Hexameron 6.46–6.68

Since, then, we have learned that the soul is after the image of God, let us now consider whether the privilege “Let us make man” could be said of the soul. But hear this too, that the soul is called by the name of man. For it is written in Genesis: “And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were nine souls. All the souls, then, that entered Egypt with Jacob were seventy-five.” And much more fittingly the soul is called homo (“man”) in Latin or anthrōpos in Greek, the one taking its name from humanity, the other from the liveliness of looking, which without doubt belongs to the soul more than to the body. That saying in the Lamentations of Jeremiah rightly agrees with this: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.” He spoke of men and thought “soul” should be added; for it seeks better if it is alone, withdrawing itself from the mud of the body and from carnal desire. It is after the image of God, conformed to the Lord Jesus; and the saints are conformed to the Son of God. For so we read, as Paul says: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called saints according to his purpose; whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Whether, then, justification seems to you to be conferred according to the body or according to the soul, I ask you to answer. But you cannot doubt, since justice, from which justification comes, certainly belongs to the mind, not to the body.

You are painted, then, O man, painted by the Lord your God. You have a good artist and painter. Do not destroy the good painting, shining not with paint but with truth, expressed not in wax but in grace. You destroy the painting, woman, if you smear your face with artificial white, if you suffuse it with acquired red. That painting is of vice, not of beauty; that painting is of fraud, not of simplicity; that painting is temporary (it is wiped off by rain or sweat); that painting deceives and misleads, so that you neither please the one you wish to please, who understands that what pleases is not yours but another's, and you displease your author, who sees his work destroyed. Tell me, if over some artist you were to bring in another, who should cover the work of the former with new works, would not the one who knew his work had been adulterated be grieved? Do not take away the painting of God and assume the painting of a harlot, for it is written: “Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Far from it!” But if anyone adulterates the work of God, he commits a grave offence against the one above. For it is a grave crime to think that a man paints you better than God. It is grave that God should say of you: “I do not recognize my colours, I do not recognize my image, I do not recognize the face which I myself formed. I reject what is not mine. Seek him who painted you; have fellowship with him; take grace from him to whom you gave a fee.” What will you answer?

And if it is grave to adulterate the work of God, what shall we say of those who destroy the work of God, who shed human blood, who wrest away the life God has given, who say: “Let us take away the righteous man, because he is useless to us”? So it was well read today: “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests where they may rest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” The fox hides itself in a hole, the birds protect themselves in a nest; man does not hide in a hole but is deceived. The hole is a man's mouth; the deep hole is a man's breast, where harmful and fraudulent counsels and evil thoughts are. You walk, and another prepares a pit for you. You walk in the midst of snares which your enemies have hidden for you on the way. So look around at everything, so that you may escape like a young deer from the nets and like a bird from the snare. The young deer avoids the nets by the liveliness of its sight; the bird escapes snares if it betakes itself to the heights and flies over earthly things; for in the heights no one spreads nets, no one hides a snare. So the one whose citizenship is above is not usually caught as prey. But why do you wonder if man is deceived by man, when the Son of Man had nowhere to rest? And he indeed made man such that he might lay his head in him; but after there began to be in our breast not rest for the neighbour but a pit, after one began to weave snares for another whom he ought to help, Christ turned his head away from us, but afterward he preferred to offer it to death for us. Do not, then, be fraudulent, cruel, pitiless, so that Christ may lay his head in you.

And when he had made the monsters of the fish, when he had made the kinds of wild beasts and animals, he did not rest; but he rested after he made man after his own image. Hear in whom he rests, from him who says: “Or upon whom shall I rest but upon the humble and quiet and the one who trembles at my words?” Be humble, then, and quiet, so that God may rest in your affection. He who did not rest in beasts much more does not rest in a beastly breast. For there are beastly souls, there are wild beasts clothed in the form of men, of whom the Lord says: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” In these God does not rest, but he rests in human character, which God made after his image and likeness, when he made the man, who ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God. To this man's soul he says: “Behold, Jerusalem, I have painted your walls.” He did not say: “I have painted your belly”; he did not say: “I have painted your lower parts”; but he says: “I have painted your walls,” asserting that he has given man the strong defence of walls, so that if a wakeful watchman is on the walls, he can drive off the danger of a siege. So he says: “I did not give you pleasures, not the allurements of desires, not the incitements of luxury, not the coveting of another's beauty; but I gave you the foundations of walls, I gave you the lofty tops of towers, placed in which you need not fear to be stormed by the enemy, nor dread the terrible attempts of attacking legions.” Indeed you have it in Isaiah that the soul of the righteous, or the church, says: “I am a fortified city, I am a besieged city,” fortified by Christ, besieged by the devil. But one who has Christ as helper ought not to fear a siege; for it is fortified by spiritual grace and besieged by worldly dangers. So you have it said in the Song too: “I am a wall, and my breasts are towers.” The church is a wall; its towers are its priests, who abound both in the word on natural things and in the discipline of moral things.

