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Chapter I. One should learn about the soul not from philosophers, but from God. 1. As to what the soul is, I argued with Hermogenes, 147 who suggested that it was formed rather from the accumulation of matter than from the breath of God; Now, having turned to the consideration of other questions, it seems that I will mainly have to fight with philosophers. 2. Even in Socrates’ 148 prison, a debate arose regarding the state of the soul 149 - I don’t know how suitable this time was for a teacher, not to mention the place. What, beyond any doubt, could the soul of Socrates feel (which, of course, experienced some excitement characteristic of nature or, if it went beyond the boundaries established by nature, was plunged into horror) when the sacred vessel had already returned, 150 when the hemlock of the sentence had already been drunk, 151 when death was already nearby? For the soul, no matter how serene and calm it was (it was not confused, as usually happens when compassion is shown, neither by the sobs of a wife, almost a widow, nor by the sight of children, already orphans 152), of course, it was still excited in the sense that it tried not to worry; Fortitude itself was shaken in the struggle against the shock that leads to instability. What else could any unjustly condemned person feel than relief from the consciousness that he was not punished according to his deserts, not to mention a philosopher, a being born for glory, who should rather mock injustice than, having been subjected to it, need consolation? 3. So, to his wife who happened to be nearby, who after the verdict cowardly exclaimed: “Socrates, you were condemned unfairly!”, he immediately answered, finding consolation in this: “Did you want it to be fair?” 153 Therefore, one should not be surprised if, wanting to crush the “unsticky” hands in prison 154 Anita and Melita 155, in the face of death he defends the immortality of the soul, in order to erase the injustice of the sentence with this forced assumption. 4. Moreover, all the then famous wisdom of Socrates stems from his desire to maintain equanimity, and not from confidence in the truth he has comprehended. For to whom has the truth been revealed without God? Who knows God without Christ? Who comprehended Christ without the Holy Spirit? Who has received the Holy Spirit without the sacrament of faith? Socrates, of course, was under the influence of the opposite spirit, since they say that the demon did not leave him from his childhood, 156 truly the worst teacher, even if poets and philosophers consider demons to be after the gods and next to the gods. 5. After all, evidence of Christian power has not yet been revealed, which alone exposes this most dangerous force, which is never good, but is the culprit of every error, leading away from all truth. And if for this reason 157 Socrates is considered the wisest, according to the saying of the Pythian, also a demon, who, of course, provides a service to his accomplice, then how much more worthy and consistent is the affirmation of Christian wisdom, from the breath of which all the power of demons recedes? 6. This wisdom of the heavenly school, while denying the gods of this world, is more free 158; she is not hypocritical, ordering the sacrifice of a rooster to Aesculapius 159, she does not introduce new gods, but expels old ones 160, she does not corrupt youth 161, but instructs him in all chastity. And therefore, not in one city, but throughout the whole world, an unjust sentence is passed on her - in the name of 162 truth, which, unfortunately, is as much more hateful as it is complete, so that this wisdom tastes death not from a glass in a pleasant way 163, but on the cross and at the stake, with all possible ingenuity and cruelty. Meanwhile, in this very gloomy prison of this world, among its Cebetes and its Phaedo, 164 Christian wisdom, if it is necessary to make an inquiry about the soul, directs it in accordance with the rules of God, confident that there is no one who would explain the soul better than its Creator. What this wisdom has from God, let it learn only from God and from no one else! For who will reveal what God has hidden? From whom should you find out? From the One from Whom it is safest not to know. It is better not to know from God what He has not revealed than to know from man what he himself has assumed. Chapter II. There is much that is controversial and unreliable in what philosophers write about the soul. 1. Of course, we will not deny that philosophers have sometimes thought the same way as we do; the truth is confirmed by the success of her deeds. Sometimes even in a storm, when sky and sea are mixed, due to a lucky mistake, some harbor is encountered along the way; even in darkness one can find some way in and out through blind luck. And quite a lot is suggested to us by our nature - ordinary common sense, which God deigned to bestow on the soul. 2. Having become its owner, philosophy used it to glorify its own art, even before it became addicted (not surprisingly if I call it that) to eloquence, capable of creating and destroying anything, and convincing rather by speaking than by teaching. Philosophy puts content into forms, considers everything, sometimes together, sometimes separately; the known is judged as the unknown. Refers to examples as if everything is subject to comparison; puts everything into one category or another, although even similar things have different properties 165, and leaves nothing in the power of God 166. She imposed her assumptions as laws of nature. I would come to terms with this if philosophy, while remaining natural, proved its rightness as participating in nature, based on its kinship with it. 3. It seems to her that she has gained knowledge from works that are believed to be sacred, for thanks to antiquity, many authors were recognized not only as divine, but even as gods. Such are the Egyptian Mercury 167, to whom Plato 168 mainly gravitated, Silenus the Phrygian, to whom, when shepherds brought him, Midas gave his huge ears 169, Hermotimus, to whom, after his death, the inhabitants of Clazomenae erected a church 170, Orpheus, Musaeus 171, Pherecydes 172, teacher of Pythagoras. But what if philosophers also attacked those writings that were condemned as pseudo-Christian among us, convinced of the inadmissibility of accepting anything that does not agree with the true prophecy that arose in this very century 173 (since we remember both the false prophets and the fallen apostate spirits that appeared much earlier, who created, thanks to the skillful use of such abilities, the entire appearance of this world)? 4. Finally, even if it is likely that every seeker of wisdom turns to the prophets themselves out of curiosity, you will still find more differences among philosophers than they have in common, since even in this commonality their dissimilarity is revealed. After all, everything that was true and in agreement with the prophets, they either present as having come from another source, or adapt it to something else, and with the greatest damage to the truth, which is forced either to accept help from lies, or to provide assistance to lies. 5. So, our clash with philosophers, especially in the issue under discussion, will occur because sometimes they provide common principles with us with their own evidence, which in one way or another contradicts our principles; sometimes their own positions are supported by evidence common to us, corresponding in one way or another to their principles, so that truth turns out to be practically separated from philosophy due to its inherent poison. Because of the existence of these two points of contact [between our teaching and philosophy] that are harmful to the truth, we are forced, by consulting the divine writings, to free our common propositions with philosophers from the proofs they give, and to separate the common proofs from their propositions, excluding, of course, that which can be used as mere evidence without the risk of falling into the trap of any preconceived opinion. For sometimes the testimony of rivals is necessary if it does not benefit them 174. 6. I am not ignorant of the abundance of material on this subject that philosophers have, considering also the number of their commentators; how great is the variety of opinions, how many schools exist that adhere to one opinion or another, how much research has grown, how many intricacies there are in the presentation. I also studied medicine, the sister, as they say, of philosophy, which also claims to have knowledge in this area. Isn't it? Indeed, due to its concern for the body, it may seem that it, to a greater extent than philosophy, is faced with the problem of the soul. That is why philosophy opposes the sister, because she comprehended the soul better than she, studying it as if directly at its location. However, let both of them moderate their desire to excel! Indeed, in their research about the soul, philosophers were guided by the play of a free mind, while physicians were guided by the need to improve their skills: the unreliable is examined in detail, and the conjectural is discussed in even more detail. As many difficulties in proving, there is as much zeal in persuasion. So Heraclitus, famous for his obscurity, 175 seeing how much fog was spread in their writings by those who explore the soul, with disgust at their search, rightly declared that, no matter how hard he tried, he had not discovered any boundaries of the soul. 7. For a Christian, little is enough to understand this subject. After all, there is always little that is reliable, and a Christian is not allowed to try to find out more than he can. The Apostle also forbade endless debates 176. Moreover, one cannot reveal more than what is revealed by God; and that which is revealed by God is everything. Chapter III. The origin of the soul is from the breath of God. 1. Oh, if there were no need for heresies to arise in order to identify the skillful ones! 177 Then we would not argue at all about the soul with philosophers, I would say, patriarchs of heretics 178; after all, the Apostle foresaw that philosophy would become a shock to truth 179. For, having visited Athens, he realized that this city is distinguished by verbiage, when he was convinced from his own experience that everyone there trades in wisdom and eloquence 180, which is why he formulated his warning injunction. 2. In the same way, the understanding of the soul has been perverted by the philosophical teachings of people who mix water with wine 181: some deny that the soul is immortal, others claim that it is more than immortal 182; some talk about its essence, others about its form, others about its structure. These consider its appearance to be alien, those consider its end to be so, depending on whether they were convinced by the authority of Plato or the energy of Zeno 183, or the measuredness of Aristotle, or the stupidity of Epicurus, or the sadness of Heraclitus, or the madness of Empedocles 184. 3. I think the divine teaching made a mistake when it arose in Judea 185 and not in Greece. Christ also made a mistake when he sent fishermen and not a sophist to preach. So, if somewhere the clear and pure air of truth is in this way polluted by the child of philosophy, then Christians must dispel this child by refuting the primary, that is, philosophical, conclusions and contrasting with them the heavenly, that is, the Lord's instructions, in order to destroy that with which philosophy traps the pagans in its nets, and break that with which heresy disturbs the faithful. 4. One battle - against Hermogenes - is already over, as was said at the very beginning, for we affirm that the soul is from the breath of God, and not from matter, finding support in this matter in one of the provisions of the divine teaching, which cannot be obscured. And God breathed in, he says, the breath of life in the face of man, and man became a living soul 186, - of course, from the breath of God, and there is no point in returning to this problem; there is a treatise dedicated to it 187, there is a corresponding heresy. Let me move on to the remaining questions 188. Chapter IV. The soul is born and created. 1. Having determined what the soul is, the question arises of how it comes into being. We, who recognize the soul as originating from the breath of God, should attribute a beginning to it. Plato excludes this, arguing that the soul is neither born nor created 189. We, on the basis of the statement about its beginning, teach that it was both born and created. There will be no deliberate error in these words of ours: one, they say, is born, the other is created, since the latter corresponds to the inanimate, the first to the animate. But differences, having their place and time, are sometimes mixed and combined. So, they say “creation” instead of “call into existence,” because everything that in any way begins to exist is created. After all, the creator himself can be called the parent of the created; Plato also uses this word. So, as far as our belief in created and begotten souls is concerned, the opinion of the philosopher is refuted - and again on the authority of the prophets. Chapter V 190. The soul is the body. 1. Let them call certain Eubulus 191, Critolaus 192, Xenocrates 193, and Aristotle, who agrees 194 with Plato in this. Perhaps, they would rather prefer to take away the body of the soul if they ignore others, and moreover, more numerous ones, who defend the presence of a body in the soul. 2. I am not only talking about those who represent the soul as consisting of obvious bodily substances: for example, Hipparchus 195 and Heraclitus - from fire, Hippo and Thales - from water, Empedocles and Critias - from blood, Epicurus - from atoms (if atoms, when combined, form something corporeal), Critolaus and his peripatetics - from some fifth substance 196 (if it is a body, therefore which contains bodies), but I also include here the Stoics, who, declaring that the soul is a spirit, almost like us, for the breath and the spirit are close to each other, will, however, without difficulty prove that the soul is a body. 3. In fact, Zeno, defining the soul as the sown spirit, argues in this way: that, he says, with whose departure a living being dies, is the body; when the sown spirit leaves, the living being dies, therefore the sown spirit is a body. Therefore, the soul is the body. 4. And Cleanthes asserts that similarity with parents is observed in sons not only in the outlines of the body, but also in the properties of the soul, that is, in the similarity of characters, abilities and inclinations; that the similarity and difference of bodies extends to souls and that, thus, the soul is a body, since bodies are similar and dissimilar. 5. He also claims that there is nothing in common between the suffering of the body and the incorporeal, while the soul sympathizes with the body, which, struck by blows, wounds, ulcers, it sympathizes with, and the body with the soul, with which, oppressed by care, melancholy, love, it sympathizes, deprived of the vital force it shares with it, while the shame and fear of the soul is evidenced by the color of shame or pallor. Therefore, the soul is a body because it is subject to bodily suffering. 6. But Chrysippus also gives him [Cleanthes] a helping hand, arguing that the corporeal can in no way be abandoned by the incorporeal, for it is not even touched by it (hence the words of Lucretius: After all, the body can only touch, as well as be tangible, 197), but people die when the soul leaves the body. Consequently, the soul is a body, since it could not leave the body if it were not corporeal 198. Chapter VI 199. Refutation of the Platonists who deny the corporeality of the soul. 1. Platonists confuse matters more out of a desire to be witty than out of a desire for truth. “It is necessary,” they say, “that every body be animate or inanimate. If it is inanimate, then it is set in motion from the outside, but if it is animate, it is set in motion from within. The soul will not be set in motion from the outside, since it is not inanimate, and will not [be set in motion] from within, since rather it moves the body itself. So, it seems that she is not a body which, unlike the corporeal, is not set in motion either from the outside or from the inside.” 2. Here we are perplexed, first of all, by the absurdity of the definition, based on what does not apply to the soul. For the soul cannot be called an animate or inanimate body, since it itself is that which makes the body animate while remaining in it, or inanimate when it leaves it. Thus, it cannot be what it itself creates to be called animate or inanimate. After all, it is called the soul after the name of its essence. (3). And if that which is the soul cannot be called animate or inanimate body, how can it be compared with animate or inanimate bodies? 3. In addition, if being set in motion by something from the outside is a property of the body, and above we showed that the soul, when it prophesies or rages, is set in motion by something else (of course, from the outside, since it is different), then I have every reason, in accordance with the example proposed, to recognize as a body that which will be set in motion by something else from the outside. Indeed, if it is a property of a body to be set in motion by something, then how much more appropriate for a body would it be to set something in motion? The soul moves the body, and its impulses from the outside manifest themselves outside. For by it the legs are stimulated to walk, and the hands to touch, and the eyes to contemplate, and the tongue to speak, as if the surface of a figurine moved due to internal influence. Where could this strength come from for a disembodied soul? Where does an empty and insignificant thing have the ability to push something dense? 4. But how can physical and intellectual feelings seem to be separated in a person? “The qualities,” they say, “of bodily things, for example, earth, fire, are communicated to the bodily senses, for example, touch, vision; non-corporeal qualities, for example, benevolence and malice, can be perceived by the intellectual senses. So, there is no doubt that the soul is incorporeal, since its qualities are perceived not by the physical, but by the intellectual senses.” 5. Of course, unless I stop the victorious march of this definition. Here, I show that the incorporeal is subject to the bodily senses: sound to hearing, color to vision, smell to smell; In the same way, the soul is attached to the body, so do not assert that the incorporeal is manifested through the bodily senses because it is attached to the corporeal. So, if it is known that the incorporeal is also comprehended by the corporeal, then why should not the soul, which is corporeal, manifest itself with the help of the incorporeal? The inconsistency of the definition, of course, has been proven. 6. From the proofs [of the Platonists], the following deserves special attention: every body, they believe, is nourished by bodily things, and the soul, as incorporeal, is nourished by non-corporeal things, namely, exercises in wisdom. But they cannot maintain this position either, since Soranus 200, a writer very knowledgeable in methodological medicine, answers them that the soul also feeds on the bodily, and, weakening, is strengthened for the most part by food. Isn't it? If a person is completely deprived of food, the soul disappears from the body. Thus, even Soranus himself, having examined the question of the soul in great detail in four volumes and having studied the positions of all philosophers, defends the corporeal essence of the soul, although he takes away immortality from it. After all, not everyone can believe in what Christians believe. 7. Therefore, just as Soranus himself proves with facts that the soul feeds on the corporeal, so let the philosopher prove that it feeds on the incorporeal. But no one has ever given the honeyed water of Plato's eloquence to a soul perplexed about death, or fed it with the crumbs of Aristotle's taciturnity. What should a host of voluminous souls of rude people and barbarians, lacking the food of wisdom, do? Although unlearned, these souls still have prudence and, without academies, Attic porticos and Socratic dungeons, abstaining from the taste of philosophy, they still live. After all, the food of science does not benefit the substance of the soul itself, but its education, for it makes the soul not well-fed, but beautiful. It is also good that the Stoics defend the corporeality of the arts: also for this reason the soul is corporeal, if we consider that it is nourished by the arts. 8. But with excessive zeal in the pursuit of philosophy, in most cases people do not look at their feet (so Thales fell into a well 201), and due to a lack of understanding of their own statements, they begin to suspect a deterioration in their health (this was the case with Chrysippus with hellebore 202). Something similar, I think, happened to him when he denied that there could be two in one body, forgetting or losing sight of pregnant women, who in one womb from day to day carry not one body, but two and three. From civil law we learn about a certain Greek woman who gave birth to five, who became the mother of all these sons at once, a woman in labor who, after one birth, became a child of many, a fertile parent with one womb, who, being filled with so many bodies, I would say, almost a people, was herself a sixth body. 9. The whole creation will confirm that the bodies that are to come out of the bodies are already in the place from which they come out. One must consider as second that which comes from another. Nothing, in turn, comes from another, unless two exist when one is born. Chapter VII. The corporeality of the soul is obvious from the words of the Gospel. 1. For philosophers, what has been said is quite enough, but for us, for whom the corporeality of the soul will become obvious from the words of the Gospel itself, what has been said is more than enough. The soul of a certain person suffers in hell and is punished by fire, and its tongue burns, and it prays to the happy soul for a moistened finger as a consolation 203. 2. Do you consider what happened to the rejoicing poor man and the grieving rich man to be just a parable? But why is the name of Eleazar 204 there if we are not talking about the true state of affairs? But even if this should be considered an image, it will be a confirmation of the true state of affairs. After all, if the soul did not have a body, then the image of the soul would not take on the image of the body, and Scripture would not lie about bodily members if they did not exist. 3. What is that which descends to hell after separation from the body, what is kept there until the Day of Judgment, and to what does Christ, having died, descend (I think to the souls of the patriarchs), if the soul underground is nothing? Indeed, nothing if not the body; After all, incorporeality is free from all kinds of imprisonment, is not subject to punishment, and does not need pleasure. Of course, that which can be punished or pleased will be the body. I will tell you more about this in a more appropriate place. 4. So, if the soul experiences pain and receives relief - in prison or in the refuge of the dead, in the fire or on Abraham's bed, then the corporeality of the soul will be proven. For incorporeality does not feel anything without having something with which it could feel; and if it has, then it will be a body. After all, to the extent that everything corporeal is capable of feeling 205, so much that what is capable of feeling is corporeal 206. Chapter VIII. The soul is a body, despite its difference from other bodies. 