Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
I could now lay out for you the wonderful design of the reproductive organs themselves, were I not held back by modesty from such a discussion; and so let those parts which decency requires be veiled by us with the covering of shame. As far as this matter goes, it is enough to lament that impious and godless men commit the utmost outrage, twisting the divine and admirable work of God — devised and fashioned by an inconceivable plan for the propagation of offspring — either to the most shameful profiteering or to the shameless service of obscene lust, so that from a thing most sacred they now seek nothing but empty, barren pleasure. But what of the rest of the body? Do its other parts lack either design or beauty? Consider the flesh gathered into the buttocks, so well suited to the office of sitting, and firmer there than in the other limbs, lest, pressed by the weight of the body, it should give way against the bones. Consider likewise the thighs, drawn out long and strengthened by broader masses of muscle, so that they might more easily bear up the weight of the body — a length which tapers gradually and is brought to a narrow point by the knees, whose graceful joints provide a bend most fitted to the feet for walking and sitting. The legs too are shaped not with uniform thickness, lest an unbecoming form should disfigure the feet, but are both strengthened and adorned by calves that curve gently outward and taper gradually. In the soles the plan is much the same, and yet quite different from that of the hands — for since the soles are, as it were, the foundation of the whole structure, the wondrous craftsman did not form them round (lest man be unable to stand, or need other feet to stand on, as four-footed creatures do), but rather stretched out and elongated, so that by their flatness they might render the body stable — whence they take their very name. The toes are equal in number to the fingers, but display more show than usefulness, and are therefore joined together, short, and arranged in graduated order; and the largest of them, since there was no need — as with the hand — to set it apart from the rest, has been drawn back into line, though it still appears somewhat greater in size and slightly separated from the others. This graceful kinship among them lends no small support to the effort of the feet, for we cannot break into a run unless, pressing our toes to the ground and bracing against the soil, we gather force and spring...
One can be sure the body holds countless things whose force and purpose only their Maker is able to discern. Who would claim he can explain the use or effect of that thin, transparent membrane that nets and covers the belly? Or the twin form of the kidneys — Varro's word for them supposedly comes from the streams of foul fluid he thought ran from them, though that is far off the mark, since in fact they lie back to back on either side of the spine, quite apart from the intestines. What of the spleen, or the liver, those organs that seem almost congealed out of roiled blood? What of the bitter fluid of the gall, or the mass of the heart? Unless, that is, we should trust those who locate anger in the gall, fear in the heart, and joy in the spleen. As for the liver, some hold that its office is to digest food in the belly through its warmth and embrace, while others suppose that desire for the pleasures of love is housed there. But first of all, the keenness of human perception cannot penetrate these matters, since their workings stay hidden inside and, being concealed, never disclose their purposes. Were it otherwise, the gentler animals would perhaps have little or no gall whatsoever, or less of it than the fierce ones do; the more fearful creatures would carry more heart, the lustier ones more liver, the wanton ones more spleen. Just as we know we hear by means of the ears, see by the eyes, and smell by the nostrils, so too we would surely sense that anger comes from the gall, craving from the liver, delight from the spleen. But since we have no awareness whatsoever of the source of these feelings, it is entirely possible they arise elsewhere, and that those organs actually do something quite unlike what we imagine — though we cannot prove that those who argue otherwise are mistaken. Still, I judge that everything touching the movements of mind and soul belongs to a reasoning so obscure and profound that seeing it clearly lies beyond human reach. Yet this much ought to stand certain and beyond question: that so many organs, so many varieties of inward parts, share one single office — holding the soul within the body. Yet what particular duty falls to each one is known to none but the Craftsman, since he alone understands the work of his own hands.
But as for the voice, what account can we give of it? Grammarians and philosophers define voice as air struck by breath, from which the word for 'words' is said to derive — but this is plainly false, for voice is not produced outside the mouth but within it. Nearer the truth, then, is the view that when compressed breath is driven against the obstruction of the throat, it produces the sound of the voice — much as when we blow breath down into an open reed held to the lip, and the breath, driven back and rebounding from the hollow of the reed as it grazes against the breath still descending, straining toward the opening, produces a sound, and the wind, springing back into vocal breath, is as it were animated by itself. Whether that is so, let God the Craftsman be the judge — for the voice appears to well up from deep in the chest rather than out of the mouth. Indeed, even with the mouth closed, a sound of a kind is emitted through the nostrils. Moreover the voice is not produced by the strongest breath, such as we use in panting, but is produced, whenever we wish, by a light and unconstrained breath. It has not, then, been grasped how this happens or what it even is. And do not think that I am now slipping into the position of the Academy, as though nothing at all could be understood — for while it must be admitted that many things are unknown, which God willed to exceed man's understanding, still there are many things that can be both perceived by the senses and grasped by reason. But our full argument against the philosophers will come elsewhere. Let us, then, finish out the stretch of road we are now running.
