smaller one underneath so that it's covered by the larger one, it gives way and hits the ground at the same time.
In the same way too, throw the heaviest one from above towards the earth and the smaller one from below towards the sky. As soon as they meet, necessarily the smaller one will be repelled and come back. I don't believe that this result happens because the smaller one should, against nature, rise in the air, while the other one resumed with more impetuosity the position that is proper to it.
In effect, suppose the strongest one is thrown into the air and finds the smallest one down to the ground. You will see the smaller one return to the sky and then, by the effect of the shock, take another direction, to fall to the ground from which it was launched.
In the same way, if they collide in space, not when they follow their natural movement, but when they are thrown as if by two fighters in an open field; who doubts that the younger gives in to return to the place from which she had started and whence the other was launched?
Since this is so, although the smaller weights always give way to the heavier ones, it is important, however, to observe the respective thrust force, as the smaller one, launched with a greater force, as if from a powerful machine, will collide with the larger strong thrown with less violence or already exhausted in its path, it will rebound, in fact, and yet it will slow the other or even push it backwards, depending on the force of its shock and its weight.
Chapter 38
38 . That said, and well understood, insofar as it asks for the subject that concerns us, look now at what we call forces in animals and tell me if we see an application of this law there. For the bodies of animals have their weight; who could deny this? And this weight, which moves according to the will of the soul, does a lot for itself, according to which way it bends.
To move the body's weight, the soul's will uses the nerves like machines. And what makes these nerves more vigorous and gentler is dryness and a moderate heat, while a damp cold relaxes and weakens them.
Sleep too—which, according to the doctors' assertion and the evidence they give, is cold or damp—leaves a certain languor to our limbs. Hence it happens that the movement of a person who awakens is extremely slow and nothing is more apathetic, calmer than a person in lethargy.
As for the frenzied ones - in whom sleepless nights, the influence of wine, the violence of fever and so many other stimulants, work an inordinate tension and nervous resistance - it is clear that they can use, in the fight and in many acts, more energy than in full health, though his body is weakened and exhausted by disease.
If then, the energy of the soul, a certain nervous system and the weight of the body constitute what we call forces; if from the will comes that energy that makes hope more ready or the audacity that represses fear and even more despair; for, in a moment of fear, at the slightest glimmer of hope, our forces commonly multiply; if it belongs to the configuration of the body to adjust the nervous system, as health changes it and the work of exercise to firm it; if the weight comes from the size of the limbs, which is acquired by age and food and is maintained only by food; when one person is equally provided with all these resources, there are prodigious strengths and the weakness of another is in proportion to the lack of these same resources.
It often happens that, with a stubborn will and solid nerves, a person of small size triumphs over another whose stature is greater than his own.
Sometimes it also happens that, thanks to his great weight, a person, acting with little energy, causes a smaller opponent to succumb and whose efforts are much more violent.
Now, when it is no longer the weight of the body or the set of nerves, but the will, or better, the soul that weakens and the strongest is defeated by the weakest, from every point of view, since shyness gives way to audacity, I do not know if it is necessary to see an effect of force there. Perhaps, however, one can attribute to the soul forces that inspire courage and confidence. But because they appear in one and disappear in the other, it is easy to understand the superiority of the mind over the body, even when it acts through the body.
Chapter 39
39 . Suppose a young man who to pull or push anything can only use his will. His budding and less-than-perfect constitution only gives him unskillful nerves, weakened by the overabundance of moods of that age, and, weakened by lack of exercise, his body is so light that it can be launched without being seriously injured and is better suited to receive than cause injuries. What is the person who, seeing the nerves, the development of the limbs and the necessary strengths arrive with the years, can believe, with wisdom and prudence, that the soul has grown, why does it use these same strengths that grow every day?
If we saw, shot by a young man hidden by a tapestry, short and light arrows, that a bow without nerve would send a short distance, and shortly thereafter other arrows garnished with iron and feathers, launched by a bow vigorously tensioned, rising high into the air . If we believed that the same effort launched these two types of arrows, then we could convince ourselves that in a very short period of time the boy grew and became fortified. Who, however, could suppose such an absurdity?
Chapter 40
40 . Another thing: if the soul grows, see how strange it is to explain its growth by the growth of physical forces and not by the progress of knowledge, because it only gives the physical forces the consent of its will and only it possesses knowledge.
And if we see a growth of the soul when the body gains strength, it is necessary to see in it a shrinkage when it loses it. Well, he loses them in old age and he loses them during his studies, when he then progresses normally and strengthens himself in the sciences. However, nothing can increase and decrease at the same time. Hence it follows that more strength with an older age does not prove the growth of the soul.
There's still a lot to say but if you're satisfied I'll stop here and move on to another point.
Evodius: — I am sufficiently convinced that the development of forces does not come from the growth of the soul, for without going back here to all that you so deftly expounded, not even a frantic would say that the soul develops with the dementia and disease of the body, while the body itself diminishes. Nobody, in fact, is unaware that a frantic person has much more strength than a sane person commonly has. That's why I attribute to nerves the effects that startle us when we encounter unexpected strengths in someone. So, I ask you to address what already occupies me entirely: whether the soul is spatially as extensive as the body, since it is sensitive to touch in all parts of the body.
Chapter 41
41 . Augustine: — So let's get to this topic, if you like. But it will take more attention from you than you might think. Then redouble your efforts to follow me properly and to respond. What idea do you have of the meaning that the soul has over the entire surface of the body, for that is its proper name?
Evodius: — I've heard that we have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. I don't know anything else but this.
Augustine: — This is a very old division and almost common everywhere. But, I ask you to give me a definition of meaning that encompasses all of this and nothing extraneous to meaning. If you can; I'm not pushing. You can, no doubt, reject or admit my definition; which is enough.
Evodius: "Perhaps I won't miss you, in that respect, to the extent of my strength, as this is not always an easy thing to do."
Augustine: — Listen then. I believe the point is that nothing the body experiences is ignored by the soul.
Evodius: — I accept this definition.
Augustine: See her as yours and defend her while I attack her a little.
Evodius: — I will defend you if you help me. Otherwise, I don't approve. It is not without reason that you believe you should attack her.
Augustine: — Don't be so subject to authority; especially mine, which is nothing. And, as Horatio said: dare to be wise , 7 so as not to be overwhelmed by fear, much more than by reason.
Evodius: — I'm not afraid of anything, whatever the march of debate, because you won't let me go wrong. But start, if you're ready, so that the postponement doesn't tire me any more than the fight.
7 Epit. Book I, ep. 2, V, 39.
Chapter 42
42 . Augustine: — Tell me what your body feels when you see it.
Evodius: — He certainly feels something, for my eyes, if I'm not mistaken, are part of my body and if they didn't feel anything I wouldn't see.
Augustine: — It's not enough to tell me that your eyes feel something; you also need to show me what they feel.
Evodius: — What would they feel if it wasn't the sensation of the sight?
Well they see. If you ask me what a sick person feels like, I'll answer: the disease; a person who covets, greed; who is afraid, fear; who rejoices, joy. When then you ask me what the one who sees feels, why then could I not answer with reason: the sensation of the sight?
Augustine: - But to rejoice is also to feel joy; do you disagree?
Evodius: — Not at all.
Augustine: — I can say the same about all sensations.
Evodius: — Agreed.
Augustine: Now, whatever the eyes feel, they see.
Evodius: — I don't agree at all. Who sees the pain? However, our eyes sense it very often.
Augustine: It's clear that you're right to have your reservations as far as the eyes are concerned. See, then, if the one who sees feels, when he sees, like the one who feels his joy when he is struck by it.
Evodius: — Could it be otherwise?
Augustine: But then, do we necessarily see everything that it feels like to see?
