And, so, he at last ceases to live, who ceases to experience them. And thus by and by infants are still-born; but how so, unless they had had life? For how could any die, who had not previously lived? But sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb, an infant is put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he impedes parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die him- self. Accordingly, among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uteriis first of all, and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, ^ by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but un- faltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire foetus is extracted "^ by a violent delivery. There is also (another instrument in the shape of ) a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive rob- bery of life: they give it, from its infanticide function, the name of eui3pvoa<(>dKTrjif the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such apparatus was possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus, and He- rophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder Soranus himself, who all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive. Of the necessity of such harsh treatment I have no doubt even Hicesius was convinced, although he imported their soul into infants after birth from the stroke of the frigid air, because the very term for soul, forsooth, in Greek answered to such a refrigeration! ^ Well, then, have the barbarian and Roman nations received souls by some other process, (I wonder;) for they have called the soul by another name than fvx^? How many nations are there who commence life * under the broiling sun of the torrid zone, scorching their skin into its swarthy hue? Whence do they get their souls, with no frosty air to help them? I say not a word of those well-warmed bed-rooms, and all that apparatus of heat which ladies in childbirth so greatly need, when a breath of cold air might endanger their life. But in the very bath almost a babe will slip into life, and at once his cry is heard! If, however, a good frosty air is to the soul so indispensable a treasure, then be- yond the German and the Scythian tribes, and the Alpine and the Argaean heights, nobody ought ever to be born! But the fact really is, ' Anulocultro. [To be seen in the Museum at Naples.]
2 Or, " the whole business (totum facinus) is despatched.
4 Censentur.
that population is greater within the temper- ate regions of the East and the West, and men's minds are sharper; whilst there is not a Sarmatian whose wits are not dull and huji- drum. The minds of men, too, would grow keener by reason of the cold, if their souls came into being amidst nipping frosts; for as the substance is, so must be its active power. Now, after these preliminary statements, we may also refer to the case of those who, having been cut out of their mother's womb, have breathed and retained life — your Bacchuses^ and Scipios.^ If, however, there be any one who, like Plato, ^ supposes that two souls can- not, more than two bodies could, co-exist in the same individual, I, on the contrary, could show him not merely the co-existence of two souls in one person, as also of two bodies in the same womb, but likewise the combination of many other things in natural connection with the soul — for instance, of demoniacal pos- session; and that not of one only, as in the case of Socrates' own demon; but of seven spirits as in the case of the Magdalene; ^ and of a legion in number, as in the Gadarene.' Now one soul is naturally more susceptible of conjunction with another soul, by reason of the identity of their substance, than an evil spirit is, owing to their diverse natures. But when the same philosopher, in the sixth book of The Laws, warns us to beware lest a vitiation of seed should infuse a soil into both body and soul from an illicit or debased concu- binage, I hardly know whether he is more in- consistent with himself in respect of one of his previous statements, or of that which he had just made. For he here shows us that the soul proceeds from human seed (and warns us to be on our guard about it), not, (as he had said before,) from the first breath of the new-born child. Pray, whence comes it that from similarity of soul we resemble our parents in disposition, according to the testimony of Cleanthes,'° if we are not produced from this seed of the soul? Why, too, used, the old astrologers to cast a man's nativity from his first conception, if his soul also draws not its origin from that moment? To this (nativity) likewise belongs the inbreathing of the soul, whatever that is.
CHAP. XXVI. — SCRIPTURE ALONE OFFERS CLEAR KNOWLEDGE ON THE QUESTIONS WE HAVE BEEN CONTROVERTING.
Now there is no end to the uncertainty and SLiberi aliqui.
6 See Pliny, Natural History, ▼ii. 9, 7 See above, ch. x.
8 Mark xvi. 9.
•o See above, ch. v.
CHAP. xx\ai.]
