On the Making of Man 8–11

Why the form of man is upright, and that the hands were given because of reason; in which there is also some philosophical discussion of the difference between souls. Man’s form is upright, stretched up toward heaven, and looks upward. These too are marks of rule and signify his royal dignity. For the fact that man alone among existing things is so made, while the bodies of all others are bent downward, clearly shows the difference in dignity between those who bow under his dominion and the authority that rises above them. For in all the others the front limbs of the body are feet, because what is bent over needed something to support it; but in the making of man the limbs became hands. For the upright form one base was sufficient for its need, securing his stance safely on two feet. Besides, the service of the hands works together with the need of speech. And anyone who called the service of the hands a property of rational nature would not be entirely wrong, not only running in thought to this common and obvious fact, that we signify speech in letters through the skill of our hands (for this too is not without a share in the gift of reason, that we speak through letters and in a way converse by the hand, preserving sounds by the shapes of the written characters); but I, looking to something else, say that the hands work together with the utterance of speech. But before examining this, let us consider a point that was passed over. For the order of the things that came to be almost escaped us: why the sprouting of what grows from the earth comes first, then the irrational animals follow, and so, after these were made, man. For perhaps we learn from this not only what is understood at first sight, that grass seemed useful to the Creator for the sake of the animals, and the cattle for the sake of man, which is why their food came before the beasts, and before man came what was to serve human life. Rather, it seems to me that by this Moses discloses a hidden doctrine and hands on in secret words the philosophy of the soul, which outside learning also imagined but did not clearly understand. For by this the word teaches us that the vital and psychic power is seen in three differences. One kind is only a power of growth and nourishment, supplying what is suitable for the increase of what is nourished; it is called natural, and is seen in plants. For even in things that grow one can recognize a certain vital power that has no share in sense. There is another form of life besides this, which has this one and has also taken on the management of sense; this is in the nature of irrational creatures. For they are not only nourished and grow, but also have the activity of sense and perception. But perfect life in a body is seen in the rational, I mean the human, nature, which is nourished and has sense, shares in reason, and is governed by mind. The division of the matter might be put to us in this way. Of existing things, some are intelligible and some bodily. Let the division of the intelligible into its own kinds be left aside for now, for our discussion is not about these. Of the bodily, some has no share in life at all, and some shares in vital activity. Again, of the living body, some lives with sense and some has no share in sense. Then the sentient is divided again into rational and irrational. For this reason the lawgiver says that after lifeless matter there came first, as a kind of foundation for the form of living things, this natural life, which came to exist beforehand in the sprouting of plants; then he goes on to the genesis of the creatures governed by sense. And since, in the same sequence, among those that have been allotted life through flesh, the sentient can exist by themselves even apart from the intellectual nature, while the rational could not come to be in a body otherwise than mixed with the sentient, for this reason man was made last, after the plants and the cattle, nature advancing in due sequence, as by a road, toward perfection. For this rational animal, man, is blended of every form of soul. He is nourished by the natural form of soul; and to the power of growth the sentient power was added, standing by its own nature midway between the intellectual and the more material substance, as much coarser than the one as it is purer than the other. Then there comes about a kind of affinity and blending of the intellectual substance with the fine and luminous element of the sentient nature, so that man has his constitution in these three. So too we have learned from the Apostle, in what he said to the Ephesians, praying for them that the complete grace of body, soul, and spirit be kept at the coming of the Lord; he says “body” for the nourishing part, signifies the sentient by “soul,” and the intellectual by “spirit.” In the same way the Lord in the Gospel teaches the scribe to set before every commandment the love of God that is exercised with the whole heart and soul and mind. For here too the word seems to me to express the same difference, calling the more bodily state “heart,” the middle one “soul,” and the higher nature, the intellectual and reasoning power, “mind.” Hence the Apostle also knows three differences of choice: he names one the fleshly, which is busied with the belly and its pleasures; another the psychic, which stands midway between virtue and vice, rising above the one but not