Evodius: Not necessarily, because if, by seeing, we felt love, would we also see that love?
Augustine: — Here is discernment and sagacity. I love that it's hard to surprise you. Now listen well. It is agreed between us that the eyes do not see everything they feel and not even everything that it feels to see. Do you even think you feel everything you see?
Evodius: If I don't agree, how can the faculty of seeing be called sense?
Augustine: But what do we feel, don't we also experience?
Evodius: — It's true.
Augustine: If then we feel everything we see and if we experience everything we feel, we surely experience everything we see.
Evodius: — I'm not opposed to that.
Augustine: So you experience me and I, for my part, experience you, because we see each other.
Evodius: I think so too, forced by reasoning.
Chapter 43
43 . Augustine: — Listen again. There would be in your eyes, I think, an excess of absurdity and madness, to maintain that you experience a body in the place where there is no body.
Evodius: — That sounds absurd and I believe that's what you say.
Augustine: Isn't it obvious that my body occupies one space and yours another space?
Evodius: That's obvious.
Augustine: — But your eyes experience the sensation of my body and if they experience it they perceive it. Now they cannot perceive where the object is. However, they are not where my body is. Therefore, they perceive in the place where they are not.
Evodio: — I agree with all this, because I see it as absurd not to agree. But the last conclusion you've just drawn is so far-fetched that it's better to accuse me of recklessness than assert the truth of this conclusion. I would not dare say, even in a dream, that my eyes feel where they are not.
Augustine: — Then see where you slept. Who could call you reckless if you had just woken up?
Evodius: — I search and replay it all in my mind and don't see quite clearly where I went wrong in agreeing. Unless perhaps I said that our eyes feel when we see, it is quite possible that it is the vision itself that feels.
Augustine: That's right, because it projects itself outwards and, through the eyes, extends in all directions and as far as it can, to reach the objects we see. Thus, she sees better where the object she is looking at is than where she goes out to see. Don't you see then, when do you see me?
Evodius: — What fool would say that? Of course I see it, but I see it because the vision leaves my eyes.
Augustine: — Now, seeing is feeling and feeling is experiencing and you cannot experience where you are not. However, you see me where I am; you then experience where i am. And if you're not where I am, I don't understand how you dare say you see me.
Evodius: — My vision being turned to where you are, I see where you are. But I confess that I don't feel it.
Like touching you with a stick, I would touch you in reality and I would feel that way, without being, however, in the very place where I touched you. So when I see through the vision, even though I myself am not there, I am not forced by it to confess that I am not the one who sees.
Chapter 44
44 . Augustine: So you made no reckless concessions, for you can defend your eyes in the same way and say that sight is to them like a wand, according to their expression, and there is nothing absurd in concluding that they see where they are not.
Do you think differently?
Evodius: — It's just as you said. I just realized that if the eyes see where they are not, they would see themselves too.
Augustine: — It would be fairer to remove “themselves too” and say that they would “only see themselves”. Because they occupy the places they are on their own. The nose is not in their place and neither is anything around them; otherwise you would be where I am. That's why we are side by side. In this way, if the eyes only see what is where they are, they would only see themselves.
Since they don't see themselves, we are forced to admit, not only can they see where they are not, but they can only see absolutely there.
Evodius: — There's nothing to make me doubt that.
Augustine: — So don't doubt that they feel where they see, since seeing is feeling and how to feel is experiencing, so they experience where they feel. Why, they see in a different place from where they are; so they experience where they are not.
Evodius: — I admire how true this seems to me.
Chapter 45
45 . Augustine: — Perhaps you see very well. But, answer me, please: do we see everything that the vision shows us?
Evodius: I think so.
Augustine: — Do you also believe that everything we know by seeing, we know by sight?
Evodius: — I believe too.
76 Saint Augustine – The dimension of the Soul Augustine: — Why then, when we see only one smoke, we usually know that underneath there is a hidden fire that we do not see?
Evodio: — What you say is true and I no longer believe that we see everything that the vision shows us. We can, in fact, as you have observed, see one thing and know of another that is untouched by the vision.
Augustine: And what does sight make us feel, can we not see?
Evodius: — Not at all.
Augustine: — Are feeling and knowing, therefore, different things?
Evodius: Completely different, because we feel the smoke we see and, with that, we know there is the fire we don't see.
Augustine: — Very well understood. But no doubt you see that in this case our bodies, or rather our eyes, have experienced nothing of the fire, but only the smoke they see.
For we have established that seeing is feeling and feeling is experiencing.
Evodius: — I maintain and subscribe to it.
Augustine: When, then, the impression of the body shows something to the soul, this knowledge cannot immediately be attributed to one of the senses enumerated above. It is necessary for the soul itself to know the impression. In fact, we don't see, don't hear, don't smell, don't taste, don't touch the fire, and if the soul takes notice of it, it's because we've seen the smoke. As the body did not feel the fire, the knowledge of the fire did not come immediately from the senses, it is true. It came to us, however, through the senses, as it is a strange bodily impression. It was the sight of one object that led us to the idea of another and to be sure of it.
Evodius: — I understand and see that all this fits perfectly into the definition you have entrusted me to defend as mine. I remember, in fact, that you stated that we feel when the impression of the body is hidden from the soul. Thus, we feel when seeing the smoke, as the eyes were impressed upon seeing it and they are part of the body. They are really bodies, but although we know there is fire and as fire has in no way impressed our organs, we do not feel it.
Chapter 46
46 . Agostinho: — You have a good memory and your intelligence is very attentive to following up. But this defense of definition threatens to fall.
Evodius: — Why? I ask you.
Augustine: Because, if I'm not mistaken, you don't deny that the body experiences something during growth or old age.
However, it is evident that some of our senses make us feel, even if the soul ignores it. Thus, he does not ignore what the body experiences then and this knowledge comes immediately to him from the senses. Seeing big what we saw small, seeing old those who were, without a doubt, young and children, we conjecture that our bodies undergo a similar change, even as we speak. There is no mistake in this, I think, and I am more inclined to believe myself deceived by what I see, than in affirming the current growth of my hair and the change in my body from one moment to the next. If, then, there is a bodily impression in this change — which no one denies —; if, moreover, we do not feel it, though the soul knows, since we know; it follows that the body experiences what the soul knows, as we have said, but that, nevertheless,we don't feel it. Therefore, our definition is vicious, as it should not contain anything extraneous to the sense and it includes the preceding case.
Evodio: — I don't see any recourse other than asking you for another definition or correcting this one, if possible, because I can't deny the vice, in the face of a reason whose strength I appreciate.
Augustine: — It's easy to correct. I really ask you to try. It's an easy thing, believe me, if you've understood correctly where the error is.
Evodius: It is not, by chance, in the fact that it encompasses other things.
Augustine: — How?
Evodius: — It's just that, as the body ages even in a young person, it can't be denied that it experiences something.
Now, as we know, the soul also knows. But, there's no sense for us to know, because, right now, I don't see myself getting old and neither hearing nor smelling nor taste nor touch tell me anything either.
Augustine: — By what means do you know?
Evodio: — That's the reason you tell me.
Augustine: — On what argument does your reason rest?
Evodio: — It's just that now I see old people who were, in the past, young like me.
Augustine: Is it not through one of the five senses that you see them?
Evodius: Who would deny that? But, by the very fact of seeing them, I conclude that I also get old, even if I don't see it.
Augustine: — What is the expression that would be missing then, in SUS opinion, to add to our definition to make it perfect? For, we only feel insofar as the soul knows what the body experiences and it does not know it by any other impression or any other means.
Evodius: Explain this to me more clearly, please.
Chapter 47
47 . Augustine: — I am at your service and more willingly when you interrupt me than when you rush me. But, redouble your attention, because what I'm going to say will serve us a lot. A definition must contain neither more nor less than it purports to explain; otherwise it is vicious. Now, it is through conversion that one assesses whether or not she has a defect. This is what we are going to clarify through some examples.