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
irregularity of humiin opinion, until we come to the limits which God has prescribed. I shall at last retire within our own lines and firmly hold my ground there, for the purpose of proving to the Christian (the soundness of) my answers to the Philosophers and the Physicians. Brother (in Christ), on your own foundation' build up your faith. Consider the wombs of the most sainted women instinct with the life within them, and their babes which not only breathed therein, but were even endowed with prophetic intuition. See how the bowels of Rebecca are disquieted,^ though her child-bearing is as yet remote, and there is no impulse of (vital) air. Behold, a twin offspring chafes within the mother's womb, although she has no sign as yet of the twofold nation. Possibly we might have re- garded as a prodigy the contention of this in- fant progeny, which struggled before it lived, which had animosity previous to animation, if it had simply disturbed the mother by its restlessness within her. But when her womb opens, and the number of her offspring is seen, and their presaged condition known, we have presented to us a proof not merely of the (separate) souls of the infants, but of their hostile struggles too. He who was the first to be born was threatened with detention by him who was anticipated in birth, who was not yet fully brought forth, but whose hand only had been born. Now if he actually imbibed life, and received his soul, in Platonic style, at his first breath; or else, after the Stoic rule, had the earliest taste of animation on touching the frosty air; what was the other about, who was so eagerly looked for, who was still detained within the womb, and was trying to detain (the other) outside? I sup- pose he had not yet breathed when he seized his brother's heel; ^ and was still warm with uis mother's warmth, when he so strongly ivished to be the first to quit the womb. What an infant! so emulous, so strong, and already so contentious; and all this, I suppose, be- cause even now full of life! Consider, again, those extraordinary conceptions, which were more wonderful still, of the barren woman and the virgin: these women would only b^ able to produce imperfect offspring against the course of nature, from the very fact that one of them was too old to bear seed, and the other was pure from the contact of man. If ihere was to be bearing at all in the case, it was only fitting that they should be born with- out a soul, (as the philosopher would say,) who had been irregularly conceived. How- ' Of the Scriptures.
ever, even these have life, each of them in his mother's womb. Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in her womb;* Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had instigated her within. ^ The mothers recognise each their own offspring, being moreover each recognised by their infants, which were there- fore of course alive, and were not souls merely, but spirits also. Accordingly you read the word of God which was spoken to Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee."* Since God forms us in the womb, He also breathes upon us, as He also did at the first creation, when " the Lord God formed man, and breathed into him the breath of life."' Nor could God have known man in the womb, except in his entire nature: " And before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee."^ Well, was it then a dead body at that early stage? Certainly not. For " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
CHAP. XXVII. — SOUL AND BODY CONCEIVED, FORMED AND PERFECTED IN ELEMENT SIMUL- TANEOUSLY.
How, then, is a living being conceived? Is the substance of both body and soul formed together at one and the same time? Or does one of them precede the other in natural for- mation? We indeed maintain that both are conceived, and formed, and perfectly simulta- neously, as well as born together; and that not a moment's interval occurs in their con- ception, so that a prior place can be assigned to either. 9 Judge, in fact, of the incidents of man's earliest existence by those which occur to him at the very last. As death is defined to be nothing else than the separation of body and soul," life, which is the opposite of death, is susceptible of no other definition than the conjunction of body and soul. If the severance happens at one and the same time to both substances by means of death, so the law of their combination ought to as- sure us that it occurs simultaneously to the two substances by means of life. Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does. Thus, then, the processes which act together to produce separation by death, also combine in a simultaneous action to produce 9 Comp. De Resurr. Carnis^ sir. '0 So Plato, Pkado. p. 64.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. XXVI] I.
life. If we assign priority to (the formation of) one of the natures, and a subsequent time to the other, we shall have further to deter- mine the precise times of the semination, ac- cording to the condition and rank of each. And that being so, what time shall we give to the seed of the body, and what to the seed of the soul? Besides, if different periods are to be assigned to the seminations then arising out of this difference in time, we shall also have different substances.' For although we shall allow that there are two kinds of seed — that of the body and that of the soul — we still declare that they are inseparable, and there- fore contemporaneous and simultaneous in origin. Now let no one take offence or feel ashamed at an interpretation of the processes of nature which is rendered necessary (by the defence of the truth). Nature should be to us an object of reverence, not of blushes. It is lust, not n^itural usage, which has brought shame on the intercourse of the sexes. It is the excess, not the normal state, which is im- modest and unchaste: the normal condition has received a blessing from God, and is blest by Him: " Be fruitful, and multiply, (and re- plenish the earth.)" ^ Excess, however, has He cursed, in adulteries, and wantonness, and chambering. 3 Well, now, in this usual function of the sexes which brings together the male and the female in their common in- tercourse, we know that both the soul and the flesh discharge a duty together: the soul sup- plies desire, the flesh contributes the gratifi- cation of it; the soul furnishes the instigation, the flesh affords the realization. The entire man being excited by the one effort of both natures, his seminal substance is discharged, deriving its fluidity from the body, and its warmth from the soul. Now if the soul in Greek is a word which is synonymous with cold,* how does it come to pass that the body grows cold after the soul has quitted it? In- deed (if I run the risk of offending modesty even, in my desire to prove the truth), I can- not help asking, whether we do not, in that very heat of extreme gratification when the generative fluid is ejected, feel that somewhat of our soul has gone from us? And do we not experience a faintness and prostration along with a dimness of sight? This, then, must be the soul-producing seed, which arises at once from the out-drip of the soul, just as that fluid is the body-producing seed which proceeds from the drainage of tlie flesh. Most true are the examples of the first crea- ' Materia:.