1. Nevertheless, it is rash and therefore stupid to deprive something of its belonging to the body on the grounds that it does not resemble other bodies. But what about individual differences in properties, thanks to which the greatness of the Creator is manifested from the dissimilarity of the same bodies, so that they are as dissimilar as they are equal, as friendly as they are hostile? After all, philosophers themselves agree that everything consists of opposites, according to the teaching of Empedocles on friendship and enmity 207. 2. Consequently, although corporeal things are opposed to incorporeal ones, they themselves differ from each other in such a way that the differences enrich their species without changing the genus, so that they remain corporeal; so numerous in the glory of God, because they are diverse, so diverse, because they are different, so diverse, because some senses are intended for the perception of some of their qualities, and others for the perception of others; because for some there is one food, for others another, because some are visible, others are invisible, because some are heavy, others are light. 3. After all, they say that the soul should be called incorporeal because with its departure the bodies of the deceased become heavier, although they should become lighter, losing the weight of one body, if the soul is a body. But what will happen, says Soranus, if those who say this begin to deny that the sea is a body, on the grounds that the ship becomes motionless and heavy outside the sea? So, how much stronger is the body of the soul, which carries with amazing lightness a body 208 so heavy afterwards! 4. Moreover, although the soul is invisible, it is so in accordance with the position of its body, the uniqueness of its essence and the nature of those (that is, people) for whom it fell to its lot to be invisible. The eyes of owls do not know the sun; the eagles can withstand its radiance and judge the birth of their children by the fearlessness of their gaze, and will not feed them like a degenerate chick that turns away from the sun's rays 209 . 5. Moreover, what is invisible to one is visible to another, without being incorporeal only on the grounds that the power of perception is not the same. After all, the sun is a body, since it is fire, but what the eagle recognizes, the owl will deny, without, however, deciding for the eagle. In the same way, the body of the soul, invisible to the flesh, is perhaps visible to the spirit. Thus, John, filled with the Spirit of God 210, contemplates the souls of the martyrs 211. Chapter IX. The soul is endowed with a certain appearance, shape and size. 1. Since we have recognized the soul as a body of a special property and kind, this uniqueness of it already gives us the opportunity to judge in advance about other incidental signs of corporeality: either they are present in the one that we show as a body, but belong to a special kind in accordance with the bodily characteristic; or are not present, which is the uniqueness of the body of the soul: its absence of signs that other bodies have. But we will nevertheless maintain, without considering this inconsistent, that everything more related to the substantial and indisputably due to corporeality is also present in the soul, such as shape, limits and extension in three dimensions, 212 I speak of length, width and height, with the help of which philosophers measure bodies. 2. How can we now, who endow the soul with an image, object to Plato, who sees in this a threat to its immortality? 213 For he asserts that everything that has an image is compound and complex; and everything composite and complex decomposes; but the soul is immortal, therefore, it is not subject to decomposition, since it is immortal, and formless, since it is not subject to decomposition. However, it turns out to be composite and complex, since it has an image, and he also describes it, seemingly in a different way - with the help of features comprehended by the intellect - beautiful because of justice and the pursuit of philosophy, ugly because of the opposite properties 214. 3. But we also attribute bodily features to her, not only on the basis of the confidence in her corporeality that arose during the study, but also referring to the reliability of the grace imparted through revelation. After all, since we recognize spiritual gifts, even after John we were also worthy to receive prophecies. 4. We have a sister who has been granted the gifts of revelation 215, which she receives in church during the Lord’s triumph through ecstasy in the spirit. He communicates with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and sees and hears the sacraments, and recognizes the hearts of some, and receives healing remedies for those in need. And depending on whether the Scripture is read or psalms are sung, a sermon is delivered or prayers are said, from them she draws material for her visions. I don't remember exactly what we talked about the soul when this sister was in the spirit. After the end of the service, when the people were dismissed, she, as is her custom, announced to us what she had seen (for we discuss this very carefully in order to correctly evaluate it), she says: “Among other things, a soul was shown to me in a bodily form, and it seemed like a spirit, but it was not empty and empty in quality, but on the contrary, one that seems to be able to be held - tender 216 and light, the color of air, with an appearance exactly like that of a person. That was the vision." And God is a witness, and the Apostle is a worthy guarantor of God’s future gifts in the Church 217. And if the case itself convinces in particulars, believe it too. 5. After all, if the soul is a body, then, without a doubt, among other things that we said above, every body [and, consequently, the soul] will have a characteristic color. In this case, what other color would you define for the soul if not airy and light? It is not that its very essence is air, even if Aenesidemus 218 and Anaximenes 219 believed so (I think that Heraclitus, as some believe), or light, although Heraclides of Pontus 220 believed so, 6. – after all, the essence of red gems is not fiery, although they shimmer with a golden-red color, and beryls do not consist of water, although they are characterized by the brilliance of a light wave (how many other things exist that are united by color, but are separated by nature!), but because everything thin and transparent seems to compete with air, and the soul will be such, since it comes from the breath and the spirit, because it is precisely because of this its very subtlety calls into question its physicality. 7. Now, in accordance with your feeling, try to imagine the image of the human soul, which will turn out to be nothing other than human, and, moreover, the body that each soul wears. By the way, contemplation of its emergence encourages us to think so. Remember that when God breathed the breath of life into a man’s face, and man, of course, became a living soul. That spirit, which immediately passed through the face into the insides and spread throughout the entire space of the body, and was immediately condensed by the divine breath, was reflected in every corner, which it, being compacted, filled and froze there, as if in a form. 8. As a result of this, the corporeality of the soul was strengthened by condensation, and the image was formed by pressing. One person will be internal, the other will be external; twice one, and the inner man also has his own eyes and ears, with which the people 221 were supposed to hear and see the Lord 222. The inner man has other members, which he uses both in his thoughts and in his dreams. So, the rich man has a tongue in the underworld, and the poor man has a finger, and Abraham has a womb 223. Thanks to this, the souls of the martyrs under the altar are distinguishable 224. Indeed, from the very beginning the soul, condensed in Adam and taking the form of a body, formed the seed of both the entire essence and its state. Chapter X. The soul is simple and homogeneous. 1. To strengthen the position of our faith, it is important to define the soul as simple, according to Plato, 225 that is, as homogeneous in respect at least of its essence, whatever the arts and sciences may say and whatever images may say. 2. After all, some believe that in the soul there is another natural substance, the spirit, as if one thing is to live, the ability that the soul gives, the other is to breathe, the ability that the spirit gives, [referring to the fact that] not all living creatures have both of these abilities, for the majority only live, but do not breathe, because they do not have respiratory organs, lungs and trachea. 3. What is the use of taking into account mosquitoes and ants when studying the human soul, since God the Creator endowed each of the living creatures with internal organs different from the rest in accordance with the structure of each genus, and, therefore, any assumptions made on the basis of comparisons will be unfounded?! After all, a person, if he is equipped with lungs and trachea, will not, for this reason, breathe thanks to one, but live thanks to the other, and an ant, if he is deprived of these organs, will not be denied breathing as merely living [and not breathing]. 4. For whom is everything so clear in God's affairs that he can assume that someone lacks the ability to breathe? For Herophilus, the notorious doctor, or rather butcher, who, in order to explore nature, cut up six hundred people and hated man in order to know him? I don’t know whether he studied all human insides properly, because death itself changes the human organs that have just lived, and, moreover, death is not natural, but occurs due to an error during an operation. 5. Philosophers have declared as obvious that mosquitoes, ants and moths do not have lungs or tracheas. Tell me, inquisitive researcher, do they have eyes to see? Nevertheless, they move wherever they want, and run away from it and grab what, having seen, they recognized: show their eyes and designate their pupils. But the moth is voracious - point out where its jaws are, get the molars. Yes, and mosquitoes make a loud sound, having listeners even in the dark: show me where they have a pipe and a spear in their mouth 226. Any living creature, no matter how tiny, needs to eat something: show the esophagus, the organs of digestion and removal of residues. (6.) So, what do we say? If life is possible thanks to these organs, everyone living will have them, even if they are not visible, even if they cannot be distinguished due to their small size. You will probably find it easier to believe this if you recognize God as skillful in both small and great things. 6. If you do not think that the ingenuity of God is manifested in such small bodies, then recognize His greatness, for He gave life to small creatures, despite their lack of the necessary organs, so that vision exists without eyes, nutrition is possible without teeth and digestion without a stomach; in the same way, some move without legs, sometimes with a quick flowing movement, like snakes, sometimes in attempts to rise, like caterpillars, sometimes crawling and spewing mucus, like snails. 7. Why don’t you admit that they breathe without the cavities of the lungs and tubes of the trachea, on the same basis on which you consider it possible to accept as strong evidence that the spirit is attached to the human soul, since there are creatures that are devoid of spirit, and they are devoid of spirit because they are not endowed with members containing air? Do you think that something can live without a spirit, but you do not admit the possibility of breathing without lungs? What do you think it means to breathe? Do you think you're going to lose your breath? What does it mean to live? Don't lose your breath, I guess. After all, I will have to answer like this, if breathing and living are not the same thing. But not breathing out will be the property of a dead person: therefore, the property of the living is to breathe out. But also the property of the breather is to emit breath; therefore, breathing is a property of the living. If it were possible to emit breath and breathe without a soul, the work of the soul would not be to breathe, but only to live. But to live means to breathe, and to breathe means to live. Consequently, all this - both breathing and living - is the business of the one whose business it is to live, that is, the soul. 8. Finally, if you separate the spirit [from the soul] by nature, separate by action: let both do something separately, separately - the soul, separately - the spirit; let the soul live without spirit, let the spirit breathe without soul; let one leave the body, the other remain; let death and life coincide. After all, if the soul and spirit are two different things, then they can separate so that, thanks to their separation - one leaving, the other abiding, the closure of death and life occurs. But in no way will this happen: therefore, those who cannot be divided, who could be divided if they were two, will not be two. 9. “But two can be fused.” But they will not be fused if one thing is to live, the other is to breathe: the entities differ in their deeds. How much more reliable is it now for you to consider as one and the same that which you do not find different, that the soul itself is spirit, since what allows one to breathe is the same as what allows one to live. After all, what will happen if you want to consider day as one thing, and light as something else that is added to the day, although light itself is day? Of course, there can be other types of light, such as light from fire. There may be other types of spirit, such as the spirit from God and the spirit from the devil. So, since we are talking about soul and spirit, then the soul itself will be spirit, just as the day itself is light. For something is that by which it exists as such. Chapter XI. The soul is called spirit because it breathes, and not because it is actually spirit. 1. But the present inquiry urges me to call the soul spirit, since to breathe is attributed to another entity [that is, spirit]. Since we consider this to be a property of the soul, which we recognize as homogeneous and simple, it is necessary that we declare it a spirit under a certain condition: not because of a state, but because of an action, not as an essence, but as a deed, because it breathes, and not because it is actually a spirit. After all, blowing means breathing. Thus, the soul, which we define, based on its originality, as a breath, we declare here to be a spirit out of necessity; be that as it may, contrary to Hermogenes, who declares that it consists of matter, and not of the breath of God, we consider it as a breath itself. 2. For he, neglecting the testimony of Scripture itself, converts the breath into spirit, so that the soul is believed to consist of matter rather than of the spirit of God, since it is incredible that the spirit of God should come to sin and then to judgment. Therefore, we affirm there that the soul is a breath, and not a spirit, according to Scripture and according to the distinction of spirit, and here we declare it a spirit reluctantly, in accordance with the similarity of breath and breath. There is a question of essence; after all, breathing is an action of essence. 3. We would not talk about this anymore if it were not for the heretics who place some incomprehensible seed into the soul, brought thanks to the secret generosity of Sophia the Mother, and even in the presence of an ignorant Creator, 227 although the Scripture of the Creator, more aware of its God, did not say anything more, except that God breathed into the face of man the breath of life, and man became a living soul, through which he has since lived and breathed, since the difference between spirit and soul is sufficiently indicated in the following testimonies, when God Himself declares: The Spirit has gone out from Me, and I have created every breath 228 . For the breath of the Spirit became the soul. And again: Who gave breath to the people on earth and spirit to those who trampled on it 229. First, after all, the soul is given, that is, breath, to the people walking on the earth, that is, in the flesh, acting in a carnal way, then the spirit is given to those who trample the earth, that is, subordinating the works of the flesh, for the Apostle says that the first is not that which is spiritual, but that which is spiritual; spiritual - then 230. 4. After all, even if Adam immediately began to prophesy about that great mystery in relation to Christ and the Church 231: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; for her sake, if a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and both become one flesh, 232 then he experienced a random visitation of the Spirit: he fell into ecstasy, the power of the Holy Spirit, the author of the prophecies, descended on him. 5. After all, an evil spirit is something accidental. Finally, how did the Spirit of God subsequently turn Saul into another man, that is, into a prophet, as soon as it was said: What is this with the son of Kish? Is Saul also a prophet? 233 - so the spirit of evil then turned him into another person, that is, into an apostate. The devil also entered into Judas, who for quite a long time was considered one of the chosen ones, including the period when he, although already a fraudster 234 , but not yet a traitor, performed his duty at the box 235 . 6. So, if no spirit, either from God or from the devil, is attached to the soul from birth, then it is obvious that it remains alone until the coming of one or another spirit. If one, then simple and homogeneous in essence and, thus, breathing for no other reason than due to its essence. 1. In the same way, by the rational principle 236 (among the Greeks this is the mind, νοῦς) we understand nothing more than an addition inherent in the soul by nature, instilled and inalienable from birth, with the help of which the soul acts and reflects in such a way that, having it with it, it moves out of itself, with itself and into itself, and thus the impression arises that it is moved by it as if different in essence, as those who assert also that the engine of the universe is the mind - the same god of Socrates, the Only Begotten of Valentine from the father Βυϑῷ and mother Σιγῇ 237 . 2. Oh, how confused is the thought of Anaxagoras! For, having invented that the mind is the beginning of everything, 238 suspending the swing of the universe on its axis and asserting that it is pure, simple and unmixed, mainly on this basis removes it from mixing with the soul, but, however, declares it in another place to be the soul. 3. This inconsistency was also noted by Aristotle, I don’t know whether he was more accustomed to filling his own or emptying someone else’s. Finally, he himself, when he gave a definition of the mind, nevertheless declared, as another variety of it, the divine Mind, which he then, showing to be dispassionate, separated from communion with the soul. It is known that a soul subject to suffering endures what is due to it. Therefore, either, if it has grown together with the mind, it will endure through it, or with it, and the mind can no longer be considered dispassionate, or, if it does not endure through it and not with it, then it will not be united with the one with whom and for whom it does not endure anything. Further, if the soul does not endure through it and with it, it will not feel, will not be rational and will not be moved by it, as [some philosophers] claim. 4. After all, Aristotle makes feelings suffering. Isn't it? After all, to feel means to suffer, since to suffer means to feel. Likewise, to be sensible means to feel, and to move means to feel. So everything means suffering. We see that the soul does not experience any of this, so that it is not attributed to the mind, for through it and with it this is accomplished. 5. Therefore, the mind is something that, contrary to Anaxagoras, can be confused, which, contrary to Aristotle, is subject to suffering. However, if separation is allowed, so that the mind and soul become essentially two things, then to one of them will belong suffering, and feeling, and all understanding, and action, and movement, while the other will belong to idleness and peace, and torpor, and it will no longer be considered a motivating principle, so that either the mind will be inactive, or the soul. 6. And if it is known that all this is attributed to both of them, then both are one, and Democritus will defend this point of view, rejecting the difference; and it will be investigated how both are one: from the mixture of two essences or from the distribution of one. We say that the mind is so fused with the soul that it is not essentially different, but a property of the essence. Chapter XIII. The mind is the instrument of the soul. 1. Now it remains to consider what the advantage belongs to, that is, what precedes what, in order to consider as the actual essence what the advantage will be, and what this essence dominates will be considered as its natural property. Indeed, who would not give all supremacy to the soul, by whose name the whole person is named? 2. “How many souls do I support,” says the rich man, he does not say “minds,” and the helmsman wants to save souls, not minds, and the peasant at work and the warrior in battle claim that they trust the soul, not the mind. Whose dangers or desires—the mind or the soul—are mentioned more often? What, they say, do people at the point of death care about—the mind or the soul? Finally, the philosophers themselves and the doctors themselves, although they intended to talk about the mind, nevertheless called their treatises “On the Soul” 239. 3. I will also refer to examples from Scripture: in order to turn the human mind to Himself, God always turns to the soul, motivates the soul and calls to it. Christ comes to save her, threatens to destroy her in Gehenna, forbids her to value her highly, 240 and Himself, the Good Shepherd, lays her down for His sheep. You are convinced that the soul has an advantage over the mind and the unity of its essence, so that you can understand that the mind is its instrument, and not its patron. Chapter XIV. The soul is incomposite and indivisible. 1. Moreover, the soul is single and simple and whole in itself, uncompounded and indivisible, for it is indecomposable. After all, if it were composite and decomposable, it would no longer be immortal. Therefore, since the soul is not mortal, it is both indecomposable and indivisible. For to divide means to decay, and to decay means to die. 2. However, they try to divide it into parts: Plato, for example, into two, 241 Zeno into three, Aristotle into five, Panetius 242 into six, Soranus into seven, Chrysippus into eight, Apollophanes 243 into nine, some Stoics into twelve, and Posidonius 244 into more parts. The latter, starting with two components: the leading one, which is called ἡγεμονικόν, and the speculative one, which is called λογικόν, then divided them into seventeen 245 components. Thus, one after another, philosophers divide the soul into a different number of parts. 3. These will be not so much parts of the soul as powers, abilities and functions, as Aristotle concluded about them. For they are not members of the essence of the soul, but natural properties, such as the ability to move, act, think; or something else of this kind, like the five well-known senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. Even if certain centers in the body are assigned to each of them, then such a distribution in the soul will not lead to its dismemberment, since the body itself is not divided into members, just as the soul is not divided, no matter how much they (my opponents) would like it. 4. But from many members one body is composed, so that here we are dealing with accretion rather than with division. Look at the most extraordinary structure of Archimedes, I mean the hydraulic organ - there are so many parts, so many details, so many connections, so many passages for tones, so many shortcuts for sounds, so many devices for variations of modes, so many rows of pipes, but everything will be one bulk. Likewise, the breath that comes from it due to the operation of the water pressure pump will not be divided into parts for the reason that it is supplied through different parts of the instrument, being integral in its essence, but divided in the process of action [of the organ]. 