On the Greatness of the Soul 30–32

E. What is it, I beg you? A. That although sense is one thing and knowledge another, not being hidden is common to both; just as, though man and beast differ very greatly, to be an animal is common to both. For whatever appears to the soul is not hidden, whether through the balance of the body or through the purity of understanding; and the former sense has claimed for itself, the latter knowledge. E. Then that definition remains safe and approved? A. It does remain. E. Where then was I deceived? A. When I asked whether everything that is not hidden is known; for you assented to this question rashly. E. What then would you have had me say? A. That it is not straightway knowledge if something is not hidden, but only if it is not hidden through reason; but when it is not hidden through the body, it is called sense, if the affection of the body is not hidden through itself. Or do you not know that it seemed to some philosophers, and very acute ones, that not even what is grasped by the mind deserves the name of knowledge unless the grasp is so firm that the mind cannot be moved from it by any reasoning? E. I accept this most gratefully. But please, since what sense is has been explained, I think, most subtly, let us go back to that question for whose sake we had undertaken to explain this. For I had brought forward an argument by which I would prove that the soul is as great as its body, from the fact that it feels one touching it from the head to the tip of the big toe, wherever you touch; and from there we were carried, perhaps necessarily, to the definition of sense, so full of delays. So now show me, if you please, the fruit of so much work. A. There is a fruit indeed, and a very rich one; for all that we were seeking has been accomplished. For if sense is an affection of the body not hidden from the soul through itself—which we discussed longer than you wished, in order to hold it most firmly—do you remember that we found that the eyes perceive where they are not, or rather undergo there? E. I remember. A. You also granted, unless I am mistaken, and do not now doubt that it had to be granted, that the soul is much better and more powerful than the whole body. E. To doubt this I think impious. A. Come then: if the body can undergo something where it is not, because of a certain blending with the soul, as was found to happen to the eyes in seeing, do we think the soul, through which the eyes themselves have such power, so gross and sluggish that an affection of the body would be hidden from it if it did not lie there where the affection itself occurs? E. This conclusion moves me greatly, so greatly that I am altogether astonished, and do not find not only what to answer but even where I am. For what shall I say? That it is not sense when an affection of the body is not hidden from the soul through itself? What else will it be, if not this? That the eyes undergo nothing when we see? That is most absurd. That they undergo where they are? But they do not see themselves, and where they are there is nothing but themselves. That the soul is not more powerful than the eyes, when their power is the soul's own? Nothing is more insane. Or must it be said that it is more powerful to undergo where a thing is than where it is not? But if this were true, sight would not be more excellent than the other senses. A. What of this: when the eyes undergo some blow, or something falling into them, or a disturbance of their moisture, they undergo it where they are; and this is not hidden from the soul, and this affection is called not sight but touch; and yet the eye could undergo such things even in a lifeless body, where the soul, from which the affection would not be hidden, was absent. But what the eye cannot undergo unless the soul is present, that is, what it undergoes by seeing—this alone it undergoes where it is not. From this, to whom does it not appear that the soul is contained in no place? For the eye, which is a body, undergoes outside its own place only what it would never undergo without the soul. E. What then shall I do, I beg you? Can it not be concluded from these reasonings that our souls are not in our bodies? And if so, do I not know where I am? For who takes from me that I myself am a soul? A. Do not be troubled, but rather be of good cheer. For this thought and consideration invites us to ourselves, and, as far as is permitted, tears us away from the body. As for what has seemed to you, that the soul is not in the body of a living creature, although it seems absurd, there have not been lacking very learned men who held this, nor do I think they are lacking now; but, as you yourself understand, the matter is very subtle, and to discern it the edge of the mind must be well purified. Now consider rather what else you can bring forward to prove that the soul is long or broad or anything of that kind: for you feel that your argument from the sense of touch does not reach the truth, nor has any force to prove that the soul is spread through the whole body like blood. Or, if you now have nothing more to bring forward, let us see what remains.

