On the Nature of Man 2

Almost all the ancients disagree in their account of the soul. Democritus, Epicurus, and the whole school of the Stoic philosophers declare the soul to be a body. And even those who declare the soul a body differ about its substance. The Stoics call it a warm and fiery breath; Critias, blood; Hippon the philosopher, water; Democritus, fire, for the spherical shapes of the atoms, combining with fire and air, make up the soul. Heraclitus says the soul of the universe is an exhalation from moist things, and that the soul in living creatures is of the same kind, arising from the exhalation outside them and within them. Again, among those who say the soul is bodiless the disagreement has become boundless: some call it a substance and immortal, others bodiless but neither a substance nor immortal. Thales first said the soul is ever-moving and self-moving; Pythagoras, a number moving itself; Plato, an intelligible substance moving itself according to harmonious number; Aristotle, the first actuality of a natural, organic body having life potentially; Dicaearchus, a harmony of the four elements, that is, a blending and concord of the elements; for he means not the harmony made of sounds, but the harmonious blending and concord of hot, cold, moist and dry in the body. It is clear that of these the others say the soul is a substance, but Aristotle and Dicaearchus deny it substance. Further, some have held that the soul of all things is one and the same, cut up into individuals and coming together again into itself, as the Manichaeans and some others; others that souls are many and differ in kind; others that they are both one and many. So the discussion must be lengthy, since it must answer so many opinions.

Against all who say the soul is a body it will be enough, in common, to state what was said by Ammonius, the teacher of Plotinus, and by Numenius the Pythagorean. It is this. Bodies, being by their own nature changeable, dispersible, and divisible throughout to infinity, with nothing unchangeable left in them, need something that puts them together, gathers them, and as it were binds and holds them together; this we call soul. If, then, the soul is any kind of body, even the most finely divided, what in turn holds it together? For it has been shown that every body needs something to hold it together, and so on to infinity, until we come to something bodiless. If they say, like the Stoics, that there is a certain tensile motion in bodies, moving inward and outward at once, the outward producing magnitudes and qualities, the inward producing unity and substance, we must ask them, since every motion comes from some power, what this power is and in what it subsists. If this power too is some matter, we shall use the same arguments again. If it is not matter but something material, then the material is different from matter, for what partakes of matter is called material. What then is that which partakes of matter? Is it itself matter, or immaterial? If matter, how is it material and not matter? If not matter, then immaterial; and if immaterial, not a body, for every body is material. If they say that bodies are extended in three dimensions, and the soul too, since it passes through the whole body, is extended in three dimensions and therefore must be a body, we shall say that every body is extended in three dimensions, but not everything extended in three dimensions is a body. For quantity and quality, which are bodiless in themselves, are incidentally measured in a bulk. So too with the soul: by itself it is unextended, but incidentally, along with that in which it is, which is extended in three dimensions, it too is viewed as extended in three dimensions. Again, every body is moved either from outside or from within. If from outside, it will be soulless; if from within, ensouled. If the soul too is a body, then if it is moved from outside it is soulless, and if from within it is ensouled; but it is absurd to call the soul either soulless or ensouled; therefore the soul is not a body. Again, the soul, if it is nourished, is nourished by something bodiless, for learning nourishes it; but no body is nourished by something bodiless; therefore the soul is not a body. So Xenocrates reasoned: and if it is not nourished, while every body of a living creature is nourished, the soul is not a body. This is said in common against all who say that the soul is a body.

