fashioned according to the volition of the artificer, and receives whatever shape the idea which is in his mind prescribes, and becomes a sword or some agricultural implement. Supposing, then, that our reason, which is our nature’s choicest part, holds the dominion over these imported emotions (as Scripture allegorically declares in the command to men to rule over the brutes), none of them will be active in the ministry of evil; fear will only generate within us obedience'®"!
, and anger fortitude, and cowardice caution; and the instinct of desire will procure for us the delight that is Divine and perfect. But if reason drops the reins and is dragged behind like a charioteer who has got entangled in his car, then these instincts are changed into fierceness, just as we see happens amongst the brutes. For since reason does not preside over the natural impulses that are implanted!8 in them, the more irascible animals, under the generalship of their anger, mutually destroy each other; while the bulky and powerful animals get no good themselves from their strength, but become by their want of reason slaves of that which has reason. Neither are the activities of their desire 1800 Reading 814 tod Evo Kai Tpd¢ Ta OVVILEVa TOUT (for TOUTWV), with Sifanus.
1801 Cf. De Hom. Opif. c. xviii. 5. “So, on the contrary, if reason instead assumes sway over such emotions, each of them is transmuted to a form of virtue: for anger produces courage; terror, caution; fear, obedience; hatred, aversion from vice; the power of love, the desire for what is truly beautiful, &c.” Just below, the allusion is to Plato’s charioteer, Pheedrus, p. 253 C, and the old custom of having the reins round the driver’s waist is to be noticed.
1802 are implanted. All the Codd. have éyxeipévne here, instead of the €yxwurafouevns of the Paris Edition, which must be meant for €ykwpaGopuévns (itself a vox nihili), “run riot in them.”
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
for pleasure employed on any of the higher objects; nor does any other instinct to be observed in them result in any profit to themselves. Thus too, with ourselves, if these instincts are not turned by reasoning into the right direction, and if our feelings get the mastery of our mind, the man is changed from a reasoning into an unreasoning being, and from godlike intelligence sinks by the force of these passions to the level of the brute.
Much moved by these words, I said: To any one who reflects indeed, your exposition, advancing as it does in this consecutive manner, though plain and unvarnished, bears suffi- ciently upon it the stamp of correctness and hits the truth. And to those who are expert only in the technical methods of proof a mere demonstration suffices to convince; but as for ourselves, we were agreed 1899 that there is something more trustworthy than any of these artificial conclusions, namely, that which the teachings of Holy Scripture point to: and so I deem that it is necessary to inquire, in addition to what has been said, whether this inspired teaching harmonizes with it all.
And who, she replied, could deny that truth is to be found only in that upon which the seal of Scriptural testimony is set? So, if it is necessary that something from the Gospels should be adduced in support of our view, a study of the Parable of the Wheat and Tares will not be here out of place. The Householder there sowed good seed; (and we are plainly the “house”). But the “enemy,” having watched for the time when men slept, sowed that which was useless in that which was good for food, setting the tares in the very middle of the wheat. The two kinds of seed grew up together; for it was not possible that seed put into the very middle of the wheat should fail to grow up with it. But the Superintendent of the field forbids the servants to gather up the useless crop, on account of their growing at the very root of the contrary sort; so as not to root up ee the nutritious along with that foreign growth. Now we think that Scripture means by the good seed the corresponding impulses of the soul, each one of which, if only they are cultured for good, necessarily puts forth the fruit of virtue within us. But since there has been scattered'®°° amongst these the bad seed of the error of judgment as to the true Beauty which is alone in its intrinsic nature such, and since this last has been thrown into the shade by the growth of delusion which springs up 1803 we were agreed. wuoAoyeito: cf. 201 D, “If on the other hand any one will accept a discussion which is in a naked unsyllogistic form, we will speak upon these points by making our study of them as far as we can follow the chain of Scriptural tradition.”
