Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.14–12.23

For it is no great thing to recognize him when he has arrived at, or led people to, things that are contrary to good morals or to the rule of faith; for then he is discerned by many. But by that gift he is judged at once, at the very beginning, when to many he still appears good, whether he is evil. Yet both through bodily vision and through the images of bodily things shown in the spirit, good spirits instruct and evil ones deceive. But intellectual vision is not deceived; for either one who thinks something other than what is does not understand, or, if he understands, it is at once true. For the eyes have nothing they can do when they have seen a similar body which they cannot distinguish from another; nor has the attention of the soul anything it can do when a likeness of a body has been formed in the spirit which it cannot distinguish from a body. But the intellect is applied, asking what these things signify or what useful thing they teach, and either it finds it and reaches its fruit, or, not finding it, it keeps itself in suspense, lest by some ruinous rashness it slip into deadly error. And a sober intellect, divinely helped, judges what and how great are the things in which even to think something other than what is is not harmful to the soul. For when someone is thought good by good people even though he is secretly evil, it is not to the peril of those who think so, but rather to his own ruin, if there is no error about the things themselves, that is, about the very good by which anyone becomes good. Nor does it harm all human beings that, when they sleep, they suppose to be true bodies those whose likenesses they see in dreams. Nor did it harm Peter that, when he had been freed from his chains and was being led by an angel, it happened by a sudden miracle that he thought he was seeing a vision; or when in that ecstasy he answered, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common and unclean,” thinking that the things shown in the sheet were real animals. When these things are found to be other than they were thought when they were seen, we do not regret that they so appeared to us, and no hard unbelief or vain or sacrilegious opinion is charged against us. Therefore, even when the devil deceives with bodily sights, it does no harm that the eyes are mocked, if there is no error in the truth of faith and in the soundness of understanding which God teaches those subject to him. Or if he mocks the soul in spiritual vision with images of bodies, so that it thinks to be a body what is not, does it harm the soul at all, if it does not consent to a ruinous persuasion?

Hence a question sometimes arises about the consent of dreamers, when they seem to themselves even to lie with someone, either against their resolve or even against lawful morals. This happens only when things that we also think of while awake—not with the approval of consent, but as we also speak of such things for some reason—are recalled in dreams and so vividly formed that the flesh is naturally moved by them and emits through the genital passages what it has naturally collected; just as I certainly could not say this very thing unless I also thought of it. Further, if the images of bodily things that I necessarily thought of in order to say this were presented in dreams as vividly as bodies are presented to those awake, there would happen what could not happen without sin to one awake. For who, when he speaks and, as the needs of discourse require, says something about his own intercourse, could not think of what he is saying? Further, when that very fantasy which occurs in the thought of the speaker is so vividly formed in the vision of the dreamer that it is not distinguished from a true union of bodies, the flesh is at once moved and there follows what usually follows that movement; though this happens as much without sin as what is said by one awake without sin, which in order to be said was undoubtedly thought of. Nevertheless, because of the good disposition of the soul, which, cleansed by a better desire, kills many desires that do not pertain to the natural movement of the flesh—which the chaste restrain and rein in while awake, but cannot while asleep, because they do not have in their power what vivid bodily image, indistinguishable from a body, is presented to them—because of that good disposition of the soul, then, some of its merits shine out even in dreams. For even when asleep Solomon preferred wisdom to all things and, neglecting the rest, asked the Lord for it; and, as Scripture testifies, this pleased the Lord, and he did not delay a good reward for a good desire.

