Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.9–7.26

But if an irrational soul is in some way the material from which the rational, that is, the human, soul is made, it is asked again from what the irrational soul itself is made, since it too is made only by the creator of all natures. Is it from bodily material? Why not this one too, then? Unless perhaps someone will deny that God can do by a short way what is granted can be done by stages, as it were. So whatever intermediate step is introduced, if body is the material of the irrational soul and the irrational soul is the material of the rational soul, without doubt body is the material of the rational soul. I know of no one who has ever dared to think this, except one who places the soul itself only in the class of some kind of body. Next we must beware lest it be believed that some passing of the soul from beast into man can take place, which is wholly contrary to truth and to the catholic faith, if we grant that an irrational soul underlies as material from which a rational soul is made. For it will follow that, if this soul is changed for the better and becomes a man's, that other is changed for the worse and becomes a beast's. Even the successors of certain philosophers were ashamed of this absurdity of theirs, and said that they had not held it but had not been rightly understood. And I believe it is so. It is as if someone were to take this view even from our Scriptures, where it is said, “Man, being placed in honor, did not understand; he was compared to senseless beasts and became like them,” or again where it is read, “Do not hand over to beasts the soul that confesses to you.” For not all heretics fail to read the catholic Scriptures, and they are heretics for no other reason than that, not understanding them well, they stubbornly assert their false opinions against their truth. But however the opinion of the philosophers about the cycles of souls stands or does not stand, it does not agree with the catholic faith to believe that the souls of beasts pass into men or those of men into beasts.

That men become like beasts by their way of life, human affairs themselves proclaim and Scripture bears witness. Hence the verse I mentioned: “Man, being placed in honor, did not understand; he was compared to senseless cattle and became like them”: but in this life, certainly, not after death. So he who said, “Do not hand over to beasts the soul that confesses to you,” did not wish his soul to be given into the power either of such beasts, the kind the Lord means we should beware of when he says that they are clothed in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves, or of the devil himself and his angels; for he too is called both lion and dragon. For what argument do the philosophers bring who think that the souls of men can be transferred after death into beasts, or those of beasts into men? This, certainly: that likeness of character draws them to it, the greedy into ants, the rapacious into kites, the cruel and proud into lions, the followers of unclean pleasure into swine, and the like. This is what they assert, and they do not notice that by this reasoning it can in no way happen that the soul of a beast is transferred into a man after death. For a pig will in no way be more like a man than like a pig; and when lions are tamed, they become more like dogs or even sheep than men. Since, then, beasts do not depart from the character of beasts, and those that become a little unlike the rest are still more like their own kind than the human, and differ far more from men than from beasts, these souls will never be the souls of men, if it is likeness that draws them. But if this argument is false, how will that opinion be true, since they bring nothing else by which it might be held, if not true, at least probable? So I myself would more readily believe, as even their later followers did, that those men who first put these things in their books wished it to be understood that in this life men become like beasts by a certain perversity and foulness of character, and so in a way are changed into beasts, so that by setting this disgrace before them they might call them back from depraved desires.

As for the stories told of things that happened, that some people seemed to remember in the bodies of which animals they had been, either they are false or this was produced in their minds by the deceptions of demons. For if it happens in sleep that a man, by a false memory, seems to remember that he was what he was not, or did what he did not do, what wonder if, by some just and hidden judgment of God, demons are allowed to be able to do something of the kind even in the hearts of those who are awake? The Manichees, however, who either think themselves Christians or wish to be thought so, are in this opinion of the transfer or cycle of souls worse and more detestable than those pagan philosophers, or any other vain men who think so, in that those philosophers distinguish the nature of the soul from the nature of God, whereas these, though they say that the soul is nothing other than the very substance of God and wholly what God is, do not shrink from calling it so shamefully changeable that, in their amazing madness, they think there is no kind of plant or little worm with which it is not mixed or into which it cannot be turned. Yet if they put out of their minds questions about the most obscure things, which, turned over by a carnal heart, must slip and tumble into false, harmful, and monstrous opinions, and held most firmly this one thing, which is naturally and truly implanted in every rational soul without the windings of any argument, that God is wholly unchangeable and incorruptible, their whole thousand-shaped fable would collapse at once, which in their vain and sacrilegious minds they have painted only out of a most shameful changeableness of God. Therefore the material of the human soul is not an irrational soul either.