1804 There is a variety of readings from the Codd. here; ovveykataAetn, ovvextaAn, ovvextadgin, ovvextoAat& 219°, ovyKataAv& 219°: in two (and on the margins of two others), ovvextiAn, which Krabinger has adopted. The Paris Editt. have ovvextivet 1805 mapeveondpn, the idea of badness being contained in mapa, which in such cases is always the first compound. One Cod. has the curious inversion évnapeondpn On the Soul and the Resurrection.
along with it (for the active principle of desire does not germinate and increase in the direc- tion of that natural Beauty which was the object of its being sown in us, but it has changed its growth so as to move towards a bestial and unthinking state, this very error as to Beauty carrying its impulse towards this result; and in the same way the seed of anger does not steel us to be brave, but only arms us to fight with our own people; and the power of loving deserts its intellectual objects and becomes completely mad for the immoderate enjoyment of pleasures of sense; and so in like manner our other affections put forth the worse instead of the better growths),—on account of this the wise Husbandman leaves this growth that has been introduced amongst his seed to remain there, so as to secure our not being alto- gether stripped of better hopes by desire having been rooted out along with that good-for- nothing growth. If our nature suffered such a mutilation, what will there be to lift us up to grasp the heavenly delights? If love is taken from us, how shall we be united to God? Ifanger is to be extinguished, what arms shall we possess against the adversary? Therefore the Husbandman leaves those bastard seeds within us, not for them always to overwhelm the more precious crop, but in order that the land itself (for so, in his allegory, he calls the heart) by its native inherent power, which is that of reasoning, may wither up the one growth and may render the other fruitful and abundant: but if that is not done, then he commissions the fire to mark the distinction in the crops. If, then, a man indulges these affections in a due proportion and holds them in his own power instead of being held in theirs, employing them for an instrument as a king does his subjects’ many hands, then efforts towards excel- lence more easily succeed for him. But should he become theirs, and, as when any slaves mutiny against their master, get enslaved!80 by those slavish thoughts and ignominiously bow before them; a prey to his natural inferiors, he will be forced to turn to those employ- ments which his imperious masters command. This being so, we shall not pronounce these emotions of the soul, which lie in the power of their possessors for good or ill, to be either virtue or vice. But, whenever their impulse is towards what is noble, then they become matter for praise, as his desire did to Daniel, and his anger to Phineas, and their grief to those who nobly mourn. But if they incline to baseness, then these are, and they are called, bad passions.
She ceased after this statement and allowed the discussion a short interval, in which I reviewed mentally all that had been said; and reverting to that former course of proof in her discourse, that it was not impossible that the soul after the body’s dissolution should reside in its atoms, I again addressed her. Where is that much-talked-of and renowned Hades '®”, then? The word is in frequent circulation both in the intercourse of daily life, and in the 1806 e&avdpanosioGetn; this is adopted by Krabinger from the Haselman Cod. for the common g& @v dpartodi00etn 1807 Sov dvopa.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
writings of the heathens and in our own; and all think that into it, as into a place of safe- keeping, souls migrate from here. Surely you would not call your atoms that Hades.
Clearly, replied the Teacher, you have not quite attended to the argument. In speaking of the soul’s migration from the seen to the unseen, I thought I had omitted nothing as re- gards the question about Hades. It seems to me that, whether in the heathen or in the Divine writings, this word for a place in which souls are said to be means nothing else but a transition to that Unseen world of which we have no glimpse.
And how, then, I asked, is it that some think that by the underworld!®°8 is meant an actual place, and that it harbours within itself!®°” the souls that have at last flitted away from human life, drawing them towards itself as the right receptacle for such natures?
Well, replied the Teacher, our doctrine will be in no ways injured by such a supposition.