This being so, the sense of the body pertains to bodily things seen; it is distributed through five channels, as it were, of differing strength, since that which is subtlest in the body and therefore nearer to the soul than the rest, namely light, is first diffused alone through the eyes and darts out in the rays of the eyes to behold visible things; then, by a certain mixture, first with pure air, second with misty and cloudy air, third with a more corporeal moisture, fourth with earthy grossness, it produces the five senses together with the sense of the eyes itself, where it excels alone—as I remember having discussed in the fourth and again in the seventh book. Now this heaven visible to the eyes, from which the luminaries and stars shine, is certainly more excellent than all the bodily elements, just as the sense of the eyes excels in the body. But since every spirit is without doubt more excellent than every body, it follows that, not by position in place but by dignity of nature, the spiritual nature is more excellent than this bodily heaven, even that spiritual nature in which images of bodily things are formed. Here something wonderful arises: although spirit is prior to body, and the image of a body is posterior to the body, yet because what is later in time comes about in what is prior by nature, the image of a body in the spirit is more excellent than the body itself in its own substance. Nor indeed should it be thought that the body produces anything in the spirit, as though the spirit were subject to the body as its maker in the manner of matter. For in every way the maker is more excellent than the thing from which he makes something; and in no way is body more excellent than spirit; on the contrary, plainly spirit is more excellent than body. So although we first see some body that we had not seen before, and from then its image begins to be in our spirit, by which we remember it when it is absent, yet it is not the body that makes this image of it in the spirit, but the spirit itself in itself, with a wonderful speed which is ineffably far from the slowness of the body; the image of which, as soon as it has been seen by the eyes, is formed in the spirit of the one seeing without the interval of any point of time. Likewise in hearing, unless the spirit at once formed in itself the image of the sound perceived by the ears and kept it in memory, one would not know whether the second syllable was the second, since the first would certainly no longer exist, having passed away after striking the ear. And so all use of speech, all the sweetness of singing, finally every bodily movement in our actions would fall apart and perish and achieve no progress, if the spirit did not hold in memory the past movements of the body, to which to connect the following ones in acting; and it certainly holds them only as images made by itself in itself. Even images of future movements go before the completion of our actions. For what do we do through the body that the spirit has not anticipated by thinking, first seeing in itself and in a way arranging the likenesses of all visible works?

How these spiritual likenesses of bodily things in our soul become known even to unclean spirits, or what hindrance our soul suffers from this earthly body so that we cannot see them in one another's spirit, is difficult to find out and explain. Yet it has been established among us by the most certain evidence that people's thoughts have been declared by demons; yet if they could discern the inner beauty of the virtues in people, they would not tempt them; just as the devil, if he could have discerned that noble and wonderful patience in Job, would certainly not have wished to be overcome by the one he tempted. As for their announcing things that have already happened somewhere far away, which are confirmed as true after some days, this is no wonder. For they can do this not only by a keenness in discerning even bodily things incomparably superior to ours, but also by the wonderful speed of their own bodies, which are certainly far subtler. We have also learned that a man who was suffering from an unclean spirit, while he was at home, used to say when a presbyter had set out to come to him from twelve miles away, and through all the places on the journey where he was, and how near he was coming, and when he was entering the estate and the house and the bedroom, until he stood in his sight. All this, even though the sufferer did not discern it with his eyes, he would nonetheless not have declared so truly unless he discerned it in some way. He was feverish and said these things as if in delirium. And perhaps he really was delirious, but because of these things he was thought to be suffering from a demon. He took no nourishing food from his own family, but only from that presbyter. He even resisted his own family violently, as far as he was able; only when that presbyter came was he quiet; to him alone he was submissive and answered submissively. Yet that estrangement of mind, or demon, did not yield even to that presbyter until he was healed of the fever, as the delirious usually are healed; nor did he ever suffer anything of the kind afterwards. We also know without doubt that a delirious man foretold the future death of a certain woman, not indeed in the manner of divining, but as though recalling something done and past. For when she was mentioned in his presence, he said, “She is dead; I saw her carried out; they passed this way with her body,” when she was alive and well; but a few days later she died suddenly and was carried out by the place he had foretold. There was also with us a boy who at the beginning of puberty suffered most acute pain in the genitals, the physicians being quite unable to recognize what it was, except that the member itself was drawn back inward, so that it could not appear even when the foreskin, which hung down to an immoderate length, was cut off, and afterwards was found only with difficulty. A sticky, acrid fluid oozing out burned the testicles and groin. But he did not suffer the sharp pain continuously; when he did suffer it, he wailed vehemently, tossing his limbs, with his mind perfectly sound, as usually happens in the torments of bodily pain. Then, in the midst of his cries, he would be snatched away from all his senses and would lie with eyes open, seeing none of those standing around, not moving at any pinching. After a while, as if waking and no longer in pain, he would tell what he had seen. Then, after a few days, he would suffer the same things. In all, or nearly all, his visions he said he saw two persons, one older, the other a boy, by whom were said or shown to him the things he reported having heard and seen. One day he saw the joy of the godly singing psalms in a wonderful light, and the various and most terrible punishments of the ungodly in darkness, those two leading him and showing him and suggesting the desert of the happiness of the one and the unhappiness of the other. He saw this on the Lord's day of Easter, after he had felt no pain throughout Lent, when before he had scarcely been spared for an interval of three days. At the very beginning of Lent he had seen those two promising him that for forty days he would feel no pain; afterwards they themselves gave him, as it were, medical advice, that the excessive length of his foreskin should be cut off; when this was done he was free from pain for a long time. When he again suffered pain in the same way and began to see similar things, he received advice from them again, that he should go into the sea up to his groin and after some delay come out; and they promised that from then on he would not suffer that violent pain, but only the trouble of that sticky fluid; and so it followed. Nor did he ever afterwards suffer any such turning of the mind from the senses, or see any such thing, as before, when in the midst of his pains and dreadful cries he would suddenly fall silent and be snatched away. Afterwards, however, when the physicians treated and healed the rest, he did not persevere in his resolve to holy life.