What, then, is it from which the soul was made by the breath of God? Was it some body, earthy and moist? By no means; for from this rather the flesh was made. For what else is mud but moist earth? Nor is the soul to be believed made from moisture alone, as though the flesh were made from earth and the soul from water. For it is too absurd to think that the soul of man was made from that from which the flesh of fish and bird was made. Perhaps, then, from air? For breath belongs to this element; but ours, not God's. So we said above that this could fittingly be thought if we believed God to be the soul of the world as of one very great living being, so that he breathed it from the air of his body, as our soul breathes from that of its own. But since it is certain that God is above the whole body of the world and above every spirit he created, at an altogether incomparable distance, how can this rightly be said? Or perhaps, the more God is present to his whole creation by his unique omnipotence, the more he could make from air a breath that would be the soul of man? But since the soul is not bodily, and whatever is made from the bodily elements of the world must be bodily, and this air too is counted among the elements of the world, it ought not to be believed even if the soul were said to be made from the element of that pure and heavenly fire. For there have been some who asserted that every body can be changed into every body; but that any body, whether earthly or heavenly, is turned into a soul and becomes a bodiless nature, I know of no one who has held, nor does the faith hold it.

Next, if what physicians not only say but claim to prove is not to be despised: although all flesh plainly bears an earthy solidity, it also has in it something of air, which is held in the lungs and spread from the heart through the veins they call arteries; and of fire, not only the hot quality, whose seat is in the liver, but also the bright quality, which they show to be refined and to rise up to the high region of the brain, as into the heaven of our body. From there the rays of the eyes flash out, and from its middle, as from a kind of center, fine tubes lead not only to the eyes but to the other senses also, namely to the ears, the nostrils, and the palate, for hearing, smelling, and tasting; and the sense of touch itself, which is throughout the whole body, is directed from the same brain through the marrow of the neck and the marrow enclosed in the bones of which the spine of the back is composed, so that from there certain very fine little streams, which produce the sense of touch, spread through all the limbs.

Since, then, the soul receives through these messengers, as it were, whatever of bodily things is not hidden from it, while it itself is something so different that, when it wishes to understand either divine things or God or even itself altogether and to consider its own powers, so as to grasp something true and certain, it turns away even from this light of the eyes and, perceiving that for this task it is not only no help but even something of a hindrance, raises itself to the gaze of the mind: how is it something of that kind, when the highest of that kind is nothing but the light that flashes from the eyes, by which the soul is not helped except to perceive bodily forms and colors, while the soul itself holds countless things far unlike the whole class of bodies, which it sees only by understanding and reason, to which no sense of the flesh aspires?

Therefore the nature of the human soul is not from earth, nor water, nor air, nor any kind of fire; yet it governs the material of its grosser body, that is, a certain moist earth turned into the quality of flesh, through the finer nature of body, that is, through light and air. For without these two there is neither any sensation in the body nor any spontaneous movement of the body by the soul. And just as knowing must come before doing, so sensing comes before moving. The soul, then, since it is a bodiless thing, acts first on the body that is close to the bodiless, such as fire, or rather light, and air, and through these on the other, grosser parts of the body, such as moisture and earth (from which the bulk of the flesh is made solid), which are more subject to being acted upon than endowed for acting.

So it does not seem to me that “man became a living soul” was said for any reason except that he began to have sensation in the body, which is the surest sign of animated and living flesh. For trees too are moved, not only by a force pushing from outside, as when they are shaken by the winds, but by the motion by which everything belonging to the growth and form of a tree is worked from within, by which sap is drawn into the root and turned into the things of which the nature of plant or wood consists; for none of these happens without inner motion. But this motion is not spontaneous, like the motion joined to sensation for governing the body, as in every kind of animal, which Scripture calls a living soul. For if that other motion were not also in us, our bodies would not grow, nor put forth nails and hair. But if this alone were in us, without sensation and that spontaneous motion, it would not be said that man became a living soul.