5. This example is also suitable for Strato, Aenesidemus and Heraclitus: after all, they also protect the unity of the soul, which, being diffused throughout the body and present everywhere, like a breath through the cavities of a reed, manifests itself in various ways through the senses, not so much divided as distributed. How all these manifestations of the soul are called, and by what division they are determined, and within what boundaries the bodies are closed, let it be better for doctors and philosophers to consider; Not much will suit us. Chapter XV. The soul has a leading principle residing in the heart. 1. First of all, is there in the soul some higher basis relating to life and reason, which is called ἡγεμονικόν, that is, a leading principle, for if its existence is denied, everything in the soul will be called into question. In fact, those who deny it (i.e., ἡγεμονικόν) first of all turned the soul itself into nothingness. 2. A certain Messenian Dicaearchus 247, and from the doctors Andrei and Asclepiades 248 eliminated the leading principle of the soul, arguing that in the mind itself there are feelings, the primacy of which they defend. Asclepiades rushes into battle, armed also with the proof that most living beings, when those parts of the body in which, as is most often believed, the leading part of the soul is located, are removed, continue to live for some time and, in spite of everything, feel something, like flies and wasps, and locusts, if you cut off their heads; goats, turtles and eels, if you remove the heart; Consequently, the leading principle of the soul does not exist, since if it existed, then if it disappeared along with its location, the vital force of the soul would not be preserved. 3. But most philosophers do not agree with Dicaearchus: Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle; The doctors also disagree with Andrew and Asclepiades: Herophilus 249, Erasistratus 250, Diocles 251, Hippocrates and Soranus himself, and now we Christians, who outnumber them all. When learning from God, we proceed from two provisions: that there is a leading principle in the soul and that it has a specific location in the body. 4. After all, if we read about God as one who searches and observes the heart, 252 if His prophet is also tested when divulging the secrets of the heart, 253 if God Himself foresaw the thoughts of the heart among the people: why do you think evil in your hearts? 254 if David: raise up a pure heart in me, O God! 255 and Paul says: with the heart one believes to righteousness, 256 and John says: with his own heart everyone is condemned, 257 if, finally, whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart, 258 then both immediately become clear: and what is the leading principle in the soul (with which the divine desire is united), that is, the power related to reason and life (after all, that which possesses mind, lives), and that it resides in the very treasury of the body that God constantly sees, 5. So that you do not think that this leading principle is set in motion from the outside, according to Heraclitus, and does not sway throughout the whole body, according to Moschion 259, and is not located in the head, according to Plato, and does not preside at the crown of the head, according to Xenocrates, and does not rest in the brain, according to Hippocrates, but neither is it around the base of the brain, as Herophilus believes, and not in its shell, as Strato believes and 260 Erasistratus, and not in the center of the eyebrows, as Strato the Physicist believes, and not in the entire armor of the chest, as Epicurus believes, but what was already announced by both the Egyptians and those who were considered interpreters of the prophetesses - this is also what the famous verse of Orpheus or, perhaps, Empedocles says: a person has a feeling in the blood, which is near the heart 261. 6. And Protagoras 262, and Apollodorus 263, and Chrysippus understand this, even if Asclepiades, refuted by them, examines his goats, bleating without a heart, and drives away his flies flying without a head; Let all those who judge the structure of the human soul by the state of animals know that it is more likely that they themselves live without a heart and brain. Chapter XVI. Two parts of the soul: the natural rational principle and the irrational one that arose later. 1. It is also acceptable for faith that Plato divides the soul into two parts: into rational and unreasonable principles. We, for our part, applaud this definition, as long as both are not attributed to the nature of the soul. For what should be considered natural is that which is rational, which was given to the soul initially, of course, by a rational Creator. For what unreasonable thing could God produce by His decree, not to mention what He releases in a special way with His breath? The unreasonable must be thought of as something later that happened at the suggestion of the serpent, that is, the notorious Fall, and then grew and took root in the soul like something natural, for it happened at the very beginning of nature. 2. In addition, since the same Plato calls natural only the rational, as being in the soul of God Himself, if we also attribute the unreasonable to nature, which our soul received from God, then the unreasonable will also be from God, since it is natural, for God is the Creator of nature. But the penetration of sin into the world occurred because of the devil, and every sin is unreasonable; So, the unreasonable is from the devil, from whom is sin, alien to God, to Whom everything unreasonable is alien. Therefore, the difference between the reasonable and the unreasonable follows from the difference between the creators. 3. Therefore, when Plato, leaving the rational only for God, identified two varieties of the unreasonable: the “hot-tempered”, which is called ϑυμικόν, and the “lusting”, which is called ἐπιϑυμητικόν 264, so that the first we have in common with lions, the second with flies, and the rational with By God, I see that because of what is revealed to us in Christ, I need to reconsider this position. 4. Look, after all, this whole triad is also in the Lord: the rational, thanks to which He teaches, thanks to which He reasons, with the help of which He paves the paths of salvation; and hot-tempered, because of which He attacks the scribes and Pharisees 265, and lustful, thanks to which He passionately desires to eat the Passover with His disciples 266. 5. So, we should not always deduce from the unreasonable the irascible and the lustful, which principles, as we know, rationally converged in the Lord. God will be indignant rationally, that is, with those whom He owes, and will passionately desire what is worthy of Him. After all, He will be indignant at the bad and desire salvation for the good. 6. And the Apostle speaks of desire: If anyone desires the episcopate, he desires a good deed 267; and by calling desire a good thing, he shows it to be reasonable. It also resolves indignation. How could it be otherwise if he himself experiences it? Oh, if only those were torn out,” he says, “that confuse you 268.” The indignation that comes from the love of discipline is also reasonable. 7. And when he says: We too were once by nature sons of wrath 269 , he condemns the unreasonable irascibility, which is not of the nature that is from God, but that which the devil introduced into us, who himself is called the master of his order: You cannot serve two masters 270, and is called father: You are from the father of the devil 271, so that you do not hesitate to attribute the possession of another nature, later and counterfeit, also to the one about whom you read as a sower of tares and a night pest of grain crops 272. Chapter XVII. About the truth of the five senses. 1. We are also concerned with the study of those five senses, which we learn about along with the first letters - something from this area is also used by heretics. These are vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. 2. Their truth is very sharply criticized by the Academicians, 273 and, according to some, also by Heraclitus, Diocles and Empedocles; at least Plato, who declares in the Timaeus that the faculty of feeling is irrational and mixed with imagination 274 . The deception is blamed on the vision, consisting in the fact that the oars in the water seem to be bent or broken, contrary to the knowledge of their integrity, the quadrangular tower from a distance appears as a round one, a completely regular colonnade is distorted, as if tapering towards the end, and the sky raised to an unattainable height is connected to the sea. 3. In the same way, hearing appears to be guilty of deception when, for example, we think that a rumble is in the sky, and this is a carriage, or when thunder rumbles, and we are sure that it is the rumble of a carriage. The same is the case with the sense of smell and taste: since the same incense and the same wines are rated lower when subsequently consumed. Likewise, the sense of touch is accused, since the same floors seem very uneven to the hands, but quite smooth to the feet, and in the baths the same pool of heated water seems first very hot, then very cool. 4. Moreover, they say, we are in the same way deceived by feelings when we change our opinions. Discreet Stoics do not accuse every feeling of lying and not always. The Epicureans very decisively assert that the truth of all senses is the same and unchanging, but they explain this differently, they say, of course, it is not the feeling that lies, but the opinion; in fact, the feeling experiences an impact, and does not imagine, but the soul imagines. They separated opinion from feeling, and feeling from the soul. 5. But where does opinion come from, if not from feeling? If vision did not perceive a round tower, there would be no opinion about its roundness. Where does the feeling come from, if not from the heart? Finally, the soul, deprived of a body, is also deprived of feelings. Thus, both feeling is from the soul, and opinion is from feeling, and the soul is everything. However, it would be much better to assume that, be that as it may, there is something that makes what the senses tell us different from what it really is. Further, if something can be communicated that does not exist in reality, then why cannot in the same way be communicated that which is not in the feelings, but is in those circumstances that intervene by themselves? 6. You can explore them too. After all, the water is to blame for the fact that the oar appears bent or broken; in fact, outside the water the oar appears intact to the eye. The softness of its essence, thanks to which it becomes a mirror in the light, breaks the straight line, shaking the reflection, depending on whether it was hit or set in motion. Likewise, a tower in open space, due to the great distance, seems different from what it really is. For the air spread evenly around, surrounding the corners under equal illumination, smoothes out the lines. So the monotonous colonnade narrows towards its end until the row, converging into a point, becomes thinner in the direction in which it extends. So the sky is united with the sea where vision is exhausted, which, while it can, separates one from the other. 7. What else misleads the ear if not the similarity of sounds? And if subsequently the incense is less fragrant, the wine loses its taste and the pool is less warm, still the original power remains intact everywhere. However, regarding rough and smooth - arms and legs, that is, tender and thick-skinned members, quite naturally differ in perception. 8. Thus, it is not by chance that the senses are deceived. And if it is not without reasons that the senses are misled, but through the feelings - and opinions, then it is no longer in the feelings that follow the circumstances causing the error that the deception must be placed, and not in the opinions that are determined by the feelings that follow the circumstances causing the error. 9. Those who are mad mistake one for another. So Orestes saw his mother in his sister 275, Ajax saw Ulysses in cattle 276, Athamas 277 and Agave 278 as animals in his sons. Will you blame your eyes or your fury for this lie? For those who suffer from bile spillage, everything is bitter. Will you blame their taste or state of health for treachery? Feelings can sometimes be dulled and deceived only for some time, and therefore they are not false. 10. Moreover, even the misleading circumstances themselves cannot be attributed to deception. After all, they are explainable, and what is explainable cannot be considered a deception. What should happen exactly the way it happens is not a lie. So, if the circumstances that cause delusion themselves are freed from ignominy, then how much greater is the feeling over which these circumstances have unlimited power! Therefore, we should defend the truth, reliability, and impeccability of the senses, mainly on the basis that they communicate nothing other than what the circumstances prescribe to them, making what is proclaimed by the senses different than in reality. 11. What are you doing, oh impudent Academy?! You are overturning the entire order of life, disrupting the entire natural order, devaluing the providence of God Himself, Who turns out to have placed feelings as lying and treacherous leaders over the knowledge of all His affairs, dwelling in them, managing and using them. Is it not thanks to them that all creation is available to us? Was it not thanks to them that the world received its secondary equipment - a multitude of arts, knowledge, sciences, occupations, duties, trade relations, medicines, advice, consolations, food, clothing, decorations - everything that gives the taste of life, when thanks to these feelings, the only one of all beings - man - turns out to be reasonable, capable of perceiving concepts and knowledge, and the Academy itself? 12. But Plato, in order not to give any evidence in favor of the senses, denies in the Phaedrus on behalf of Socrates that he can know himself, as the Delphic inscription advises; and in Theaetetus he directly denies himself the ability to know and feel. And besides, in the Phaedrus he postpones the opportunity to express the true, that is, the last, judgment for a time after death. And yet he philosophized while alive. 13. We cannot, we must not question the truth of these feelings, so as not to doubt their authenticity in Christ, lest, God forbid, they say that He saw Satan cast out of heaven 279 by mistake, or that He mistakenly heard the voice of the Father testifying about Him, 280 or that He was deceived when he touched Peter’s mother-in-law, 281 or that He later smelled a different smell from anointing, which He accepted for His burial 282 that He later felt a different taste of the wine, which He consecrated in memory of His Blood 283. 14. Thus, Marcion also chose to believe in Him as illusory, denying in Him the truth of the whole body. However, among the apostles His nature was not misrepresented; their sight and hearing on the mountain 284 were reliable, the taste of that wine, albeit water at first, at the wedding in Galilee 285 was also reliable, and the touch of Thomas, who later became trusting, was also reliable. Read the testimony of John: what we saw, he says, what we heard, we saw with our eyes, and with our hands we touched it about the Word of life 286. This evidence is false, of course, if nature deceives the senses of the eyes, ears and hands. Chapter XVIII. The intellect cannot be preferred to feeling and cannot be separated from it. 1. I turn to the intellectual, how Plato, separated from the physical, handed it over to the heretics, having achieved knowledge even before his death. After all, he says in the Phaedo: What about the very possession of knowledge? Will the body be a hindrance or not if we take it as a companion during research? I say something similar: do sight and hearing have a certain truth for people? Don’t poets constantly grumble at us because we hear and see incorrectly? 287 He remembered, one must think, the comedian Epicharmus 288: the mind sees, the mind hears, the rest is deaf and blind. 2. That is why he repeats: he, they say, surpasses others in comprehension, who, having become familiar with the truth, comprehends it primarily with the mind, not giving preference to sight and not attracting any feeling to help the mind, but when thinking, using pure thinking itself to comprehend the essence of things, while completely abandoning the eyes and ears and (this must be said) the whole body as leading the soul into confusion and not allowing it to master the true knowledge when the body joins it. 3. So, we see that instead of the bodily senses, another equipment is provided as much more convenient, namely the powers of the soul, giving comprehension of that truth, the essence of which is not before the eyes and is not accessible to the bodily senses, but far exceeds the capabilities of everyday knowledge, being in the hidden and in the highest, and with God Himself. After all, Plato believes that there are certain invisible incorporeal super-mundane entities, divine and eternal, which he calls ideas, that is, forms, patterns and causes of natural things, obvious and accessible to the bodily senses, and that the former are true, the latter are their copies. 4. Are not the heretical seeds of the Gnostics and Valentinians visible in this? Of course, from here they borrow the difference between bodily feelings and intellectual powers, which they adapt to the parable of the ten virgins so that the five foolish ones symbolize bodily feelings, obviously unreasonable, because they are easily deceived; the wise expressed intellectual powers, reasonable, of course, because they touch that truth, secret and highest, residing at the pleroma - the concentration of heretical ideas. After all, these are their zones and genealogies 289. 5. Thus, they divide perception into the intellectual - from their spiritual seed, and into the sensory - from the spiritual, for it cannot in any way perceive the spiritual; The spiritual belongs to the invisible, while the spiritual belongs to the visible, low and temporary, which, represented in images, is accessible to the senses. That is why we declared in advance that the mind is nothing more than an addition and superstructure to the soul, and that the spirit is not something alien to it, but what it itself produces when breathing; however, it should be considered as an appendage, which either God or the devil subsequently inhaled. 6. So, we do not see behind the difference between the sensory and the intellectual anything other than the difference that exists between physical and spiritual things, visible and invisible, open to everyone and secret, for the former are intended for feeling, the latter for knowledge. However, both of them are considered to be subject to the soul, which feels the corporeal with the body in the same way as it cognizes the incorporeal with the mind, so that it retains the ability to simultaneously feel and know. 7. In fact, doesn’t feeling mean knowing, and knowing means feeling? Or what would a feeling be if not the knowledge of what it perceives? What will knowledge be if not the perception of the thing that is known? Where do the instruments of torture come from to torture simplicity and torment truth? Who will show me a feeling that does not understand what it feels, or an understanding that does not feel what it understands, in order to prove that one is possible without the other? 8. If the corporeal is felt, and the incorporeal is known, then only the kinds of things are different, and not the receptacles of feeling and intellect, that is, not the soul and the mind. Finally, how is the corporeal perceived? If by the mind 290, then the mind is already sensual, and not just intellectual, because when it knows, it feels, for if it does not feel, then it does not know. If the soul perceives the bodily, then the power of the soul is intellectual, and not just sensual, because when it feels, it knows, for if it does not know, then it does not feel. In exactly the same way, how, accordingly, is the incorporeal perceived? If with the mind, then where will the soul be? If the soul, then where will the mind be? For that which differs must alternately be absent when it performs its functions. 9. You may think that the mind is separate from the soul: after all, sometimes it turns out that we do not know what we saw or heard, since the mind was supposedly in another place. Moreover, I insist that the soul itself did not see or hear, for it was in another place along with its strength, that is, the mind. For when a person goes mad, his soul goes mad not because the mind has abandoned it, but because the mind at that time suffers along with the soul - however, the soul suffers most of all. 10. How is this confirmed? The fact that after the departure of the soul and mind in a person is not revealed; So, he follows her everywhere, from whom he is not separated in the end. Since the mind obeys and is attributed to the soul, then in the same way understanding is attributed to that to which the mind obeys, to which understanding is attributed. Even if the intellect surpasses feeling and is better versed in the mysteries, it is still, like feeling, an inalienable power of the soul. This does not matter to me, unless the intellect is preferred to the senses only so that, on the ground on which it is recognized as more powerful, it is considered more dissimilar. Following the dissimilarity, I should also refute the preference given to the intellect, which can lead to belief in a better God. 11. But about God we are ready to argue with heretics even on their field 291. This treatise is dedicated to the soul, and here it is appropriate to argue that one should not slyly prefer the intellect to the feeling. For even if that which, being spiritual, is comprehended by the intellect, is superior to that which, being corporeal, is comprehended by the senses, then this will be a superiority of things, that is, of the higher over the lower, and not a preference of the intellect over the senses. For how can the intellect exceed the sense by which it is informed for the knowledge of reality? 12. If reality is comprehended through images, that is, the invisible is known through the visible (and the Apostle writes to us: After all, His invisible from the creation of the world appears to be known from the creations 292, and Plato writes to the heretics: What is manifested is the appearance of the hidden and it is absolutely necessary for this world to be a kind of prototype of some other 293), then don’t you think that the intellect uses sense as a guide, a guide and the most important basis, and that without feeling truth cannot be comprehended? Therefore, how can the intellect be more powerful than what it exists thanks to, what it needs, what it owes to everything that it knows? 