For if it is true, what you say ~~, and also that the vault of heaven prolongs itself so uninterruptedly that it encircles all things with itself, and that the earth and its surroundings are 1811 i. round this fixed poised in the middle, and that the motion of all the revolving bodies and solid centre, then, I say, there is an absolute necessity that, whatever may happen to each one of the atoms on the upper side of the earth, the same will happen on the opposite side, seeing that one single substance encompasses its entire bulk. As, when the sun shines above the earth, the shadow is spread over its lower part, because its spherical shape makes it impossible for it to be clasped all round at one and the same time by the rays, and neces- sarily, on whatever side the sun’s rays may fall on some particular point of the globe, if we follow a straight diameter, we shall find shadow upon the opposite point, and so, continu- ously, at the opposite end of the direct line of the rays shadow moves round that globe, keeping pace with the sun, so that equally in their turn both the upper half and the under half of the earth are in light and darkness; so, by this analogy, we have reason to be certain that, whatever in our hemisphere is observed to befall the atoms, the same will befall them in that other. The environment of the atoms being one and the same on every side of the 1808 tov UmoxOdviov 1808 tov UmoxOdviov 1809 Kdxeivov év avt@, H. Schmidt’s reading, on the authority of 3 Codd. The reading of Krabinger is év EXUT@ TE KaKEIvOV. But the underworld is the only habitation in question.—oUtw A€yeo8a1, above, must mean, “is rightly so named.”
1810 ei yap GANOIIG 6 Adyos 6 Kath O€, Kai TO OVVEXT TE TPOG, K. T. A., Krabinger’s reading, following the majority of Codd.; 6 kata o€ being thus opposed to the next words, which others say. But Schmidt points out that the conclusion introduced below by a&vaéykn ma&oa does not follow at all from the first, but only from the second of these suppositions, and he would await the evidence of fresh Codd. Sifanus and Augentius would read ei KaL...KATH o€. TH yap, K. t. A., which would certainly express the sense required.
1811 na&vtwv THV KUKAOPOPOLLEVUWV, i.e. the heavenly bodies moving as one (according to the ancient astronomy) round the central earth.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
earth, I deem it right neither to contradict nor yet to favour those who raise the objection that we must regard either this or the lower region as assigned to the souls released. As long as this objection does not shake our central doctrine of the existence of those souls after the life in the flesh, there need be no controversy about the whereabouts to our mind, holding as we do that place is a property of body only, and that soul, being immaterial, is by no ne- cessity of its nature detained in any place.
But what, I asked, if your opponent should shield himself'*!” behind the Apostle, where he says that every reasoning creature, in the restitution of all things, is to look towards Him Who presides over the whole? In that passage in the Epistle to the Philippians!®!° he makes mention of certain things that are “under the earth” “every knee shall bow” to Him “of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.”
We shall stand by our doctrine, answered the Teacher, even if we should hear them adducing these words. For the existence of the soul (after death) we have the assent of our opponent, and so we do not make an objection as to the place, as we have just said.
But if some were to ask the meaning of the Apostle in this utterance, what is one to say? Would you remove all signification of place from the passage?
I do not think, she replied, that the divine Apostle divided the intellectual world into localities, when he named part as in heaven, part as on earth, and part as under the earth. There are three states in which reasoning creatures can be: one from the very first received an immaterial life, and we call it the angelic: another is in union with the flesh, and we call it the human: a third is released by death from fleshly entanglements, and is to be found in souls pure and simple. Now I think that the divine Apostle in his deep wisdom looked to this, when he revealed the future concord of all these reasoning beings in the work of goodness; and that he puts the unembodied angel-world “in heaven,” and that still involved with a body “on earth,” and that released from a body “under the earth”; or, indeed, if there is any other world to be classed under that which is possessed of reason (it is not left out); and whether any one choose to call this last “demons” or “spirits,” or anything else of the kind, we shall not care. We certainly believe, both because of the prevailing opinion, and still more of Scripture teaching, that there exists another world of beings besides, divested of such bodies as ours are, who are opposed to that which is good and are capable of hurting the lives of men, having by an act of will lapsed from the nobler view °””, and by this revolt 1812 mpoBdAAorto. This is the proper meaning of the middle: “should object,” as Oehler translates (einwerfen wollte), would require the active.
1813 Philip. ii. 10.
1814 lapsed from the nobler view (6noArWEws). This is the common reading: but Krabinger prefers ArZews, which is used by Gregory (De Hom. Opif. c. 17, “the sublime angelic lot”), and is a Platonic word. The other word, “lapsed,” is also Platonic.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
from goodness personified in themselves the contrary principle; and this world is what, some say, the Apostle adds to the number of the “things under the earth,” signifying in that passage that when evil shall have been some day annihilated in the long revolutions of the ages, nothing shall be left outside the world of goodness, but that even from those evil spir- its1815 can compel us to see any spot of the underworld in the expression, “things under the earth”; shall rise in harmony the confession of Christ’s Lordship. If this is so, then no one the atmosphere spreads equally over every part of the earth, and there is not a single corner of it left unrobed by this circumambient air.
