On the Making of Man 12–13

An examination of where the ruling faculty is to be thought to reside; in which there is also a natural account of tears and laughter, and a natural speculation on the communion of matter, nature, and mind. Let all conjectural idle talk be silent, then, of those who shut up the intellectual activity in certain bodily parts. Some of them place the ruling faculty in the heart; others say that the mind dwells in the brain, holding such notions on the strength of some superficial plausibilities. He who assigns the rule to the heart makes its local position the proof of his argument, because it seems somehow to hold the middle place of the whole body, so that voluntary movement is easily distributed from the middle to the whole body and so goes forth into activity. And he makes the sorrowful and angry disposition of man a witness for his argument, because such passions seem somehow to move this part along with them in sympathy. Those who dedicate the brain to reasoning say that the head has been built by nature like a citadel of the whole body, and that the mind dwells in it like a king, guarded all around by the senses as by messengers or shield-bearers. These too make a sign of such a supposition the fact that the reasoning of those whose meninges have been injured is displaced from its settled state, and that those whose heads are heavy with drunkenness fall into ignorance of what is fitting. Each of those who stand by these opinions also adds some more natural causes for this supposition about the ruling faculty. The one says that the movement of the understanding is akin to the fiery, because both fire and the understanding are ever moving; and since it is agreed that heat springs from the region of the heart, he says that the movement of the mind is blended with the mobility of heat, and so declares the heart, in which the heat is contained, to be the receptacle of the intellectual nature. The other says that the meninx (for so they name the membrane that encloses the brain) is a kind of foundation and root of all the sense organs, and by this he confirms his own argument, as though the intellectual activity were seated nowhere else than in that part on which the ear, fitted to it, strikes the sounds that fall upon it; and sight, grown together with the base of the seat of the eyes, makes its impression inward through the images that fall on the pupils; and the qualities of vapours are distinguished in it by the drawing in of smells; and the sense of taste is tested by the judgment of the meninx, which from close by has mixed in certain sensitive nerve-like outgrowths of itself, through the vertebrae of the neck, at the strainer-like passage, with the muscles there. For my part, I say it is true that the thinking part of the soul is often disturbed by the dominance of afflictions, and that reason is dulled in its natural activity by some bodily circumstance; and that the heart is a kind of source of the body’s fiery element, being moved along with angry impulses. And besides, that the meninx underlies the sense organs, as those who give natural accounts of such things say, enfolding the brain in itself and moistened by the vapours from it, I do not reject what is said, since I hear it from those who have given their time to anatomical studies. … the body, everything that is hindered from transpiration is pushed together into the hollows in the depth; hence, when the breathing organs are constricted by what surrounds them, the drawing of breath often becomes more violent by nature, which widens what was narrowed so as to open what had collapsed. Such a gasp we make a symptom of grief, calling it a groan and a sigh. Moreover, what seems to oppress the region about the heart is a discomfort not of the heart but of the mouth of the stomach, from the same cause, I mean the collapse of the passages: the vessel that holds the bile, under the constriction, pours that sharp and biting fluid into the mouth of the stomach. A proof of this is that the complexion of grieving people becomes sallow and jaundiced, as the bile, from the excessive pressure, spreads its own fluid into the veins. But the opposite affection too, I mean that of gladness and laughter, establishes the argument still more. For in some way the body’s passages are relaxed and loosened by pleasure in those who have been gladdened by some pleasant news. For as there, through grief, the fine and invisible exhalations of the passages close up, and, compressing the inner disposition of the organs, force up the moist vapour to the head and the meninges, and this, when much of it has been held in the hollows of the brain, is pushed out through the passages at its base to the eyes, the contraction of the brows drawing out the moisture in drops (and the drop is called a tear); so think with me that, from the opposite disposition, when the passages are widened more than usual, some air is drawn through them into the depth, and from there is pushed out again by nature through the passage of the mouth, all the organs, and especially the liver, as they say, pushing out such air together by a certain shaking and seething movement. Hence nature, contriving some ease for the passage of the air, widens the passage about the mouth, stretching the cheeks on either side about the breath. And the name of what happens is laughter. Neither, then, should the ruling faculty be reckoned to the liver on this account, nor should the seat of the mind be thought to be in the heart because of the boiling of the blood about the heart in angry dispositions; rather, these things are to be referred to the particular constitutions of bodies. We must think that the mind touches each of the parts equally, according to the ineffable principle of their blending. And if some put forward Scripture to us on this point, as bearing witness that the ruling faculty is in the heart, we will not accept the argument without examination. For he who mentioned the heart also mentioned the kidneys, saying, “God, who tries hearts