13. Thus we come to the double conclusion that intellect cannot be preferred to feeling (after all, that [i.e., intellect], thanks to which something [i.e., feeling] is comprehended, is inferior to it) and that intellect cannot be separated from feeling (after all, that [i.e., feeling], thanks to which something, [i.e., intellect], exists, exists together with it). Chapter XIX. A refutation of those who claim that a person receives intellect later than the soul. 1. It is impossible not to mention those who, at least for a short time, separate the soul from the intellect. After all, by this they prepare the basis for the assertion that intelligence, like intelligence, is introduced later, namely at the age when intelligence begins to manifest itself. 2. They claim that children have only a soul, thanks to which they only live, but at the same time they are not also rational, for not everything that lives is rational; that, finally, trees also live, but, however, are not intelligent, according to Aristotle 294 or someone else, who endows absolutely everything with an animate substance (which, according to our teaching, belongs only to man, being not only the creation of God, for the rest is like that, but also the breath of God, because it is the only one that we speak of as being born along with all its equipment). 3. And if we are forced to talk about trees, we use this example, since not only in these trees, but also in the twigs and even in the cuttings, as soon as they emerge from the holes, there is the own power of the soul. However, it lingers for a while, taking root and growing and strengthening, until age makes the appearance of the trees such that nature manifests itself in all its fullness. For what other reason are the branches later grafted, and the leaves later formed, and accordingly later the buds swell, and the flowers bloom, and the juices flow, if everything that is necessary for growth does not rest within them and does not increase, becoming stronger in parts? 4. So, trees both understand and live, thanks to the ability to both live and understand, inherent in them from an early age. In fact, here I see a vine, still tender and immature, but already knowing its business and striving to hold on to something: so, leaning and twining around, it grows. In short, without waiting for it to be dealt with in accordance with the rules of rural science, it grows without support, without a stamen and, if it touches something, without coercion it will lovingly cling to it and wrap its arms around it rather thanks to its natural property than your will: it is in a hurry to be safe. 5. I see that the ivies, no matter how much you restrain them, immediately strive for what is above them and hang when there is nothing in front of them, since they prefer to rush in intertwined thickets along the walls than to be trampled on the ground by just anyone. On the contrary, if trees have a bad structure because of it, they will retreat from it as they grow! Look at the branches, which by nature should be facing the other way, and by the way the tree leans away from the wall, recognize its animation! It was content with the small size of the bush, which knew its future, which it comprehended from the very beginning, retreating even from the ruins. 6. Why shouldn’t I say that trees have wisdom and knowledge? If they live, as philosophers believe, if they have understanding, which philosophers do not agree with, if even the branches from the very beginning have knowledge, then how much more does this apply to man, whose soul, like a kind of cutting from the trunk of Adam, taken for propagation and entrusted to the fertile mother’s womb, has grown with everything that it is equipped with: intellect and feeling. 7. I would be lying if I said that the child, as soon as he greeted life with a cry, did not testify that he felt and realized the fact that he was born, revealing all the senses at once: vision - reacting to light, and hearing - reacting to sound, and taste - feeling moisture, and smell through odors, and touch - touching the ground 295. Thus the above-mentioned first cry of a child is caused by the first movements of the senses and the first manifestations of understanding. 8. Moreover, looking at a life worthy of tears, some understand this plaintive cry as a prediction of misfortunes, so that the soul from birth should be considered foreseeing, and even more so understanding. Thus, a child tests his mother in spirit, tests his nurse in spirit, recognizes his nanny in spirit, turning away from someone else’s breast and rejecting an unfamiliar cradle, not wanting anyone other than those to whom he is accustomed. 9. Where does he get his judgment about the new and the familiar if he does not have reason? Where does he get this feeling of irritation and affection if he doesn’t think? It would be very surprising if children were by nature full of life, without spirit, and by nature impressionable, without intelligence. But Christ, who received praise from the lips of babies and children 296, declared that both children and infants were not devoid of reason: the children were able to present evidence to Him by running towards him with an expression of approval 297, the babies killed for His sake experienced, at least, violence 298. Chapter XX. The soul is homogeneous in seed; different destinies are determined by external influences. 1. Thus we now conclude that all that is natural to the soul is present in itself as its essence, and grows and prospers with it from the moment it itself appears. As our Seneca also says: The seeds of all arts and ages are inherent in us, and God the teacher imperceptibly produces talents 299, that is, from seeds innate and hidden in infancy, which include the intellect. After all, talents develop from them. 2. Further, in the seeds of fruits there is one image of each genus, their development, however, will be different: some plants rise to full height, others achieve even better results, others degenerate: depending on the climate and condition of the soil, in accordance with care and care, depending on the seasons, depending on circumstances and accidents. Likewise, the soul can be homogeneous in seed, diverse in growth. Here, after all, the terrain matters. 3. They say that in Thebes the most dull and stupid are born, in Athens the most sensible and eloquent, where in Colitta 300 boys begin to speak in less than a month with a still undeveloped language. After all, Plato claims in the Timaeus that Minerva, when she built this city, took into account, first of all, that the nature of the region promised remarkable talents. Therefore, in his “Laws,” he himself ordered Megillus and Clinias to take care of the place where the state was created. But Empedocles sees the reason for natural wit or stupidity in the quality of blood, and derives perfection and success from training and upbringing. However, talking about national characteristics has become commonplace. Comedy writers mock the fearful Phrygians; Sallust 301 condemns the vain Moors and wild Dalmatians; Even the Apostle condemns the lying Cretans 302. 4. Perhaps something depends on both physique and health. Obesity hinders prudence, thinness favors it, paralysis exhausts the mind, consumption preserves it. There will be much greater recognition of those factors, besides corpulence and health, which sharpen or dull the mind. They sharpen science, education, arts, practice, business, professions; dulls ignorance, idleness, inaction, passions, inexperience, idleness, vices, and besides this, certain commanding forces 303. 5. Indeed, the rulers, at least according to our teaching, are the Lord God and the devil - [His] rival; according to the general opinion, providence, fate, necessity, fate and free will. After all, philosophers distinguish this, and we have already promised in the treatise 304 devoted to this issue to analyze this in accordance with faith. 6. It is obvious how great are those influences which dispose of one and the same nature of the soul so diversely that they are usually attributed to nature, while they are not species, but portions of one nature and essence, the one with which God endowed Adam and which he made the matrix of all; and they will remain destinies, and not types of one substance, that is, this difference is moral: no matter how great it would be now, it will not turn out to be so at the very beginning of the race, in Adam. After all, all this should be in him as in the source of nature and flow from there with all the diversity, if there were differences in nature. Chapter XXI. About free will and the variability of the nature of all born and created. 1. And if the nature of the soul is homogeneous in Adam from the very beginning, before the emergence of so many talents, then, therefore, it is not diverse, since in the presence of so many talents it is homogeneous, and not threefold, 305 following the example of the still being cut up Valentinian triad, which is not found in Adam. 2. For what is spiritual in it? If it is in him because he predicted that great mystery about Christ and the Church: This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she will be called woman, therefore a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and both will become one flesh 306 , then this happened later when God brought unconsciousness upon him, the spiritual power 307 on which prophecy depends. 3. If evil also manifested itself in him when he violated the commandment, then one should not think that what he did at the instigation of the serpent is natural; it is as unnatural as it is not material, for we have already excluded faith in matter 308 . And if what belongs to him personally was not spiritual and not, as they say, material (if he were made of matter, he himself would be a seed of evil), then it remains that in him the one and only thing is natural, which is called spiritual, which, as we affirm, is simple and homogeneous in its state. 4. After this, it remains to be seen whether what is declared natural should be considered changeable. After all, heretics deny that nature is changeable in order to endow each part of its triad with characteristic permanent features 309, for a good tree does not bear bad fruit, and a bad tree does not bear good, and no one plucks figs from a thorny plant, or grapes from a thorn bush 310. Therefore, if this is the case, then God will not be able to raise up sons for Abraham from stones 311, and the fiends of the serpents will not be able to bear fruits of repentance 312, and the Apostle was mistaken when he wrote: You were once from darkness 313 and we were once by nature the sons of wrath 314 and among them were you also, but now you are washed 315. 5. But holy sayings will never contradict one another. After all, a bad tree will not give good fruit if it is not grafted in, and bad fruit will give good if they do not take care of it, and the stones will become the sons of Abraham if they are transformed in accordance with the faith of Abraham, and the offspring of the serpent will bear the fruits of repentance if they spew out the poison of malice 316. 6. This will be the power of divine grace, which, of course, is more powerful than nature, having in us a principle dependent on it - freedom of choice, called αὐτεξούσιον, which, since itself is natural and changeable, no matter what it inclines, inclines in accordance with nature. We have already shown both Marcion 317 and Hermogenes 318 that τὸ αὐτεξούσιον is in us in accordance with the laws of nature. 7. Or maybe the state of nature will need to be defined in such a way that it is defined in two ways: as the state of the born and the unborn, the created and the uncreated? And thus, that which turns out to be born and created, its nature will allow change: after all, it will be able to be reborn and restored. The unborn and the uncreated will remain motionless. Since this corresponds to God alone as the only unbegotten and uncreated, and therefore immortal and unchangeable, it is obvious that the nature of all other begotten and created things is reversible and changeable, so that even if trinity should be attributed to the soul, it should be explained from random changes, and not from the structure of its nature. Chapter XXII. Definition of soul. 1. Hermogenes has already heard from us about other natural properties of the soul (we spoke about them in connection with their defense and proof), thanks to which the soul is known rather as akin to God than as akin to matter. These properties will only be named here so that they do not appear to have been omitted. After all, as was said above, we have endowed the soul with freedom of choice and dominion over things, and sometimes with a prophetic gift, different from that which, by God’s grace, the prophets possess. So, I will avoid re-examining its structure in order to proceed to an examination of the history of its appearance. 2. We define the soul as born of the dying breath of God, immortal, corporeal, having an image, simple in essence, reasonable in what concerns it, diversely developing, free to decide, subject to chance, changeable thanks to its gifts, reasonable, mistress, prophetess, originating from one soul 319 . Now we should consider how it comes from one [soul], that is, where, when and how it arises. Chapter XXIII. Opinions of various heretics who borrow the teachings of Plato. 1. Some consider themselves to have descended from heaven with the same confidence with which they speak of their inevitable return back, as Saturninus, the disciple of Menander the Simonian, showed, asserting that man, created by the angels, being at first a fragile, weak and unstable creature, writhed on the earth like a worm, since he lacked the strength to stand firmly on his feet; then, by the mercy of the Higher Power (after whose model, not fully comprehended, however, he was created at random), he found a spark of life that raised him and set him straight, which constantly animates him and, after passing away, will take him to the original source. 2. But Carpocrates 320 also demands so much heavenly things for himself that his disciples completely equate their souls with Christ, not to mention the apostles, and, when they want, place them above 321, supposedly from a higher power having received these souls, despising the principles, ruling over the world. 3. Apelles reports that the souls were moved by a fiery angel, the God of Israel and ours, with the help of earthly food, so that they left their supercelestial abodes; after this he formed sinful flesh around them. 4. The Valentinian crowd squeezes the seed of Sophia into the soul, thanks to which they learn through visible images the stories and “Miletus stories” 322 about their aeons. 5. I truly regret that Plato became the “supplier of spices” for all heretics. After all, this is his opinion, expressed by him in the Phaedo 323 that souls go from here to there, and from there to here, and also in Timaeus 324 that the creatures of God, when they were entrusted with creating mortals, having taken an immortal beginning for the soul, surrounded it with a mortal body like an ice crust; then - that this world is an image of some other. 6. To give credence to the fact that the soul was formerly with God in heaven, in contact with ideas, and from there comes here and here by patterns remembers what it had learned before, he developed a new proof, μαϑήσεις ἀναμνήσεις, which means that doctrines are memories; after all, coming from there to here, souls forget what they were among before; then, having learned from visible things, they remember. So, with this proof, Plato introduces what the heretics borrow, and I will completely refute the heretics if I destroy Plato’s proof. Chapter XXIV. Refutation of Plato's doctrine of the recollection of the soul. 1. Firstly, I do not agree that the soul is prone to oblivion: after all, Plato recognized such divinity in it that it turns out to be equal to God. He makes her unborn - this alone I could use to prove full divinity. In addition, he recognizes it as immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal (for he believes that God is like that), invisible, indescribable, homogeneous, dominant, rational, intellectual. How greater could he declare the soul if he intended to declare it God? 2. We do not bring anything closer to God and thereby place the soul much lower than Him, for we recognize it as born and, as a result, less involved in divinity and bliss, considering it as breath, and not as spirit. Recognizing her as immortal, since this is from the deity in her, we say that she is subject to suffering, since this is a consequence of birth in her, and therefore from the very beginning she allows deviations, which means she is capable of forgetting. Enough has been said about this in my polemic with Hermogenes. 3. However, in order for the soul to be considered God on the basis of the complete equalization of all properties, it must not be subject to any passion, and therefore to oblivion, since oblivion is as great an insult as the great object of pride of the one to whom it is inflicted, that is, memory, which Plato himself declared to be salvation for the senses and reason, 325 and Cicero - the treasure of all scientific pursuits. It is not in doubt whether the divine soul could have lost its memory, but whether it could have regained what it had lost is called into question. After all, the one who should not have forgotten, if she forgot, I doubt whether she will be able to remember. Thus, both oblivion and remembrance are more suitable for the soul of which I speak, and not for the one of which Plato speaks. 4. My second objection will be this: do you make the soul by the nature of a perceiving idea or not? “Of course, by nature,” you say. Consequently, no one will agree that natural knowledge of the natural disappears; knowledge of arts, professions, sciences, disciplines will disappear; Perhaps the knowledge of one's talents and passions will disappear, which seem natural, but are not, since, as we have already shown, they depend on the accidents associated with the place, way of life, fullness of the body, health, with the dominant forces and with free will. 5. Knowledge of the natural does not weaken even in animals. The lion will completely forget about ferocity, having learned meekness in the process of training, and, shaking his huge mane, will become the amusement of some queen Berenice 326, licking her cheeks with his tongue. The habits will leave the beast, but the knowledge of the natural will remain. He will not forget about natural food, about natural medicines, about natural fears. And if the queen offers him a meal of fish and pies, he will desire meat; and if a remedy is prepared for a sick person for a poisonous bite, the lion will look for the monkey; and although no hunting spear is prepared against him, he will nevertheless be afraid of the rooster. 6. Likewise, in man, perhaps the most forgetful of all, only the knowledge of the natural, being the only natural thing, will not be erased from memory. He will always remember about food when he is hungry, and about drinking when he is thirsty, and about what he sees with his eyes, listens with his ears, smells with his nose, tastes with his lips and touches with his hand. These, of course, are those feelings that philosophy underestimates, preferring the speculative. 7. So, if the natural knowledge of the sensible is preserved, how does the knowledge of the speculative, which is considered the best, disappear? Where does the very power of oblivion, which precedes memory, come from? “It arises,” someone will say, “over a long period of time.” Quite a rash statement. After all, the extension of time has no relation to a thing that is declared unborn and, thanks primarily to this, is considered eternal. For that which is eternal, because it is unborn, having neither beginning nor end, does not admit of any measure of time in relation to itself. But that for which there is no measure of time is not subject to time due to any change, and for it the duration of time does not matter. 8. If time is the cause of oblivion, why does memory begin to fail from the moment the soul is introduced into the body, as if after that the soul began to experience the influence of time, which, undoubtedly, did not exist outside of time before entering the body? But, having entered the body, does she forget immediately or a little later? 328 If immediately, what will be the duration of time that cannot yet be calculated? If a little later, then it means that during this interval before the time of oblivion the soul was still remembering. And how is it that later she forgets and then remembers again? And how long should be considered the time during which oblivion takes possession of her? I think that a whole life is not enough to destroy the memory of such a long time before entering the body. 9. But Plato again changes his explanation, pointing to the body as the cause, as if it could be believed that the begotten essence invalidates the unbegotten. The differences in bodies are great and numerous depending on people’s nationality, size, appearance, age, and health. Consequently, differences in the degree of oblivion will also be found? But oblivion is the same for everyone. Consequently, corporeality in all its diversity will not cause the same result. 10. Many of the proofs that we have already given to Hermogenes have confirmed, according to the testimony of Plato himself, that the soul has the gift of divination. But there is no one who does not himself sometimes feel his soul of things, an augur of a sign, danger or joy. If the body does not suppress the ability of divination, then I think it will not interfere with memory. Souls forget and remember, of course, in the same body. If the bodily state in some way instills oblivion, then how does it allow the opposite of it to be remembered (for recollection itself after oblivion is a renewed memory)? What opposes the first memory, why does not it also oppose the second? 11. Finally, who has a better memory than children, as fresher souls, not yet plunged into domestic and social worries, engaged only in sciences, the study of which becomes a memory? Why don’t we all remember equally, but only philosophers, although we all forget equally? Moreover, not all are philosophers. Plato, one must think, is the only one among such a great forest of pagans, in such a vast meadow of sages, who both forgot and remembered ideas. 12. So, if this most important proof turned out to be vulnerable in all respects, then everything connected with it is equally refuted: souls are considered unborn, living in heaven, participating in the divine there, descending from there and remembering here - presumably, to help heretics. Chapter XXV. Refuting the opinion that the soul appears after birth. 1. Only now will I turn to the cause of this error, in order to explain how souls come from one, when, where and how they are conceived. It makes no difference whether the inquiry is undertaken by a philosopher, a heretic, or a common people. 