E. I would perhaps have nothing, if I did not remember how much we used to wonder as boys at lizards' tails quivering when cut off from the rest of the body. I can in no way persuade myself that this movement happens without the soul; nor do I understand how it can be that the soul has no extent, when it can be cut off along with the body. A. I could answer that air and fire, which are held in the earthy and moist body by the presence of the soul so that a blending of all four elements may come about, when they escape upward and free themselves after the departure of that same soul, move those little bodies the more violently the fresher the wound from which they suddenly burst out; and that then the movement grows languid and finally ceases, as what escapes becomes less and less, until it has flown off entirely. But I am called back from this by what I took in with these eyes almost later than can be believed, but certainly not later than I should have. For when we were recently on a country estate in Liguria, those young men of ours who were then with me for the sake of their studies, lying on the ground in a shady place, noticed a little creature with many feet crawling—a long worm of a sort, I mean. It is commonly known, but what I am going to tell I had never observed in it. One of them, turning round the stylus he happened to have, struck the animal in the middle; then both parts of the body went off from the wound in opposite directions, with such speed of their feet and no weaker effort than if they were two animals of this kind. Terrified by this marvel and curious about the cause, they eagerly brought those living pieces to us, where Alypius and I were sitting together. And we, not a little moved, watched them run on the tablet in whatever direction they could; and one of them, touched with the stylus, twisted itself toward the place of the pain, while the other felt nothing and went about its own movements elsewhere. What more? We tried how far this would go; and we cut the worm, or rather by now the worms, into many parts: they all moved in such a way that, had we not done it ourselves and had the fresh wounds not been visible, we would have believed that so many had been born separately and each had lived on its own. But what I then said to those young men, when they looked at me intently, I am afraid to say to you now. For we have now gone so far that, unless I answer you otherwise with something that holds probably for my case, our great effort, fortified by so long a discussion, would seem to have been pierced through by one little worm and to have succumbed. I had instructed them to keep to the course of their studies as they had begun; so they would come more suitably some day to seeking and learning these things, if the matter should prompt them. But if I wanted to set out what I discussed with Alypius after they left, when each of us, according to his small capacity, recalled and conjectured and inquired, we would have to say far more than has been said from the very beginning with so many windings and turnings. Yet with you I will not keep silent about what I think. If I had not already known many things about the body, about the form that is in the body, about place, about time, about motion—things which are discussed most subtly and abstrusely because of this very question—I would lean toward giving the palm to those who say that the soul is a body. Therefore I warn you again and again, as I can, not to rush rashly into the books or the discussions of very talkative men who trust too much in these bodily senses, until you correct and make firm the steps that lead the soul to God himself; lest you be turned away from that most secret and most tranquil dwelling of the mind, from which it is now a pilgrim while it dwells here, more easily by studies and labors than by inertia and sloth. But now hear, against what troubles you so much, as I feel, not the strongest of many arguments, but the shortest; and not what seems to me more probable than the rest, but what I could choose as more suited to you. E. Tell me, I beg you, as quickly as you can. A. First I say this: even if the cause is completely hidden why these things happen when certain bodies are cut up, we should not straightway be so disturbed by this one thing as to think false so many things that seemed to you above clearer than light. For it may be that the cause of this is hidden from us, either because it has been concealed from human nature, or because it is known to some man who cannot be asked by us, or even because we ourselves are of such ability that he could not satisfy us if asked. Is it fitting, because of this, that whatever we have learned most firmly on the contrary side, and admit to be most true, should slip from us and be wrested from us? But if those things remain intact which, when questioned, you answered were certain and beyond doubt, there is no reason for us to fear this little worm childishly, even if we cannot give the cause of its vitality and multiplicity. For if you were firmly and unshakably convinced about someone that he was a good man, and you caught him at a banquet of robbers whom you were pursuing, and by some chance he died before you could question him, you would suppose any cause rather than crime and complicity for his association and banqueting with criminals, even if it always remained hidden from you. Why, then, since by so many arguments set out above, and most firmly approved by you, it has been made plain to you that the soul is not contained in place and therefore is of no such quantity as we see in bodies, do you not suspect that there is some cause why some animal lives in all its parts when cut up—but not that the soul could be cut up with the body? And if we cannot find it, should we not rather seek the true cause than believe a false one?