Know yourself, then, beautiful soul, that you are the image of God. Know yourself, man, that you are the glory of God. Hear how you are glory. The prophet says: “Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me,” that is: in my work your majesty is more wonderful; in the making of man your wisdom is proclaimed. While I look at myself, whom you detect even in hidden thoughts and inner feelings, I recognize the mysteries of your knowledge. Know yourself, then, man, how great you are, and attend to yourself, lest at some time, entangled in the snares of the devil, you become the hunter's prey, lest you run into the jaws of that foul lion who roars and goes about seeking whom he may devour. Attend to yourself, so as to consider what enters into you and what goes out of you. I do not speak of food, which is swallowed and expelled, but I speak of thought, I mean speech. Let not the coveting of another's bed enter into you; let it not creep into your mind; let your eye not snatch the beauty of a passing woman, let your mind not shut it in; let your speech not weave the machines of temptations, not betray in deceit, not spatter your neighbour with slanderous reproach. God made you a hunter, not an attacker, he who said: “Behold, I send many hunters,” hunters not of crime but of absolution, hunters not of guilt but of grace. You are Christ's fisherman, to whom it is said: “From now on you will catch men alive.” So cast your nets, so cast your eyes, so cast your words, that you crush no one but raise up the one who is tossed about. “Attend,” he says, “to yourself.” So stand that you do not fall; so run that you reach the prize; so contend that you often win, because the crown is owed to the lawful contest. You are a soldier: scout the enemy carefully, lest he creep up on you by night. You are an athlete: keep your hands nearer to your adversary than your face, lest he strike your eye. Let your gaze be free, your step quick, so that you may throw down the one rushing on you, seize the one who yields, avoid the wound with a watchful look, drive it off with a strong encounter. But if you have been wounded, attend to yourself, run to the physician, seek the remedy of repentance. Attend to yourself, because you have flesh, which quickly slips. Let the divine word, the good physician of souls, come to you; let it sprinkle on you the oracles of the Lord as healing medicines. Attend to yourself, lest a hidden wicked word come into your heart; for it creeps like poison and brings deadly infections. Attend to yourself, lest you forget God, who made you, and lest you take his name in vain.

Attend to yourself, says the law, lest when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built houses and begun to dwell in them, and have been filled with your flocks, and have abounded in gold and silver and in all things that you have in abundance, you be lifted up in heart and forget the Lord your God. For what do you have, man, that you have not received? Do not all these things pass away like a shadow? Is not this house of yours dust and ruin? Are not all these things false? Is not the treasure of the world vanity? Are you not yourself ashes? Look at the tombs of men and see what will remain of you but ashes and bones, that is, of your body; look, I say, and tell me which there is the rich man and which the poor. Distinguish the needy and the powerful. Naked we are all born, naked we die. There is no distinction among the bodies of the dead, except perhaps that the bodies of the rich, swollen with luxury, stink more fully. What poor man have you heard of dying of indigestion? His want profits him; it exercises his body and does not burden it. Yet we have not heard of the righteous forsaken and his seed seeking bread, since he who works well on his land abounds in food. Attend, then, to yourself, rich man, because you too bear flesh like the poor man.

Attend to yourself, poor man: your soul is precious. Though the flesh is mortal, the soul is lasting; though you lack money, you do not lack grace; though your house is not large, your estate not wide, heaven lies open, the earth is free. The elements were given to all in common; the ornaments of the world lie open equally to rich and poor. Are the gilded ceilings of the most precious houses more beautiful than the face of heaven adorned with shining stars? Are the estates of the rich wider than the expanses of the lands? So to those who join house to house, villa to villa, it was said: “Will you alone dwell upon the earth?” You have a greater house, poor man, in which you cry out and are heard. “O Israel,” says the prophet, “how great is the house of God and how vast the place of his possession! It is great and has no end, high and immeasurable.” The house of God is common to the rich and the poor; yet it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But perhaps you grieve that no light of gilded lamps shines for you; yet the moon shines for you with a light much brighter. Perhaps you complain of the winter, because no … heated floors are warmed for you with fires; but you have the heat of the sun, which tempers the world for you and defends you from the winter cold. Or do you think those happy who are surrounded by crowds of following servants? But those who need other people's feet do not know how to use their own; in short, they are preceded by few and carried by many. Unless perhaps you marvel at this, that they abound in gold, silver, money: you see how much they abound in, you do not see how much they lack. You think it precious to recline on ivory couches, and do not consider that the earth is more precious, which spreads beds of grass for the poor man, on which rest is sweet and sleep pleasant, which the other, laid on a golden couch, seeks all night awake and does not find. Oh, how much happier than he, awake, are you at rest! Besides this, which is far more excellent: the righteous man who has been in need here will abound there, and he who has toil here will have consolation there; but he who has received good things here will not be able to hope for their reward there; for poverty keeps its reward, wealth uses it up.