In particular, against those who think the soul is blood or breath, because when the blood or the breath is removed the creature dies, we should not use the argument that some who think themselves clever have written: “So when part of the blood flows away, part of the soul has flowed away.” That is frivolous; for in things of like parts the remaining part is the same as the whole: water, much or little, is the same; so are silver and gold and everything whose parts do not differ from one another in substance; so the remaining blood, however much it is, would be soul, if the blood is soul. Rather we should say this: if that is soul whose removal kills the creature, then phlegm too is soul, and both kinds of bile; for whichever of these fails brings life to an end. So too the liver, the brain, the heart, the stomach, the kidneys, the intestines and many other things; for which of these could be taken away without the creature dying? Besides, many creatures are bloodless yet ensouled, such as the cartilaginous fishes and the soft-bodied creatures, like cuttlefish, squid, and octopus, and all the hard-shelled and soft-shelled creatures, such as crayfish, crabs, and lobsters. If, then, they are ensouled but bloodless, clearly the soul is not blood. Against those who say the soul is water, because water appears to give life to all things and it is impossible to live without water, there are many objections. Nor can one live without food; so by their account all foods, each one, must be called soul. Next, many animals do not drink, as is recorded of certain eagles, and the partridge too can live without drinking. And why should water be the soul rather than air? One can do without water for a long time, but not even for the shortest time without breathing air. But neither is air the soul. For there are many creatures that live but do not breathe air, such as all insects, like bees, wasps and ants, and bloodless creatures, and most sea creatures, and all that have no lungs; for nothing that lacks lungs breathes air, and conversely nothing that does not breathe air has lungs.

Since certain arguments of Cleanthes the Stoic and of Chrysippus are reported which are not to be despised, we must set out their solutions too, as the Platonists solved them. Cleanthes weaves this syllogism: “We are like our parents not only in body but also in soul, in passions, characters, dispositions. But likeness and unlikeness belong to body, not to the bodiless. Therefore the soul is a body.” But first, universals are not established from particulars. Further, “not to the bodiless” is false. For we say numbers are similar whose sides are proportional, such as 6 and 24: the sides of 6 are 2 and 3, of 24, 4 and 6, double them; yet numbers are bodiless. Figures too are similar to figures when they have equal angles and the sides about the equal angles proportional; and they themselves admit that figure is bodiless. Again, as equal and unequal are proper to quantity, so like and unlike are proper to quality; but quality is bodiless. So the bodiless can be like the bodiless. Again he says: “Nothing bodiless suffers along with a body, nor a body with the bodiless, but body with body. But the soul suffers along with the body when it is sick and cut, and the body with the soul: when the soul is ashamed the body turns red, and when it is afraid, pale. Therefore the soul is a body.” But one of the premises is false, laid down by assumption: that nothing bodiless suffers along with a body. What if this belongs to the soul alone? It is as if someone said, “No animal moves its upper jaw; the crocodile moves its upper jaw; therefore the crocodile is not an animal.” Here too the premise, “No animal moves its upper jaw,” is false, laid down by assumption; for see, the crocodile is an animal and moves its upper jaw. In the same way when he says that nothing bodiless suffers along with a body, he assumes the point in question in the denial. And if someone should grant that it is true that nothing bodiless suffers along with a body, still the next premise is not agreed, that the soul suffers along with the body when it is sick and cut. For it is disputed whether the body alone feels the pain, having received sensation from the soul, while the soul itself remains unaffected, or whether it shares the body's pain; and among the more reputable thinkers the former prevails. Syllogisms must be drawn not from disputed premises but from agreed ones. And it can be shown besides that some bodiless things do suffer along with bodies: qualities, being bodiless, suffer along with bodies when they are affected, changing along with the body in its corruption and its generation.

Chrysippus says: “Death is the separation of soul from body. But nothing bodiless is separated from a body, for the bodiless does not even touch a body. But the soul both touches and is separated from the body. Therefore the soul is a body.” Of these, that death is the separation of soul from body is true; that the bodiless does not touch a body is false as a universal statement, but true of the soul. False, because a line, being bodiless, touches a body and is separated from it, and likewise whiteness; true of the soul, because the soul does not touch the body. For if it touches it, clearly it lies beside it; and if so, it does not lie beside the whole of it, for it is impossible for a body to lie beside a body whole to whole; and so the creature will not be ensouled throughout. So if it touches, the soul will be a body, but the creature will not be wholly ensouled; and if the creature is wholly ensouled, the soul neither touches nor is a body. But the creature is wholly ensouled. Therefore the soul neither touches nor is a body, and it is separated being bodiless. That the soul is not a body, then, is clear from what has been said. That it is not without substance either must be stated next.