You ask me what a human being is and I give you this definition: a human being is a mortal animal. What I said is true.
However, don't be quick to agree. Add the whole word and then convert the definition to see if it is also true after converting it. Thus, it is true that every human being is a mortal animal, but is it equally true that every mortal animal is a human being? That is not true. Condemn, then, the definition as including something that is foreign to you, since the human being is not the only mortal animal and any other animal is also.
This definition becomes more exact if the rational expression is added to mortal, for the human being is a mortal and rational animal, and as every human being is a rational and mortal animal, so every rational and mortal animal is a human being. The vice of the first definition was to encompass everything, as it encompassed both the animal and the human being. This is exact because it encompasses every human being and nothing that is not human.
It would be vicious if it encompassed less. For example, if you added grammar to it. For if every mortal, rational, and grammatical animal is a human being, however, there are many people who are not grammarians and who are not included in this definition. Therefore, it is false when presented in this way and becomes true when converted. It is false that every human being is a rational, mortal, and grammatical animal; but it is true that every rational, mortal, and grammatical animal is a human being.
When a definition is not true either in its first statement or in its conversion, it is even more flawed than each of those we are about to examine.
The following two are thus: the human being is a white animal; the human being is a four-legged animal. Whether you say that every human being is a white or four-legged animal, or you convert these two propositions, you present a falsehood. There is, however, the difference between them that the first applies to some human beings, since many are white, while the second does not apply to anyone, since no human being has four feet.
Very often, in order to teach how to examine a definition and evaluate it, either by proposing it directly or by inverting it, many things are taught and in as many words as there are obscurities. I will try to make you understand little by little, as cases arise.
Chapter 48
48 . Then take our definition back and correct it after having examined it further.
We found that, in order to define meaning, it encompassed something other than meaning and ceased to be true as soon as we converted it.
It may be true to say that we feel when our body experiences a known impression of the soul. How true it is that every human being is a mortal animal. But just as it is false that every animal is a human being, just because it also dies, so it is false that every bodily impression known to the soul is a sensation. For, the growth of our nails is not unknown to our soul, considering that we know it ourselves, but we do not feel it and we only know it by supposition.
We fixed our definition of human being by adding the word rational and thus excluding the animals it encompassed at the same time. In this way, it encompassed only the human being and all human beings.
Shall we not then add to this definition some word, to eliminate all that it contains that is strange and so that it covers only the human being and all human beings?
Evodius: I agree with that, but I don't know what could be added to it.
Augustine: Certainly there is sensation in every bodily impression known to the soul, but this proposition cannot be converted because of the impression our body experiences, whether in growth or shrinkage. This is an impression that we know and, consequently, our soul.
Evodius: — It's true.
Augustine: Is it through herself or through an intermediary that this impression is revealed to our soul?
Augustine: It is through an intermediary, of course.
Well, there is a difference between seeing our nails grow and knowing they do.
Augustine: If an impression then grows which is not revealed by any of our senses and the development which these senses show us is the result of that impression, but not the impression itself, it becomes evident that this impression does not reveal itself by itself , but through an intermediary. And if it revealed itself to the soul without an intermediary, would we not know it through the senses, much more than through supposition?
Evodius: — I understand.
Augustine: Why then hesitate about what should be added to our definition?
Evodius: — I understand that our definition should call sensation every bodily impression that reveals itself to the soul. Well, all sensation is this and, if I'm not mistaken, all this is sensation.
Chapter 49
49. AUGUSTINE: That being the case, I confess that the definition is perfect. However, wouldn't you like to check that it doesn't have the second flaw we've shown in the definition of human being, after we've added the word grammar?
I must remind you that we call the human being a rational, mortal and grammatical animal. This definition had the defect of being false in its first statement and true only after its conversion. It is false, in fact, that every human being is a rational, mortal, and grammatical animal, even if every rational, mortal, and grammatical animal is a human being.
So this definition, which does not cover anything other than being human, has the defect of not covering all human beings. And perhaps this is how we glorify as perfect. For even if every bodily impression that reveals itself to the soul is a sensation, not every sensation is like that. You will understand. Animals feel and almost all are endowed with our five senses, as it is in the nature of each one. Do not you agree?
Evodius: — Not at all.
Augustine: — Don't you agree that there is a science only when reason learns and knows something with certainty? Now the reason is not in the animal.
Evodius: I agree with that too.
Augustine: — So science is not in all animals.
In fact, it is known that what is not unknown. So, the animal does not feel, because every sensation is a bodily impression that reveals itself to the soul. But they feel, however, according to what we agree. Why then hesitate even to reject a definition that does not include all that is sensation, since it excludes the sensations of animals?
Chapter 50
50 . Evodius: — I was wrong, I confess, to agree that there is science when reason learns with certainty. When you interrogated me, I only had human beings in mind, and I cannot say that animals are rational or deny that they have knowledge. In fact, he knew his owner, the dog that, after twenty years 8 is said , recognized him; not to mention so many other animals.
Augustine: — Two things are proposed to you. One is the goal to be pursued; the other is the means of achieving it. Please tell me which one do you like and prefer?
8 Odyssey, ch. XVII.
Evodius: Who would hesitate to prefer what is to be achieved?
Augustine: — Reason and science are two things. Is it through science that one arrives at reason or is it through reason that one arrives at science?
Evodius: In my opinion these two things are so closely linked that one leads to the other. It would be impossible to reach reason if we didn't know that it is necessary to reach it. So, science precedes and through it we arrive at reason.
Augustine: It is, therefore, without reason that one arrives at science, which precedes, you say?
Evodius: God forbid I say that, for it would be supreme temerity.
Augustine: — So it's through reason?
Evodius: — Not either.
Augustine: — So it's through temerity?
Evodius: — Who would say such a thing?
Augustine: — By what means then?
Evodius: By no means, since science is infused into us.
Chapter 51
51 . Augustine: — You seem to have forgotten what we agreed well between us a while ago. I asked you if there is science when reason knows something with certainty. You answered, I believe, that in your opinion, human science was like that, and you say now that the human being can have a science, even if reason has not taught him anything! Who does not see the greatest contradiction between these two statements: there is only science if reason knows something with certainty and if it can know something without reason knowing it? I'm curious to know which one you prefer, as both cannot be true.
Evodio: — I'll take my last one. I was wrong to admit the first one. When, with reason, we seek together the truth and this through questions and answers, how can we reach the result, which is the conclusion of reasoning, if something is not admitted first?
But how can you agree if you don't know anything? If then reason did not find in me anything known to lean on to lead me into the unknown, it would never teach me anything and I would not even remember the word reason. It is therefore wrong for you not to agree with me that, prior to reason, there is necessarily some science in us on which to base it.
Augustine: — Be. And, as I recommend to you, I will allow you to back off every time you regret it. But, do not abuse my permission, I beg you, to listen to my questions less attentively and, by making too often unreasonable concessions, you may be led to question what you were right to agree with.
Evodius: — Go on to what's left. Although I apply myself with all my strength to being as attentive as possible, as I am ashamed to abandon my opinions so often, nothing, however, will prevent me from pushing that shame and rising from my downfalls. Especially when you extend your hand to me, because if constancy is desirable, you shouldn't go all the way to stubbornness.
Chapter 52
52 . Augustine: — May this constancy come to you in its fullness and as promptly as possible, as much as I liked that maxim you said. Now then, pay the sharpest attention to what I desire. What is the difference you think there is between reason and reasoning?
Evodio: — I can't distinguish these two things very well.