When she had finished, I hesitated a moment, and then said: I am not yet satisfied about the thing which we have been inquiring into; after all that has been said my mind is still in doubt; and I beg that our discussion may be allowed to revert to the same line of reasoning as before!®!6 , omitting only that upon which we are thoroughly agreed. I say this, for I think that all but the most stubborn controversialists will have been sufficiently convinced by our debate not to consign the soul after the body’s dissolution to annihilation and nonentity, nor to argue that because it differs substantially from the atoms it is impossible for it to exist anywhere in the universe; for, however much a being that is intellectual and immaterial may fail to coincide with these atoms, it is in no ways hindered (so far) from existing in them; and this belief of ours rests on two facts: firstly, on the soul’s existing in our bodies in this present life, though fundamentally different from them: and secondly, on the fact that the 1815 from those evil spirits. So Great Catechism, c. 26 (fin.). Here too Gregory follows Origen (c. Cels. vi. 44), who declares that the Powers of evil are for a purpose (in answer to Celsus’ objection that the Devil himself, instead of humanity, ought to have been punished). “Now it is a thing which can in no way cause surprise, that the Almighty, Who knows how to use wicked apostates for His own purposes, should assign to such a certain place in the universe, and should thus open an arena, as it were, of virtue, for those to contend in who wish to “strive lawfully” for her prize: those wicked ones were to try them, as the fire tries the gold, that, having done their utmost to prevent the admission of any alloy into their spiritual nature, and having proved themselves worthy to mount to heaven, they might be drawn by the bands of the Word to the highest blessedness and the summit of all Good.” These Powers, as reasoning beings, shall then themselves be “mastered by the Word.” See c. Cels. viii. 72.
1816 Theconclusion of which was drawn, 199 C. “Therefore the soul exists in the actual atoms which she has once animated, and there is no force to tear her away from her cohesion with them.” It is to the line of reasoning (a&koAovBia) leading up to this conclusion that Gregory would revert, in order to question this conclusion. What both sides are agreed on is, the existence merely of the soul after death. All between this conclusion and the present break in the discussion has been a digression on the Passions and on Hades. Now Gregory asks, how can the soul possibly recognize the atoms that once belonged to her? Oehler therefore does not translate aright, “ich bitte nur den gefithrten Beweis...in derselben Folge zu wiederholen:” but Krabinger expresses the true sense, “ut rursus mihi ad eandem consequentiam reducatur oratio,” i.e. the discussion (not the proof), which is here again, almost in Platonic fashion, personified.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
Divine being, as our argument has shown, though distinctly something other than visible and material substances, nevertheless pervades each one amongst all existences, and by this penetration of the whole keeps the world in a state of being; so that following these analogies we need not think that the soul, either, is out of existence, when she passes from the world of forms to the Unseen. But how, I insisted, after the united whole of the atoms has assumed!8!7 sumed!8!7 , owing to their mixing together, a form quite different—the form in fact with which the soul has been actually domesticated—by what mark, when this form, as we should have expected, is effaced along with the resolution of the atoms, shall the soul follow along (them), now that that familiar form ceases to persist?
She waited a moment and then said: Give me leave to invent a fanciful simile in order to illustrate the matter before us: even though that which I suppose may be outside the range of possibility. Grant it possible, then, in the art of painting not only to mix opposite colours, as painters are always doing, to represent a particular tint!®!8, but also to separate again this mixture and to restore to each of the colours its natural dye. If then white, or black, or red, or golden colour, or any other colour that has been mixed to form the given tint, were to be again separated from that union with another and remain by itself, we suppose that our artist will none the less remember the actual nature of that colour, and that in no case will he show forgetfulness, either of the red, for instance, or the black, if after having become quite a different colour by composition with each other they each return to their natural dye. We suppose, I say, that our artist remembers the manner of the mutual blending of these colours, and so knows what sort of colour was mixed with a given colour and what sort of colour was the result, and how, the other colour being ejected from the composition, (the original colour) in consequence of such release resumed its own peculiar hue; and, supposing it were required to produce the same result again by composition, the process will be all the easier from having been already practised in his previous work. Now, if reason can see any analogy in this simile, we must search the matter in hand by its light. Let the 1817 has assumed, &vadaBdvtwv. The construction is accommodated to the sense, not the words; tfc Tv otolxeiwv Evwoews having preceded.