If anyone can track down the causes and modes of these visions and divinations and grasp them with certainty, I would rather listen to him than be expected to discourse on them myself. Yet what I think I will not hide—so that the learned may not laugh at me as if I were asserting, nor the unlearned receive me as if I were teaching, but both may take me as discussing and inquiring rather than knowing. I compare all these visions with the visions of dreamers. For just as these are sometimes false and sometimes true, sometimes disturbed and sometimes calm, and the true ones themselves sometimes entirely like the future events or plainly stated, sometimes foretold by obscure significations and figurative expressions, as it were, so too are all those. But people love to marvel at what they have not experienced and to seek the causes of unusual things, while they mostly do not care to know everyday things of the same kind, often of even more hidden origin. For just as with words, that is, the signs we use in speaking, when they hear an unusual word they first ask what it is, that is, what it means; and when they know this, they then ask where it comes from, though they are ignorant, without concern, of so many words they have in daily use, as to where they come from; so when something unusual happens in things, whether bodily or spiritual, they anxiously inquire into its causes and reason and demand that teachers render them an account. When someone asks me, for example, what catus means, and I answer “prudent” or “sharp,” and that does not satisfy him but he goes on to ask where catus comes from, I usually ask in turn where acutus comes from. Of this he was nonetheless ignorant, but because it was a familiar word he was content not to know its origin; but because the other sounded new in his ears, he thinks he hardly knows what it means unless he also finds out where it comes from. So whoever asks me where the things seen in ecstasy, resembling bodily things, come from—which rarely happens to the soul—I ask in turn where the things seen by those asleep come from, which the soul experiences daily, and no one cares, or cares much, to inquire into that. As if the nature of such visions were less wonderful because it is daily, or less worth caring about because it belongs to everyone! Or if those who do not inquire into these do right, they would do more rightly not to be curious about those either. For my part, I marvel far more, and am most of all amazed, at the speed and ease with which the soul fabricates in itself images of bodies it has seen through the eyes of the body, than at the visions of dreamers or even of those in ecstasy. But whatever the nature of these things seen, it is beyond doubt not a body. Whoever is not satisfied to know this, let him ask others where they come from; I confess I do not know.

This much, at least, can be gathered from the experience of examples. Just as pallor, blushing, trembling, or even disease in bodies sometimes has its causes from the body and sometimes from the soul—from the body when some fluid spreads or food or something else is introduced into the body from outside; from the soul when it is disturbed by fear or confused by shame or angry or in love or something of the kind; and not without reason, if what animates and rules the body also agitates it more vehemently when it is itself moved more vehemently—so too it happens to the soul itself, that it passes into visions which are not reported to it through the senses of the body but through an incorporeal substance, and passes so that it does not distinguish whether they are bodies or likenesses of bodies, sometimes from the body and sometimes from the spirit. From the body, either by natural alternation, as are the visions of dreamers—for sleeping comes to a man from the body—or through some bad health, when the senses are disturbed, as when the delirious see at once both bodies and things like bodies as if they too were present before their eyes; or when the senses are entirely shut off, as people who have fallen gravely ill, when some disease grows worse, being long absent though the body is present, and then restored to human company, have said that they saw many things. From the spirit, when with a body entirely sound and whole people are snatched into rapture, either in such a way that they see bodies through the senses of the body and in the spirit certain likenesses which they do not distinguish from bodies, or in such a way that they are wholly turned away from the senses of the flesh and, perceiving nothing at all through them, dwell by that spiritual vision among likenesses of bodies. But when an evil spirit seizes people into these things, it makes them demoniacs, or the possessed, or false prophets; when a good spirit does so, it makes believers speaking mysteries, or, when understanding is also added, true prophets, or people who see and tell for a time what must be shown through them.