and kidneys,” so that they must either shut up the intellectual faculty in both or in neither. And though I have been taught that the intellectual activities are dulled, or even become wholly inactive, in a certain disposition of the body, I do not make this a sufficient proof that the power of the mind is confined to some place, as though it were shut out of its proper space by inflammations arising in the parts. For such an opinion is bodily: that when a vessel is already occupied by something put into it, something else cannot find room in it. For the intelligible nature neither lingers in the empty spaces of bodies nor is pushed out by an excess of flesh. But since the whole body has been made like a musical instrument, just as it often happens with those who know how to make music but cannot show their skill because the uselessness of their instruments does not admit their art (for an instrument destroyed by time, or broken by a fall, or made useless by rust or mould, remains mute and inactive, even if it is blown by one thought to excel in the art of piping), so too the mind, passing through the whole instrument and touching each of the parts suitably for its intellectual activities, according to its nature, did its proper work in those that are in their natural state, but in those too weak to receive its skilful movement remained ineffective and inactive. For the mind is somehow naturally at home with what is in its natural state, and estranged from what has been displaced from it. And it seems to me that there is a more natural speculation on this point, through which one may learn one of the more refined doctrines. Since the most beautiful and most excellent good of all is the divine itself, toward which all things incline that have a desire for the beautiful, we say for this reason that the mind too, since it came to be according to the image of the most beautiful, itself remains in beauty as long as it shares, as far as is possible, in the likeness to the archetype; but if it should somehow come to be outside this, it is stripped of the beauty in which it was. And as we said that the mind is adorned by the likeness to the prototypal beauty, being shaped like a mirror by the form of what appears in it, by the same analogy we reckon that the nature governed by it is attached to the mind and is itself adorned by the beauty that lies beside it, becoming as it were a mirror of a mirror; and that the material element of our existence, about which the nature is seen, is ruled and held together by it. As long, then, as each holds to the other, the communion of true beauty passes through all in proportion, beautifying what is next by what is above it. But when some rupture of this good union occurs, or the superior conversely comes to follow the inferior, then the unseemliness of matter itself, when it is left alone without nature, is displayed (for matter in itself is something formless and unconstructed), and by its formlessness the beauty of the nature, which is beautified by the mind, is destroyed along with it. And so the transmission of the ugliness of matter passes through the nature to the mind itself, so that the image of God is no longer seen in the form of what was fashioned. For the mind, putting the idea of the good behind it like a mirror turned away, casts off the reflections of the shining of the good and takes the impress of the formlessness of matter into itself. And in this way the genesis of evil comes about, arising beside it through the withdrawal of the beautiful. Everything is beautiful that happens to be in affinity with the first good; whatever comes to be outside relation to and likeness with it is certainly without share in the beautiful. If, then, according to the account we have considered, the true good is one, and the mind itself has its being beautiful by having come to be according to the image of the beautiful, and the nature held together by the mind is like an image of an image, it is shown by these things that our material part holds together and is maintained when it is governed by the nature, but is dissolved and falls apart again when it is separated from what maintains and holds it together and is torn away from its union with the beautiful. And this happens in no other way than when the nature turns the opposite way, its desire not inclining toward the beautiful but toward what needs to be beautified. For it is entirely necessary that what is made like matter, which is destitute of its own form, should be transformed along with it into what is unseemly and without beauty. But these things have been examined by us by the way, following from the argument, having come in through our contemplation of the subject. For the question was whether the intellectual power is seated in some one part of us or extends through all equally. Since those who confine the mind to local parts bring forward, to establish their supposition, the fact that the understanding does not prosper in those whose meninges are in an unnatural state, the argument showed that in every part of the human compound in which each faculty naturally operates, the power of the soul equally remains inactive when the part does not remain in its natural state. And for this reason the speculation set out above fell into the discussion as a consequence, by which we learn that in the human compound the mind is governed by God, and our material life by the mind, when it remains in its natural state; but if it is turned aside from nature, it is also estranged from the activity of the mind. But let us return to where we began. In those who have not been turned aside from their natural condition by some affliction, the mind exercises its proper power; it is strong in those who are sound, and is powerless again in those that cannot contain its activity. For the doctrine about these things can also be confirmed by other arguments; and, if it is not burdensome to the ears of those already wearied by the discussion, let us treat these too briefly, as far as we are able.