1818 tint, wop@ric. Certainly in earlier Greek pop¢r is strictly used of “form,” “shape” (or the beauty of it) only, and colours cannot be said to be mixed in imitation of form. It seems we have here a late use of pop@r as = “outward appearance”; so that we may even speak of the yop@r of a colour, or combinations of colours. So (214 A) the painter “works up (on his palette) a particular tint of colour” (uop@rv). Here it is the particular hue, in person or picture, which it is desired to imitate. Akin to this question is that of the proper translation of mpdc TrHV OHOLoTHTa Tob MpoKelpévov, which Sifanus and Krabinger translate “ad similitudinem argumenti,” and which may either mean (1) “to make the analogy to the subject matter of our question as perfect as possible,” i.e. as a parenthesis, or (2) “in imitation of the thing or colour (lying before the painter) to be copied.” The last seems preferable (“to form the given tint”).
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
soul stand for this Art of the painter!®!; and let the natural atoms stand for the colours of his art; and let the mixture of that tint compounded of the various dyes, and the return of these to their native state (which we have been allowed to assume), represent respectively the concourse, and the separation of the atoms. Then, as we assume in the simile that the painter’s Art tells him the actual dye of each colour, when it has returned after mixing to its proper hue, so that he has an exact knowledge of the red, and of the black, and of any other colour that went to form the required tint by a specific way of uniting with another kind—a knowledge which includes its appearance both in the mixture, and now when it is in its natural state, and in the future again, supposing all the colours were mixed over again in like fashion—so, we assert, does the soul know the natural peculiarities of those atoms whose concourse makes the frame of the body in which it has itself grown, even after the scattering of those atoms. However far from each other their natural propensity and their inherent forces of repulsion urge them, and debar each from mingling with its opposite, none the less will the soul be near each by its power of recognition, and will persistently cling to the familiar atoms, until their concourse after this division again takes place in the same way, for that fresh formation of the dissolved body which will properly be, and be called, resurrection.
You seem, I interrupted, in this passing remark to have made an excellent defence of the faith in the Resurrection. By it, I think, the opponents of this doctrine might be gradually led to consider it not as a thing absolutely impossible that the atoms should again coalesce and form the same man as before.
That is very true, the Teacher replied. For we may hear these opponents urging the fol- lowing difficulty. “The atoms are resolved, like to like, into the universe; by what device, then, does the warmth, for instance, residing in such and such a man, after joining the uniq ne. so as to versal warmth, again dissociate itself from this connection with its kindre form this man who is being ‘remoulded’? For if the identical individual particle does not return and only something that is homogeneous but not identical is fetched, you will have something else in the place of that first thing, and such a process will cease to bea resurrection and will be merely the creation of a new man. But if the same man is to return into himself, 1819 ypagikijs TEX.
1820 duryés tob ovyyevobs ndAw damoKpiOfjval. Krabinger’s and Oehler’s reading. But Krabinger, more correctly than Oehler, opposes év tHe to Ev TH KAO’ GAov (quod est hic calidum, si fuerit in universo): though neither he, nor Oehler, nor Schmidt himself appears to have any suspicion that t@5¢ maymean “so and so:” and yet it is quite in accordance with Gregory’s usage, and makes better sense, as contrasting the particular and universal heat more completely. ’Auryéc is proleptic: the genitive may depend either on it or on the verb. Just below avanhacoduevov is read by 5 of Krabinger’s Codd. (including the Hasselmann). This is better than Migne’s amaAAacodpevov, which is hardly supported by 1 Cor. xv. 51.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
he must be the same entirely, and regain his original formation in every single atom of his elements.”