Who does not know that the workings of the mind, too, are beyond comprehension — except one who has no mind at all, since it is not even known where the mind itself is located, or of what nature it is? Philosophers have argued various things about its nature and location. I for my part will not conceal what I myself think — not that I assert it to be so, which would be the act of a fool in a doubtful matter, but so that, once the difficulty of the question has been set out, you may understand how great is the greatness of the divine works. Some have wished to place the seat of the mind in the chest. If this is so, how worthy of wonder it is that a thing set in so dark and shadowy a dwelling should move amid so great a light of reason and understanding, and further, that the senses converge upon it from every part of the body, so that it seems present in whatever region of the limbs one considers! Others located it instead in the brain, and they too had reasonable grounds for saying so: surely whatever governs the entire body should dwell at the very top, as though in the body's stronghold, and indeed nothing outranks whatever governs the totality through reason, precisely because the cosmos itself is likewise ruled from its highest point by its own lord and director. Furthermore, the organs serving all the senses — hearing, sight, and smell — sit in the head, and their pathways lead not down to the chest but up to the brain; otherwise our perception would necessarily lag, having to travel the long route down the neck before reaching the chest. These men are, perhaps, not greatly mistaken, or not mistaken at all — for it does seem that the mind, which holds dominion over the body, is set at the top of the head like God in the highest heaven, but that when it is occupied with some thought, it travels to the chest and withdraws, as it were, into some secret inner chamber, so as to draw forth and bring out its counsel as from a hidden treasury; and this is why, when we are intent on thinking and the mind has buried itself in deep concentration, we are apt neither to hear what sounds around us nor to see what stands in our way. Whether this is indeed so is truly a marvel, since no path lies open from the brain to the chest; but even if it is not so, it remains no less marvelous that by some divine means it comes to seem so. Can anyone fail to marvel that this living and heavenly faculty called mind or spirit possesses such restlessness that it does not even rest when the body is asleep, and such swiftness that in a single instant it can, if it wishes, survey the whole heaven, fly across the seas, range over lands and cities — indeed, set before its own view all things it pleases, however far and wide they may lie removed? And is it any wonder that God's own mind ranges with full attention through every part of the universe, ruling and directing all things, present everywhere and spread everywhere at once, given that the strength and reach of the human mind, though locked inside a body doomed to die, remains so vast that no barrier raised by this heavy, sluggish frame to which it is tied can stop it from granting itself, in its restlessness, free rein to wander? Whether, then, the mind dwells in the head or in the chest, can anyone grasp what power of reason causes that incomprehensible faculty to cling either to the marrow of the brain or to that twofold blood enclosed within the heart — rather than gathering from this very fact how great is the power of God, in that the spirit does not see itself, neither of what kind it is nor where it is, nor, even if it could see, could it perceive how an incorporeal thing is joined to a corporeal one? Or perhaps the mind occupies no single location at all, but is diffused across the entire body — a view that is indeed tenable, one Xenocrates, Plato's pupil, defended, since feeling can be found in any part whatsoever of the frame — in which case neither the essence of the mind nor its character can be grasped, its nature being so fine and subtle that, once infused into the solid organs, it mingles with every limb in a living, almost burning, sensation. But beware of ever thinking there is any truth in what Aristoxenus says — that there is no mind at all, but that the power of feeling arises, like a harmony in the strings of an instrument, from the structure of the body and the joining of its organs. For musicians call the tuning and concord of strings, sounding together in whole and unbroken measures without any clash, a harmony. They would have it, then, that the soul in man is constituted on the same principle as concordant tuning is constituted in strings — namely, that the firm joining of the body's several parts, and the harmonious vigor of all the limbs together, produce that sensory motion and tune the soul as well-tuned strings produce a concordant sound; and just as, in strings, when something is broken or slackened the whole scheme of the music is disturbed and undone, so in the body, when some part of the limbs has taken harm, the whole is destroyed, and once everything is corrupted and thrown into disorder, sensation perishes — and this, they say, is called death. But if that man had had any mind at all, he would never have carried the analogy of harmony from strings over to man. Strings, after all, cannot produce sound by themselves — nothing about them truly resembles or compares to a living being — whereas the soul, unprompted, both thinks and moves on its own initiative. Were something like a harmony actually present in us, it would need an outside strike to set it moving, just as strings need the hand, since left untouched by a craftsman's fingers they lie silent and inert. But no doubt that man himself needed to be struck by a hand before he could feel anything at all, since his mind, badly joined together out of limbs, lay torpid.