Accordingly, since the front part of the brain, from which all the senses are distributed, is placed toward the forehead, and the organs of sensation themselves are, as it were, in the face (except the sense of touch, which is spread through the whole body; yet even this is shown to have its path from the same front part of the brain, a path which leads backward through the crown and the neck to the marrow of the spine, of which we spoke a little before, so that the face too has the sense of touch, like the whole body, besides the senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste, which are placed in the face alone): for this reason, I think, it is written that God breathed the breath of life into man's face when he became a living soul. For the front part is rightly put before the back, because the one leads and the other follows, and from the one comes sensation, from the other movement, just as deliberation goes before action.

And since no bodily movement that follows sensation takes place without intervals of time, and we cannot manage intervals of time by spontaneous movement except with the help of memory, three ventricles, as it were, of the brain are pointed out: one in front, toward the face, from which all sensation comes; another behind, toward the neck, from which all movement comes; and a third between the two, in which they show that memory is active, so that, when movement follows sensation, a man may not fail to connect what is to be done through having forgotten what he has done. They say these things are proved by sure signs, since when these parts themselves have been affected by some disease or defect, and the functions of sensing, or of moving the limbs, or of remembering bodily movement have failed, it has become clear enough what each of them does, and when treatment was applied it was found which function it served to restore. But the soul acts in these as in organs; it is none of them itself; but it gives life to and rules them all, and through them provides for the body and for this life in which man became a living soul.

So when it is asked where the soul itself comes from, that is, from what material, as it were, God made this breath which is called the soul, nothing bodily ought to come to mind. For just as God surpasses every creature, so the soul surpasses every bodily creature in the dignity of its nature. Yet it governs the body through light and air, which in the world too are the superior bodies and have more of the excellence of acting than of the bulk of being acted upon, as moisture and earth have; it governs it, as it were, through the things more like spirit. For bodily light reports something; but that to which it reports is not what it is; and the soul is that to which it reports, not the light that reports. And when the soul feels the afflictions of the body with distress, it is offended that its action, by which it is present to the body to rule it, is hindered when the body's balance is disturbed, and this offense is called pain. And the air poured into the nerves obeys the will, to move the limbs, but is not itself the will. And that middle part reports the movement of the limbs so that it may be held in memory; it is not itself memory. Finally, when these, its servants as it were, fail completely through some defect or disturbance, the messengers of sensation and the servants of movement ceasing, the soul departs, as having no reason to be present. But if they do not fail in the way that usually happens in death, the soul's attention is disturbed, as of one trying to restore what is slipping and unable to do so. And from the things in which it is disturbed one learns which part of its servants is the cause, so that, if possible, medicine may help.

For that the soul itself is one thing, and these bodily servants of it, or vessels, or organs, or whatever they may more aptly be called, another, is evidently clear from this: that often, by an intense effort of thought, it turns itself away from everything, so that it does not know many things set before eyes that are open and perfectly healthy; and if the effort is greater, it suddenly stops while walking, turning away its signal of command from the service of motion by which the feet were moved. But if the effort of thought is not so great as to fix the walker to the spot, but is still so great that the soul is not free to attend to that middle part of the brain which reports the movements of the body, it sometimes forgets both where it is coming from and where it is going, and unawares passes the farm it was heading for, the nature of its body being sound, but its own nature called away to something else. Therefore, as to these bodily particles of the bodily heaven, that is, of light and air, which first receive the signals of the life-giving soul, because they are nearer to the bodiless nature than moisture and earth, so that the whole mass is governed through their immediate service: whether God mixed them into or joined them to the body of the living being from this heaven poured around and above us, or made them too from the mud, like the flesh, is a question not to the point. For it is credible that every body can be changed into every body; but to believe that any body can be changed into a soul is absurd.