But when the cause of seeing such things is from the body, it is not the body that presents them; for it does not have the power to form anything spiritual. Rather, when the path of attention from the brain, by which the manner of perceiving is directed, is lulled or disturbed or even shut off, the soul itself, which cannot by its own movement cease from this work, since through the body it is not allowed, or not fully allowed, to perceive bodily things or to direct the force of its attention to bodily things, produces likenesses of bodily things in the spirit or beholds them presented to it. And if it produces them itself, they are only fantasies; but if it beholds them presented, they are showings. Finally, when the eyes are diseased or destroyed, since the cause is not in the seat of the brain, from which the attention of perceiving is directed, visions of this kind do not occur, though an obstacle to discerning bodily things arises from the body. For the blind see something more when asleep than when awake; for in those asleep the path of perceiving in the brain, which leads the attention to the eyes, is lulled, and so the attention itself, turned to something else, discerns the sights of dreams as though bodily forms were present, so that the sleeper seems to himself to be awake and thinks he is beholding not things like bodies but bodies themselves. But when the blind are awake, the attention of seeing is led along those paths, and when it has come to the place of the eyes it is not thrust out but remains there, so that they perceive that they are awake and are rather in darkness when awake, even by day, than when asleep, whether by day or by night. For many who are not blind also sleep with their eyes open, seeing nothing through them, yet not on that account seeing nothing, since they discern the sights of dreams by the spirit; but if they are awake with their eyes closed, they are present neither to the visions of sleepers nor to those of the waking. Yet it makes so much difference that the path of perceiving, neither lulled nor disturbed nor shut off, reaches from the brain to their eyes and leads the soul's attention right up to the doors of the body, though closed, that images of bodies are indeed thought of, but are in no way taken for the bodies that are perceived through the eyes. So much does it matter where the hindrance to perceiving bodily things occurs, when it occurs in the body. For if it occurs only at the entrances and, as it were, doors of the senses, as in the eyes, the ears, and the other senses of the body, only the perception of bodily things is hindered; but the soul's attention is not turned to something else in such a way that it takes images of bodies for bodies. But if the cause is within, in the brain, from which the paths are directed to perceive what is outside, then the very vessels of attention are lulled or disturbed or shut off, by which the soul strives to look at or perceive what is outside. And since it does not lose this striving, it forms likenesses so vividly that, unable to distinguish images of bodily things from bodily things, it does not know whether it is among the former or the latter; and when it does know, it knows in a very different way than when likenesses of bodies are turned over in thought or occur to it; a way that cannot be grasped at all except by those who have experienced it. Hence it was that, while asleep, I knew that I was seeing in dreams, and yet I did not distinguish the likenesses of bodily things that I saw from bodily things themselves in the way we usually distinguish them when thinking of them, even with eyes closed or in darkness. So much does it matter whether the soul's attention is led right up to the senses, though closed, or, some cause arising in the brain itself from which it strives toward them, is turned to something else; so that, although the soul sometimes knows that it is discerning not bodies but likenesses of bodies, or, less instructed, thinking them to be bodies themselves, perceives that it sees them not with the body but with the spirit, it is still far from the vividness with which things are presented to its body. By this the blind too know that they are awake, when they distinguish with sure knowledge the likenesses of bodies they think of from the bodies they cannot see.

But when, with the body sound and the senses not lulled by sleep, the soul is snatched by some hidden spiritual work into those sights that are like bodily things, the nature of the things seen is not different just because the mode is different; since even among those causes which arise from the body there is certainly a difference, and sometimes an opposite one. For the delirious, rather than by sleeping, have the paths of perceiving in the head disturbed so as to see such things as dreamers see, whose attention is turned away in sleep from the waking sense and turned to seeing these things. Although, then, the one happens not by sleeping and the other by sleeping, the things seen are not of any other kind than of the nature of the spirit, of which or in which the likenesses of bodies are formed. So, although the cause of the estranged attention is different when, with the body of a waking person sound, the soul is snatched by some hidden spiritual power so as to see in the spirit likenesses of bodily things formed in place of bodies, the nature of the things seen is still the same. For it cannot be said that when the cause is in the body, then the soul turns over images of bodies from itself without any foreknowledge of the future, as it usually does in thinking, but that when it is taken up by a spirit to see them, these are shown divinely; since Scripture plainly says, “I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and young men shall see visions, and old men shall dream dreams,” attributing both to divine operation; and, “An angel of the Lord appeared to a man in sleep, saying, Do not fear to take Mary your wife”; and again, “Take the child and go into Egypt.”