2. There is no difference between the teachers of truth and its opponents, especially those of them who are so bold as to suppose that the soul is not conceived in the womb of the mother, and is not created and produced simultaneously with the formation of the flesh, but is impressed from without on the not yet living child after birth; that, moreover, the seed, transmitted to the female genital organs by copulation and strengthened by natural movement, is condensed into the simple essence of flesh; that it, having been brought into the world, when leaving the womb furnace, emits steam, softened by heat, like red-hot iron immediately immersed in cold water, struck by the cold of the air, receives life-giving power and makes sound. This is what the Stoics and Aenesidemus think and, at times, Plato himself, when he teaches that the soul, alien to the body, located in another place and not allowed into the womb, is introduced with the first breath of the baby, and leaves with the last exhalation. Let's see if he didn't make it up according to his wishes. Among the doctors was Hykesius, who betrayed nature and his art. 3. I think they were ashamed to say what women also know. And how much more shameful it is to be refuted by women than to be approved! For no one will be a more suitable teacher, judge, witness in this matter than their sex itself. Answer, mothers, both you who are pregnant and you who are giving birth! Let infertile men and women remain silent! The truth of your nature is examined, the authenticity of your suffering is questioned 329. Do you feel some extraneous vital force in the birthing fetus, because of which the insides are trembling, the sides are trembling, the entire abdominal area is agitated, the position of the burden is constantly changing? Don't these movements bring you joy and a sense of security, since thanks to them you are sure that the child is living and playing? If his anxiety stops, aren't you first afraid for him? Doesn't he already hear in your womb when he begins to worry in response to a new sound? Don’t you demand food that you don’t need for him, don’t you feel an aversion to certain food because of him, don’t you share illnesses, at least, doesn’t he receive everything from you, even your bruises, which are imprinted on the same members of his as yours, so that he, being inside, takes on his mother’s injuries? 4. If the bruise or redness is an outpouring of blood, then there will be no blood without a soul. If illness always comes to the soul, then illness will not exist without the soul. If nutrition, fasting, growth, decline, fear, movement, touch belong to the soul, then the one who experiences this will live. And he stops living who stops experiencing. But dead people are also born. How would this happen if they were not [previously] alive? Who are the dead if not those who were once alive? Even in the womb itself, the child is killed out of cruel necessity, when, upon exiting, turning to the side, he refuses to come out - a murderer of the mother, if he does not die. 5. Thus, among the medical instruments there is an instrument with a flexible device, with which distant places are first forced to open, with a ring-shaped knife, with which, in accordance with a desperate decision, the members inside the womb are cut, with a blunt hook, with which the whole atrocity is committed during a violent “birth”. There is also a copper sting, which is used to carry out the killing itself in this secret robbery. Because of the infanticide he commits, he is called ἐμβρυοσφάκτην—the destroyer of a living baby, of course. Hippocrates had this instrument, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus, and Herophilus, who cut both adults, and the more kind-hearted Soranus, who were confident that a living being had been conceived, and who showed compassion for such unfortunate babies in such a way that they should have been killed first, and not tormented alive. 6. I think even Hycesius had no doubt about the necessity of this crime, although he argued that the soul is added to something already born from the blow of cold air, because the very name of the soul among the Greeks corresponds to cooling 330. Are the barbarian and Roman peoples really animated differently, since they called the soul differently than ψυχήν? However, how many people live under the hot sky, scorched so that their skin color changes? Where do those who have no cold air get their souls from? I'm not talking about the warmth in the sleeping quarters and about all the ways to maintain the high temperature there, necessary for women in labor, for whom, of course, drafts are very dangerous. Almost in the baths themselves, the fetus is born, and a cry is immediately heard. 7. However, if the cold air were a treasury of souls, then no one should be born outside of Upper and Lower Germany, the Scythian countries, the Alps and the Argean Mountains. However, in the warm East and South, the peoples are more numerous and the talents are brighter, while all Sarmatians are distinguished by an inert mind. Sharper minds would have to arise in the cold if souls came from the frost, because power (mind) accompanies the essence (soul). 8. After such preparation, we can also recall those who, after cutting the mother’s abdomen, breathed air alive, certain Liberi 331 and Scipioni 332. And if someone, like Plato for example, does not allow that two souls, as well as two bodies, converge in one body, I would show him not only two souls, as well as two bodies, located in one body - in pregnant women, but many other things connected with the soul, namely, the demonic essence, represented not by one, as in Socrates himself, but by seven spirits, as in Magdalene 333, and legion in number, as in Gerasenes 334. The soul [of the fetus] will be more easily united with the soul [of the mother] on the basis of a common essence, than an unclean spirit due to the difference in nature. 9. But he (i.e. Plato), calling in the sixth book of the “Laws” to beware lest the corruption of the seed due to some baseness of copulation transmits the disease to the body and soul, I don’t know whether in his previous statement he deviated more from his teaching, or in this one. After all, he shows that the soul is introduced from the seed, which he advises to take care of, and not from the first breath of a newborn. Where, I ask, does the similarity of soul come from, due to which we resemble our parents in terms of our talents, according to the testimony of Cleanthes, if we do not come from the seed of the soul? Why did ancient astrologers consider the birth of a person from the moment of conception 335, if not at the same time the soul appears, to which breathing is directly related, if it really exists? Chapter XXVI. Scripture confirms that unborn babies have souls. 1. But any inconstancy of human opinion is within the limits established by God. I am already heading, slowing down, to our borders in order to prove to the Christian the truth of what I answered to the philosophers and doctors. Brother, build faith on your own foundation, 336 look at the life-filled wombs of the most holy women, and not only at the babies already breathing there, but also at those prophesying. 2. Now Rebekah’s womb is agitated 337, and it is still far from the time of birth, and there is no push of air. Here is a double fetus beating in the mother’s womb, and in no way yet two peoples 338. Perhaps the agility of babies was extraordinary, fighting before they began to live, acquiring a fighting spirit before breathing, if by jumping up and down they only alarmed their mother. But when the fetus is discovered, and the number of children is clarified, and the prediction is remembered, I think that not only the presence of souls in babies is confirmed, but also their battles. 3. The one who was ahead at birth was kept behind, not yet fully developed, born only by hand 339. And if he himself absorbed the soul from the first breath in the Platonic way, or absorbed it from the cold air, as the Stoics teach, what to do with the one who was expected, who was still held inside and was already held outside? Still, I think, without breathing, he took possession of his brother’s foot, remaining still hot, passionately wanting to be the first to leave his mother. Oh child! - and competitive, and strong, and already unyielding, I think, because it’s alive. 4. Look also at conceptions that are exceptional in their kind and, moreover, very unusual - the conception of a barren woman and a virgin - which for this reason could give birth to inferior children in accordance with the shock of nature, since one is deaf to the seed, the other has not been touched by a man. Perhaps those who were not conceived as usual should have been born without a soul, but they also live, each in the womb of his mother. Elizabeth rejoices, she was pushed from within by John 340. Mary glorifies God 341, Christ within Her prompted her to do this. Mothers recognize their children, recognized in the same way by themselves, of course, living, possessing not only a soul, but also a spirit. 5. So, you read the voice of God to Jeremiah: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you 342. If God forms a man in the womb, then he breathes the soul into him as he did at the beginning: And God formed man and breathed into him the breath of life 343. God could know a person in the womb only as a whole: And before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you 344 - is it really still a lifeless body? Of course not: after all, God is the God of the living, not the dead 345. Chapter XXVII. Soul and body are conceived at the same time. 1. So, how was a living being conceived? Were the essences of body and soul cast at the same time, or did one precede the other? We say that both of them, of course, are simultaneously conceived, formed, and perfected, just as they come out, and that there is no gap in the conception due to which the order could be determined 346. 2. Judge the first by the last: if death is defined in no other way than the separation of body and soul 347, then the opposite of death, life, will be defined in no other way than the union of body and soul. If the separation for both entities occurs simultaneously through death, then the reason for this is the nature of the union of both entities occurring at the same time through life. 3. Further, we admit that life begins at the moment of conception, since we affirm that the soul exists from the moment of conception; after all, life begins from the moment the soul appears. Consequently, at the same time that which is united for the emergence of life is that which is simultaneously separated in order to cause death. If we give primacy to one and second place to another, then the time of fertilization of the body and soul, depending on the order, should be different. In this case, when will the seed of the body enter, and when will the soul? 4. If the time of fertilization is different, then (due to the difference in time) the substances that form both seeds will be considered separate. For even if we recognize two varieties of seed, bodily and mental, we will nevertheless maintain that they are inseparable and, thus, arise simultaneously, in the same instant. And let us not be ashamed of the inevitable interpretation. Nature should be revered, not shamed. Coitus is dishonored by lust, and not by the circumstances under which it occurs. Deviation is obscene, not the normal state, since the latter is blessed by God: Grow and multiply 348, but deviation is cursed - adultery, debauchery and brothels. 5. So, during this ordinary sexual act that unites a man and a woman, during ordinary, I say, copulation, as is known, both the soul and the body act simultaneously, the soul with lust, the body with effort, the soul provides inspiration, the body with movement. So, when the whole person is shaken by a single impulse of both of them, the seed of the whole person is spilled, receiving liquid from the bodily essence, heat from the spiritual. And if the Greeks have a “cold” name for the soul, then why does the body grow cold when it moves away? 6. Finally (let me risk modesty rather than credibility), in that very heat of the greatest passion, when the generative fluid is thrown out, don’t we feel that something is also coming from the soul, and we even weaken and lose strength, so that it darkens in the eyes? This will be the spiritual seed, immediately arising from the outflow of the soul, just as that discharge, the bodily seed, arises from the purification of the body. 7. Examples of the origin of man are the most reliable: the flesh in Adam is from mud. What else is silt if not the best moisture? From it the semen fluid will come. The soul is from the breath of God. What other breath of God is there than the vapor of the breath? From it will come what we emit along with that liquid. 8. Since at creation two different and separated principles, mud and breath, formed one man, the two essences united into one also mixed their seed and then transmitted this form to the human race for its continuation, so that now the two principles, albeit different, but also united together, poured out and, penetrating together into the furrow in their field, together from both essences produced a man, in whom, in turn, there will be his seed according to his kind 349 as is intended for everything that generates. 9. So, from one person comes all this abundance of souls, since nature fulfills, one must think, God’s command: Grow and multiply 350. Indeed, in the very introduction to one of the cases: let us make man 351, all descendants were predicted by using the plural: and let them rule over the fish of the sea 352. This is not surprising: the seed is the guarantee of future crops. Chapter XXVIII. Exposing the deception of Pythagoras. 1. What kind of fairy tale, now outdated, did Plato remember about the cycle of souls 353: they leave here and come back here again and are born, and thus it turns out that they are made alive again from the dead? A Pythagorean invention, as some claim. Albinus 354 considers her divine, possibly belonging to the Egyptian Mercury. But nothing is divine if it does not belong to the one God, whose thunderous voice is heard in the prophets, apostles, and in Christ himself. Moses is much older even than Saturn, by about nine hundred years, 355 not to mention Saturn's great-grandsons; in any case, much more divine was Moses, who gave a description of the human race from the beginning of the world by individual generations, by name, by year, sufficiently confirming the divinity of his work by the divinity of speech. 2. If the Samian sophist is the inspirer of Plato in the question of the constant circulation of souls, possible thanks to the alternate replacement of the dead and the living (of course, this is Pythagoras), then, although he is otherwise good, however, in order to support this opinion, he indulged in not only vile, but also reckless deception. Know if you don't know and trust us. He feigns death, hides in a dungeon, condemns his patience to seven years of stay there; Meanwhile, what he intended to report to support his words about those who died subsequently, he learns from the only assistant initiated into his plan - his mother. Just when it seemed to him that his body had acquired the terrible appearance of an ancient corpse, he emerged from the false tomb, as if returning from the underworld. 3. Who would not believe that the one whom he thought was dead had come to life, especially when he heard from him what he could not, it seems, learn about the dead later anywhere except in the underworld? Thus, the saying that the living are made from the dead is a very old one. What if it was newer? Truth does not require antiquity, and lies do not avoid novelty. I recognize an obvious lie, hallowed by antiquity. How can something whose confirmation is also based on a lie not be a deception? How can I believe that Pythagoras, who lies in order for me to believe, is not lying? How will he convince me that earlier, before becoming Pythagoras, he was Ephalides 356, and Euphorbus 357, and Pyrrhus the fisherman, and Hermotimus (all this in order to convince me that the living are made from the dead): how can he do this who falsely swore that he is the resurrected Pythagoras? After all, how much more likely is it that he himself, as he is, once returned to life than that he returned so many times and each time in the form of another person, so much so that he deceived in the more serious, who lied in the less important. 4. “But he recognized the shield of Euphorbus, once dedicated to Delphi, and called it his own, and proved it on the basis of signs not known to everyone.” Remember his dungeon, and believe if you can. After all, the one who invented such a trick, harmful to health and robbing a life tormented by a seven-year stay underground, malnutrition, idleness, darkness, the one who had such great contempt for heaven, how would he not dare to be reckless, how would he not try to satisfy curiosity in order to find out about the sign on that shield? 5. Maybe he found information about him in some secret research? Perhaps some echoes of rumor reached him - the remnants of a tradition that had already disappeared? Maybe he found out from a church official and secretly paid for the inspection? We also know that magic is capable of using catabolic (“knocking down”), paredric (“sitting nearby”) and pythonic (“ventriloquist”) spirits to investigate the secret. And Pherecydes, the teacher of Pythagoras, did not predict with the help of such tricks (not to say, he was delusional)? Perhaps the same demon was in Pythagoras, who performed bloody deeds in Euphorbus? Finally, why did the one who proved that he was Euphorbus, referring to the shield, also not recognize any of his Trojan comrades? After all, they too would already come to life if the living arose from the dead. Chapter XXIX. Refutation of the doctrine of transmigration of souls. 1. It is known that the living become dead, but it does not follow from this that the living also become dead. After all, from the beginning the living precede the dead, and from here it equally follows that from the beginning the dead come later, appearing not from anywhere, but from the living. Those had the opportunity, from which it would be better for them to arise, if only not from the dead; these had no better place to come from than from the living. 2. So, if from the beginning the living were not from the dead, then why subsequently from the dead? Has that primary source, whatever it was, really dried up? Or did the way it came about begin to cause dissatisfaction? And how did he remain the same when it comes to the dead? Doesn’t the fact that the dead are initially among the living mean that they are always among the living? For either in both cases the original mode of origination would have to remain the same, or in both cases it would have to change, so that if the living should subsequently arise from the dead, in the same way the dead should not arise from the living. 3. If confidence in this construction does not have to be complete, (3.) the opposite does not always and everywhere arise from the opposite. After all, we can contrast as opposites the born and the unborn, sight and blindness, youth and old age, wisdom and foolishness; but, however, the unbegotten does not arise from the begotten because the opposite arises from the opposite; and sight does not appear after blindness, on the grounds that blindness appears after sight; and youth is not restored after the onset of old age because youth fades, giving way to old age; and wisdom does not become dull, replaced again by foolishness, due to the fact that wisdom displaces foolishness. 4. And Albinus, timid before his Plato, endeavors to carefully classify these kinds of opposites, as if they were not so disjointed in their absolute difference from each other, as those which he explains according to the opinion of his teacher—I speak of life and death. But life does not come back after death, on the grounds that death occurs when life ends. Chapter XXX. Refutation of the doctrine of transmigration of souls (continued). 1. How do we answer the rest? Firstly, if the living were from the dead, just as the dead were from the living, then the same number of all people would always remain, namely that which entered life at the very beginning. After all, the living came before the dead, then the dead from the living, and again from the dead the living. And since this borrowing would always come from among the same people, the number of people who would come from the same people would always be constant. For no more and no less of them would leave than would return. 2. However, we find in writings about human antiquities that the human race gradually expanded, here aborigines, nomads, exiles, ambitious people seize lands (for example, the Scythians - Parthians, Temenids - Peloponnese, Athenians - Asia, Phrygians - Italy, Phoenicians - Africa), here are the usual migrations, which are called ἀποικίας, the purpose of which is to reduce the number of inhabitants [in the metropolis], lead to the fact that many people rush into other areas. After all, the metropolises, remaining to this day in their former places, lent to other countries even more of their fellow tribesmen than remained in them. 3. Of course, before everyone’s eyes, the globe itself is becoming day by day more and more well-groomed and more populated than before. Everything is already accessible, everything is known, the fruits of human activity are visible everywhere, the most delightful estates have driven out of memory the image of previously disreputable wastelands, arable lands have subjugated the forests, livestock has put wild animals to flight, sands are sown, rocks are covered with plantations, swamps are drained, there are as many cities as there were no huts before. The islands no longer inspire terror, and the mountain peaks no longer frighten; houses are everywhere, people are everywhere, the state is everywhere, life is everywhere 358. 4. The best evidence of human multiplicity: we are a burden to the world, we barely have enough means of subsistence, and the need has become stronger, and everyone has complaints, and this despite the fact that nature can no longer stand us. Indeed, infection, famine, wars, the destruction of cities during earthquakes should be considered a cure, like pruning an overgrown human race. However, although such axes immediately cut down a great many mortals, the world has never yet been afraid of the return of this many living from the dead immediately after a thousand years 359 . But equal conditions of loss and restoration would make this very noticeable if the living were obtained from the dead. 5. Why is it that after a thousand years, and not immediately, the living arise from the dead: after all, if what was destroyed is not immediately rejoined, there is a danger of complete extermination due to a decrease that outstrips restoration, since this respite of life would not be comparable to a thousand-year period of time, being, of course, much shorter and therefore more capable of dying out before flaring up again? So, since that (i.e. life) which would thus cease if the living were to arise from the dead does not cease, one should not believe that the living arise from the dead. Chapter XXXI. The absurdity of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. 1. And if the living arise from the dead, then, of course, each separately from each separately. So, it follows that the souls of separate bodies, each one, return to separate bodies. But if two, three and five are taken into one womb, then the living will no longer arise from the dead, for not each separately from each separately, but this is how the original form will appear, because even now many souls are born from one. 2. Then, although souls separate at different ages, why do they return at the same age? For everyone from infancy is filled with a soul that returns like a baby. How is it that a dead old man comes back as a baby? If the soul, during a life moving backwards, decreases outside the body, then how much better would it be if after a thousand years the soul returned more successful, of course, at the same age at which death found it, in order to reacquire the age that it left behind? 