Since Dicaearchus defined the soul as a harmony, and Simmias, contradicting Socrates, said the soul is a harmony, comparing the soul to a harmony and the body to a lyre, we must set out the solutions given in Plato's Phaedo. One comes from what he had shown earlier. He had shown that learning is recollection. Taking this as agreed, he builds the argument thus: if learning is recollection, our soul existed before it came into human form; but if it is a harmony, it did not exist before but came to be later, when the body was fitted together; for every composition is posterior to the things of which it is composed, since a composition, which a harmony is, is a kind of association of the components, and nothing prevents it from not leading the things of which it is composed but following them. So the claim that the soul is a harmony conflicts with the claim that learning is recollection. But the account of recollection is true; therefore the claim that the soul is a harmony is false. Again, the soul leads the body and rules it, and often opposes it; but a harmony neither leads nor opposes; therefore the soul is not a harmony. Again, one harmony is more or less a harmony than another by being slackened or tightened, not in the ratio of the harmony (for a ratio cannot admit more and less) but in the tuning: if a high and a low note blended together are then slackened, they keep the same ratio in the sizes of the sounds, but the harmony is varied in its tuning, more or less tightened; but one soul is not more or less a soul than another; therefore the soul is not a harmony. Again, the soul admits virtue and vice; but a harmony does not admit harmony and disharmony; therefore the soul is not a harmony. Again, the soul, by admitting contraries in turn, is a substance and a subject; but a harmony is a quality and in a subject; and substance is different from quality; therefore the soul too is different from harmony. That the soul partakes of harmony is not absurd, but it is not on that account a harmony; for neither is the soul virtue because it partakes of virtue.

Galen declares nothing; indeed in his demonstrative works he protests that he has declared nothing about the soul. But from what he says he seems rather to favour the view that the soul is a blending, since difference of character follows upon it, building the argument from Hippocrates. If so, clearly he thinks it mortal too, not the whole of it, but only the irrational soul of man; about the rational he is in doubt, speaking thus: … That the blending of the body cannot be the soul is clear from this. Every body, ensouled or soulless, is blended from the four elements, for their blending produces bodies. If, then, the blending of the body is the soul, nothing will be soulless. The argument runs: if the blending of the body is soul, and every body has a blending, every body has a soul; if every body has a soul, no body is soulless; so neither stone nor wood nor iron nor anything else will be soulless. If he says not that every blending of a body is soul, but such and such a one, we must ask what kind of blending it is that makes a living creature and holds the place of soul; for whatever blending he names, we shall find it also in soulless things. There are nine blendings, as he himself showed in his work On Blendings, eight ill-balanced and one well-balanced. He says man is blended according to the well-balanced one, not every man, but the man of the middle blending; and according to the other ill-balanced blendings, and the seasons, and the ways of life, the soul changes. But if it changes, we do not have the same soul, but according to the blending now that of a lion, now of a sheep, now of something else, which is absurd. Again, the blending does not oppose the desires of the body but cooperates with them, for it is what moves them; but the soul opposes them; therefore the blending is not the soul. Again, if the blending is soul, and the blending is a quality, and a quality comes and goes without the destruction of its subject, then the soul too will be separated without the destruction of its subject; but this is not true; therefore the soul is neither a blending nor a quality. For surely they will not say that one of the contraries belongs to the creature by nature, as heat to fire; for then it would not change; but the blending clearly does change, and indeed they themselves are the ones who change blendings by the art of medicine. Again, the qualities of every body are perceptible by sense; but the soul is not perceptible but intelligible; therefore the soul is not a quality of the body. Again, the good blending of blood and breath, together with the arrangement of flesh, sinews and the rest, is strength; the good blending of hot, cold, dry and moist is health; and the symmetry of the limbs with good colour makes the body's beauty. If, then, the harmony of health, strength and beauty is the soul, a living man would necessarily be neither sick, nor weak, nor ugly; but it often happens that not one only but all three of these good blendings are lost while the man is alive; for the same man may be at once ugly, weak and sick; therefore the good blending of the body is not the soul. How, then, do certain natural vices and virtues attend men? This truly comes from the blending of the body. As men are naturally healthy or sickly from their blending, so some, being naturally bilious, are irascible, others cowardly, others lustful. But some master and overcome these; clearly they master the blending; and what masters is one thing and what is mastered another; so the blending is one thing and the soul another. For the body, being the soul's instrument, if it is suitably constructed, cooperates with the soul and is itself in a good state; but if unsuitably, it hinders it, and then the soul has trouble, fighting against the unsuitability of its instrument; and unless it is very watchful, it is perverted along with it, as a melody goes wrong along with a lyre that is out of tune, unless the lyre is first set right. Therefore the soul needs to take care of the body, to make it a suitable instrument for itself. This it does by reason and by habits, as in tuning, slackening some things and tightening others, to make it fit for itself and use a suitable instrument, unless it too is perverted along with it; for this also happens.