Then to meet such an objection, I rejoined, the above opinion about the soul will, as I said, avail; namely, that she remains after dissolution in those very atoms in which she first grew up, and, like a guardian placed over private property, does not abandon them when they are mingled with their kindred atoms, and by the subtle ubiquity of her intelligence makes no mistake about them, with all their subtle minuteness, but diffuses herself along with those which belong to herself when they are being mingled with their kindred dust, and suffers no exhaustion in keeping up with the whole number of them when they stream back into the universe, but remains with them, no matter in what direction or in what fashion Nature may arrange them. But should the signal be given by the All-disposing Power for these scattered atoms to combine again, then, just as when every one of the various ropes 1821 + the pull from that centre, so, following this force of the soul which acts upon the various atoms, all these, once that hang from one block answer at one and the same moment so familiar with each other, rush simultaneously together and form the cable of the body by means of the soul, each single one of them being wedded to its former neighbour and embracing an old acquaintance.
The following illustration also, the Teacher went on, might be very properly added to those already brought forward, to show that the soul has not need of much teaching in order to distinguish its own from the alien amongst the atoms. Imagine a potter with a supply of clay; and let the supply be a large one; and let part of it have been already moulded to form finished vessels, while the rest is still waiting to be moulded; and suppose the vessels them- selves not to be all of similar shape, but one to be a jug, for instance, and another a wine- jar, another a plate, another a cup or any other useful vessel; and further, let not one owner possess them all, but let us fancy for each a special owner. Now as long as these vessels are unbroken they are of course recognizable by their owners, and none the less so, even should they be broken in pieces; for from those pieces each will know, for instance, that this belongs toa jar 1822 toa jar 1822 , and, again, what sort of fragment belongs to a cup. And if they are plunged again into the unworked clay, the discernment between what has been already worked and that clay will be a more unerring one still. The individual man is as such a vessel; he has been moulded out of the universal matter, owing to the concourse of his atoms; and he ex- hibits in a form peculiarly his own a marked distinction from his kind; and when that form has gone to pieces the soul that has been mistress of this particular vessel will have an exact knowledge of it, derived even from its fragments; nor will she leave this property, either, in the common blending with all the other fragments, or if it be plunged into the still formless 1821 same moment. kata tavtov: on the authority of 2 Codd. Mon.
1822 Reading dt1 10 Ev TO Ex Tod TIBov, Moiov Sé TO Ex Tob NotNpiou, K. T. A.
On the Soul and the Resurrection.
part of the matter from which the atoms have come!®”*; she always remembers her own as it was when compact in bodily form, and after dissolution she never makes any mistake about it, led by marks still clinging to the remains.
I applauded this as well devised to bring out the natural features of the case before us; and I said: It is very well to speak like this and to believe that it is so; but suppose some one were to quote against it our Lord’s narrative about those who are in hell, as not harmonizing with the results of our inquiry, how are we to be prepared with an answer?
The Teacher answered: The expressions of that narrative of the Word are certainly material; but still many hints are interspersed in it to rouse the skilled inquirer to a more discriminating study of it. I mean that He Who parts the good from the bad by a great gulf, and makes the man in torment crave for a drop to be conveyed by a finger, and the man who has been ill-treated in this life rest on a patriarch’s bosom, and Who relates their previous death and consignment to the tomb, takes an intelligent searcher of His meaning far beyond a superficial interpretation. For what sort of eyes has the Rich Man to lift up in hell, when he has left his bodily eyes in that tomb? And how can a disembodied spirit feel any flame? And what sort of tongue can he crave to be cooled with the drop of water, when he has lost his tongue of flesh? What is the finger that is to convey to him this drop? What sort of place is the “bosom” of repose? The bodies of both of them are in the tomb, and their souls are disembodied, and do not consist of parts either; and so it is impossible to make the framework of the narrative correspond with the truth, if we understand it literally; we can do that only by translating each detail into an equivalent in the world of ideas. Thus we must think of the gulf as that which parts ideas which may not be confounded from running together, not as a chasm of the earth. Such a chasm, however vast it were, could be traversed with no difficulty by a disembodied intelligence; since intelligence can in no time’®** be wherever it will.