3. But even if they always returned the same, they, of course, would have to bring with them, if not the same forms of bodies and not the same destinies, but at least the previous distinctive features of their talents, occupations and inclinations, for they would in vain be considered the same, being deprived of that by which their identity would be confirmed. “How do you know,” you say, “that everything does not secretly happen this way, but that the thousand-year age takes away the ability to remember, which is why souls return to you unknown?” But I know that everything is wrong when you introduce Pythagoras-Euphorbus to me. 4. After all, it is indeed well known that Euphorbus had a brave and warlike soul: his shields speak of his glory. Pythagoras had a soul so inactive and unwarlike that, avoiding the battles of the then Greece, he preferred the peace of Italy, devoting himself to the studies of geometry, astronomy and music, being far from the activities and inclinations of Euphorbus. Pyrrhus was engaged in fishing, Pythagoras, on the contrary, did not eat it, refraining from eating living creatures. Ephalides and Hermotimus pounced on beans, considering them ordinary food; Pythagoras, on the contrary, bequeathed to his students not to even cross the bean plantings 360. 5. So, how do the same souls return, whose identity is not confirmed either by talents, or habits, or food? Finally, out of such a large number of Greeks, only four souls are counted. And why does only the Greeks experience transmigration of souls and reincarnation every day, and not every nation, with people of any age, rank, gender, in the end? Why is it that only Pythagoras remembers himself now as one thing, now as another, and not me? 6. Or if this is the prerogative of philosophers, and especially of the Greeks, as if neither the Scythians nor the Indians were engaged in philosophy, why does neither Epicurus, nor Chrysippus, nor Zeno, nor even Plato himself, whom we would perhaps consider Nestor 361 thanks to the honey of his eloquence, remember that they were someone before? Chapter XXXII. Refutation of the doctrine of the infusion of the human soul into animals. 1. But Empedocles also says: “I was a bush and a fish,” considering himself unworthy to be remembered as some kind of hero, I think because in his madness he imagined himself to be a god. Why doesn’t he imagine himself to be a pumpkin, so vulgar, and a chameleon, so inflated? Just like a fish, he preferred to fry by throwing himself into Etna, so as not to rot in some secret grave. And after that, transformations ended for him, like a summer dinner after a roast. 2. Therefore, in exactly the same way, here we need to struggle with an even more strange assumption, which deduces animals from people and people from animals. Let us leave the bushes and grass alone, so as not to be forced to laugh more than to teach. We say that the human soul cannot in any way pass into animals, even if it is derived, according to philosophers, from the original essences. 3. After all, if the soul is fire or water, or blood, or spirit, or air, or light, we must remember that any animal is hostile to any one of these species; to fire - cold-blooded: (water) snakes, star lizards, salamanders 362 and all those who come from a rival element, that is, from water. Dry and devoid of juices are equally hostile to water: locusts, moths and chameleons rejoice in drought. Also hostile to blood are those who lack its purple color: snails, worms and most fish. Those who are hostile to the spirit are those who do not seem to breathe, being deprived of lungs and trachea: mosquitoes, ants, moths and small creatures of this kind. Also hostile to air are those who, always living underground and under water, are deprived of the opportunity to inhale it (you know them better than their name). Also hostile to the light are those who are completely blind or have eyes that can see only in the dark: moles, bats, owls. I need all this in order to teach using the example of clear and obvious entities. 4. However, if I had retained the atoms of Epicurus, or seen the numbers of Pythagoras, or had come across the ideas of Plato, or captured the entelechy (inner purposefulness) of Aristotle, then in these species I would probably have found animals that I would have opposed to each other, based on their opposition. For I affirm that whatever the above-mentioned essence the human soul may consist of, it could not be transformed into animals so hostile to each separate essence and, in its transition, bring with it its basis to those from which it would rather be removed and repelled than assimilated and accepted - because of the existence between them of that most important contradiction, which ensures the difference of the essential order, and also because of other contradictions caused by the inherent nature of each development. 5. After all, the human soul has acquired special residence, food, structure, sensations, inclinations, and methods of copulation and birth, as well as gifts, then deeds, joys, aversions, vices, passions, pleasures, illnesses, medicines, and finally its own way of life and death. 6. Therefore, how can that soul that clings to the earth, by no means devoid of fear of heights and depths, tired of climbing stairs, capable of drowning when immersed in ponds, will later jump into the air in an eagle or jump into the sea in an eel? 363 How will she, fed on food that is refined and delicate and, moreover, carefully prepared, chew, I do not say chaff, but the thorns and bitterness of wild leaves, worms that live in dung heaps, even poisonous creatures, if she turns into a goat or a quail; Moreover, [how will she eat] carrion, even human flesh, remembering, of course, herself, being in the bear and the lion? Similarly, you will give other examples of inconsistency. So that we do not linger in detail about individual cases, whatever the image of the human soul itself, whatever its size, what will it do in animals much larger or smaller than itself? For it is necessary that every body be filled with soul and that every soul be covered by body. How, in this case, will the human soul fill the elephant? How will it become covered with flesh in a mosquito? If it stretches or contracts so much, it will, of course, be in danger. 7. And therefore I add: if in no way does it accept such a movement in animals that are not comparable to it either in the size of their bodies or in other laws to which their nature is subject, will it really change in accordance with the properties of the genera and in accordance with their life, which is opposite to human life, becoming as a result of the change the opposite of itself - human? In fact, if it allows change, losing what it was, then it will not be what it was; and if such as it was will not be, then reincarnation is destroyed, which cannot be attributed to that soul, which, if changed, will not exist. After all, that phenomenon will be called the reincarnation of the soul, after which it retains its previous state. 8. So, since she cannot change in order to remain herself, and cannot remain in her previous state, because she does not accept what is opposite to herself, I do not find any credible reason for such a movement. After all, even if some people are compared to animals in accordance with their morals, talents and inclinations, for God also says: Man has become like the foolish beasts of burden 364 - because of this, predatory people will not produce kites, dirty and dissolute people will not become dogs, vicious people will not become leopards, modest people will become sheep, talkative people will not become swallows, bashful people will not become doves, as if one and the same essence souls everywhere manifested their nature again and again in the characteristic features of animals. After all, one is the essence, the other is the nature of the essence, since each thing has its own essence, but nature can be common. 9. Here is an example: the essence is stone and iron; the rigidity of stone and iron is the nature of the essence. Rigidity connects them, their essence is different. There is the softness of wool and the softness of down: natural qualities equalize them, but the qualities of essences do not equalize. In the same way, even if a person is called a fierce or a good-natured beast, they will not have the same soul: for the similarity of nature is also noted when the dissimilarity of essences is observed. After all, by the very fact that you consider a person to be similar to an animal, you admit that their souls are not the same, saying “similar” and not “the same.” 10. This is also what the divine saying says, comparing man to beasts of burden by nature and not by essence. However, God Himself would not have designated man in this way if He had recognized him as a beast of burden in essence. Chapter XXXIII. The meaninglessness and inadequacy of retribution carried out through the infusion of the human soul into various animals. 1. Of course, under the pretext of a fair trial, this doctrine is defended, according to which human souls, in accordance with life and merit, receive a corresponding kind of animal: those that are to be slaughtered are in the animals that are to be slaughtered; those that need to be tamed are in reptiles; those who should be bothered - in draft animals, those who should be disgraced - in unclean animals; in the same way those who should be glorified and loved, and who should be cared for and to whom we should strive - in the most beautiful, most excellent, most useful, most tender animals. To this I will say: if they change, then the reward that they deserve will no longer be awarded to them. 2. The trial will be meaningless if the defendant does not have an awareness of his guilt. There will be no awareness of guilt if the state of souls changes. The state of souls will change if they do not remain the same. Likewise, if souls are preserved until judgment, as the Egyptian Mercury knows, who says that the soul that has left the body does not flow back into the soul of the world, but remains separate, “to give an account to the Father of the deeds that it has done in the body,” then I want to evaluate the justice, severity, greatness, dignity of the divine court: is not human justice located on a higher throne, being more perfect due to the glory of both sentences - punishment and mercies, more strict in vengeance, more generous in retribution. 3. What do you think the killer's soul will be? Some kind of animal, I suppose, destined for the butcher shop and the meat market, so that it was slaughtered in the same way, for it slaughtered itself, it was skinned in the same way, for it itself robbed, it was eaten in the same way, for it itself made those whom it killed in forests and desert places a treat for the animals. 4. If justice be administered in this way, will not that soul receive more consolation than punishment, for it finds burial among highly paid cooks, for it is buried with the seasonings of Apicius 365 and Lurcon, for it is delivered to the tables of Cicero, for it is carried out on the shining cups of Sulla, for its funeral rites are a feast, for it is devoured by its equals, and not by vultures and by wolves so that it seems that she was buried in the body of a man and that, having returned to her family, she was resurrected, boasting before human courts, if she happened to experience them? 5. But they hand over the murderer to be torn to pieces by various selected wild animals trained to act contrary to nature, and, moreover, alive, and what’s more, does not die easily, since everything has been done to delay his end to complete the punishment. But even if the soul escapes the final blow of the sword, the body will not be saved from the iron; after both collarbones are pierced and ribs are pierced, retribution for his crime still occurs. The body is then put on fire so that it will also be punished during burial. There is no other way to deal with criminals. But, however, they do not care so much about the fire so that other animals do not find the remains; Of course, bones are not spared, and no mercy is shown to the ashes deprived of burial. 6. The punishment for murder among people is as great as that which is carried out by nature. Who would not prefer worldly justice, to which the Apostle testified that it is not in vain that it is armed with a sword, 366 which is sacred because of its fierce vengeance for a person. If we also imagine retribution for other crimes - neck stocks 367, burning alive, leather bellows 368, hooks 369 and rocks, then for whom would it not be better to receive a sentence from Pythagoras and Empedocles? 7. After all, those who, subject to punishment by labor and slavery, put on donkeys and mules, how joyfully they will congratulate themselves on the mills and wheels of aquilegia 370 if they remember the mines, convict prisons, public works and the dungeons themselves, even without labor! In the same way, people of good morals who entrusted their lives to a judge - I am looking for reward, but I find rather punishment. Undoubtedly, the reward for the righteous is great - to be reborn in all kinds of animals! 8. Homer remembered himself as a peacock, as Ennius saw in a dream 371; but I will not believe even the waking poets. Even if the peacock is very beautiful and can give any shade of color to his outfit, his feathers are silent and his voice is unpleasant, and poets prefer nothing more than to sing. So Homer is condemned to be a peacock, not glorified by it. He will rejoice more at the reward of this world, being considered the father of noble arts, for he will prefer the beauty of his glory to the beauty of his tail. 9. Well, let poets turn into peacocks or swans, if swans have a beautiful voice, but in which animal will you place the just husband Aeacus? Which beast is the flawless woman Dido? What bird will receive patience, what pet will receive piety, what fish will receive innocence? All of them are subject to man, all are subordinate, all are given to him as his property. If he becomes one of them, the one who is awarded for his services in life with images, statues and inscriptions, public honors, privileges, to whom the curia and the people donate votes in elections, will be diminished. 10. Oh, divine judgments after death! - more deceptive than human, worthy of contempt for punishment, repulsive with their favors; judgments that neither evildoers fear nor righteous people desire, that criminals rather than saints strive for, those in order to quickly escape from worldly justice, these in order to enjoy its fruits longer. Well do you teach, philosophers, with benefit you convince that punishments and rewards after death are less significant, although if any judgment awaits the soul, it should be considered more severe at the end than during its course, for there is nothing more complete than the perfect, nothing more perfect than the divine. 11. Thus, God will judge more fully, for more perfectly, passing a final verdict, both guilty and acquittal, and the souls will return not to animals, but to their bodies, and this will happen once, on that day that only the Father knows 372 so that faith full of anxiety will be tested with a terrible expectation, always looking out for this day and never knowing it, constantly trembling before what it constantly hopes for. Chapter XXXIV. Refutation of the teachings of Simon the Samaritan. 1. However, an insane judgment of this kind, embodying human souls in animals, has not yet been expressed by heretics. But we considered it necessary to bring it up for discussion and refute it as connected with the previous ones, in order to put an end to the chatter about Homer the peacock as well as about Euphorbus-Pythagoras, and so that, after striking a blow at this belief in the transmigration of souls or in reincarnation, in the same way, destroy the faith that helps heretics in some way. 2. After all, Simon the Samaritan, the purchaser of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles 373, after being condemned to death along with his money by the [Apostle] himself, mourned sin without benefit, again began to encroach on the truth, as if consoled with revenge: supported by the power of his [magical] art, in order to create the appearance of a certain virtue, from a place of public lust he redeemed for the same money Tyrian Helen, a worthy reward for the Holy Spirit. 3. At the same time, he imagined himself to be the Supreme Father, her - his first impulse, with which he thought of creating angels and archangels 374; and she, knowing about this plan, abandoned the Father, jumped down and there, forestalling the implementation of her father’s plan, gave birth to angelic forces that did not know about the Father - the creators of this world. Then she, captured by these forces (guided by a feeling other than hers) so that after her departure they would not seem to be the offspring of someone else, and therefore devoted to every humiliation that would prevent her, disgraced, from going anywhere, fell into human form as doomed to the bonds of the flesh; 4. Thus, passing for many centuries through more and more new female guises, she was also that Helen, most destructive for Priam, and later for the eyes of Stesichorus, whom she deprived of sight for reproach in a song, and then again endowed with the ability to see, being satisfied with glorification; similarly moving from body to body, she reached extreme dishonor, becoming the despicable harlot Helen; so, she is that lost sheep 375 to which the High Father, that is, Simon, descended, and, having first freed her and taken her out, I don’t know whether on his shoulders or on his knees, then turned to the salvation of people whom he needed to deliver through the newly found [Helen] from those angelic powers, for the deception of which he himself also took on the appearance, and for people pretended to be a man, and appeared in Judea as a Son, in Samaria is like the Father. 5. Oh, Helen, who suffered among poets and heretics! - then defamed by adultery, now by debauchery, except that she is liberated from Troy more gloriously than from a brothel - with a thousand ships from Troy, and not a thousand denarii from a brothel. Be ashamed, Simon, slower in seeking, more fickle in returning. And Menelaus immediately follows the one who was taken away, immediately demands back the stolen one, and, through a ten-year war, snatches it away, without hiding, without deceiving, without dodging. I am afraid that it was rather the Father who, during the deliverance of Helen, showed himself to be more courageous, tireless and generous. Chapter XXXV. Refutation of the teachings of Carpocrates. 1. But you are not the only one who is supplied with this tale by the doctrine of the transmigration of souls: it is also used by Carpocrates, also a magician, also a libertine, although without Helen. Isn't it? After all, in order to pervert the divine and human teaching, he argued that souls again put on flesh; that this life is not read to anyone if everything that makes it vicious is not fulfilled in it, for things are considered bad not by nature, but by opinion 376 . So, it is necessary for the transmigration of souls to occur if, during the first attempt in life, satisfaction is not given to everything that is prohibited (that is, crimes are attributed to life!); however, the soul can be called back as many times as many times it, the debtor of sins, will pay less than it needs, until it pays the last coin 377, constantly being thrown into the prison of the body. 2. After all, he weakens this whole allegory of the Lord, which is understandable without sophisticated explanations and should be interpreted simply from the very beginning. For the pagan is our adversary 378, walking along the same common road of life as we do. However, we should have left the world 379 if we were not allowed to communicate with them 380. So, the Lord prescribes a kind attitude towards such a person (after all, He says: “love your enemies and pray for those who slander you” 381), so that he, irritated by an insult in some business relationship, does not drag you to his judge, and, having been taken into custody, you would not be in straitened circumstances until the entire debt is repaid 382. 3. Then, if the word “adversary” in this instruction refers to the devil, 383 it means that you are also persuaded to come to such an agreement with him as is allowed after accepting faith; You promised to renounce him, his splendor and his angels. This is the agreement between you. This will be a friendship consisting of the observance of an obligation so that you will not subsequently take again any of those things of his that you have renounced, which you have returned to him, so that you will not be handed over to God the Judge as a deceiver and a breaker of the contract (as we read elsewhere about the devil - the accuser of the saints 384 and an informer by his very name 385 ) and so that the Judge will not hand you over to the angel of punishment, and he will not cast you into the underground prison from which you you will not be released unless any minor offense is paid for by delaying the resurrection. What understanding of the parable is more acceptable than this? Which interpretation is more reliable? 4. However, let us return to Carpocrates: if the soul is a debtor in relation to crimes, then who should be understood as its enemy and adversary? I think [the enemy of the soul is] a good thought that prompts the soul to shun sin, so that it must be driven into the body again and again until it turns out to be completely alien to a righteous life 386. This means that a good tree is known by its bad fruit, that is, the teaching of truth is known from the worst instructions. 5. I believe that heretics of this kind also attack the parable of Elijah, supposedly reproduced in John the Baptist in such a way that the words of the Lord turn out to confirm the transmigration of souls: Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him 387 , and in another place: And if you want to hear, it is Elijah who was supposed to come 388 . So, did the Jews really ask John: Are you Elijah? 389 - based on the Pythagorean idea, and not on the basis of divine prediction: Behold, I will send you Elijah the Thesbite? 390 6. But for them the transmigration of souls is the return of a soul that has already tasted death and is renewed in another body; (6.) Elijah is to come not after leaving life, but after being transferred from it; and not to be restored to a body from which it was not removed, but to be restored to the world from which it was transferred; not by the right of the return of life, but by the fulfillment of prophecy; the same, with his own name, and with his own individuality 391. But how is John Elijah? You have the word of the angel: “And he himself,” he says, “will go before the people in power and in the spirit of Elijah 392,” not in his soul and not in his body. After all, these last ones are each person’s own; spirit and strength are brought in from without by the grace of God; thus, they can be transferred to another by the will of God, as happened before with the spirit of Moses 393. Chapter XXXVI. About the male and female sexes. 1. In these studies, we, I believe, have deviated from what we now need to return to. Thanks to the competing opinions, of course, of philosophers and heretics, and also thanks to that empty dialogue of Plato, we have established that the soul is sown in and from man himself, and from the beginning there is only one seed of the soul, as well as the flesh, for the entire human race. Now we analyze the interpretations arising from this in order. 2. The soul, sown in the womb along with the flesh, immediately receives sex; these actions coincide in time in such a way that none of these entities turns out to be the cause that determines gender. After all, if between the seed of one and the seed of another essence their conception allowed a certain gap, so that either the flesh or the soul was conceived first, then it would be possible to assign the sign of sex to one of them on the basis of a temporary interval between one and the other seed, so that the sex would be assigned either by the flesh to the soul, or by the soul to the flesh, 3. for Apelles, not an artist, but a heretic, asserting that before entering bodies the souls are male and female, as he learned from Philumena, makes the flesh, like a later one, take gender from the soul. Those who, after birth, introduce the soul into the previously formed flesh, assign the soul male or female sex according to the flesh. 