Aristotle, calling the soul an actuality, agrees no less with those who call it a quality. Let us first make clear what he calls actuality. He speaks of substance in three ways: one as matter, the subject, which by itself is nothing but has a capacity for coming to be; another as shape and form, by which matter is given form; the third as the combination of both, what comes to be from matter and form, which is then ensouled. Matter is potentiality, and form actuality. This too is understood in two ways: one as knowledge, the other as contemplating according to knowledge, that is, one as a disposition, the other as activity. The soul is actuality as knowledge is, because in the existence of the soul there are both sleep and waking: waking is analogous to contemplating and acting, sleep to having and not acting; and knowledge is prior to activity. Therefore he calls the form the first actuality and the activity the second. For example, the eye consists of a subject and a form: the subject is the eye itself, which receives sight, that is, the form; it is the matter of the eye and is itself also called eye, by the same name. The form and first actuality of the eye is sight itself, which gives it the ability to see; the second actuality of the eye is the activity by which it sees. As a newborn puppy has neither actuality, but the capacity to receive the actuality, so we must understand it with the soul. As there sight, coming into being, perfects the eye, so here the soul, coming into being in the body, perfects the living creature, so that neither is the soul ever without a body, nor a body without a soul. For the soul is not a body, but it belongs to a body, and therefore exists in a body, and in such a body, but does not exist by itself.

But first, he calls only the life-giving part of the soul soul, separating the rational part from it; but he should have taken the whole soul of man together, and not pronounced on the whole from a part, and that the weakest part. Next, he says the body has life potentially even before the soul comes into being. For he says the body has life in itself potentially; but the body that has life in itself potentially must first be a body actually, and it cannot be a body actually before receiving the form, for matter is without quality and not a body; it is impossible, then, for what is not actually a body to have a capacity for something to come to be from it. And if it is a body potentially, how can a body that is only potential have life in itself potentially? Besides, with other things it is possible to have something and not use it, for instance to have sight and not use it; but with the soul this is impossible. For not even one who sleeps is without the activity of soul: he is nourished, grows, has images, and breathes, which is the surest sign of life. From this it is clear that living potentially cannot belong to anything, but always actually; for what gives form to the soul is primarily nothing else but life. Life is inborn in the soul, but in the body by participation. So whoever says that health stands in the same relation to life speaks not of the life of the soul but of the life of the body; and in that way he is saved. For bodily substance can receive contraries in turn, but the substance according to form by no means; for if a change of form occurs, the creature itself is changed. So it is not the substance according to form that admits contraries, but that according to the subject, that is, the bodily. The soul, then, can in no way be the actuality of the body, but a self-complete, bodiless substance; for it admits contraries in turn, vice and virtue, which the form could not admit.