Attend, then, to yourself, poor man; attend, rich man, because there are temptations both in poverty and in riches. So the wise man says: “Give me neither riches nor poverty.” And for what reason he asked this, he says: it is enough for a man to have what suffices him; for riches distend the mind with cares and anxieties as feasts distend the belly. So he asks that what is necessary and sufficient be appointed for him, “lest,” he says, “being filled I become a liar and say: Who sees me? Or, made poor, I steal and swear by the name of the Lord.” The temptations of the world, then, whether of the lowly or the lifted up, are to be fled, lest the poor man despair, lest the rich man grow insolent. For it is written: “When you have driven out the nations and begun to use their lands, do not say: My strength and …” So it is with the one who ascribes his wealth to his own merit, and so, as if approved, does not recognize his own error, but drags sin along with a long rope. For if he believed that the increase of money came either from chance events or from base cunning, there would be no room for insolence in things in which there is either no praise and empty labour, or a shameless greed that does not know how to set a limit to pleasure.

But now some things must be said about the very body of man, which who would deny excels the others in beauty and grace? For although the substance of all earthly bodies seems to be one and the same, and strength and size are greater in some beasts, yet the form of the human body is …, its stance upright and lofty, so that there is neither monstrous size nor a mean and abject smallness. Then the very build of the body is sweet and pleasing, so that there is neither a beastly vastness to cause horror nor a thin slenderness nor ….

And first of all let us recognize that the structure of the human body is like the world. For as heaven stands above air, lands, and sea, which are as it were the members of the world, so we see the head stand out above the other limbs of our body and be the most excellent of all, like heaven among the elements, like a citadel among the other walls of a city. In this citadel a kind of royal wisdom dwells, according to the prophetic saying that “the eyes of the wise man are in his head”; this is safer than the rest, and from it vigour and providence go out to all the members. For what would the strength and power of the arms, what the speed of the feet profit, unless the imperial power of the head, as of their prince, supported them? From this all things are either abandoned or upheld. What would bravery do unless it used the eye as guide to battle, what flight if sight were lacking? The whole body is a prison of dark squalor unless it is lit by the sight of the eyes. What the sun and moon are in heaven, the eyes are in man. The sun and moon are the two lights of the world; the eyes are like stars in the head, shining from above and lighting the lower parts with clear light, and they do not let us be wrapped in a kind of darkness of night. They are like sentries who keep watch by day and by night. For they are roused from sleep more quickly than the other limbs, and when awake look all around; for they are nearer the brain, from which all use of seeing flows. Nor let anyone think I have come down here too hastily in praising the eyes having left the top of the head, since it is not foreign to praise the whole in a part; for it is certain the eyes are a portion of the head. So the head explores all things with the eyes; with the ears it searches out hidden things, learns secrets, hears what is done in other lands.

And the very top of the head, how sweet and pleasing it is, how beautiful the hair, how venerable in old men, how revered in priests, how terrible in warriors, how comely in youths, how well-dressed in women, how soft in boys! One sex is becomingly long-haired, the other is not becomingly shorn. From trees one may judge what grace there is in the human head. In the head of the tree is all the fruit, there is all the beauty; its foliage either covers us from the rains or defends us from the sun. Take away the tree's foliage, and the whole tree is unpleasing. How great, then, is the adornment of the human head, which protects and clothes our brain, that is, the seat and origin of our senses, with the hair of the head, lest it be troubled by cold or heat! For there is the fountain of all things, and so where injury harms, there grace stands out.

What is a man without his head, since he is wholly in his head? When you see the head, you recognize the man; if the head is missing, no recognition can be present; the trunk lies ignoble, without honour, without name. Only the heads of rulers cast in bronze and faces modelled in bronze or marble are worshipped by men. Not without reason, then, do the other members serve it as their counsellor and carry it about as a servile burden, like a divinity, and bear it placed on high. From there, with a censor's power, it directs the obedience of certain servants where it wishes and decrees the commands each is to carry out. You may see each one serve its commander with unpaid service. Some carry, others feed, others defend or show their service; they obey as a prince, they wait on it as a master. From there a kind of watchword goes out: what region the feet must go to, what duties of service the hands are to carry out in completing works, what form of imposed discipline the belly is to keep in abstaining or eating.