4. The indivisible seed of one and the other essence and their simultaneous spilling determines the common destiny of the race, where some natural pattern, whatever it may be, will draw the boundaries [of one or the other sex]. Of course, here too the nature of the origins makes itself felt, when a man is formed earlier (after all, Adam was created earlier), and a woman - a little later (after all, Eve was created subsequently). So, the flesh remains formless for a long time, as it was taken from the rib of Adam; she, however, is already a living being, for I admit that this part of Adam was then a soul. However, she too would have been revived by the breath of God if there had not been an offshoot of both the flesh and the soul of Adam in the woman. Chapter XXXVII. About carrying a baby, its birth and further growth. 1. A certain power of the divine will as an assistant provides everything necessary for the sowing, creation, formation of a person in the womb, owning the way, whatever it may be, to carry it out. Based on this, Roman superstition 394 invented Alemona 395 for feeding the fetus in the womb, Nona and Decima, who received the name for the most anxious months 396, Partula 397, which presides over childbirth, and Lucina 398, which brings to light. We consider these divine functions to be angels. 2. So, the fetus in the womb becomes a man from the time its appearance is formed. After all, the law of Moses in that case condemns the perpetrator of a miscarriage to the punishment corresponding to the crime, 399 when the matter already concerns a person, when the state of life and death is already attributed to him, when a fate is already assigned to him, even if he, still living in his mother, primarily shares his fate with his mother. 3. I will also say something about the timing of the birth of the soul in order to present everything in order. A normal birth usually occurs at the beginning of the tenth month. Those who talk about numbers honor the number ten as the basis of all other numbers and as the creator of human birth. 4. And I, according to God, would rather justify the expediency of this period of time by the fact that ten months will better initiate a person into the Ten Commandments, that we are born in the same number of months as we are reborn by the number of commandments. But in the fact that births occur more often in the seventh month than in the eighth, I recognize the respect given to the Sabbath: God’s image is sometimes reproduced in the same month on which the day of God’s creation was consecrated. The birth is allowed to hasten and occur, however, properly in the week as a sign of the resurrection, peace and kingdom. Therefore, the eight does not create us: then there will be no 400 marriages. 5. We have long ago proven the community of flesh and soul from the very union of their seed until the completion of the formation of man. In the same way, now and after birth, we will defend it, first of all, because they grow together, but in different ways in accordance with the nature of their own species: flesh - size, soul - talent, flesh - appearance, soul - feeling. However, it should be denied that the soul increases in essence, lest it also be said that the essence decreases, and so that because of this it is not believed that it disappears. But its power, which contains its natural riches sown in it while the magnitude of the essence remains unchanged, with which it was infused at the very beginning, gradually increases along with the flesh. 6. Take a certain amount of gold or silver, a still unworked ingot: in appearance it is dense and is still smaller than what it will be later, but contains within its limits everything that is the nature of gold or silver. Further, when the ingot turns into a plate, it becomes larger than it was at the beginning, due to flattening at a given mass, and not due to the addition of something to it when it is stretched and when expanded, even if it also expands when stretched: it is possible to increase in appearance, but not in state. 7. At the same time, the sheen of gold and silver itself, which was also present in the ingot, intensifies, more cloudy, but still there. In this case, each time a new appearance arises in accordance with the pliability of the substance, thanks to which it will be chosen by the one who will work with it, without adding anything to it except form. Likewise, the growth of the soul should be considered not essential, but awakened. Chapter XXXVIII. Flesh is the home of the soul, and the soul is the tenant of the flesh. 1. Although we established earlier that everything natural that is in the soul, relating to feeling and intellect, due to the state inherent in the soul from birth, belongs to the essence itself, but little by little at one age or another it is revealed and manifests itself differently due to chance depending on skill, habits, place, governing forces 401, however, since this speaks in favor of the community of flesh and soul now considered, we also affirm that mental maturity coincides with the carnal one, and that in the same way both one, thanks to the accumulation of feelings, and this one, thanks to the growth of the members, begins approximately from the fourteenth year, not because Asclepiades calculates prudence from that time, and not because civil law from that time allows for the conduct of affairs, but because this was established from the beginning. 2. After all, if Adam and Eve felt that it was necessary to cover up their shame, having known good and evil, then we also declare our knowledge of good and evil from the time we begin to feel the same. Beginning at this age, each sex becomes more bashful and tries to cover its nakedness more carefully; and lust uses the eyes as observers, makes pleasure common, understands the existing state of affairs, girdles its loins with lust, as if with a fig cover, leads a person out of the paradise of purity, burning with the desire to then commit other sins, including unnatural ones, since it no longer acts in accordance with the structure of nature, but in accordance with vice. 3. However, there is only one natural lust: the desire for food, which God implanted in the beginning. From every tree,” he says, “you will eat 402, and for the second creation after the flood He added to this: Behold, I have given you everything, like the greenery of mown grass, as food 403, intended not so much for the soul as for the body, although for the sake of the soul. After all, one cannot give a convenient reason to a disputant who, since it seems to him that the soul needs food, on this basis wants it to also be considered mortal, since it is supported by food, and when food is limited, the soul loses strength and, deprived of food, ultimately dies. 4. Next, we must take into account not only who needs food, but also for whom; and if for oneself, then why, when and to what extent; in this case, we must take into account that one thing is to be desired by nature, another is to be desired by necessity, one is to be desired according to a property, the other is to be desired for a specific reason. So, for itself the soul will desire food out of necessity, but for the body - in accordance with the nature of its properties. For the home of the soul is the flesh, and the tenant of the flesh is the soul. 5. Therefore, the tenant will, for a certain reason and from necessity (since he is a tenant), intending to be useful to the whole house during his residence, not as one who himself must be provided with a foundation and plastered and fortified, but only as one who must be contained, for he cannot be contained anywhere except in a fortified house. 6. However, after the destruction of the house, the soul will be able to leave the ruins of the previous refuge unharmed, having its own support and food corresponding to its condition - immortality, rationality, the ability to feel, cognitive ability, freedom of choice. Chapter XXXIX. About superstitions associated with childbirth. 1. All these gifts given to the soul at birth are tried to be hidden and distorted by human envy from the ages 404 so that they cannot be noticed directly or so that they are used incorrectly. Who among the people is not pestered by an unclean spirit, seeking to capture souls already at the very doors of birth, or somehow invited by all these superstitions associated with childbirth? 2. Thus, we are all born under a midwife - idolatry, when the mother's wombs themselves, tied with sacred bandages made in front of idols, declare their offspring dedicated to demons, when at birth they call on Lucina and Diana, when during all seven days Juno is offered a meal, when on the decisive day the Fates of Scribunda 405 are invoked, when even the first step of a baby on earth is dedicated goddess Statina 406. 3. Who, after this, does not either devote his son’s entire head to sin, or pluck out some hair, or cut it all off with a razor, or swear to perform a sacrifice with it, or seal it with a sacrifice - as a family, hereditary, public or private vow? So Socrates, when he was still a child, was found by a demonic spirit; so all people are assigned “geniuses” (this is the name of demons). Moreover, birth is almost never pure (we are talking about the birth of pagans). 4. For this reason the Apostle says that from one sanctified sex saints are born due to both the advantage of the seed and the method of education. Otherwise, he says, they would be born unclean, 407 as if they wanted the sons of believers to be considered destined for holiness and, therefore, salvation, so that, by giving such hope as a pledge, they would protect marriages that, in his opinion, should be preserved. However, he remembered the Lord’s injunction: if someone is not born of water and the spirit, he will not enter the Kingdom of God 408, that is, he will not be a saint. Chapter XL. Flesh is the servant of the soul. 1. So, every soul is valued according to Adam until it is revalued in Christ, until it is revalued; a sinner, because she is unclean, also accepting the dishonor of the flesh because of their commonality. 2. After all, although the flesh is a sinner, in accordance with which we are forbidden to act, 409 whose deeds, willing contrary to the spirit, 410 are condemned, because of which people who live according to the flesh are blamed, 411 yet it is not dishonored by its name. After all, it does not itself perceive or feel something in order to incline or induce sin. Isn't that right? She is a servant, and a servant not like a slave or a younger friend - the names of living beings - but like a cup or some other similar body, and not a soul. After all, the cup also serves the thirsty; however, if the thirsty person does not bring the cup to himself, it will not serve him in any way. 3. Moreover, there is no sign of a person in the dust of the earth, and the flesh is not a person as if it were a different power of the soul and a different personality, but is a thing of a completely different essence and a different state, handed over, however, to the soul as a utensil, as an instrument for serving life. Consequently, the flesh is condemned in Scripture because the soul without the flesh cannot do anything in matters of lust, gluttony, drunkenness, cruelty, idolatry and other carnal not feelings, but actions. 4. In addition, the soul is also charged with sinful feelings without actions. Whoever looks with lust has already committed adultery in his heart 412. However, what is flesh without a soul also in matters of decency, justice, patience, modesty? On the other hand, how can you attribute crimes to someone to whom you do not attribute his own good traits? But it (the flesh), with the help of which one sins, is also called to trial, so that that (soul), because of which one sins, can be accused when the servants are accused. There is more hostility towards the master when his servants are beaten; The one who commands is flogged more, although the one who obeys does not receive an excuse. Chapter XLI. Just as there is no soul without sin, so there is no soul without the seed of goodness. 1. So, the vice of the soul, in addition to what is added to it after an encounter with an unclean spirit, comes from its original guilt, being in some way natural. After all, as we said, the corruption of nature is another nature, which has its own god and father, that is, the culprit of the corruption itself; at the same time, however, the good of the soul remains, that very original, divine and truly natural one. 2. For what is from God is not so much extinguished as obscured. After all, it can be obscured, because it is not God, but it cannot be extinguished, because it comes from God. So, just as light, having encountered a certain obstacle, remains, but does not manifest itself if the density of the obstacle is too great, so the good in the soul, suppressed by evil in accordance with its nature, either remains completely inactive, not finding a means of salvation, or somehow manifests itself and shines, having received the opportunity to escape. 3. Thus, there are people who are very bad and very good, but nevertheless all souls belong to the same kind; and in the worst there is a particle of goodness, and in the best there is something of evil. After all, only God is without sin, and only one person without sin is Christ, for He is both God and Christ. So the divinity of the soul, by virtue of its original goodness, breaks through into predictions, and its understanding of God is confirmed by the words: “God is right,” “God is the witness,” “with God” 413. For this reason there is no soul without sin, for there is no soul without the seed of goodness. 4. Therefore, when she comes to faith transformed through the second birth from water and a higher power, when the veil of ancient corruption is torn off, she notices all her light. She is received by the Holy Spirit in the same way as the unclean spirit received her at her previous birth. The soul that marries the Holy Spirit is followed, as property given as a dowry, by the flesh, a servant no longer of the soul, but of the spirit. Oh, happy marriage if there is no adultery committed in it! Chapter XLII. Refutation of Epicurus' teaching on death. 1. There is still something to be said about death; the subject of study will be the posthumous existence of the soul, although Epicurus, expressing a fairly widespread opinion, denied that death concerns us. After all, that which decomposes, he says, is devoid of feeling; what is devoid of feeling does not concern us 414. It is not death itself that decomposes and has no feelings, but the person who endures it. But Epicurus gave the suffering to the one to whom the action belongs. And if the property of a person is to endure death, the destroyer of the body and the destroyer of feelings, then how absurd it would be to talk about such a force that it does not concern a person! 2. Seneca says much more precisely: After death, everything ends, even death itself. If this is so, then death will already concern itself, since it ends; especially a person, at whose death, among other things, she herself ends. “Death does not apply to us,” therefore, life does not apply either. After all, if we are decomposed by something that does not concern us, then we are also formed by something that has no relation to us. If the taking away of feelings does not concern us, then the acquisition of feelings does not apply to us. 3. But he who destroys the soul 415 also destroys death. We will explore both the afterlife and another area of ​​the soul, and death, to which, of course, we are related, even if it does not concern us. Finally, its mirror - sleep - is not a subject alien to our research. Chapter XLIII. About the naturalness of sleep. 1. First we will talk about sleep, then about how the soul passes through death. Of course, sleep is not something supernatural, as some philosophers believe, explaining it by reasons that seem supernatural. 2. The Stoics claim that sleep is a weakening of sensory energy, the Epicureans - a decrease in the life-giving spirit, Anaxagoras and Xenophanes 416 - its fatigue, Empedocles and Parmenides - its cooling, Strato - the separation of the sown spirit, Democritus - a lack of spirit, Aristotle - the lethargy of pericardial heat. I'll point out right away that I never slept enough to admit any of this. After all, it cannot be assumed that sleep is fatigue, but rather something opposite to fatigue, which it eliminates, since a person is more refreshed by sleep than tired. Moreover, sleep does not always arise from fatigue, and when it does occur, the fatigue is no longer present. 3. I do not admit that sleep is a cooling or a kind of lethargy of heat, since the bodies during sleep become so hot that the distribution of food during sleep would proceed with difficulty with heat accelerating [digestion] and cold slowing it down, if we were cooled in sleep. Moreover, the digestion of food occurring at high temperatures is indicated by sweat. Finally, it is said that we “digest food,” and this is the action of heat, not cold. 4. Likewise, the immortality of the soul does not allow us to believe in the diminution of the life-giving spirit, in the lack of spirit, or in the separation of the sown spirit. The soul perishes if it decreases. 5. It remains for us, perhaps, in alliance with the Stoics, to define sleep as a weakening of sensory energy, for it brings peace only to the body, and not to the soul. After all, the soul, being always mobile and excited, never needs peace as alien to immortality; after all, nothing immortal allows the completion of its work, and sleep is the completion of the work. Finally, only the body, which is inherent in mortality, promises the end of the matter. 6. So, whoever doubts the natural character of a dream, let him remember the experts in dialectics who question the existence of any distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Let him know that what he considers to be outside of nature can be attributed to nature, from which it received as its lot the ability to exist in such a way as to appear to be outside of it. In any case, either everything relates to nature, or nothing. We will be able to hear about what is given to us when contemplating God - the Creator of all that we are talking about. 7. For we believe that nature, if it is anything, is a kind of intelligent act of God. In turn, sleep is subordinate to reason, so suitable for man, so useful and so necessary that not a single soul can do without it, in it is the renewal of bodies, the restoration of strength recommended for illnesses, peace after work, a remedy for suffering, pleasure, to which the day legitimately gives way, to which the night, depriving things even of their color, gives the force of law. Therefore, if a dream is something life-giving, healing, helping, then what relates to it cannot be unreasonable, there is nothing unnatural in what is reasonable 417. 8. Likewise, doctors banish beyond the gates of the natural everything that is opposite to life-giving, healing, and helping. After all, having declared illnesses, insanity and indigestion, competing with sleep, to be unnatural, they previously recognized sleep as natural; and by designating sleep in lethargy as unnatural, they do this in response to its natural evidence when it is normal. After all, everything natural is destroyed either by a flaw or by excess, but is preserved with unchanged characteristic parameters. Thus, in its state, that which may turn out to be unnatural due to weakening or excess will be natural. 9. Will you not consider both food and drink to be natural things? After all, they are an excellent preparation for bed. Of course, from the very beginning of his existence, a person depends on them. If you learn from God, you will learn that the aforementioned founder of humanity, Adam, absorbed deep sleep 418 before he desired rest, slept before he worked, moreover, before he ate and before he prophesied 419 so that everyone could see that sleep is a natural human sign that precedes all natural manifestations. 10. Based on this, we are inclined even then to consider it as an image of death. After all, if Adam was the image of Christ 420, then Adam’s dream meant the death of Christ, Who was to fall asleep into death, so that from His side 421, damaged in the same way, the true mother of the living, the Church, would be formed. Therefore, sleep, as healing as it is reasonable, seems to be a prototype of ordinary death, common to all. 11. For God, having in other cases created nothing in His institution without types, wished daily to draw symbolic boundaries with us, especially the boundaries of the human beginning and end, stretching out His hand to help faith through images and comparisons both of words and deeds, and this is more effective than what Plato did. So, He shows you a body, crushed by the beneficial power of deep sleep, overthrown by the gentle necessity of rest, motionless in position, as it lay before life and as it will lie after life, as evidence that it was previously fashioned and will later be buried, awaiting the soul as if not yet blown in and as if already expelled. 12. But the soul also undergoes something that seems to spend time in another place, comprehending its future absence in the body thanks to a presence hidden from itself (we will learn about Hermotimus below), and with all this, it also dreams: where do its dreams come from at that moment? The soul is not at rest, does not become completely inactive, and does not surrender its immortal nature into slavery to deep sleep. She proves that she is always mobile; wanders on land and sea, trades, worries, works, plays, mourns, rejoices, chases what is permitted and what is not permitted, shows that it can do perfectly well without a body, that it is equipped with its own members, but nevertheless is forced to set the body in motion again. Thus, when the body awakens, it, having returned to its duties, proves to you the resurrection of the dead. This will be the natural intelligence of the dream and its rational nature. Also through this image of death you are initiated into faith, you reflect on hope, you learn to die and live, you learn to stay awake while you sleep. Chapter XLIV. About the case of Hermotim. 1. However, about Hermotim. As they say, during sleep he lost his soul, as if leaving the body under the pretext that the person was going to rest. My wife gave it away. The enemies, having taken possession of the sleeping man, burned him as if he were dead. The soul, returning later, I believe, accused itself of murder. The Klazomenian citizens consoled Hermotimus with the church. Women are forbidden to enter there because of the shame of the wife. 2. Why am I talking about this? So that (since it is widely believed that sleep is a separation of the soul) gullibility does not find support in this case with Hermotimus. It was a kind of deeper sleep than usual, so that the assumption arises that this is a nightmare (incubus) or even the illness that Soranus, not allowing the existence of the incubus, opposes to him, or something like that vice that Epimenides 422, who was sleepy for almost fifty years, made the talk of the town. But Suetonius in relation to Nero, and Theopompus 423 in relation to Thrasymedes 424 deny that they ever saw dreams, unless Nero saw them at the end of his life after his fears 425. 