Next, he says that the soul, being an actuality, is unmoved in itself and moved incidentally. There is nothing strange in its moving us though it is unmoved; beauty too, being unmoved, moves us. But even if so, it moves what is movable; what is by nature able to be moved is moved, not what is unmoved. If, then, the body had motion by itself, there would be nothing absurd in its being moved by something unmoved; but as it is, it is impossible for the unmoved to be moved by the unmoved. Where then does the body get its motion, if not from the soul? For the body is not self-moving. Wanting to show the first source of motion, he showed not the first but the second. If what is not moved moved something, it would produce the first motion; but if what is moved by itself moves something else too, he explains the origin of a second motion. Where then is the first origin of motion for the body? To say that the elements move by themselves, some being light by nature and others heavy, is false. For if lightness and heaviness were motion, light and heavy things would never come to rest; but they do come to rest when they reach their proper place; so heaviness and lightness are not causes of the first motion, but qualities of the elements. And even if this is granted, how can reasoning, opining and judging be the works of lightness and heaviness? If they are not their works, then not of the elements; and if not of the elements, not of bodies either. Again, if the soul is moved incidentally … [it is not ever-moving; but] as the sun and the moon, which move by nature, cannot by nature be at rest, so the soul, which is by nature ever-moving, cannot by nature be at rest; for rest is the destruction of the soul and of everything ever-moving. Besides, the question raised at the beginning remains unsolved: how the body, which is by nature apt to be dispersed, is held together. These arguments, out of many, suffice to show that the soul is neither an actuality, nor unmoved, nor something that comes into being in a body.

Pythagoras, accustomed always to compare God and all things symbolically with numbers, defined the soul too as a number moving itself, and Xenocrates followed him: not that the soul is a number, but that it is in what is numbered and in the many, and that the soul is what distinguishes things by imposing shapes and patterns on each. For it is the soul that separates forms from forms and shows them to be different, by the otherness of the forms and by the multitude of number, and so makes things numerable; hence it is not entirely free of association with numbers. Its self-motion he himself bore witness to. That it is not a number is clear from this: number is a quantity; the soul is not a quantity but a substance; therefore the soul is not a number, even though they especially want number among intelligibles to be a substance, as we shall say later. Again, the soul is continuous, but number is not continuous; therefore the soul is not number. Again, number is either even or odd, but the soul is neither even nor odd; therefore the soul is not a number. Again, number grows by addition, but the soul does not grow by addition. Again, the soul is self-moving, but a definite number is unmoved. Again, number, remaining one and the same in nature, cannot change even one of the qualities found in numbers; but the soul, remaining one and the same in substance, changes its qualities, passing from ignorance to knowledge and from vice to virtue; therefore the soul is not a number. Such, then, are the doctrines of the ancients about the soul.

Eunomius defined the soul as a bodiless substance created in a body, agreeing at once with Plato and Aristotle: “bodiless substance” he took from Plato, “created in a body” from the teaching of Aristotle; not realizing, sharp as he is, that he is trying to bring together things that cannot be reconciled. For everything that has a coming into being, bodily and temporal at once, is corruptible and mortal. The writings of Moses agree with this. For in describing the coming into being of all sensible things he did not expressly say that the nature of the intelligibles came into being at that time; some hold this by conjecture, but not all agree with them. If someone concludes, from the soul's being put in after the body was formed, that it was created then, … [this does not follow: Moses does not say that the soul was then created, but that it was put] into the body after it, nor is it reasonable so. Either let him call the soul mortal, as Aristotle does, who says it comes into being in the body, and as the Stoics do; or, if he calls it a bodiless substance, let him refrain from saying “created in a body,” lest he suggest the notion of a mortal and wholly irrational soul. Besides, on his view the world is not yet full but is still unfinished even now and always in need of addition: at least fifty thousand intelligible substances, they say, are added to it every day. And worst of all, when it has been completed, then, on his view, it will be dissolved, when the last men, those at the resurrection, have filled up the number of souls. What could be more irrational than to say that the world is destroyed when it is filled? This is exactly the way of little children, who as soon as they have finished building in the sand of their play knock down what they have made. And to say that souls now come into being by way of providence and not of creation, since no new substance, other than the one that exists, is introduced, but the existing one is multiplied according to providence, is the mark of those who do not know the difference between creation and providence. The work of providence is to preserve the substance of perishable living things by generation from one another (I mean those that do not come from putrefaction, since another providence preserves their succession too); the supreme work of creation is to make things from what is not. If, then, souls come into being by generation from one another, they come by way of providence and are perishable, like other things that come into being by succession of kind; but if they are brought forth from what is not, what comes to be is a creation, and the word of Moses is not true, that “God rested from all his works.” Both are absurd.