Augustine: - So you think that a person in adolescence or mature age and even, to avoid any embarrassment, when he reached wisdom, he has reason in a permanent way, when he is mentally healthy, as the body enjoys health when it is not. no illness or injury? Or is the sage right or wrong, as long as he is walking or sitting or talking?
Evodio: — I think that a mentally healthy person is always right.
Augustine: — In order to gain any knowledge, we rely on concessions or on evidence, we interrogate these and read those ideas. Do you think we or any wise person does this continually?
Evodius: —Continually not. In my opinion, no person and even no sage is continually occupied in seeking the truth, whether talking to himself or to others. Searching is not having found and searching always is never having found. But the sage has already found, to say the least, at least the wisdom, which, in the time he was ignorant, he sought through debate or through any other means.
Augustine: — What you say is true. You understand then that it is not reason that leads from the known and the accepted to the unknown. For a sane mind does not always do this, as we said, but reason is always with it.
Chapter 53
53 . Evodius: — I understand. But what is the reason for these observations?
Augustine: — That's why you wanted, a moment ago, to make me agree that science precedes reason in us, since reason needs the support of some knowledge to lead us into the unknown. Now we see now that it is not the reason that it does this. Indeed, any rational person is not always occupied with this exercise, but nevertheless, he is always right. The word reasoning was perhaps more convenient. So that reason would be like the look of the mind and reasoning the search that reason makes. In other words, it is the movement of this gaze over the objects that it needs to look at. We would thus need reason to see and reasoning to seek. Thus, we call science the mind's gaze fixed on an object and contemplating it.
But, there is the absence of science, or ignorance, when the mind does not see, although it applies its gaze. Even with the eyes of the body, it is not always enough to look to see. We easily observe this in darkness. Hence, it is evident, I believe, that there is a difference between looking and seeing; they are two acts of the mind that we call reason and science.
Do you have any objections or even these differences don't seem clear to you?
Evodio: — I like this distinction very much and I subscribe to it very willingly.
Augustine: — Then see if we look to see or if we see to look.
Evodius: — A blind man wouldn't doubt that. It is to see what you look at and not to look at what you see.
Augustine: Let us agree then that the vision is more esteemed than the gaze.
Evodius: Yes, of course.
Augustine: — So also science more than reason.
Evodius: — It's a consequence.
Augustine: — Do you believe that animals are superior to humans and happier?
Evodius: God save me from this horrible dementia!
Augustine: — This horror is quite right, surely. But that's what your opinion leads us to. You said, in effect, that animals have science without being right. While the human being is right, with which science is barely achieved. But, as I agreed that we got to it easily, how would reason help us to consider ourselves superior to animals, since they possess this science that we recognize to be preferable to reason?
Chapter 54
54 . Evodius: — I see myself in the absolute necessity of refuting the science of animals or admitting that they are really superior to me. But, please explain to me what nature is the characteristic that I related of the dog of Odysseus. Yeah, I barked uselessly in my admiration for him.
Augustine: — What was there in that dog if it wasn't the faculty of feeling and not the faculty of knowing? Countless animals surpass us through the senses and it is not the case here to research the cause of this. But God put us above them through mind, reason and science. Now these senses, supported by training, whose power is great, can discern what pleases these animals, and as easily as the animal's soul is more attached to the body to which these senses which it uses for food and pleasure belong. that he enjoys in that same body. The human soul, on the contrary, is removed from the body, insofar as it is capable, by reason and by science, whose superiority over the senses we now see. She enjoys inner pleasures better, and the more she immerses herself in the senses, the more she also makes human beings like animals.It also follows that, the more the crib child is far from reason, the easier it is for her to identify, through sensation, the approach and contact of her mother, while she cannot bear the odor of another woman she does not know .
Chapter 55
55 . Hence it follows that I willingly encourage my soul not to fall into the senses beyond what is necessary and, on the contrary, to withdraw from it, to withdraw into itself and be reborn in God; that is, undressing the old human being and dressing the new one.
Surely it is necessary to start there, after having despised the divine law. And the divine Scriptures contain nothing truer and deeper.
I would like to say more on this subject and compel myself to act only to become myself 9 —showing that I do my homework—whom I mostly give myself to. I would like to become, in relation to God, what Horace called a servant friend of his master 10 .
9 Retract. book I, chap. VIII, no. 3.
10 Hours Free sat. II, Sat. I, V. 2 and 3.
But this is only possible on condition that we reform ourselves in his image. He entrusted us with the custody of this image as if it were a treasure of the most dear and precious. When he gave our being to ourselves, he did it in such a way that we cannot prefer anything outside of himself.
Well, nothing seems to me more laborious than such a work. And nothing is more prone to interruption. However, the soul can only begin and end it with the help of the One to whom it turns. Hence it follows that, in order to reform, man needs the mercy of the One whose goodness and power formed him.
Chapter 56
56 . But, we need to get back to our topic. See, then, if it's sufficiently proven to you that animals don't have science and that everything we admire about them that looks like science is simply the faculty of feeling.
Evodius: — This has been amply proven, and if I need to go deeper, I'll save it for another time. Now I would like to know the conclusion you will draw from this.
Augustine: — What is the conclusion? Is that the definition of sensation a little while ago included a lot, and this one lacks the opposite: it does not include all sensations. Animals have sensations and not science.
Well, not to ignore is to know and everything that is known is, indisputably, the domain of science. On all this we are already in agreement. So either it is not true to say that sensation is an affection of the body known to the soul, or else animals don't have them, they don't have science. Now, we've already agreed on the feeling for animals. So this definition is flawed.
Evodio: — I confess that I have nothing to object to.
Chapter 57
57 . Augustine: — Here's another reason that should make us blush even more with this definition. You remember, I think, that we showed in the definition a third, far more humiliating error, which is not being true in any sense. Like this definition of a human being: it's a four-legged animal. In fact, to say and claim that every human being is a four-footed animal or that every four-footed animal is a human being is a delusion, if not a joke.
Evodius: — What you say is true.
Augustine: And if this is the vice that should be reproached in the definition of sensation, there is nothing more to be rejected and repelled, don't you think?
Evodius: — Who can deny it? But I would not like, if it were possible, to be stuck on this topic for so long and not pressured by small issues.
Augustine: — Don't worry, we're already finishing. When it comes to the difference between humans and animals, don't you agree that it's one thing to feel and another to know?
Evodius: — Quite convinced.
Augustine: So sensation is different from science.
Evodius: Yes.
Augustine: Well, it is not from reason that sensation is born, but from sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
Evodius: — I agree.
Augustine: And everything we know we owe to reason.
Therefore, no sensation is science. Now everything that is not ignored belongs to science. Therefore, it makes no sense to teach us that no human being could be called a quadruped.
Therefore, our definition, which you defended, is convinced not only of having invaded the property of others, despising correction, but also of having nothing of it and living only on robbery.
Evodius: — What to do then? Would she leave the court like that? It's true that I defended it as much as I could, but it was you who put this formula in the judgment that deceived us. If I couldn't win my case, at least act in good faith, that's enough for me. But you, if we are accused of malfeasance, how can you apologize, since you are the author of this blatantly controversial definition and that you attacked to make it shamefully abandon the ground?
Augustine: Is there a judge here that she and I must not fear? As a lawyer, I wanted, to educate the case, to refute it in private, to prepare you to respond when we get to court.
Evodius: So you have something to say in favor of that definition, whose defense you have entrusted to a champion as weak as myself.
Augustine: — Certainly yes.
Chapter 58
58 . Evodius: — What then, tell me.
Augustine: — It's just that sensation and science, despite what distinguishes them, have perception in common. As the human being and the animal, despite the distance that separates them, they both belong to the animal kingdom in common. Nothing, in fact, is hidden when the soul knows, whether through the harmony of the body or through the purity of the intelligence.
In the first case there is sensation and, in the second, science.