An account of the causes of sleep, yawning, and dreams. This material and flowing life of bodies, always advancing by motion, has the power of its being in this, that it never ceases from motion. As a river flowing by its own impulse keeps full the channel through which it happens to be carried, yet is not seen with the same water always in the same place, but part of it has run on and part flows in after it, so too the material part of this present life is exchanged through a kind of motion and flow by the continual succession of opposites, so that it can never stand still from change, but, through its inability to rest, has an unceasing motion that alternates through like things. And if ever it should stop moving, it will certainly stop being as well. For example, emptying has succeeded fullness, and filling has come in again in place of emptiness. Sleep has relaxed the tension of waking; then waking has braced what was relaxed. And neither of these remains continually, but both give way at each other’s coming, nature thus renewing itself by the alternations, so that, partaking of each in turn, it passes without a break from the one to the other. For if the living creature were continually tense in its activities, this would cause a kind of breaking and tearing of the overstrained parts; and a continual relaxation of the body brings about a kind of collapse and dissolution of its structure. But to have each in moderation at the proper time is a power for the continuance of nature, which by its continual passing to opposite states rests itself in each from the other. So, finding the body braced by waking, nature produces a loosening of the tension by sleep, resting the sense faculties from their activities for a time, unyoking them like horses after the chariot races. A timely relaxation is necessary to the constitution of the body, so that nourishment may be spread without hindrance through the whole body by the passages in it, no tension blocking its way. For as, when the sun shines with warmer rays on the soaked earth, misty vapours are drawn up from its depth, so something similar happens in the earth that is in us, when the food is made to boil up within by the natural heat. These vapours, being naturally upward-tending and airy, and breathing toward what lies above, come into the regions of the head, like smoke seeping into the joints of a wall; then from there they are dispersed, exhaled into the passages of the sense organs, and through them sense is necessarily idle, giving way before the passage of those vapours. For the eyes are seized by the eyelids, as by a leaden weight (I mean such a heaviness) letting the lid down over the eyes. And the hearing, thickened by these same vapours, as if a door had been set against the organs of hearing, keeps quiet from its natural activity. And such an affection is sleep, when sense is at rest in the body … And for this reason, if the arrangement about the sense organs is constricted by the exhalation from within, but sleep is hindered by some need, the sinewy part, being filled with the vapours, is naturally stretched of itself, so that by the stretching the part thickened by the vapours may be thinned out, as people do who wring the water out of garments by twisting them hard. And since the parts about the throat are round, and the sinewy part abounds in them, when the thickness of the vapours must be driven out of these as well (since it is impossible to stretch a round part in a straight line unless it is stretched according to its circular shape), for this reason, when the breath is held back in the yawn, as the chin is hollowed downward toward the uvula and all the inner parts are stretched into the form of a circle, that sooty thickness held in the parts is breathed out with the passage of the breath. And this often happens after sleep too, when some of those vapours have been left in those places undigested and not breathed out. From these things, then, the human mind clearly shows that it holds to the nature: when the nature is in good order and awake, it too works with it and is moved; but when the nature is relaxed in sleep, it remains unmoved, unless perhaps someone should suppose that the fancies of dreams are a movement of the mind exercised during sleep. But we say that only the sensible and coherent activity of the understanding ought to be referred to the mind; while the fanciful nonsense of sleep we think is a set of phantoms of the mind’s activity, moulded at random by the more irrational form of the soul. For it necessarily happens that the soul, released from the senses by sleep, is also outside the activities of the mind. For the mind’s blending with the human being comes about through the senses; when the senses cease, then, the understanding too must be idle. A proof of this is that the dreamer often seems to be in absurd and impossible situations, which would not happen if the soul were then governed by reason and understanding. But it seems to me that, when the more honourable powers of the soul are at rest (I mean the activities of mind and sense), only its nourishing part is active during sleep; and certain images and echoes of what was done in waking, both by sense and by the understanding, which were impressed on it by the memory-form of the soul, are painted again as it happens, an echo of memory remaining in that form of the soul. In these, then, the man has fancies, not led by any connection to the intercourse of appearances, but wandering among confused and inconsequent illusions. And as in bodily activities, when one of the parts acts in its own way according to the power naturally set in it, a certain sympathy arises in the part at rest with the part that is moving, so in the soul too, if one part of it happens to be at rest and another moving, the whole is affected along with the part. For the natural unity cannot be wholly torn apart, even when one of its powers prevails in part through its activity. But just as, when we are awake and busy, the mind prevails and sense serves, yet the power that governs the body does not leave them (for the mind provides the food for the need, sense received what was provided, and the nourishing power of the body made its own what was given), so in sleep too the rule among these powers is somehow reversed in us; and when the more irrational prevails, the activity of the others ceases but is not entirely quenched. While the nourishing power is then hastening through sleep to digestion and occupying the whole nature with itself, the power of sense is neither entirely