purely sharing in the other; and another the spiritual, which sees the perfection of the life according to God. So he says to the Corinthians, reproaching their love of pleasure and their passions, “You are fleshly,” and unable to receive the more perfect doctrines; and elsewhere, comparing the middle with the perfect, he says, “The psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; but the spiritual man judges all things, and is himself judged by no one.” As, then, the psychic man has risen above the fleshly, by the same proportion the spiritual has risen above him. If, then, Scripture says that man came to be last, after every living thing, the lawgiver is doing nothing else than teaching us the philosophy of the soul, seeing that the perfect comes last by a necessary sequence of order. For in the rational the rest are also included, and in the sentient the natural form certainly exists as well; but that is seen only in what is material. Fittingly, then, nature, I mean the properties of life, makes its ascent as by steps from the lesser to the perfect. Since, then, man is a rational animal, the instrument of the body had to be made suited to the needs of speech. As one can see musicians producing their music according to the kind of instrument, not piping on lyres nor playing the lyre on pipes, in the same way the construction of the organs had to be suited to speech, so that it might resound fittingly for the use of words, shaped by the vocal parts. For this reason the hands were joined to the body. For though one could count up countless uses in life for which these skilful and serviceable instruments, the hands, are useful, readily pursuing every art and every activity in war and peace … yet before all others nature added them to the body for the sake of speech. For if man had had no hands, the parts of his face would certainly have been formed, like those of the quadrupeds, to suit the need of feeding: the face would have been long and tapering toward the nostrils, and the lips of the mouth would have projected, calloused, firm, and thick, fit for tearing up grass; and between the teeth there would lie a tongue of another kind, fleshy, resistant, and rough, helping the teeth to work what came under them; or moist and loose at the sides, like that of dogs and the other flesh-eaters, flowing through the gaps between their jagged teeth. If, then, the hands had not been present in the body, how could articulate voice have been formed in it, when the construction of the parts of the mouth was not shaped for the use of speech? So man would necessarily have had to bleat, or bray, or bark, or neigh, or bellow like oxen or asses, or give out some beastly roar. But as it is, since the hand has been set in the body, the mouth is at leisure for the service of speech. The hands, then, have proved to be a property of rational nature, the Fashioner having devised through them ease for speech.

That the form of man was made as an instrument for the use of speech. Since, then, the Maker bestowed on our formation a godlike grace, placing in the image the likenesses of his own goods, he gave the rest of his goods to human nature out of his generosity; but of mind and wisdom it cannot properly be said that he gave them, but rather that he shared them, adorning the image with the proper adornment of his own nature. Since, then, the mind is something intellectual and incorporeal, it would have had its grace incommunicable and unmixed, if its movement were not made manifest by some contrivance. For this reason it needed in addition this instrumental construction, so that, touching the vocal parts like a plectrum, it might express its inward movement by the quality of the sounds it shapes. And as someone skilled in music who, through some affliction, has no voice of his own but wishes to make his skill known, might make melody with other voices, publishing his art through pipes or lyre, so too the human mind, the inventor of thoughts of every kind, being unable by the bare soul to show the movements of its understanding to those who hear through the bodily senses, like a skilled musician touches these living instruments and makes its hidden thoughts known by the sound produced in them. The music of the human instrument is a kind of mixture of pipe and lyre, sounding together with each other at the same time as in a concert. For the breath, forced up through the windpipe from the vessels that receive the air, when the speaker’s impulse toward voice tightens that part, strikes against the projections inside that encircle this pipe-like passage, and so imitates in a way the sound made by the pipe, being whirled round in a circle by the membrane-like projections. The palate receives the sound from below in its own hollow, splitting the voice by the twin pipes that run to the nostrils and, as by projecting scales, by the cartilages around the strainer, and so makes the sound more resonant. The cheek and the tongue and the arrangement about the pharynx, by which the chin is relaxed when hollowed and is stretched when giving a high tone, all these play the part of the plectrum’s movement on the strings, in varied and manifold ways, adjusting the tones to the need at the moment with great speed. And the opening and closing of the lips does the same as those who check the breath of the pipe with their fingers, in keeping with the harmony of the melody.