It has a free forehead, open with bare temples, which by its appearance betrays the state of the mind, now glad, now sadder, now raised to severity, now relaxed to gentleness, which expresses the inner will by outward signs. A kind of image of the soul speaks in the face, the base of faith, on which daily the name of the Lord is written and held. Twin hedges of eyebrows follow it, which hold up defences for the eyes and weave grace about them, so that both the charm of beauty smiles and the care of protection stands by. For if anything falls from the head, dirt or the dust of sand or the dew of mist or the sweat of the moist crown, it is caught by the eyebrow, so that it does not trouble the tender sight of the soft eyes by injuring their keenness.

The eyes cling as it were to brows of mountains, so that they may be safer under the protecting peak of the mountain, and, placed as at the top, may look out over everything from a kind of higher stage. For they ought not to be low like the ears or the mouth and the inner recesses of the nostrils. For a lookout is always on high, so that the arrival of hostile troops coming can be scouted, lest they take by surprise the idle people of a city or an emperor's army. So too they forestall the incursions of robbers if scouts are placed on walls or towers or the brow of a high mountain, so that they may look down on the plains of the regions, in which the ambushes of robbers cannot lie hidden. On the sea too, if anyone guesses that he is approaching land, a scout climbs to the very top of the mast and the high horns of the yards and greets the land from afar while it is still invisible to the other sailors.

And perhaps you will say: if a higher lookout was necessary, why were the eyes not placed above the very top of the head, as they are at the top in crabs or beetles, in which, though no head appears, the necks and backs are higher than the rest of the body? But they have a strong shell, not so thin a membrane as we have, which can easily be injured and torn by brambles and other thorns. Other animals too have such a form that they can bring their eyes either to the neck, like horses or oxen and nearly all wild beasts, or to their wings, like birds, so as to enjoy safe rest. But for us the eyes had to be placed in the highest part of the body as in a citadel, and defended from every injury, even the smallest, two things which seemed to fight with each other. For if they were low for safety, their function would be hindered; if on the top, they would lie open to injury. So, lest anything be taken from the use of their function, or anything be lacking for repelling injury, he placed the eyes in that position where the eyebrows above give them no small protection, the cheeks, a little raised, add no small defence below, the nostrils hedge the inner part, and the swelling humps of the forehead and cheeks the outer part, and though joined by a compact framework of bones and made level, they seem to wall in the boundaries. Between these are the orbs of the eyes, both safe for caution and free for looking, and comely for grace, as shining like crystal. In their middle are the pupils, which perform the function of seeing. Lest these be harmed by the injury of anything falling on them, they are protected all round by hairs set close on this side and that, as by a palisade. So the prophet, asking safe help for himself, says: “Keep me, O Lord, as the apple of the eye,” so that the protection of God might be as anxious and safe for him as that with which he deigned to fortify the pupil of the eye by a very safe palisade of nature; and at the same time because innocence and integrity are violated when sprinkled with slight dirt and lose the gift of their grace, and so we must take care that no dust coming upon it besmears it and no mote of sin troubles it, because it is written: “First cast the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see to cast the mote out of your brother's eye.”

So, the experts in medicine say, the brain of man was placed in the head for the sake of the eyes, and the other senses of our body were set in a neighbouring dwelling for the sake of the brain. For the brain is the beginning of the nerves and of all the senses of voluntary motion, and from there flows the whole cause of the things we have mentioned. But many think that the heart is the beginning of the arteries and of the inborn heat by which the vital parts are animated and warmed. Of the senses the nerves are like the instrument, which, proceeding from the brain like cords and strings, are drawn off through the parts of the body to each of their functions. And so the brain is softer than the others, because it receives every sense. Hence too the nerves, which report everything the eye has seen, or the ear heard, or the nose smelled, or the tongue sounded, or the mouth tasted. For what is soft is fitter for sympathy, while what is hard, by some stiffness of the nerves, is more effective for action.