What is left is to discuss the soul, even though its nature and rational basis defy full comprehension. That does not mean, however, that we cannot grasp the soul's immortality, since anything that flourishes and moves under its own continual power, and can be neither seen nor touched, must necessarily be everlasting. But what the soul is, philosophers have not yet agreed, and perhaps never will. Some have said it is blood, others fire, others wind — whence it took the name anima or animus, since in Greek wind is called anemos — yet none of them seems to have said anything sound. For if the soul, when blood is poured out through a wound or consumed by the heat of fevers, appears to be extinguished, it does not follow that the nature of the soul is to be located in the substance of blood — just as, if the question arose what the light we use is, and it were answered that it is oil, since when the oil is used up the light is extinguished, though the two are certainly distinct, one being merely the nourishment of the other. So the soul seems to resemble the light, which is not itself the blood, but is fed by the moisture of the blood as the flame is fed by oil. Those, however, who believed it was fire based their claim on this: that the body stays warm as long as the soul dwells in it, and turns cold once the soul departs. But fire needs sensation to burn, is visible, and burns to the touch, whereas the soul is endowed with sensation, cannot be seen, and does not scorch — from which it appears that the soul is, in some way, something like God. Those who think it wind are mistaken on this ground, that because we draw breath from the air we seem to live by it. Varro defines it thus: the soul is air taken in through the mouth, heated in the lungs, tempered in the heart, and spread through the body. These claims are quite plainly false. Nor do I say the reasoning of such matters is so obscure to us that we cannot even grasp what cannot be true. If someone told me that the sky is made of bronze, or of glass, or, as Empedocles says, of frozen air, would I at once agree, simply because I do not know what substance the sky is made of? Just as I do not know the one thing, so I do know the other. The soul, then, is not air taken in through the mouth, because the soul is generated long before air can be taken in through the mouth. For it is not instilled into the body after birth, as some philosophers hold, but immediately after conception; for divine necessity has already shaped the child in the womb, since it lives so fully within the mother's womb that it grows in size and, by frequent movements, strains to leap forth. Indeed a miscarriage must occur if the living being within has died. The remaining parts of that definition amount to this — that during those nine months we spent in the womb, we would appear to have been dead. None of these three opinions, then, is true. Yet those who have held them are not to be called so entirely wrong as to have said nothing at all — for we do live by blood, and by warmth, and by breath together. But since it is agreed that the soul in the body is a union of all these things, none of them properly expressed what it actually is, for it can no more be expressed than it can be seen.
There follows another question, equally impossible to untangle: whether the soul and the mind are one and the same, or whether that by which we live is one thing and that by which we perceive and understand is another. Arguments are not lacking on either side. Those who say the two are one follow this reasoning: that nothing can live without sensation, nor be sensed without life, and therefore what cannot be separated cannot be considered distinct, but whatever that single thing is, it possesses both the function of living and the faculty of sensing. For this reason two Epicurean poets use 'mind' and 'soul' interchangeably. But those who say the two are distinct argue as follows: it can be understood that mind is one thing and soul another, from the fact that the mind can be extinguished while the soul remains sound — as commonly happens to the insane — and likewise from the fact that the soul is put to sleep by death, but the mind by ordinary sleep, and indeed in such a way that it not only does not know what it is doing or where it is, but is even deceived by the contemplation of unreal things. How this itself happens cannot be fully seen, though why it happens can be. For we can rest in no way unless the mind is held fast, occupied by the images of visions. The mind lies hidden, overwhelmed by sleep, like a fire smothered beneath ashes — which, if you stir it even slightly, blazes up again and, as it were, wakes. It is thus drawn off by phantom images until the limbs, steeped in slumber, are refreshed; for the body, while sensation is awake, though it lies motionless, is nevertheless not at rest, because sensation still burns and flickers within it like a flame, and holds all the joints bound to itself. But once the mind has been drawn away from its concentration to the contemplation of images, only then is the whole body finally relaxed into rest. The mind, meanwhile, is diverted by unseeing thought: driven inward by the darkness, it starts to keep company with only itself, and as it dwells upon whatever occupies its thinking, sleep creeps over it unnoticed, and thought itself gradually slides toward images close at hand — so that it begins also to 'see' the very things it had set before its own eyes. Then it proceeds further and finds for itself further diversions, so as not to interrupt the body's most wholesome rest. For just as the mind, by day, is diverted by true visions so that it does not fall asleep, so by night it is diverted by false ones so that it is not roused — for if it perceived no images at all, it would necessarily either stay awake or be sunk in unending death. The faculty of dreaming, then, has been granted by God as the reason for our sleeping, and indeed in common to all living creatures alike; but this above all is peculiar to man — that while God gave this faculty for the sake of rest, he reserved to himself the further power of teaching man future things through dreams. For histories too often bear witness that there have arisen dreams whose outcome was both immediate and remarkable, and the responses of our own seers have in part rested upon dreams. Hence dreams are neither always true nor always false, as Virgil himself attests, who held that there are two gates of dreams. But those that are false seem to occur merely for the sake of sleep, while those that are true are sent by God, so that through this revelation we may learn of some good or evil impending.