On the Making of Man 28–29

To those who say that souls existed before bodies, or conversely that bodies were formed before souls; in which there is also a refutation of the fables about transmigration of souls. Perhaps it is not outside the treatise before us to examine the question disputed in the churches about soul and body. For some of those before us, by whom the treatise On First Principles was composed, thought it right to say that souls pre-exist, like a people in a commonwealth of their own; that there too examples of vice and virtue are set before them; and that the soul that remains in the good stays without experience of union with the body, but if it slips away from participation in the good, it slides down to this life and so comes to be in a body. Others, attending to the order of the making of man according to Moses, say that the soul is second to the body in time, since God first took dust from the earth and formed man, and then gave him a soul by breathing into him. And by this argument they show the flesh to be more honourable than the soul, what was formed beforehand than what was introduced afterward. For they say that the soul came to be for the sake of the body, so that what was formed might not be without breath and motion; and everything that comes to be for the sake of something is certainly less honourable than that for whose sake it comes to be. As the Gospel says that the soul is more than food and the body more than clothing, because the latter exist for the sake of the former; for the soul was not made for the sake of food, nor bodies for the sake of clothing, but since these existed, those were invented in addition for their need. Since, then, the account is open to criticism in both suppositions, both of those who tell fables of souls living beforehand in some state of their own and of those who think they are made later than the bodies, it would be necessary to leave nothing that is said in these doctrines unexamined. To exercise the arguments on both sides exactly and to uncover all the absurdities inherent in the suppositions would need much time and many words; but having briefly examined each of the views mentioned, as far as possible, we shall take up our subject again. Those who stand by the former account and teach that the commonwealth of souls is older than the life in the flesh do not seem to me to be clean of the Greek doctrines, the fables they tell about transmigration into other bodies. For if anyone examines it exactly, he will find their argument necessarily dragged down to this: what they say one of their wise men said, that the same man became a man, then put on the body of a woman, flew with the birds, grew as a bush, and obtained the life of water creatures. In my judgment the one who said this of himself was not far from the truth. For such doctrines, saying that one soul passed through so many things, are truly worthy of the chattering of frogs or jackdaws, or the stupidity of fish, or the insensibility of oaks. And the cause of such absurdity is the opinion that souls pre-exist. For the starting point of such a doctrine leads the argument on in sequence to what is next and adjacent, and goes on telling marvels until it reaches this point. For if the soul, torn away from the higher commonwealth by some vice, after once tasting bodily life, as they say, becomes a man again, and life in the flesh is admitted to be certainly more subject to passion than the eternal and incorporeal life, then the soul that comes to be in such a life, in which there are more occasions of sin, must necessarily come to be in greater vice and be more passionately disposed than before. Now the passion of a human soul is likeness to the irrational; and having become akin to this, it changes into a brutish nature; and once it has set out on the road of vice, it never ceases its progress toward evil even when it has come to be in an irrational creature. For the halting of evil is the beginning of the impulse toward virtue, and virtue does not exist in irrational creatures. It will necessarily always be altered for the worse, then, always advancing to what is less honourable and always finding what is worse than the nature in which it is. And as the sentient lies below the rational, so from this too the fall to the insensible takes place. Thus far their argument proceeds, and though it moves outside the truth, it at least takes one absurdity from another by some sequence. But from here their doctrine is made into a fable by things that do not hang together. For the sequence points to the complete destruction of the soul. For the soul that has once slipped from the lofty commonwealth will be able to stop at no measure of vice, but through its attachment to the passions will pass from the rational to the irrational, and from that will be transferred to the insensibility of plants; and the lifeless borders in some way on the insensible, and the non-existent follows this. So that altogether, by the sequence, the soul will, according to them, pass into non-being. Its return to the better will therefore necessarily be impossible. And yet they bring the soul back from a bush to the man. They show from this, then, that life in a bush is more honourable than the incorporeal existence. For it has been shown that the progress of the soul toward the worse will probably go down to what is lower still; and below the insensible nature lies the lifeless, to which the starting point of their doctrine leads the soul by sequence. But since they do not want this, either they shut the soul up in the insensible, or, if they bring it back from there to human life, they will show the life of a tree, as has been said, to be more honourable than the first state, if from that state the fall into vice took place, while from this the return to virtue takes place. Such an argument, then, is shown to be headless and incomplete, which maintains that souls live by themselves before the life in the flesh and are bound to bodies because of vice. As for those who say the soul is younger than the body, the absurdity was established above. The account of both, then, is equally to be rejected. I think we must direct our own doctrine in truth through the middle of the suppositions. It is this: neither to think, with the Greek error, that souls revolving with the universe, weighed down by some vice, fall to the earth through inability to keep pace with the swiftness of the motion of the pole; nor again to say that man was first formed in thought like a clay statue and that the soul came to be for its sake. For then the intellectual nature would be shown to be less honourable than the clay figure.