The function of hearing is also most excellent, and nearly equal in grace to sight. So the ears stand out more, so that they both display the beauty of ornament and catch whatever dirt or moisture flows down from the top of the head, and at the same time so that the voice, echoing in their folds, may enter the inner windings without harm. For if it were not so, who would not be stunned at every sound of a stronger voice, when even amid these aids we often feel ourselves struck by an unexpected shout? Then you may see them hold out like bulwarks against the harshness of cold and the blaze of heat, so that neither the cold penetrates the open passages nor too much heat burns them. The winding of the inner ears supplies a certain rhythm and discipline of modulation, since through the windings of the ears a kind of rhythm is produced, and the sound of the voice, having entered, is expressed with certain melodies. That the very windings of the ears hold fast the speech received, experience itself teaches us, since in the retreats of mountains, or in the recesses of rocks, or in the windings of rivers, the voice is heard sweeter and the echo resounds, returning pleasant answers. Even the wax of the ears is not useless, which binds the voice so that both its memory and its grace may be more lasting in us.

And what shall I say of the nostrils, which with a double and long opening provide a kind of cave for receiving smells, so that the smell does not pass through quickly but clings longer in the nostrils and through their passage feeds the brain and the senses? So a smell received breathes longer than speech resounds or sight appears. Often what you have smelled for a brief moment breathes in your nostrils all day. Through them too the waste of the head flows down and is drawn off without deceit or any offence to the body.

There is also no slight sense in touch, and in it a most pleasing pleasure and a sure judgment; for often we test by touch what we cannot test with the eyes.

The last function too is that of the mouth or tongue, which, however, supplies strength to all. For neither would the eyes have vigour for seeing, unless they received the strength of bodily substance, which is brought by food and drink, nor the ears for hearing, nor the nostrils for smelling, nor the hands for touching, unless the whole body were strengthened by nourishment. For we fail in strength unless we restore it by the constant use of suitable food. Indeed, those worn out by hunger are delighted by no pleasures of the senses, but, as if deprived of them, do not feel their charms.

Why should I describe the wall of the teeth, by which food is chewed and full expression of the voice is produced? What nourishment would delight without teeth? Indeed we often see the aged grow old more quickly for this very reason, that, having lost their teeth, they can take in no strength of solid food. So infancy is dumb, because it does not yet have the instrument of the voice.

The function of the tongue, too, is most precious not only in speaking but also in eating. For it is like the plectrum of one speaking and a kind of hand of one eating, which pushes the slipping food to the teeth and serves it. The voice, too, is carried by a kind of oarage of the air and borne through the void, and by its own force strikes the air, now stirs, now soothes the feeling of the hearer, calms the angry, raises the broken, comforts the grieving. Let us share song in common with birds; but with whom it uses a sound of voice, and what is rational, cannot be common with all animals, that is, the irrational. For the senses themselves are common to us with the other animals; yet the other animals do not use them with the same industry. The heifer too lifts her eyes to heaven, but does not know what she looks at; the wild beasts lift them, the birds lift them; sight is free to all; but to man alone belongs the interpreting understanding of what he sees. He looks with his eyes at the risings and settings of the constellations, sees the ornament of heaven, marvels at the orbs of the stars, understands also the different brightness of each, when the evening star rises, when the morning star, why the one shines in the evening, the other in the morning, what motions Orion has, what eclipses the moon, how the sun knows its settings and keeps the circuits of its course by solemn rule. The other animals also hear, but who besides man understands by hearing? Man alone, of all the kinds on earth, gathers the secrets of wisdom by hearing, meditation, and prudence; he can say: “I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me.” This is most precious, that man becomes the instrument of the divine voice and expresses with bodily lips the heavenly oracle, as in this: “Cry. What shall I cry? All flesh is grass.” He received what to say and cried out. Let those keep their prudence to themselves who describe the spaces of heaven and earth with a rod; let them keep their understanding to themselves, of which the Lord says: “And I will reject the understanding of the prudent.” Nor will I place here the rhythms of oratory … and the measures of music as wisdom. But I define that wisdom of which the prophet says: “The uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom you have made plain to me.”

And what shall I say of the kiss of the mouth, which is the sign of devotion and love? Doves too kiss, but what is that compared with the loveliness of the human kiss, in which the token of friendship and humanity shines out, in which the faithful affection of full love is expressed? So the Lord, condemning in the betrayer a kind of portent, says: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” That is: turning the token of love into a sign of betrayal and a mark of faithlessness, do you use this pledge of peace for the workshop of cruelty? With the oracle of the divine voice he rebukes the one who by a beastly service of the mouth brings death rather than offering the covenants of love. This too is chief, that men alone express with the mouth what we feel in the heart, and so we signify the thoughts of the silent mind by the speech of the mouth. What, then, is the mouth of man but a kind of sanctuary of speech, a fountain of discussion, a hall of words, a storehouse of the will? We have now finished with what is, as it were, the royal palace of the human body, which, though it is only one portion, yet gives form to the rest.