For this reason we must not listen either to what some have thought, that there is a certain fifth body from which souls come, which is neither earth nor water nor air nor fire (whether this more turbulent, earthly fire or that pure and bright heavenly one), but something else, lacking a customary name, yet still a body. For if those who think so mean by body what we mean, that is, any nature that occupies a space in place by length, breadth, and height, the soul is neither this nor is it to be believed made from it. For whatever is of that kind, not to say more, can be divided or bounded by lines in any part of it: and if the soul were subject to this, it could in no way know lines of the kind that cannot be cut lengthwise, which it nevertheless knows cannot be found in a body. Nor does the soul meet anything of this kind in itself, since it cannot fail to know itself, even when it inquires so as to know itself. For when it seeks itself, it knows that it is seeking itself; which it could not know if it did not know itself. For it seeks itself from nowhere else than from itself. Since, then, it knows itself seeking, it certainly knows itself, and whatever it knows, it knows as a whole. So when it knows itself seeking, it knows itself as a whole, and therefore it knows the whole of itself; for it knows nothing else but itself, as a whole. Why then does it still seek itself, if it knows itself seeking? For if it did not know itself, it could not know that it is seeking itself; but this is in the present; what it seeks about itself is what it was before or what it will be. Let it stop, then, for the present, suspecting that it is a body, because if it were something of that kind, it would know itself as such, since it knows itself better than it knows heaven and earth, which it knows through the eyes of its body. I pass over saying that that power of the soul which even beasts and the birds of the sky are understood to have when they return to their lairs or nests, in which the images of all bodily things are grasped, is in no way like any body; and surely that power ought rather to be like a body in which the likenesses of bodily things are contained. But if this is not a body, since it is certain that these likenesses of bodies are not only held there in memory but countless ones are also formed at will, how much less can the soul be like a body in any other power of its own! But if they call everything that is, that is, every nature and substance, a body in some other sense, this way of speaking is indeed not to be admitted, lest we find no way of speaking by which to distinguish the things that are not bodies from bodies; yet we need not labor too much over a name. For we too say that whatever the soul is, it is not of these four best known elements, which are plainly bodies, but neither is it what God is. But what it is, is not better said than “soul” or “spirit of life.” “Of life” is added because this air too is often called spirit. Although they have also called this same air soul, so that a name can no longer be found by which this nature can be properly distinguished, which is neither body nor God, nor life without sensation, such as can be believed to be in trees, nor life without a rational mind, such as is in beasts, but a life now lower than that of the angels, and one that will be what the angels are, if it lives here according to its creator's command. But where it comes from, that is, from what material, as it were, it was made, or from what perfect and happy nature it flowed out, or whether it was made wholly from nothing: even though this is doubted and inquired into, this at least is in no way to be doubted, that, if something existed before, what existed was made by God, and that the soul has now been made by God so as to be a living soul; for either nothing existed, or what exists now did not exist. But the part in which we were inquiring into its material, so to speak, from which it was made, we have now treated enough.

Now, if the soul did not exist at all, we must ask how we can understand the statement that its causal reason existed in the first works of the six days of God, when God made man to his image, which is not rightly understood except of the soul. We must beware, though, lest, when we say that God did not then create the very natures and substances that were to be, when he created all things together, but certain causal reasons of those that were to be, we be thought to be saying something empty. For what are these causal reasons according to which God could already be said to have made man to his image, when he had not yet formed his body from the mud nor made his soul by breathing? And of the human body, even if there was some hidden reason by which it was to be formed, there was also the material from which it would be formed, that is, earth, in which that reason can be seen to have lain hidden as in a seed; but what causal reason for making the soul, that is, for making the breath that would be man's soul, was first founded there when God said, “Let us make man to our image and likeness” (which cannot rightly be understood except of the soul), if there was no nature in which it might be founded? For if this reason was in God, not in a creature, then it had not yet been founded. How then was it said, “God made man to the image of God”? But if it was already in a creature, that is, in the things God had created all together, in what creature was it? Spiritual or bodily? If spiritual, did that creature do anything in the bodies of the world, whether heavenly or earthly? And was this reason lying idle in it before man was founded in his own proper nature, just as in man himself, once he leads his own life, the reason of begetting lies hidden and idle and does not work except through intercourse and conception? Or did that spiritual creature, in which this reason lay hidden, do no work of its own? And for what purpose had it been created? Was it to contain the reason of the human soul to come, or of the souls to come, as though these could not exist in themselves, but only in some creature already living its own life, just as the reason of begetting cannot exist except in natures already existing and complete? Then some spiritual creature was set up as the parent of the soul, in which the reason of the soul to come would be, a soul which does not come into being from it except when God makes it to be breathed into man. For even from man God alone creates and forms the offspring, whether as seed or as the child itself, through Wisdom, which reaches everywhere because of its purity, so that nothing defiled falls into it, while it reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly. But I do not know how it can be understood that some spiritual creature was created only for this purpose, a creature which would not be mentioned among the works of God made in those six days, when God is said to have made man on the sixth day, whom he had not yet made in his own nature, but still only by a causal reason in that creature which is not mentioned. For that creature ought rather to have been mentioned, which had been so completed that it was not still to be made according to a reason going before it.