An establishment of the doctrine that the cause of existence of soul and body is one and the same. Since man, who is constituted of soul and body, is one, we must suppose one common beginning of his constitution, so that he may not become older and younger than himself, the bodily element in him coming first and the other later. Rather, we must say that by the foreknowing power of God, according to the account given a little earlier, the whole fullness of humanity pre-existed, the prophecy bearing witness to this, which says that God knows all things before their genesis; but in the making of each individual we must not place one before the other, neither the soul before the body nor the reverse, so that man may not be at variance with himself, divided by the difference in time. For since our nature is conceived as twofold, according to the apostolic teaching, the outward man and the hidden man, if the one pre-existed and the other came afterward, the power of the Maker would be shown to be imperfect, not sufficient for the whole at once, but dividing the work and busying itself with each of the halves in turn. But as we say that in wheat or in any other seed the whole form of the ear is contained in potency, the blade, the stalk, the joints in between, the grain, the beard, and that none of these, by the account of its nature, pre-exists or comes into being before the others in the nature of the seed, but that the power lying in the seed is made manifest in a certain natural order, while no other nature is introduced into it, by the same reasoning we suppose that the human seed too has the power of its nature contained together in the first beginning of its constitution, and that this power is unfolded and made manifest by a natural sequence as it advances to perfection, not taking anything from outside as a means of perfection, but itself advancing in sequence to perfection. So that we may say neither that the soul exists before the body nor the body without the soul, but that there is one beginning of both, which according to the higher account was laid down in the first will of God, and according to the other comes into existence at the beginnings of genesis. For as one cannot see the articulation of the limbs in what is placed in the womb for the conception of the body before its formation, so neither can one perceive in it the properties of the soul before they advance into activity. And as no one would doubt that what is placed there is formed into the differences of joints and inward parts, not by some other power coming in from outside but by the power lying within it changing into activity, so by analogy one may suppose the same about the soul: that even if it is not made known by any activities in what is seen, it is no less in it. For the form of the man who is to be constituted is in it in potency, but is hidden because it cannot appear before the necessary sequence. So too the soul is in it, even though it does not appear, and it will be manifested by its own proper activity, advancing along with the growth of the body. For the power for conception is not secreted from a dead body but from one that is living and animate. For this reason we say it is reasonable not to think that what is sent forth from a living body as the beginning of life is dead and lifeless. For what is lifeless in flesh is also dead, and deadness comes about by privation of soul; and no one would say that the privation is older than the possession, as one would if he maintained that the lifeless, which is dead, is older than the soul. And if anyone should seek a clearer proof that the part which becomes the beginning of the animal being formed is alive, it is possible to understand it by the other signs too by which the animate is distinguished from the dead. For we take it as a sign of life in human beings that something is warm, active, and moving; but what is chilled and motionless in bodies is nothing else than deadness. Since, then, we see that this of which we are speaking is warm and active, we infer from these things that it is not lifeless either. But as, with regard to its bodily part, we do not say that it is flesh and bones and hair and all that is seen in the human being, but that it is each of these in potency, though not yet appearing in visible form, so too with regard to the part belonging to soul, we say that the rational, the desiring, and the spirited element, and all that is seen in the soul, have their place in it, not yet appearing, but that the activities of the soul grow along with the subject in proportion to the formation and perfection of the body. For as man, when perfected in maturity, has the activity of the soul shining through, so at the beginning of his constitution he shows in himself the cooperation of the soul suited and proportioned to the present need, in its preparing for itself, through the material placed there, the dwelling that suits it. For we do not think it possible for the soul to be fitted to buildings not its own, as the seal in wax cannot be fitted to another engraving. … to be taught its own nature; for it is possible, having understood the manner of life and learned how the body is fitted for every vital activity, to know with what the natural power of the soul was occupied at the first formation of what comes to be. So it is clear from this too, to those who consider it carefully, that what was torn from the living body and placed for the planting of the living creature did not become dead and lifeless in the workshop of nature. For we also cast into the earth the kernels of fruits and the cuttings of roots, not with the vital power lying in their nature deadened, but preserving in themselves the property of the original, hidden but certainly alive. The surrounding earth does not put such a power into them from outside, introducing it of itself; for then even dead pieces of wood would be brought to sprout. Rather, it makes manifest the power lying in them, nursing the plant with its own moisture and perfecting it into root, bark, pith, and the outgrowths of branches. This could not happen unless some natural power had been placed in it together with it, which, drawing to itself from what lies around the nourishment that is akin and suitable, became a bush or a tree or an ear of grain or one of the shrubby growths.