torn from it (for what has once grown together cannot be cut apart) nor can its activity shine out, being hampered by the idleness of the sense organs in sleep. By the same reasoning, since the mind is joined to the sentient form of the soul, it would follow to say that when this is moved it is moved with it, and when this rests it rests with it. As happens naturally with fire, when it is covered on every side with chaff and no breath fans the flame, it neither consumes what lies near it nor is wholly put out, but instead of a flame a kind of vapour passes out through the chaff into the air, while if it gets some breath it turns the smoke into flame: in the same way the mind, covered over during sleep by the inactivity of the senses, is neither able to shine out through them nor yet wholly quenched, but moves, as it were, like smoke, partly acting and partly unable to act. And as a musician who strikes the plectrum on the slackened strings of a lyre does not bring forth the melody in rhythm (for what is not tightened will not sound), but his hand often moves with skill, bringing the plectrum to the places of the notes, yet there is no sound except a kind of meaningless and disordered hum in the movement of the strings; so, when the instrumental construction of the sense organs has been relaxed by sleep, either the artist is wholly at rest, if the instrument suffers complete relaxation from some fullness and heaviness, or he will act feebly and dimly, since the instrument of sense does not receive his art exactly. For this reason memory is confused, and foreknowledge, drowsing under ambiguous veils, has fancies in images of what is pursued in waking, and has often revealed something of what is to come. For by the fineness of its nature it has some advantage over bodily coarseness in being able to see something of reality. Yet it cannot make what it says clear in a straightforward way, so that the teaching of what lies ahead is plain and evident; rather, the disclosure of the future is oblique and ambiguous, what those who interpret such things call a riddle. So the cupbearer presses the cluster into Pharaoh’s cup; so the baker imagined himself carrying baskets: each thought himself, in his dreams too, to be about the business he was busy with when awake. For the images of their accustomed occupations, impressed on the foreknowing part of the soul, enabled them at the time to divine what would come to pass, through such a prophecy of the mind. And if Daniel and Joseph and those like them were taught beforehand the knowledge of the future by divine power, with no sense clouding them, this has nothing to do with the present argument. For no one would reckon these things to the power of dreams, since in consequence he would certainly also think that the manifestations of God that occur in waking are not a vision but a sequence of nature working of its own accord. As, then, while all men are governed by their own mind, there are a few who are counted worthy of open communion with God, so, while the fancy in sleep arises naturally in all alike and equally, some, not all, share in a more divine manifestation through dreams; for all the rest, even if some foreknowledge of something arises from dreams, it arises in the manner described. And if both the Egyptian and the Assyrian tyrant were guided by God to knowledge of the future, what was arranged through them is something different: the hidden wisdom of the saints had to be made manifest, so that it might not pass through life useless to the community. For how would Daniel have been known to be such a man, if the enchanters and magicians had not failed to discover the vision? And how would the nation of the Egyptians have been saved, with Joseph shut up in prison, if the interpretation of the dream had not brought him out into their midst? These things, then, are something else and must not be reckoned with common fancies. But this ordinary sight of dreams is common to all, arising in many ways and many forms in our fancies. For either, as was said, the echoes of the day’s occupations remain in the memory of the soul, or often the state of the dreams is shaped by the particular dispositions of the body. So the thirsty man seems to be among springs, and the man in need of food at feasts, and the young man, when his youth is in its vigour, has fancies matching his passion. I also learned another cause of what happens in sleep while attending one of my friends who had been seized by frenzy. Weighed down by food given him beyond his strength, he cried out, blaming those standing around for having filled intestines with dung and laid them on him. And when his body was already hastening to sweat, he accused those present of keeping water ready to drench him as he lay, and did not stop crying out until the outcome explained the causes of such complaints. For suddenly much sweat poured over his body, and his bowels, relaxed, showed the heaviness in his intestines. What his nature suffered, then, when its sobriety had been dulled by the disease, being affected along with the affliction of the body, not insensible of what troubled it but unable to make clear what pained it because of the delirium of the disease, would probably, if the thinking part of the soul had been lulled not by sickness but by natural sleep, have become a dream to one so disposed, the flow of sweat being signified by water and the burden of the food by the weight of intestines. Many who are trained in medicine also think that the sights of dreams that come to the sick differ according to the differences of their afflictions: some to those with stomach complaints, others to those whose meninges are injured, others again to those in fevers; not the same to those troubled by bile and by phlegm, and others again to the plethoric and to the wasted. From this one can see that the nourishing and growing power of the soul has something of the intellectual sown together with it through the blending, which in a way becomes like the particular disposition of the body and is adapted in its fancies to the prevailing affliction. Moreover, for many, dreams are also shaped according to the state of their characters. The brave man has some fancies, the coward others; the dreams of the licentious are of one kind, those of the chaste of another; the generous man has fancies about some things and the greedy about others; it is never the understanding but the more irrational disposition in the soul that forms such fancies, moulding in dreams too the images of what it was occupied with in waking practice.