Or perhaps, in the nature of that day which he founded first, if that day is rightly taken as intellectual spirit, God placed this causal reason for making the soul when on the sixth day he made man to his image, fixing beforehand, that is, the cause and reason according to which he would make him after those seven days, so that he may be believed to have created the causal reason of man's body in the nature of the earth, and that of his soul in the nature of that day? But what else is said, when this is said, than that the angelic spirit is a kind of parent of the human soul, if the reason for creating the human soul is founded beforehand in it in the way that the reason of his future offspring is in a man, so that men are the parents of human bodies and angels the parents of souls, while God is the creator of both bodies and souls, but of bodies from men and of souls from angels; or of the first body from earth and of the first soul from the angelic nature, where he had fixed their causal reasons beforehand when he first made man among the things he created all together, but thereafter men from men, body from body, soul from soul! It is hard to say that the soul is the daughter of an angel or of angels, but much harder to say it is the daughter of the bodily heaven; how much more, then, of sea and earth! Much less, therefore, was the causal reason of the soul founded beforehand in any bodily creature when God made man to his image, before in its own time he animated him, formed from the mud, by his breath, if it is absurd to believe that he founded the soul causally in the angelic nature.

Let us see, then, whether this may perhaps be true, which certainly seems to me more acceptable to human opinion: that God, in those first works which he created all together, created the human soul too, which in its own time he would breathe into the limbs of the body formed from mud, while of that body he created, among the things founded together, the reason causally, according to which the human body would be made when it was to be made. For we rightly understand “to his image” only of the soul, and “male and female” only of the body. Let it be believed, then, if no authority of the Scriptures or reasoning of truth contradicts it, that man was made on the sixth day in such a way that the causal reason of the human body was created in the elements of the world, but the soul itself was created, just as the day was first founded, and, once created, lay hidden in the works of God until in its own time he put it, by breathing, that is, by breathing into, into the body formed from mud.

But here again a question arises which is not to be despised. For if the soul had already been made and lay hidden, where could it be better off than there? What reason was there, then, for the soul, living innocently, to be put into the life of this flesh, in which by sinning it would offend him who created it, so that the hardship of toil and the torment of condemnation would rightly follow it? Or must it be said that it was inclined by its own will to govern a body, so that in this life of the body, since one can live in it both justly and unjustly, it would have what it chose, either a reward for justice or a punishment for injustice, so that this would not be contrary to the apostle's statement that those not yet born had done nothing good or evil? For that inclination of the will toward the body is not yet an act either of justice or of injustice, for which account is to be given at the judgment of God, when each will receive according to what he did through the body, whether good or evil. Why, then, should we not believe this too, that it came to the body at God's bidding, where, if it chose to act according to his command, it would receive the reward of eternal life and the company of the angels, but if it despised it, it would pay the most just penalties, either of long toil or of eternal fire? Or, because this very thing, having obeyed God when he willed it, is certainly already a good act, will it be contrary to the statement that those not yet born had done nothing either good or evil?

If this is so, we shall also admit that the soul was not first created in such a class of things as to foreknow its future work, whether just or unjust. For it is quite incredible that it could have been inclined by its own will to the life of the body if it foreknew that it would sin in certain things in such a way as to be justly punished with everlasting punishment. The Creator is rightly praised in all things, who made all things very good. For he is not to be praised only for those to which he gave foreknowledge, since he is rightly praised also because he created beasts, to which human nature is superior even in those who sin. For the nature of man is from God, not the injustice in which he has entangled himself by misusing free choice; yet if he did not have free choice, he would be less excellent in the nature of things. For we must think of a man living justly even without foreknowledge of the future, and there we must see how little the excellence of a good will is hindered from living rightly and pleasing God by the fact that, not knowing the future, it lives by faith. Whoever, then, would not want such a creature to exist among things contradicts the goodness of God; and whoever does not want it to pay penalties for its sins is an enemy of justice.