[Some say] the succession passes from the first man to all born of him, like the bodily succession. For, they say, souls are neither stored up beforehand nor created now: those who say so make God a fellow-worker with adulterers, since children are born from them too; and it would be false that “God rested from all his works which he had begun to make,” if he still creates souls even now. But if everything that comes into being by succession, by generation from one another, has been shown to be mortal (for things beget and are begotten for this reason, that the race of perishable things may continue), he too must either call the soul mortal, born by generation from one another, or not say that souls come into being by succession from one another. As for the question of those born of adultery, let us leave it to the reason of providence, which is unknown to us. If we must make some guess about providence, it surely knows that what is born will be useful either to life or to itself, and for this reason permits the ensoulment to take place. We take a sufficient proof of this from Solomon, born of the wife of Uriah and David.

Next let us examine the opinion of the Manichaeans which they hold about the soul. [They say the soul is one, immortal and bodiless, the soul of the universe, divided into individual bodies, some of which] partake of more of it, some of less: ensouled things of more, soulless things of less, the heavenly bodies of much more; so that individual souls are parts of the universal soul. If they said that it is divided without division, as a voice is among its hearers, the evil would be moderate; but in fact they say the very substance of the soul is cut up. Worst of all, they hold that it is properly in the elements, is divided along with them in the generation of bodies, and comes together again into one when bodies are dissolved, like water divided and gathered and mixed again; and that pure souls go to the light, being light, while those defiled by matter go into the elements, and again from the elements into plants and animals. Thus, cutting up its substance, declaring it bodily and subjecting it to passions, they still say it is immortal. And they fall into contradictions. Saying that the defiled souls run back to the elements and are mixed with one another, they again say that they are punished in reincarnations according to the size of their sins, uniting them and again separating them as individuals. For they say that shadows are separate when there is light, but united when there is cloud or night; which is impossible to happen with an intelligible nature; for shadows belong to sensible things, even if one grants that they are separated and united again.

Plato declares that souls are both one and many. There is one soul of the universe, but there are also other souls of the individual beings, so that the universe as a whole is ensouled by the soul of the universe, and each individual in turn by its own soul. He says that the soul of the universe is stretched from the centre of the earth to the ends of heaven, not stretched spatially, but intelligibly; and that this is the soul that carries the universe round in a sphere and holds together and binds the bodily part of the world; for bodies need something to hold them together, as was shown earlier; and this the form-giving soul does. For each thing lives its own life and perishes by its own perishing: as long as the body is held together and bound, it is said to exist; when it is dissolved, to perish. All things live, but not all are living creatures. They distinguish plants from soulless things by growth and nourishment, that is, by the nourishing and vegetative power; irrational animals from plants by sensation; rational beings from irrational by reason; and so, while saying that all things live, they distinguish the nature of each one's life. They say that even wholly soulless things have a cohesive life, by which they are held together by the soul of the universe merely to exist and not to be dissolved. This, they say, is the soul that governs the universe and that sends down the individual souls, which were made earlier by the Creator; the Creator himself, that is, gave it laws according to which it must conduct this universe, which he also calls fate, and supplies it with power sufficient to govern us. This has been said also in the discussion of fate.