That the mind works through the senses. Since, then, the mind makes the music of speech in us through this instrumental construction, we have become rational; we would not, I think, have the gift of speech if we had to supply the body’s need with our lips, the heavy and toilsome service of eating. But as it is, the hands have taken this ministry on themselves and have left the mouth free for the service of speech. The activity of the instrument is twofold: one for producing sound, the other for receiving thoughts from outside. And the one does not mix with the other, but each remains in the activity to which it was assigned by nature, not troubling its neighbour: the hearing does not speak, nor does the voice hear. For the voice is always putting something forth, while the hearing, though it receives continually, is never filled, as Solomon says somewhere. And this seems to me one of the things in us most worthy of wonder: what is the breadth of that inner space into which flows everything that is poured in through the hearing? Who are the recorders of the words brought into it, and what are the storerooms of the thoughts placed in the hearing? And how, when many thoughts of every kind are heaped on one another, does no confusion or error arise from the piling up of what lies within? One might wonder equally at the activity of sight. For through it likewise the mind grasps what is outside the body and draws to itself the images of the things that appear, inscribing the marks of visible things within itself. And as if there were a spacious city receiving those who flock to it through different entrances, and all do not run together to the same place in the city, but some go to the market, some to houses, others to the churches, or the squares, or the lanes, or the theatres, each moving about according to his own mind, so I see the city of the mind too, that is founded within us, filled by the different entrances of the senses; and the mind, sorting and examining each thing that enters, stores it in the proper places of knowledge. And as in the example of the city it often happens that people of the same tribe and kin do not enter by the same gate, one coming in by one entrance and another by another as it happens, yet, once within the circuit of the wall, they are together again, being intimate with one another; and the opposite can be found too, for strangers who do not know one another use a single entrance into the city, yet their companionship at the entrance does not join them to one another, since even inside they can separate to their own kin: something like this I see also in the wide space of the mind. For often one knowledge is gathered for us from different sense organs, the same thing being divided in many parts among the senses. And again, conversely, it is possible to learn many varied things from one of the senses, things that in no way agree with each other in nature. For example (for it is better to make the argument clear by an illustration), let the question be about the property of flavours: what is pleasant to the sense and what is to be shunned by those who taste. By experience, then, the bitterness of gall and the agreeable quality of honey have been found. These being different, the same thing brings in one knowledge, entering the understanding in many parts: by taste, by smell, by hearing, often also by touch and by sight. For one who has seen honey, and heard its name, and taken it by taste, and recognized its scent by smell, and tested it by touch, has recognized the same thing through each of the sense organs. And again we are taught varied and manifold things through one sense, since the hearing receives every kind of sound, and the perception of the eyes has its activity undiscriminating in beholding things of different kinds; for it meets white and black and all things opposite in colour alike. So taste, so smell, so the apprehension by touch: each, by its own perception, puts in us the knowledge of things of every kind.

That the nature of the mind cannot be seen. What, then, is the mind in its own nature, which divides itself among the sense faculties and through each suitably takes up the knowledge of existing things? That it is something other than the senses, I do not think any sensible person doubts. For if it were the same as sense, it would certainly have its affinity with only one of the things done by sense, since it is itself simple and nothing varied is seen in what is simple. But as it is, since all agree that touch is one thing and smell another, and the rest likewise are disposed toward each other without communion or mixture, and since the mind is present to each equally and suitably, we must certainly suppose it to be something other than the sensible nature, so that no variety may be mingled with the intelligible. “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” says the Apostle. But I say besides this: Who has understood his own mind? Let those who bring the nature of God within their own comprehension tell us whether they have understood themselves, whether they have recognized the nature of their own mind. Is it something of many parts and much compounded? And how is the intelligible in composition? Or what is the manner of blending things of different kinds? Or is it simple and uncompounded? Then how is it scattered into the many parts of sense? How is there variety in unity? How is there unity in variety? But I have recognized the solution of these difficulties by running back to the very word of God: “Let us make man,” he says, “according to our image and according to our likeness.” For the image, as long as it falls short in nothing of what is conceived in the archetype, is properly an image; but in whatever respect it falls away from likeness to the prototype, in that respect it is not an image. Since, then, one of the things contemplated about the divine nature is the incomprehensibility of its substance, it is entirely necessary that the image should imitate the archetype in this too. For if the nature of the image were comprehended while the prototype was beyond comprehension, the contrariety of what is seen in them would prove the image defective. But since the nature of our mind, which is according to the image of the Creator, escapes knowledge, it has an exact likeness to what is above it, marking out the incomprehensible nature by its own unknowability.