Evodius: Is our definition then unassailable and proven?
Augustine: — Certainly.
Evodius: Where was my mistake then?
Augustine: When I asked you if everything that is not hidden belongs to science, you were wrong to answer in the affirmative.
Evodius: — And what did you want me to say?
Augustine: - That not everything that is known belongs to science, but only what is known by reason. There is only sensation, when we know it through the body and the bodily impression makes itself known. Don't you know that many philosophers - and the most acute - have not even wanted to call what our mind discovers science, unless it is done through an intelligence such that no argument can dispute it?
Chapter 59
59 . Evodius: — I receive these remarks with heartfelt recognition. But, after having explained in such depth, I believe, what is meant by sensation, let us return to the subject that we propose to clarify. I would like to prove that the soul is as big as the body and reason, and the reason I did this is that wherever you touch it, from head to toe, the body feels the hand. Hence we were led to this definition of sensation that held us back for so long; necessarily, I think. Now then, please show what the result of such a great job is.
Agostinho: — This work has a result and a serious result: here we have reached the objective we wanted to achieve. In fact, in order to penetrate it well, we have explained more at length than you would like, that sensation is a bodily impression that shows itself to the soul. But, do you also remember that you found with me that the eyes feel, or rather, that they are impressed where they are not?
Evodius: — I remember that.
Augustine: — You also agreed—if I'm not mistaken—and now you too believe without a doubt that you must agree that the soul is much better and more powerful than the whole body.
Evodius: — I would feel guilty if I doubted that.
Augustine: — If then — as we observed in considering the phenomenon of vision — the body can feel where it is not, because of its union with the soul, we shall consider that same soul, which imparts so much power to the eyes, to be so indolent and so inert as not to know bodily impressions when she's not where they happen?
Chapter 60
60 . Evodio: This conclusion strikes me singularly.
She amazes me to the point of putting me out of my mind, without me knowing what to say or even where I am. What to say? That sensation is not the corporeal impression that reveals itself to the soul by itself? But what would she be if not that? That our eyes are not affected when we see? That would be absurd. That they are affected by the part of the body where they are? But they don't see themselves and are alone in their orbits. That the soul is no more powerful than the eyes, to which it imparts its strength? That would be the height of madness. Would I also say that there is more power in feeling impressions of where you are than impressions of where you are not? But if that were true, then vision would not have the upper hand over the other senses.
Augustine: — Is it not even true that the eyes, when they suffer a blow, a wound, a derangement in the moods, are affected because that is where they are, and this is perceived by the soul? And this impression is not called vision but touch? Something the eye could experience even in a corpse, when the soul is no longer there to know. But this same eye could not feel without the soul the impression of vision. However, does he not see where he is not? Is this not evident proof that the soul is nowhere circumscribed? The only thing, in effect, that the eye—that is, the body—cannot do where it is not is what it could never do without the soul.
Chapter 61
61 . Evodius: — Which side should I take, I ask you?
Don't these reasons prove that our souls are not in our bodies? And if that's true, where am I? For nothing can stop me from being my soul.
Augustine: — Don't worry. Be more confident, because this idea, this consideration brings us back to ourselves and separates us from the body, as far as this is possible. It certainly seems absurd to think, as you have just said, that the soul is not in the living animal's own body. There were, however—and there are still, I presume—wise people who believed this. But, you understand that this is a very deep question. It requires, in order to resolve it, that the mind's eye be purified. Examine first, at this time, how you could demonstrate that the soul is long or large, or even that it has any other similar dimension. For you feel that the reason you intended to get out of tact does not reach the truth. It could not convince us that the soul is, like blood, spread throughout the body. If, however,you have no more arguments to present, let us examine what we have left.
Chapter 62
62. EVODIUM: Perhaps I would have if I remembered how much we liked to see lizards' tails move when they were young, after they had been cut off and separated from their bodies. How can I convince myself that this movement can happen if the soul is not there? I also don't understand that the soul is not scattered, when it can be divided like that with the body.
Augustine: — It is the presence of the soul that maintains air and fire in the body formed of earth and water, in order to bring about the union of the four elements. I could then reply that air and fire, when separating and rising after the soul's departure, imprints on these little bodies a movement so much faster the more the wound, through which they escape, is more recent. This movement diminishes little by little, as the principle of life diminishes and it ceases when that principle has entirely evaporated.
But, this answer is forbidden to me by what I saw with my own eyes. So long after that you can hardly believe it; but not so late that you don't have to.
We were recently in some fields in Liguria and the young people who were then with us to continue their studies observed, lying on the ground, a small animal that was crawling. It was a long worm with a large number of feet. I knew this worm, but nevertheless, I had never seen what I am going to say.
One of the young men, taking the stiletto he happened to have in his hands, struck the animal in the middle of its body. The two cut parts ran in opposite directions. The feet moved so fast and with such force that they looked like different animals. Very impressed by this kind of wonder, the young people brought us, with alacrity, the two living parts.
Alipio and I were sitting in the same place. Very impressed too, we watched these same parts run all over the table. One of them, struck again with the stiletto, squirmed painfully where the wound had been. But the other felt nothing and continued her run.
We wanted to know, finally, what was the strength of this worm, and after again having broken the parts a great number of times, we saw that they all moved equally. And if we hadn't broken them ourselves, if we hadn't seen the fresh wounds ourselves, we would have believed that they were worms each born separately and that they each had a life of their own.
Chapter 63
63 . These young people were looking at me intently, but I'm afraid to repeat to you what I told them, as we've come so far and defended our ideas in this conversation for so long that if I don't give you an answer in harmony with the cause I'm defending , this cause will appear to have been shaken and will appear to have succumbed to the teeth of a worm.
I had then ordered them to continue their studies as they had begun them. I told them that in that way they could one day, if given the opportunity, to examine and study phenomena of that kind. But if I wanted to repeat everything we said—Alypius and I—when those young men left; the memories, speculations and questions of each one; we would need to talk a long time beyond what we have already done, through so many rounds and rounds. I will not let you, however, ignore my opinion.
If I didn't know about the body, about the form that animates it, about place, about time, about movement, many certain and profound things, which are examined so carefully, in relation to the question that concerns us, I would I would be inclined to give the palm to those who uphold the materiality of the soul.
So, I beg you more and more and with all my strength, not to throw yourself recklessly on the works or in the middle of conversations of these fickle people who only give faith to the senses of the body. Rather, enter and strengthen yourself on the path that leads to God.
Study and work can — more easily than inertia and laziness — draw you away from that mysterious sanctuary where the soul enjoys full repose and from which it is banished while it inhabits this world.
Chapter 64
64 . Let's see now, to combat the strong impression I see on you, not what I find most decisive and most powerful, but what I prefer, among so many other reasons, as shorter and more appropriate to your mind.
Evodio: — Tell me, I ask you, as soon as possible.
Augustine: First of all, if these phenomena happen in some bodies, when they are cut, we should not be disturbed just because of it, nor consider false so many observations that you see clearer than the light of day. It can actually happen that we ignore the cause of what amazes us; either because it is hidden from human nature, or because it is known by a person we would not be able to interrogate, or, finally, because we have a kind of mind that does not allow us to be satisfied. Should we, therefore, let what we know so surely to the contrary and which we proclaim as the exact truth be snatched away from us?
If the objection does not destroy any of the answers you gave to my questions and whose undoubted correctness you recognized, why should we fear this miserable worm, whose life we cannot explain, when we tear him to pieces?
You have, let's assume, the firm assurance that a particular person is a good person. You meet him with thugs you know and he dies before you can question him.
Even if you were eternally ignorant of why he was in the company of bandits and at table with them, you would prefer to assume anything but believe that he is guilty and linked to criminals.