All the Greeks in common who declared the soul immortal teach reincarnation; but they differ about the kinds of souls. Some say there is one kind, the rational, and that it passes into plants and into the bodies of irrational animals, some at fixed periods of time, others at random. Others say there are not one but two kinds of souls, rational and irrational; others many, as many as the kinds of animals. The Platonists especially disagreed about this doctrine. Plato said that savage, irascible and rapacious souls change into the bodies of wolves and lions, and those given to licentiousness take on the bodies of asses and the like; some understood him literally of wolves, lions and asses, others judged that he spoke figuratively, indicating characters through the animals. Cronius, in his book On Rebirth (this is what he calls reincarnation), holds that all souls are rational; so too Theodorus the Platonist in his work That the Soul Is All the Forms, and Porphyry likewise. Iamblichus, running the opposite way, says that there is a kind of soul for each kind of animal, that is, different kinds. He wrote a single book entitled That Reincarnations Do Not Happen from Men to Irrational Animals nor from Irrational Animals to Men, but from Animals to Animals and from Men to Men. And on this point he seems to me to have guessed rightly not only Plato's mind but the truth itself, as can be shown from many other things and especially from these. No rational movement appears in the irrational animals: there are no arts in them, no learning, no deliberation, no virtues, nor anything else of thought; from which it is clear that they have no share in a rational soul. And it is absurd to call the irrational rational. For although only irrational movement is present in very young infants, we say they have a rational soul, since as they grow they display rational activity; but the irrational animal, which at no age shows the rational, would have a rational soul to no purpose, since its rational power would be wholly useless. And all agree that nothing has come into being from God to no purpose. If so, a rational soul would have been put into cattle and wild beasts to no purpose, never able to show its proper work; and it would be a charge against the one who gave a soul unsuited to the body; for this is not the work of a craftsman, nor of one who knows order and harmony. If someone says that animals move rationally in disposition but that their bodily form keeps them from it (for if only the fingers of the hands were taken from men, most arts would be lost), he does not solve the question. The same absurdity remains: that God fitted to the body a soul not suited to it but superfluous, useless and inactive, hindered throughout the animals' life from its proper activities; besides the fact that they build their argument on what is unclear and not agreed. For how do we know that animals move rationally in disposition? It is better, then, to hold that a soul suited to each body was fitted to it, and that animals have nothing more in disposition than the natural simplicity that appears in their works. For each kind of irrational animal moves by its own impulse toward the use and activity for which it was made from the beginning, and for these it has a suitable bodily form. Yet the Creator has not left them wholly without help, but has put into each a natural, not a rational, intelligence; and into some he has put cunning as well, like an image of art and a shadow of reason, for two reasons: so that they may avoid present attacks and guard against future ones, and so that he might join the whole creation to itself, as has already been said. That they do not do these things rationally is clear from the fact that each animal of a kind does the same things in the same way, not more or less, the whole kind being moved by one impulse. Every hare uses the same tricks, every wolf the same cunning, every ape the same mimicry; which is not so with man. There are countless ways of human action; for the rational is something free and self-determining. Hence there is not one and the same work for all men, as there is for each kind of irrational animal; for these move by nature alone, and what is by nature is alike in all; but rational actions differ from one man to another and are not of necessity the same in all. If they say that the soul is sent down into such bodies as punishment for sins committed earlier in human life, they draw their proof from later things. For why were rational souls put into the first bodies of animals that came into being? Surely not because they had sinned in human bodies before they had even come into a human body. Galen too, the admirable physician, seems to adopt this opinion and to hold that there is a different kind of soul for each kind of animal. For right at the beginning of the first book of his treatise On the Use of the Parts he says: “If so, many of the parts of animals will be some larger, some smaller, some not divisible at all into another form; and all of them are of use to the soul. For the body is its instrument, and for this reason the parts of animals differ much from one another, because their souls do too.” And again, going on in the same book, he adds this about the ape: “Indeed, most wise accuser, Nature would say to you, a ridiculous body had to be given to a ridiculous soul.” So he knows that different souls are in bodies different in kind. So much on these matters.

If we have shown that the soul is neither a body, nor a harmony, nor a blending, nor any other quality, it is plain from this that the soul is a bodiless substance. That it exists, all agree; and if it is neither a body nor an accident, it is clear that it is a bodiless substance and not one of the things that have their being in another; for these come and go without the destruction of the subject, but when the soul is separated, the body perishes entirely. Using the same arguments one can show that the soul is immortal. For if it is neither a body, which has been shown to be by nature dissoluble and perishable, nor a quality, nor a quantity, nor any other of the things that perish, it is clear that it is immortal. There are many proofs of its immortality in Plato and others, but they are intricate, hard to grasp, and scarcely known even to those trained in those sciences. For us the teaching of the divine oracles is enough as proof of its immortality, since it carries its credibility in itself, being inspired by God. For those who do not accept the writings of the Christians, it is enough to show that the soul is none of the things that perish; for if it is none of the things that perish, it is imperishable, and so also immortal. So this point, being sufficiently established, may be left.