3 Lupanaria.
tion. Adam's flesh was formed of clay. Now what is clay but an excellent moisture, whence should spring the generating fluid? From the breath of God first came the soul. But what else is the breath of God than the vapour of the spirit, whence should spring that which we breathe out through the generative fluid? Forasmuch, therefore, as these two different and separate substances, the clay and the breath, combined at the first creation in forming the individual man, they then both amalgamated and mixed their proper seminal rudiments in one, and ever afterwards com- municated to the human race the normal mode of its propagation, so that even now the two substances, although diverse from each other, flow forth simultaneously in a united channel; and finding their way together into their appointed seed-plot, they fertilize with their combined vigour the human fruit out of their respective natures. And inherent in this human product is his own seed, according to the process which has been ordained for every creature endowed with the functions of gen- eration. Accordingly from the one (primeval) man comes the entire outflow and redundance of men's souls — nature proving herself true to the commandment of God, " Be fruitful, and multiply." 5 For in the very preamble of this one production, " Let us make man," * man's whole posterity was declared and described in a plural phrase, " Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea," etc' And no wonder: in the seed lies the promise and earnest of the crop.
CHAP. XXVIII. THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE OF TRANSMIGRATION SKETCHED AND CEN- SURED.
What, then, by this time means that ancient saying, mentioned by Plato,* concerning the reciprocal migration of souls; how they re- move hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, and afterwards become alive from the dead? Some will have it that this is a saying of Pythagoras; Albinus sup- poses it to be a divine announcement, perhaps of the Egyptian Mercury.' But there is no divine saying, except of tlie one true God, by whom the prophets, ant) the apostles, and Christ Himself declared their grand message. More ancient than Saturn a good deal (by some nine hundred years or so), and even than hit grandchildren, is Moses; and he is certainly much more divine, recounting and tracing out, 9 [Hermes. See Bacon, De A vr. i.
CHAP. XXIX.]
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
as he does, the course of the human race from the very beginning of the world, indicating the several births (of the fathers of mankind) according to their names and their epochs; giving thus plain proof of the divine character of his work, from its divine authority and word. If, indeed, the sophist of Samos is Plato's authority for the eternally revolving migration of souls out of a constant alternation of the dead and the living states, then no doubt did the famous Pythagoras, however excellent in other respects, for the purpose of fabricating such an opinion as this, rely on a falsehood, which was not only shameful, but also hazardous. Consider it, you that are ig- norant of it, and believe with us. He feigns death, he conceals himself underground, he condemns himself to that endurance for some seven years, during which he learns from his mother, who was his sole accomplice and at- tendant, what he was to relate for the belief of the world concerning those who had died since his seclusion;' and when he thought that he had succeeded in reducing the frame of his body to the horrid appearance of a dead old man, he comes forth from the place of his concealment and deceit, and pretends to have returned from the dead. Who would hesitate about believing that the man, whom he had Bupposed to have died, was come back again to life? especially after hearing from him facts about the recently dead,' which he evi- dently could only have discovered in Hades itself! Thus, that men are made alive after death, is rather an old statement. But what if it be rather a recent one also? The truth does not desire antiquity, nor does falsehood shun novelty. This notable saying I hold to be plainly false, though ennobled by antiquity. How should that not be false, which depends for its evidence on a falsehood? — How can I help believing Pythagoras to be a deceiver, who practises deceit to win my belief? How will he convince me that, before he was Pythagoras, he had been yEthalides, and Eu- phorbus, and the fisherman Pyrrhus, and Hermotimus, to make us believe that men live again after they have died, when he actual- ly perjured himself afterwards as Pythagoras. In proportion as it would be easier for me to believe that he had returned once to life in his own person, than so often in the person of this man and that, in the same degree has he deceived me in things which are too hard to be credited, because he has played the im- postor in matters which might be readily be- lieved. Well, but he recognised the shield of Euphorbus, which had been formerly conse- ' De posteris defunctis. 