When the numerous reasons that have been developed and whose persuasive force you have felt have clearly demonstrated that the soul does not take up space and therefore does not have the kind of dimension that we see in bodies, you see no way of explaining how an animal in in particular, when it is torn to pieces, it lives in all its parts, will you suppose that the soul can be divided with the body? If we cannot find the cause of this phenomenon, is it not better to continue to search for the truth than to admit a falsehood?
Chapter 65
65 . Augustine: Another question: do you believe there is a difference between the sound and what it means?
Evodius: — I don't believe.
Augustine: — Then tell me where does the sound you speak come from?
Evodius: From me, no doubt.
Augustine: — From you also comes the sun, when do you pronounce this word?
Evodius: — You asked me about sound and not things.
Augustine: The sound then differs from what it means. You said there was no difference.
Evodius: — Well then. I agree now that sound is something other than what it means.
Augustine: — But with the knowledge you have of our language, could you, in a speech, speak of the sun, if you didn't have an idea of it before?
Evodius: — I couldn't.
Augustine: — And if before saying a word, you had a moment of silence dedicated to thinking about it. Wouldn't the sound of that word remain in your mind, before your voice carried it to the ears of others?
Evodius: — This is evident.
Augustine: — And the sun, which has such a large volume; could your idea of it look long, wide or any other dimension?
Evodius: — Not at all.
Chapter 66
66. Augustine: — In this way, the moment the word sun escapes your lips, the moment I hear it myself, I think of that sun, whose idea you had before talking about it and even at the same time as you spoke and what we think maybe at this moment. Would you not say that this word received from you the meaning that it should convey?
Evodius: —Certainly.
Augustine: — The word thus has a meaning and a sound. Sound is for the ears and meaning is for the mind. Does it not seem to you then that the word is like a living being, in which sound is the body and the sense is like the soul?
Evodio: — I can't find anything more similar.
Augustine: Now, couldn't we divide sound like letters, although you can't divide soul or meaning? For the meaning is nothing other than this idea in our minds, which does not seem long or long, as you have just said.
Evodius: I believe that perfectly well.
Augustine: — But, when dividing it like the letters, doesn't the sound seem to retain the same meaning?
Evodius: — How could each letter mean what the word formed by them all means?
Augustine: — And when, after having lost its meaning, the sound is like dismembered with all its lyrics. Wouldn't you say it's like the soul that escaped from a shattered corpse and the word died somehow?
Evodius: I willingly believe that nothing in our conference pleased me more than this.
Chapter 67
67. Augustine: — This comparison seems to show you sufficiently how the soul cannot be divided when the body becomes so. See now how the parts of a dismembered body can live, even though the soul is not. You have admitted—and I think rightly so—that when a word is uttered, the sense, which is like the soul, could not be divided, although the sound, which is like the body, can be broken. The word sun, when the sound is divided, retains no meaning in any of its parts, just as when a word is somehow torn apart and the letters have lost all meaning, we regard these letters as the inanimate members of a body. without life. But if we find a word where each part has a meaning, even after separation,you must agree that this kind of dismemberment did not entirely produce death. Each part, considered individually, meaning something, will seem to breathe still.
Evodius: — I will agree with all my heart. But what is this word?
Augustine: — Still close to the sun, which we just mentioned, I think of the word Lucifer (bringer of light). Divide it between the second and third syllables. The first part, luci (light) still has a meaning. So half of this body is still alive. The other half too. She makes herself understood when she orders something to be transported. When it says: Take this notebook, would you obey if this word meant nothing? Adding this particle to luci, we have Lucifer, the name of a star. By dismembering it, it still has meaning and seems to conserve life.
Chapter 68
68 . Time and space are two things that fill everything that falls under our eyes. To space belongs what we see and to time what we hear. Just as the insect takes up more space entirely than one of its parts, so it takes us longer to pronounce Lucifer than it does to pronounce luci.
It follows from this that the sense of luci still keeps this word alive, although it takes less time to pronounce it than it would take to pronounce Lucifer, from which it is separate and the meaning of this last term is not divided as the sound, as it is not subjected to time like this.
So, although each still-living part of the shattered insect takes up less space than it occupied the entire body, one must avoid believing that the soul is equally divided and that it is smaller in a smaller space, after having animated, in a wider space, the entire body of the insect. Well, it is not she, but the body enlivened by her that occupied this space. Like the very sense of the word, which is not subject to time, although it completely animates, in some way, all the letters, with their time and their respective quantity.
For now, I ask you to be content with this comparison, which seems to please you and do not expect further considerations that can be made on this subject and which can satisfy the mind, not because of similarities that often deceive, but because of the vision. of reality itself.
On the one hand, it is necessary to bring this long lecture to an end, and to see and distinguish these truths, on the other hand, it is necessary to cultivate and endow your mind with many other knowledges, which you still lack. In this way you will be able to understand clearly whether it is true, as some very wise people claim, that, absolutely indivisible by itself, the soul is divisible by the body.
Chapter 69
69 . Listen now, if it pleases you, or rather, acknowledge with me what is the greatness of the soul. This greatness, which does not consist in time or space, but in strength and power. For, if you remember, this is how we, from the beginning, established and divided this issue.
You think the number of souls is related to this question11, but I don't know what to answer you on this matter. I would say more quickly that you should not be concerned at all, or at least you must not be concerned with it yet, than to prove that the quantity does not relate to the multiplicity nor to the number or that I can, in the present, withdraw of their difficulties such an embarrassing question.
11 Relating the greatness of the soul with the question of the number of souls, Evodius based himself on the Latin noun quantitas and the corresponding adjective quantus, understanding the number as the magnitude itself.
If I were to say, in effect, that there is only one soul, you would not understand how it is unhappy in this person and happy in that other, for the same thing could not be both happy and unhappy at the same time.
If I said there is one soul and many souls, you would laugh at me and I don't see how I would stop you from doing that.
If I just said that there are several, I would laugh at myself then and could not bear my own contempt any better than yours.
Listen then to what you can very well hear from me, without burdening me and without burdening you with a burden that could crush each other or even crush both of us.
Evodius: — I agree with that. Explain then what you find convenient to deal with me. What is the power of the soul?
Chapter 70
70 . Ah, if we could both interrogate a person on this subject who was at the same time cultured, eloquent, truly wise; perfect at last! How she would show us, with word and argument, what the soul can over the body, what it can with itself and what it can with God, to whom it approaches, when it is pure and with whom it finds its supreme and absolute happiness!
Although for this I myself need someone I miss, I dare not miss you. But, explaining with my ignorance what the soul can do, I will have, as a reward, knowing without danger what I myself can. First, however, give up on the immense and as if infinite wait to hear me speak of all souls. I will only speak of the human soul. Unique, it must be the object of our solicitude, when we have it for ourselves.
This soul then—and everyone can easily observe this—begins by animating, with its presence, this earthly and mortal body.
It establishes unity in him and maintains it. It prevents you from falling apart and falling into ruins. It is she who, providing each one with his due, distributes food equally to the members. It is she who maintains harmony and balance, not only in beauty, but also in the growth and communication of life.
It is possible to observe, however, that the human being, at this point, is not distinct from the animals. We see, in fact, and say that they live, that they are preserved each in their species, that they feed, that they grow and reproduce.
Chapter 71
71. Then go up to a second level and see what the soul can do about the senses, where life manifests itself more clearly and more clearly.
No account should be taken of impiety that is really gross and cruder than the very vegetables it is responsible for protecting. You don't believe that the vine suffers when it harvests its grapes, that vegetables feel the ax that cuts them, that they see and that they hear, do you? There is much talk of this sacrilegious error.
Let's get back to our purpose. Note what power the soul has over the senses and movements of animals themselves. There is, on this point, no similarity between us and the plants, which are attached to the soil by their roots.