So I do not think that the spirit of a man is taken up by a good spirit to see these images unless they signify something. But when the cause is in the body, so that the human spirit is directed to beholding them more vividly, we must not believe that they always signify something; they signify, however, when they are inspired by a showing spirit, whether to one asleep or to one suffering something else from the body so as to be estranged from the senses of the flesh. We know also that to people who are awake and afflicted by no disease nor stirred by frenzy, thoughts have been introduced by some hidden prompting, by uttering which they divined; not only when they were doing something else, as the high priest Caiaphas prophesied though his intention had no will to prophesy, but even when they undertook to say something in the manner of divining. For certain young men, travelling as strangers, in fun and to deceive, pretended to be astrologers, though entirely ignorant even whether the signs were said to be twelve. When they saw their host marvelling at what they said and testifying that it was most true, they went on more boldly to more. And he, testifying to everything, marvelled. Finally he asked them about the safety of his son, whom he had long missed in his absence and about whom he was anxious that something might have happened to him, because he was unexpectedly delayed. They, not caring what truth would be known after their departure, so long as they made the man happy for the present, being about to set out, answered that he was safe and approaching and would come that very day on which they were speaking. For they did not fear that, when the whole day had passed, he would follow them the next day to refute them. In short: while they were already preparing to leave, behold, suddenly, while they were still there, he came. Again, another man was dancing before a musician, where there were many idols, during some festival of the pagans; he was not seized by any spirit, but in playful imitation was mimicking the possessed, as those standing around and watching knew. For it was the custom that, when the sacrifices had been completed before the meal and the frenzied devotees had been worked up, if any young men wished to play in that manner after the meal, no one was prevented. So while dancing, when silence had been made for him, joking and surrounded by the laughing crowd, he foretold that in the coming night a man would be killed by a lion in the wood that was nearby, and that at daybreak the crowd would flock to see his corpse and desert the place of that festival. And it happened, though it had been clear enough to all who were present, in all his movements, that he had said this playing and joking, with his mind nowhere disturbed or estranged; he himself marvelling at what happened all the more, the better he knew with what intention and in what tone he had uttered it. In what way these visions come into a man's spirit—whether they are first formed there, or are introduced already formed and discerned by some kind of conjunction, so that angels show to human beings their own thoughts and the likenesses of bodily things which they preform in their spirit by knowledge of the future; just as they themselves see our thoughts, not with eyes, since they see not by a body but by the spirit; yet with this difference, that they know ours even if we do not wish it, while we cannot know theirs unless they are shown, because, I think, they have it in their power to hide them by spiritual means, just as we hide our bodies by interposing obstacles so that they are not seen by others' eyes—and what happens in our spirit, so that sometimes signifying images alone are discerned but it is not known whether they signify anything, sometimes they are perceived to signify something but what they signify is not known, and sometimes, by a fuller showing as it were, the human soul sees both the images themselves with the spirit and what they signify with the mind: all this is most difficult to know and, even if we already knew it, most laborious to discuss and explain.

What I think it enough to point out now is this: it is certain that there is in us a certain spiritual nature in which likenesses of bodily things are formed: whether when we touch some body with a sense of the body and its likeness is at once formed in the spirit and stored in memory; or when we think of absent bodies already known, so that from them a certain spiritual sight is formed, which were already in the spirit even before we thought of them; or when we behold likenesses of bodies we do not know but do not doubt exist, not as they are but as they occur to us; or when we think at will or by opinion of other things that either do not exist or are not known to exist; or when, from wherever, without our doing or willing it, various forms of likenesses of bodies turn over in the soul; or when, about to do something bodily, we arrange the very things that will be in that action and go ahead of them all in thought; or when, already in the act itself, whether we are speaking or doing, all bodily movements, so that they can be carried out, are anticipated by their likenesses within in the spirit—for not even the shortest syllable would have sounded in its order unless it had been foreseen; or when dreams are seen by sleepers, signifying nothing or something; or when, the inner paths of perceiving disturbed by bodily ill health, the spirit so mingles images of bodies with true bodies that they can scarcely or not at all be told apart, and either signify something or arise without any signification; or when some disease or bodily pain grows heavier and shuts off within the paths by which the soul's attention was thrust out and strove to perceive through the flesh, and, the spirit being withdrawn more deeply than in sleep, images of bodily things arise or are shown, either signifying something or appearing without any signification; or when, with no cause arising from the body, but some spirit taking up and snatching it, the soul is lifted to see likenesses of bodies of this kind, mingling bodily sights with them, when it is also using the senses of the body at the same time; or when, a spirit so taking it up, it is estranged and turned away from every sense of the body, so that it is held by likenesses of bodies alone in spiritual vision, where I do not know whether any things can be seen that signify nothing.