14 crated at Delphi, and claimed it as his own, and proved his claim by signs which were generally unknown. Now, look again at his subterranean lurking-place, and believe his story, if you can. For, as to the man who devised such a tricksty scheme, to the injury of his health, fraudulently wasting his life, and torturing it for seven years underground, amidst hunger, idleness, and darkness — with a profound disgust for the mighty sky — what reckless effort would he not make, what cu- rious contrivance would he not attempt, to arrive at the discovery of this famous shield? Suppose now, that he found it in some of those hidden researches; suppose that he recovered some slight breath of report which survived the now obsolete tradition; suppose him to have come to the knowledge of it by an in- spection which he had bribed the beadle to let him have, — we know very well what are the resources of magic skill for exploring hidden secrets: there are the catabolic spirits, which floor their victims;^ and the paredral spirits, which are ever at their side ■" to haunt them; and the pythcmic spirits, which entrance them by their divination and ventriloquistic * arts. For was is not likely that Pherecydes also, the master of our Pythagoras, used to divine, or I would rather say rave and dream, by such arts and contrivances as these? Might not the self-same demon have been in him, who, whilst in Euphorbus, transacted deeds of blood? But lastly, why is it that the man, who proved himself to have been Eu- phorbus by the evidence of the shield, did not also recognise any of his former Trojan comrades? For they, too, must by this time have recovered life, since men were rising again from the dead.
CHAP. XXIX. THE PYTHAGOREAN DOCTRINE REFUTED BY ITS OWN FIRST PRINCIPLE, THAT LIVING MEN ARE FORMED FROM THE DEAD.
It is indeed, manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it does not fol- low from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. For from the beginning the living came first in the order of things, and therefore also from the beginning the dead came afterwards in order. But these pro- ceeded from no other source except from the living. The living had their origin in any other source (you please) than in the dead; whilst the dead had no source whence to de- rive their beginning, except from the living.
2 From (caTapaXAetv, to knock down.
3 From irap€6o9, sitting by one.
4 From ■nvBtavi.KO's, an attribute of Pythius Apollo, this c^as^ were sometimes called iyyavrpiiJivBoi, ventriloquists.
2IO A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. XXX.
If, then, from the very first the living came not from the dead, why should they afterwards (be said to) come from the dead? Had that original source, whatever it was, come to an end? Was the form or law thereof a matter for regret? Then why was it preserved in the case of the dead? Does it not follow that, because the dead came from the living at the first, therefore they always came from the living? For either the law which obtained at the beginning must have continued in both of its relations, or else it must have changed in both; so that, if it had become necessary for the living afterwards to proceed from the dead, it would be necessary, in like manner, for the dead also not to proceed from the liv- ing. For if a faithful adherence to the insti- tution was not meant to be perpetuated in each respect, then contraries cannot in due alternation continue to be re-formed from contraries. We, too, will on our side adduce against you certain contraries, of the born and the unborn, of vision ' and blindness, of youth and old age, of wisdom and folly. Now it does not follow that the unborn proceeds from the born, on the ground that a contrary issues from a contrary; nor, again, that vision proceeds from blindness, because bhndness happens to vision; nor, again, that youth revives from old age, because after youth comes the decrepitude of senility; nor that folly ' is born with its obtuseness from wisdom, because wisdom may possibly be sometimes sharpened out of folly. Albinus has some fears for his (master and friend) Plato in these points, and labours with much ingenuity to distinguish different kinds of contraries; as if these instances did not as absolutely partake of the nature of contrariety as those which are expounded by him to illustrate his great mas- ter's principle — I mean, life and death. Nor is it, for the matter of that, true that life is restored out of death, "because it happens that death succeeds ^ life.
CHAP. XXX. — FURTHER REFUTATION OF THE PYTHAGOREAN THEORY. THE STATE Oti" CONTEMPORARY CIVILISATION.
But what must we say in reply to what fol- lows? For, in the first place, if the living come from the dead, just as the dead proceed from the living, then there must always re- main unchanged one and the selfsame num- ber of mankind, even the number which orig- inally introduced (human) life. The living preceded the dead, afterwards the dead issued from the living, and then again the living ' Visualitatis.
* iDsipientiam. " Imbecility " is the raeaaing here, though the word takes the more general sease in the next clause. 3 Deferatur.