The soul employs touch, and through it it feels and distinguishes what is hot, cold, rough, polished, hard, soft, light, heavy.
She then learns—through taste, smell, hearing, and sight—innumerable varieties of taste, odor, sound, and shape.
Furthermore, it appropriates and seeks in all of this, what suits the nature of the body, and it runs away and rejects what is contrary to it.
From time to time she withdraws from these senses and takes a vacation to repair her functioning. It recovers en masse and in all directions the images it collected through its intermediary. This is what is called sleep and dream.
She too often recreates herself through easy movements, dedicating herself to joy and distractions and, without work, she restores order and harmony in the organs.
She does everything she can for the union of the two sexes and her love seeks unity in a dual nature. It works not only to produce, but also to feed, protect and create.
Custom links her to external objects, in the midst of which and through which she makes the body live. She separates from them with such pity that it is as if they are her members. This force of custom is not destroyed, neither by moving away from objects nor by the lapse of time, and this is called memory.
But who can deny that all this is done equally for the souls of animals?
Chapter 72
72 . Then go up to a third level, which belongs exclusively to the human being and consider memory, where so many ideas accumulate that were not recorded by custom, but which were entrusted to you and maintained by observation and retention of images. All the arts that direct the worker's hand, the culture of the countryside, the construction of cities, the varied buildings, the wonderful monuments, the invention of so many signs that distinguish letters, words, gestures, sounds of all kinds , painting, sculpture.
So many different languages, so many institutions, so many new things, so many things, so many things restored. So many books and monuments of all kinds to convey the memories.
Such a concern for posterity. The hierarchies of functions, powers, honors and dignities, whether in families or in the State, for war and peace, or in profane and sacred ceremonies. The power of argument and reflection. The rivers of eloquence, the varieties of poems, the thousands of representations destined for play and entertainment. The skill in music, the accuracy of measurements, the rules of calculation, the presentiments of the past and the future, taken from things present.
Here are big distinctions. They fully characterize the human being. But these characteristics are still common to the wise and the ignorant; to the good and the wicked.
Chapter 73
73 . Then lift your eyes and cast them to the fourth level. Here begins virtue and all that is truly praiseworthy. Here, indeed, the soul dares to consider itself superior; not only to your body, whatever part it occupies in the universe, but to all bodies as well. She does not regard the world's goods as her own, and when she compares them to her power and beauty, far from being confused with them, she despises them.
The more she delights in her possessions, the more she turns away from what defiles her, purifies and beautifies herself. She also begins to arm herself against all the obstacles that try to make her give up on her purposes and her feelings. She uniquely esteems the great human community and does not want for others what she does not want for herself. She follows the direction of authority and the advice of the sages, where she believes she hears the voice of God Himself.
It is true that work is felt in this magnificent occupation of the soul. It is necessary to fight strong and courageously against the adversities and seductions of the world. Purifying itself in this way, the soul fears death; sometimes very little and sometimes a lot.
Just when, still unable to see the truth as the very pure souls see it, she firmly believes that everything is governed by the high providence and justice of God and that death strikes no one unjustly, even when struck by a guilty hand .
Death is greatly feared when as little is believed in this divine Providence as it is most eagerly sought. When it is so little distinguished the more the tranquility of mind - indispensable to the examination of obscure matters - is disturbed by this very fear.
Then, the more the soul feels, in the progress it makes, how much of a difference there is between being pure and being tainted, the more it fears that, in leaving this body, it will find God more severe against its faults than it does. itself is.
But nothing is more difficult than to reconcile the fear of death and the renunciation of the pleasures of this world, as the dangers facing the soul demand. The soul, however, is so big that it can do it; but with the help of the true and sovereign God, of the justice that sustains and directs this universe, who gave existence to everything and an existence such that nothing could be better. It is, therefore, to this justice that she confides herself, with pity and assurance, so that she can be helped in carrying out the very difficult work of her sanctification.
Chapter 74
74 . The soul, after this work, that is, after having been freed and purified from all stain and all dirt, remains happily in itself, without fearing anything else and without tormenting itself with itself. This is then the fifth level.
It is one thing, in effect, to reach purity and another thing to remain in it. It is still one thing to act to recover from your faults and another thing to act to avoid falling back into them.
The soul understands, in any case, how big it is.
Encouraged then by an immense and incredible confidence, she runs to God, that is, to the contemplation of her own truth. For that great, sublime, and mysterious reward she has worked so hard for.
Chapter 75
75 . But this impulse, this desire to understand what is really and absolutely, is the supreme gaze of the soul and there is nothing more perfect, better or more correct. This is then the sixth level.
It is one thing to purify the eye of the soul, not to open it in vain or frivolously, not to cast it on anything evil, and another thing to keep it like that and strengthen its holiness. Another thing, finally, is to maintain, on what needs to be contemplated, that gaze that has become fair and serene.
Those who want to engage in this contemplation, without having purified and healed themselves, are wounded by the divine light in such a way that, far from seeing anything good, they believe they see much evil in it and refuse to call it the truth. Driven by passion, dragged miserably by a corrupting pleasure, they fall, cursing the remedy, into the darkness compatible with their morbid state.
Thus, the prophet says with great justice and under the divine breath of inspiration: O my God, create in me a pure heart, and renew my spirit of steadfastness 12 . The spirit of steadfastness, it seems to me, is that which makes the soul incapable of going astray and getting lost in the search for truth.
12 Psalm 50: 12.
There is no recovery unless the heart has been purified, that is, a brake has been put on the thought itself. Before the soul has risen above all the passions and all the blemishes produced by perishable things.
Chapter 76
76 . But it is the seeing and the contemplation of the truth that constitutes the seventh and last level of soul power. Or rather, it is the goal towards which all levels lead.
How then to describe what the joy of the soul is like; how much she enjoys the supreme and true good; what is the reflection that falls upon her of serenity and eternity? Great and incomparable souls spoke of this happiness, as they saw fit and we believe they were and still are witnesses of it.
What I dare to say now is that, following with constancy the path that God ordained us and that we undertake, we will come, through the virtue and wisdom of God, to the sovereign cause, to the sovereign author, to the sovereign principle of all things, to the incomparable Being, which it is perhaps possible to give a more convenient name.
Now, when contemplating it, we will really see how much under the sun everything is vanity of vanities 13 . Vanity is, in fact, a deception and the vain are nothing but deceived or deceivers, or deceived and deceivers at the same time.
13 Ecclesiastes 1: 2.
We can, however, observe today how much differs what is like this under the sun and what truly exists. The way God created the beings of this world, they are nothing compared to eternal goods; though, considered properly, they are beautiful and admirable.
We will then know how true what we are told to believe is true; how happy and favored we were to have fed in the bosom of our mother's Church; how wholesome was this mysterious milk that the apostle Paul declared he had given us to drink 14 .
14 1 Corinthians 3:2.
Taking this food while still in the mother's arms is very helpful; when you grew up, that would be humiliating.
It would be necessary to regret the one who rejected him when he needed him; To see as guilty and impious the one who came to despise and abhor him. But what charity and what glory is in him who prepares and serves him properly!
We will also see very happy changes and transformations in this corporeal nature, when it is submitted to the divine laws.
The very resurrection of the flesh - which is hardly admitted by some and considered fable by others - will seem to us at least as certain as we are certain that the sun will rise after it has set.
As for those who laugh at the incarnation, through which he humbled himself, to be the model and firstfruits of our salvation, the omnipotent, eternal, and unchanging Son of God; who mock her birth in the bosom of a virgin and the other miracles of her life; we will despise them, as one despises a child who, after having seen a painter copy pictures, imagines that one cannot make a portrait of a person without having another portrait under his eyes.