Next I ask you whether you think that in our words the sound itself is one thing and what is signified by the sound another. E. I think both are the same. A. Tell me, then, where the sound itself comes from when you speak. E. Who doubts that it comes from me? A. So the sun comes from you when you name the sun? E. You asked me about the sound, not about the thing itself. A. So the sound is one thing and the thing the sound signifies another; but you had said both are the same. E. Very well, I now grant that the signifying sound is one thing and the thing signified another. A. Tell me, then, whether, knowing the Latin language, you could name the sun in speaking if the understanding of the sun did not precede the sound. E. In no way could I. A. What? If, before the name itself comes from your mouth, wishing to utter it you keep yourself silent for a while, does there not remain in your thought what another will hear when the voice expresses it? E. It is plain. A. What? Since the sun itself is of such great size, can that notion of it which you hold in thought before the voice be seen to be long, or broad, or anything of the kind? E. In no way. A. Come now, tell me: when the name itself bursts from your mouth, and I, hearing it, think of the sun, which you thought of before the voice and with the voice itself, and which now perhaps we both think of, does not the name itself seem to you to have received from you, as it were, a meaning which it would carry to me through the ears? E. It does. A. Since, then, the name itself consists of sound and meaning, and the sound belongs to the ears, the meaning to the mind, do you not think that in the name, as in a living being, the sound is the body and the meaning, as it were, the soul of the sound? E. Nothing seems to me more alike. A. Attend now, whether the sound of the name can be divided into letters, while its soul, that is, the meaning, cannot—since this is what you answered a little before seemed to you neither broad nor long in our thought. E. I entirely agree. A. What? When that sound is divided into single letters, does it seem to you to keep that meaning? E. How can single letters signify what the name made of them signifies? A. But when the sound, having lost its meaning, has been torn apart into letters, do you think anything else has happened than that, the body being torn to pieces, the soul has departed, and a kind of death of the name has occurred? E. I not only agree, but so gladly that nothing in this discussion has delighted me more. A. If, then, you have seen clearly enough in this comparison how the soul need not be cut when the body is cut, hear now how the very pieces of the body can live when the soul has not been cut. For you have already granted, and rightly, I think, that the meaning, which is, as it were, the soul of the sound while the name is uttered, cannot in any way be divided by itself, while the sound itself, which is, as it were, its body, can. But in the name “sun” the division of the sound was made in such a way that no part of it kept any meaning. So we considered those letters, the body of the name being torn apart, as lifeless members, that is, as lacking meaning. Therefore, if we find some name which, when divided, can signify something even in its single parts, you must grant that not an altogether total death, as it were, has been brought about by such a cutting, since the members, considered separately, will seem to you to signify something and, as it were, to breathe. E. I will grant it entirely, and I urge you to sound out that very thing. A. Hear it: for while I attend to the neighborhood of the sun, whose name we treated above, Lucifer comes to my mind; which, split between the second and third syllables, signifies something in its first part when we say luci (“by light”), and so lives in this more than half of the body of the name. The last part too has a soul: for you hear it when you are told to carry something. For how could you obey if someone said to you, Fer codicem (“Carry the book”), if fer signified nothing? When luci is added to it, it sounds Lucifer and signifies a star; but when it is taken away, it still signifies something, and so it keeps, as it were, its life. But since there are place and time, by which all things that are perceived are occupied—or rather which they occupy—what we perceive by the eyes is divided through place, what we perceive by the ears through time. For just as that little worm occupied more place whole than any part of it did, so Lucifer takes up a longer stretch of time when said than if only luci were said. Therefore, if this part lives by its meaning in that diminution of time which was made when that sound was divided, though the same meaning was not divided (for it was not the meaning that was extended through time, but the sound), so we must think that, when the worm's body was cut, although a part lived in a smaller place by the very fact that it was a part, the soul was not at all cut, nor made smaller in a smaller place, even though it possessed at once all the members of the whole animal, stretched through a larger place. For it held not the place itself, but the body which was moved by it; just as that meaning, not extended through time, nevertheless gave life to and filled, as it were, all the letters of the name, each possessing its own duration and time. Be content meanwhile, I ask, with this comparison, by which I feel you have been delighted. But do not expect at present the things that can be argued most subtly about this, so that satisfaction is given not by comparisons, which often deceive, but by the things themselves. For so long a discussion must be concluded, and your mind must first be prepared by many other things you lack to look into and discern these matters, so that you may understand most clearly whether what is said by certain very learned men is so: that the soul by itself can in no way be divided, but can be divided through the body. Now hear from me, if you will, or rather recognize through me, how great the soul is, not in extent of place and time, but in force and power; for so, if you remember, we set out and divided the question long ago. As for the number of souls, I do not know what to answer you, since you thought this belonged to this question. For I would sooner say that it should not be asked at all, or at least should be postponed by you for now, than say either that number and multitude do not belong to quantity or that so involved a question could be resolved for you by me now. For if I say that there is one soul, you will be troubled, because it is happy in one person and wretched in another, and one thing cannot be happy and wretched at once. If I say it is at once one and many, you will laugh; and I do not easily find how to suppress your laughter. But if I say only that there are many, I will laugh at myself, and I will bear being displeasing to myself less easily than being displeasing to you. Hear, then, what I promise you can well hear from me; but what is so burdensome either to both of us or to one of us that it might perhaps overwhelm us, do not wish either to take up or to lay on. E. I yield entirely, and I wait for you to set out, as far as you think it can suitably be treated with me, how much the soul is capable of.