But what delights are there in the contemplation of the truth, whatever the aspect in which to look at it! What purity! What clarity! What an undoubted certainty! Whatever was believed to be known will be deemed never to have known in comparison with this truth. And to give the soul a greater facility to adhere to it more fully and more fully, rather than fearing death as before—that is, its complete separation from the body—it will be desired as a supreme favor.
Chapter 77
77 . You have just heard what the strength and power of the soul is, and to put it all in a nutshell, even if this human soul is not like God, you have to admit that nothing that was created by him comes any closer to him.
Thus, we are divinely and magnificently taught in the Catholic Church that “the soul must not adore any creature” (I use these words with great pleasure because they were used when I began this doctrine), but only the Creator himself of all things, of who, for whom and in whom they are all. That is, the immutable principle, the immutable wisdom, the immutable love, the one God, true and perfect, who was never without existence, who will always exist, who has never been and will never be different. Nothing is more hidden or more present than it. It is difficult to find out where he is and more difficult to find where he is not. Not everyone can be with him and no one can be without him. What can be said even more amazing? This is what our humanity can most legitimately and most conveniently claim of it.
It is then only this God that the soul must adore without distinction and without confusion. In fact, whatever the soul worships as God it must necessarily regard as being superior to itself. Now neither the earth, nor the seas, nor the stars, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor anything that we can touch or see with our eyes, nor even the sky that cannot be seen by us, should be considered superior. to the nature of the soul. What I say? Reason shows with certainty that all this is far inferior to a soul, whatever it may be. Therefore, let the lovers of the truth follow it, with an unshakeable constancy and a fidelity to the test, along unusual and consequently arduous paths.
Chapter 78
78 . In addition to those creatures that fall under our senses, that occupy any space and over which the human soul prevails, without question, we have to check if there is something else in the universe created by God that is above the soul or is equal to it.
Below is the soul of animals; like that of the angels; but superior, there is nothing. If anything, it would be the work of sin and not nature. Sin, however, does not deteriorate the human soul until it puts it below or even on the level of the soul of animals.
She must therefore only adore God, for he alone is her author.
As for human beings, however wise and perfect they may be; or rather, as for other rational and already blessed souls, it is only necessary to love them, imitate them and show them the deference that befits their merit and their level. Indeed, it is said: You shall adore the Lord your God and him alone you shall serve 15.
15 Deuteronomy 6: 13 and Matthew 4: 10.
If our relatives are in error and pain, let us know that help must be brought to them, as far as possible and as ordered. But we must understand that in doing good we are God's instruments.
Let us not also be seduced by the love of useless glory and do not attribute anything to ourselves; that would be enough to plunge us from the top and plunge us into the abyss.
We do not hate people tyrannized by addiction, but the addiction itself; not sinners either, but their sins.
We must wish that a helping hand be extended to all; even those who hurt us and those who want to ruin us, personally or through others.
This is the true, perfect, unique religion; through which the soul that possesses the greatness with which we occupy ourselves and through which it is worthy of freedom must be reconciled with God.
God, in effect, delivers us from all that can enslave us.
Nothing is more advantageous than being submissive to it. The perfect and only freedom consists in pleasing and serving him.
But I realize that I've almost broken the boundaries I've set and that I've been saying things without questioning you for a long time. However, I have no regrets, as these truths are scattered throughout many Church Scriptures. It seems advantageous to have them together as we did.
However, you cannot fully understand them until you have reached the fourth of the seven levels we have described. Courageously and faithful to piety, busy with acquiring the health and strength necessary to understand them, examining everything in detail and with all the attention and penetration possible. There is, in fact, on each of these levels, a distinct and particular beauty and it would be better if we called them acts.
Chapter 79
79 . The issue, in fact, is the power of the soul and it may be that it does everything that is understood on all these levels at the same time, although it only believes that it does what it does with difficulty or with love. In these two cases, in fact, she is much more attentive.
If we go through these levels, from the bottom to the top, we will say, to explain, that the first act of the soul is to animate; the second, feel; art is the third; virtue, the fourth; the fifth is tranquility; the sixth will introduce us to God and the seventh is contemplation.
It can also be said that these acts are performed in the body, for the body and around the body; for the soul and in the soul; for God and in God. Also to say that they are beautiful when performed in one another, for another, around another subject. For or in what is beautiful; for or in the beauty itself.
If you think you need some clarification about all these denominations, ask later. The reason I wanted to use all these terms was the fear that you would be disturbed to see these same ideas expressed and divided differently by one and the other and that for this reason you would condemn this one or that one. Is it not possible, with perfect justice and much penetration, to attribute to the same things names and divisions that vary infinitely? Each one chooses from this great number those that he deems suitable for his purpose.
Chapter 80
80 . By virtue then of the sacred and unalterable law by which he governs all that he formed, the sovereign and true God has subjected body to soul, soul to himself, and hence everything to him.
Nor does he ever abandon her in any of his actions, either to punish her or to reward her, because he thought it would be very beautiful if everything were as it is, for the truth to make order in nature, for there to be nothing shocking to anyone considering the whole, that punishments and rewards, because of the justice that decreed them, were added to the general beauty and universal order.
The soul has been given free will and those whose frivolous arguments work to deny it are blind to the point of not understanding that nothing forces them to publish so much nonsense and blasphemies. Free will, however, does not permit the soul in any way to disturb with culpable actions the divine order and general law, for it comes from the wise and invincible Lord of all creatures.
But, few people are able to understand these truths as they should be understood and only true religion can make them capable of this. The truth is, in effect, that the soul, after having separated itself from God through sin, is united with him through reconciliation.
True religion then, in the third act, takes possession of the soul and begins to lead it. In the bedroom she purifies her. She reforms it on the fifth. She introduces you to the sixth. She feeds her on the seventh. It produces these effects more or less quickly, according to each soul's merits. But whatever the dispositions of these souls, God, acting on them, does everything with perfect justice, perfect wisdom, and perfect beauty.
What is the consecration of very small children for?
This question is very obscure. We must believe, however, that these consecrations are not useless. Reason will find out when you get busy with it, just like so many other matters. For a long time, I confess, I have been asking you questions more to find out some day than to find out about them. It will be very helpful to examine them, provided godliness is a guide.
Chapter 81
81 . This being the case, who would have the right to regret that the soul was joined with the body to lead and direct it, for what would be the best way to establish the connection in this great and magnificent order of the universe?
Who would still like to ask what the soul becomes in this frail and mortal body, since it is justly condemned to death because of sin and it can perfect itself in virtue in this same body?
What will she become, leaving him, since the pain of death must necessarily subsist, if sin subsists and God Himself, that is, truth in person, will be the reward of piety and virtue?
So then, if you agree, let us finish this long conversation and let us apply ourselves, with all possible care and every possible religion, in fulfilling the precepts of God, for so many evils cannot be escaped in any other way.
If in some passages I spoke to you in a very obscure way, mark them in memory and dedicate a better time to return to them, for He who is above, the Master of us all, will not fail us, if we do. look for.
Evodius: I am so impressed by this speech that I would feel guilty if I interrogated it. But, if you think it convenient to finish here, if you thought it best to go through the last three questions very quickly, I surrender to your discretion, and henceforth, when it comes to examining such important matters, I will not only choose the time convenient to your occupations. , as I will also take care of preparing myself better.
Credits
De quantitate animae
© 388 Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis
© 2017 Teodoro Editor
Translated from De la grandeur de l'âme.
Translated by M. l'abbé Morisot In Œuvres Complètes de Sai70nt Augustin. Translations pour la première fois en français, sous la direction by M. Raulx, Bar-Le-Duc, L. Guérins & Cie éditeurs, 1863.
Cross-checked with La dimensión del alma
Translator: Eusebio Cuevas, OSA
And with Sant'Agostino – La dell'anima greatness