3. What if everything was the same with Hermotimus, that the peace of the soul doing nothing in dreams was mistaken for its separation from the body? You, perhaps, will assume anything but this right of the soul, and, moreover, a permanent one, to be a fugitive until death. If it were said that something like this happens once: both an eclipse of the sun or moon, and an eclipse of the soul, then I would, of course, be inclined to believe that this happened miraculously by the will of God, since it follows that God should admonish or frighten a person like a flash of lightning with a blow lasting an instant of death. But it is better to consider as a dream that which, if it were not to be considered a dream, would rather happen to someone who is awake. Chapter XLV. About sleep and ecstasy. 1. Here we are obliged to set forth the Christian view of dreams as accidents of sleep and as very significant fluctuations of the soul, which we have declared to be always active and restless because of its incessant movement, serving as proof of divinity and immortality. So, when the body finds rest, whose own joy it is, the soul, not needing a joy alien to it, does not rest and, since it is deprived of the help of bodily members, uses its own. 2. Imagine a gladiator without a weapon or a driver without a chariot, depicting with gestures all the poses and efforts of their craft: they fight, compete, but their body movements are useless. Nevertheless, what appears to happen is what does not seem to happen. After all, judging by the action, it happens, but judging by the result, it doesn’t happen. 3. We call this force ecstasy, the withdrawal of feeling and a kind of madness. So at the very beginning, sleep is shown together with ecstasy: And God sent ecstasy on Adam, and he fell asleep 426. After all, sleep visited the body in order to give peace, but ecstasy seized the soul in order to deprive it of peace, and from here arose a pattern connecting sleep with ecstasy, and from the pattern - naturalness. 4. Further, in dreams we enjoy, and grieve, and are frightened - oh, how much! with what anxiety and suffering! - although we would not be disturbed by anything like that, that is, by empty images, if we dreamed while controlling ourselves. And good deeds in dreams are useless, and crimes are harmless; for we will not be condemned for the vision of debauchery, just as we will not be crowned for the vision of martyrdom. 5. How, you say, does a soul that cannot control itself remember dreams? This will be the peculiarity of this madness, for it arises not from want of health, but from nature; for it does not expel, but withdraws the mind. It’s one thing to shake, another thing to move; one thing is to destroy, the other is to excite. 6. So, the fact that memory is preserved is a sign of a healthy mind; the fact that a healthy mind weakens while memory remains is a kind of madness. And therefore they do not say that we are crazy, but that we are dreaming; That is why we are reasonable, if we are such at all. After all, although our mind is darkened, it is not destroyed, unless at that moment it may seem detached; ecstasy - acting at the same moment by its own means in such a way as to bring into us images of wisdom along with images of error. Chapter XLVI. On the reliability of dreams. 1. And again we are forced to talk about the interpretation of the dreams themselves, which disturb the soul. And when do we get to [considering] death? And here I will say: “When God willing.” There won't be a long delay in what will happen. 2. Epicurus considered dreams to be completely empty, freeing the deity from troubles, destroying the order of things and scattering everything indiscriminately as left to chance and unpredictable. Even if this is the case, then by chance one may come across the truth, for it is unacceptable that it alone should be spared the randomness due to everything. Homer singled out two gates for dreams, horny for truth, ivory for deception; they say that you can look through the horn, but ivory is solid 427. 3. Aristotle, considering most [dreams] false, recognizes the truth in them. Residents of the city of Telmessa do not neglect any dreams, blaming only the inability of a person to interpret them. Who is so alien to human nature that someday in his life he will not see a true vision? By mentioning a few of the more significant, I shame Epicurus. 4. Astyages, the ruler of the Medes, saw in a dream that a flood of Asia came from the bladder of his daughter Mandana, still a virgin; Herodotus reports this 428; in the same way, in the first year after her marriage, the grapevine, emerging from the same place, spread throughout Asia. Charon of Lampsacus also conveys this earlier than Herodotus 429. Those who interpreted this as a reference to her son were not deceived, since Asia was both flooded and crushed by Cyrus. 5. Philip of Macedon, not yet becoming a father, saw in a dream that the reproductive organ of his wife Olympias was sealed with a ring: the seal was a lion; and decided that the path to birth was blocked, because a lion becomes a father only once. Aristodemus (or Aristophon), assuming that, on the contrary, nothing empty is sealed, decided that a son was foreshadowed, who would also be distinguished by the greatest valor. Those who know Alexander will recognize the lion 430 on the ring. Ephorus writes about this 431. 6. But a certain resident of the city of Himera also saw in a dream the tyranny of Dionysius of Sicily. Heraclides reported this. And the fact that Seleucus would gain power over Asia was foreseen by his mother Laodice even before her birth. This was made famous by Euphorion 432. From Strabo 433 I learn that Mithridates also, in accordance with the dream, took possession of Pontus; in Callisthenes 434 I find that Baralir of Illyria, in accordance with the dream, ruled over the territory stretching from the Molossians to Macedonia. 7. And the Romans recognized prophetic dreams. Marcus Tullius 435 recognized from a dream already as Augustus and the pacifier of civil unrest the unknown future transformer of the Empire, then still a child and, of course, not holding any position, then only Julius Octavius. This dream is reported in the Vitellian Notes. 8. But there are dreams that predict not only supreme power, but danger and death: for example, when Caesar 436 in the battle with his opponents Brutus and Cassius at Philippi 437, warned by the dream of Artorius 438, escapes by leaving the tent (although he was sick 439 and expected greater danger for himself elsewhere from enemies); or when the daughter foresees the cross of Polycrates of Samos, based on the anointings of the Sun and the ablutions of Jupiter that she saw in a dream 440. 9. In dreams, honors and gifts are revealed, healing remedies are discovered, thefts are revealed, treasures are found. Thus, the dignity of Cicero, still a child, was seen in a dream by his nanny. The swan from Socrates' chest, pleasing people, turns out to be his student Plato 441. The fist fighter Leonymus is treated by Achilles in his dreams. When a golden wreath disappeared from the Athens Kremlin, Sophocles the tragedian finds it in a dream 442. The tragic actor Neoptolemus at Cape Rhetaeus, near Troy, taught in a dream by Ajax, saves his tomb from destruction and, having removed the dilapidated stones, returns from there with a large amount of gold. 10. How many interpreters and guarantors are there in this matter?! Artemon 443, Antiphon 444, Strato, Philochorus 445, Epicharmus, Serapion, Cratippus 446, Dionysius of Rhodes, Hermippus 447, all the literature of the pagans. I will laugh, perhaps, only at those of them who imagined that he would prove that Saturn was the first to dream, except that Saturn lived before everyone else. Aristotle, excuse the laugher! 448 11. By the way, the primacy among different types of divination was awarded to dreams by Epicharmus and Philochorus of Athens. After all, the world is full of similar oracles, for example, the oracle of Amphiaraus in Oropus 449, Amphilochus in Mallus 450, Sarpedon in Troas, Trophonius in Boeotia, Pugus in Cilicia, Hermione in Macedonia, Pasiphae in Laconia. You will learn more than enough about other oracles, their foundation, rituals and people who described the oracles, about the entire history of dreams in the five volumes of Hermippus of Berita. But the Stoics are also inclined to assert that God, being very caring towards humanity, among other means necessary for the art and science of divination 451, also gave dreams as a special consolation in natural prediction. 12. We also need all these examples to confirm the reliability of dreams, but with a different understanding of its cause than the pagans. After all, about other oracles, near which no one sleeps, what else can we say, except that these are the demonic works of those spirits who already lived in people themselves or tried to take possession of their memory in order to manifest their malice in any way? They pretend to be a deity and with the same intent they deceive, giving medicines, warnings and predictions; By helping in this way, they cause more harm, since with their help they lead people away from the search for the true Divinity, instilling in them ideas of the false. 13. And, of course, their power is not locked up or circumscribed by the boundaries of the sanctuaries; she is wandering, flying and at the same time unbridled. Therefore no one will doubt that houses are open to demons and that not only in sanctuaries, but also in rooms, people are surrounded and deceived by visions. Chapter XLVII. Four types of dreams. 1. After all, we establish that dreams are in most cases inspired by demons; although dreams are sometimes true and pleasant, but, luring and captivating a person with the intention that we said, they are all the more empty, deceptive, disordered, ridiculous and unclean! And this is not surprising if the visions belong to those who own the essence. 2. From God, who promised the grace of the Holy Spirit to all flesh, and that His servants and His handmaidens would prophesy and see dreams 452, those dreams that will be connected with grace itself should be considered emanating: worthy, holy, prophetic, containing revelation, house-building, calling; their generous gifts tend to be poured out on the uninitiated, since God gives showers and His sun to the just and the unjust alike, 453 since Nebuchadnezzar had a dream from God, 454 and most people recognize God from visions. Consequently, just as the pagans have reverence for God, so the temptation of the evil one exists among the saints, whom it does not leave day or night, in order to creep up, if possible, even on those sleeping, if it is not able to approach those who are awake. 3. The third type of dreams will be those which the soul seems to cause itself due to the tension caused by external circumstances. Further, how can the soul, which is not given the ability to dream dreams voluntarily (after all, Epicharmus believes so), will itself become the cause of a certain vision? Should this type of dream be considered a natural form, allowing the soul, even in ecstasy, to experience what happens to it? 4. And what will seem to come not from God, not from a demon and not from the soul, happening contrary to expectation and incapable of interpretation and explanation of how it happened, will be attributed to ecstasy itself and the state accompanying it. Chapter XLVIII. On the influence of time, human position and fasting on dreams. 1. They say that dreams are more definite and clear at the end of the night, as if then the strength of the soul is already manifested, since deep sleep dissipates. As for the times, dreams are calmer in spring, since summer relaxes the soul, winter hardens to a certain extent, and autumn, which brings illness, softens with the drunken juice of fruits. 2. Likewise, depending on the position of a person during the rest itself - whether he lies supine, on his right side, with his insides bent, as if their cavities were adjacent - the seat of the senses will fluctuate, or, with a compressed full liver, the abode of the mind will be disturbed. But I would rather admit that such judgments are expressed wittily than that they are proven thoroughly, even if they were expressed by Plato 455; perhaps all this occurs by chance. However, dreams will be voluntary if they can be directed. 3. After all, it is necessary to carefully examine the fact that both prejudice and superstition establish rules for dreams regarding the distribution of food or the refusal of it: superstition - when, for example, people intending to sleep with oracles are prescribed the abstinence of food in order to achieve ritual purity; prejudice - then, for example, when the Pythagoreans, guided by the same idea, reject beans as heavy food and for inspiration. But those three brothers with Daniel, content with only the pods, so as not to be defiled by the royal dishes, in addition to the rest of their wisdom, acquired from God a special gift of perception and interpretation of dreams 456. 4. I, being hungry (I don’t know if I’m the only one), mostly dream in such a way that I don’t feel like I’ve seen them. Therefore, you say, abstinence means nothing in this matter? On the contrary, it is as important in this as in any other; if it is important for superstition, then much more for piety. So, after all, the demons also demand abstinence from their dreamers as a pandering payment for the gift of prophecy, for they learned that abstinence is close to God, for the same Daniel languished for three weeks without food 457; but he did this in order to touch God with humble zeal, and not in order to prepare the feeling and understanding of the soul for a dream; [Daniel did this] as if his soul were not supposed to be in ecstasy. Thus, continence does not contribute to the onset of ecstasy, but awaits its appearance from God. Chapter XLIX. There are no dream-free souls. 1. Those who believe that infants do not dream, on the ground that everything pertaining to the soul is carried out in life in accordance with age, let them pay attention to the trembling, nodding and smiling of children in sleep, in order, based on this fact, to understand that the movements of the dreaming soul easily break through to the surface due to the tenderness of the flesh. 2. But the fact that, as they say, the Atlanteans living in Libya sleep in dreamless sleep is, of course, contrary to the nature of the soul 458. So, either Herodotus was deceived by rumors that sometimes slandered the barbarians, or powerful demons dominate that climate. After all, if Aristotle points to a certain hero from Sardinia who frees those who spend the night in his church from visions, it means that driving out dreams and causing them depends on the whims of demons; from which we can conclude that the miracle of Nero, the late dreamer, and Thrasymedes 459 occurred for this reason. 3. But we affirm that dreams also come from God. Why, therefore, should not the Atlanteans [now] see dreams from God, at least on the basis that no race is no longer alien to Him, since the light of the Gospel shines throughout the entire earth, from end to end of the world? So, either the rumor lied to Aristotle 460, or is it still necessary to take into account the machinations of demons? If only it were not believed that a certain nature of the soul is free from dreams! Chapter L. Refutation of Menander, who taught that death does not apply to his followers. 1. I have said enough about the likeness of death, that is, about sleep, and also about the affairs of sleep, that is, about dreams; Now I will move on to the source of this departure from life, that is, to death itself, for it cannot be left without research, although it is the end of all research. 2. In accordance with the generally accepted opinion, we proclaim death as a duty to nature. This determined God's command, this foreshadows everything that is born, so that after this the stupidity of Epicurus, who denies that this duty applies to us, will no longer spread, and the madness of the heretic magician Menander of Samaritan, who says that death not only does not apply to his [followers], but does not come to them, was rejected: it was for this purpose that he was sent by a higher and hidden power, so that immortal, incorruptible and immediately involved those who would receive his baptism became resurrected. 3. We read about many amazing kinds of waters, but [they do not resurrect]: either the underground wine stream of the Lynquests intoxicates 461, or the demonic spring of Colophon makes them possessed, 462, or the poisonous Nonacris of Arcadia 463 kills Alexander. There was also a healing pond in Judea before Christ. The poet clearly spoke about the Stygian swamps removing death, but Thetis also mourned her son 464. Although, if Menander also dips into the Styx, he will still need to die to come to the Styx; after all, they say that this river is in the underworld. 4. What are these happy waters and where are they, which neither John the Baptist gave, nor Christ Himself showed to the disciples? What kind of bath is this at Menander's? Like in comedies 465, I think. But why is the one in which very few bathe so little visited, so hidden? After all, I consider suspicious the greatest rarity of the calmest and safest sacrament, in which there is no rule to die for God Himself, although all nations 466 still ascend to the mountain of the Lord and to the church of the God of Jacob, 467 demanding death through martyrdom, 468 the death that He exacted even from His Christ. No one will admit that magic is capable of eliminating death or, like a grapevine, renewing life, returning the past years. At least Medea was not allowed to do this in relation to a man 469, even if she was able to do this in relation to a ram 470. 5. Enoch 471 and Elijah 472 were transferred, and their death was not discovered, that is, it was postponed; however, they are preserved for death in order to neutralize the Antichrist with their blood 473. John also died; the hope that he would live until the Coming of the Lord was in vain. Heresies usually greedily rush to examples taken from our religion, finding support for themselves in what they are fighting. In conclusion, I will say briefly: where are those whom Menander himself doused, whom he plunged into his Styx? Let [these] eternal apostles come, appear before us, let my Thomas see them, let him hear them, let him touch and believe 475. Chapter LI. Death immediately and completely separates the soul from the body. 1. The matter of death is known to everyone: it is the separation of body and soul. But some, in order to prove the immortality of the soul, which they, not being taught by God, defend unfoundedly, beg for arguments like beggars so much that they are inclined to think that even after death some souls cling to their bodies. 2. For this purpose, Plato, although he releases souls at will immediately to heaven, in the Republic 476, however, depicts the corpse of a certain unburied person, preserved for a long time without any damage due to the inseparability, presumably, with the soul. Moreover, Democritus also notes the growth of nails and hair in the buried for some time. 3. However, the property of air could also contribute to the preservation of the dead body. What if the air was drier than usual and the soil saltier? What if the body itself was thinner than usual? What if the kind of death had previously destroyed the material for damage? The nails, being the ends of the veins, naturally seem more protruding when the veins are elongated by decomposition and come from the daily decreasing flesh. And the hair’s nutrition comes from the brain, which is allowed to survive for quite a long time due to its special structure. Finally, in the living, too, depending on the quality of the brain, hair either grows in abundance or falls out. Ask doctors about this. 4. In addition, it is impossible to remain in the body of some small part of the soul, which will someday leave itself, when the whole body is destroyed by time. But some recognize the existence of this remnant of the soul; for this reason, while sparing him, they say that the bodies of the dead should not be burned. There is another reason for this kindness, but not for the sake of the remainder of the soul, but because of hatred of cruelty towards the body, because it, they say, being a person, does not deserve to be destroyed by execution. 5. However, the soul, being indivisible, since it is immortal, requires that death also be considered indivisible, not as immortal, but as inseparably belonging to the indivisible soul. Likewise, death will be divided if the soul is divided, precisely because of the remnant of the soul that will someday die; thus, a part of death will remain with a part of the soul. 6. I know that such an opinion exists. I learned about this from one of ours: a certain woman born into a church-going family, after a single and short-lived marriage, beautiful and in the prime of her life, rested in peace; when the priest was reading a prayer over her, who had not yet been buried, this woman, at the first words of the prayer, separated her hands from her sides, brought them to the position of one praying and, as soon as silence reigned, returned them to their place. 7. The following story is also known among our people: in a cemetery, a body, so that another body could be laid next to it, gave way to it. And if something similar is transmitted among the pagans, it means that everywhere God shows signs of His power: to His own as a consolation, to strangers as a testimony. For I would rather believe that all this happens as a testimony from God than from any remains of the soul, which, if they were inside the body, would also set other members in motion, and if only the hands, then not for prayer. And the body would not only give way to its fellow body, but, having moved, would take a position convenient for itself. 8. In any case, for whatever reason these phenomena, which should be considered rather as signs and omens, occur, they cannot be natural. Death, if it is not all at once, does not exist; if something from the soul is preserved, it is life; death, then, will no more unite with life than night with day. Chapter LII. Man was not created for death; any death is violence against nature. 1. So, this is the work of death: to separate flesh and soul; leaving the study of destinies and accidents, people divided death into two types - ordinary and extraordinary, considering the ordinary type (the type of any calm death) inherent in nature, while the extraordinary type (the type of any violent end) considered contrary to nature. 2. We, who know about the origin of man, will boldly define death as resulting not from human nature, but from guilt, and, moreover, not natural. It is easy to assign the name of nature to something that seems to have stuck to it by chance from the very beginning. Death would be attributed to nature only if man was directly destined for death. Moreover, the fact that man was not created for death is proven by the law itself, which contains a prohibition with a threat fulfilled under certain conditions and dooms a person to death by his own decision. In short, if he had not sinned, he would not have died in any way. Consequently, what happened in accordance with the decision regarding the proposed [choice] - by will, and not in accordance with what the law of [human] community prescribes - by necessity, will not be natural. 3. Therefore, even if the fatal outcomes are different due to the diversity of the circumstances that caused them, we do not call any outcome so easy that it is not associated with violence [over our nature]. This very principle that causes death is, albeit simple, violence. Isn't it? After all, he tears apart and separates such a strong union of soul and flesh, such a strong unity of sister-entities from the very conception. After all, even if someone gives up the ghost for joy, like the Spartan Chilo 477 when he embraces his son who became an Olympic winner, even if because of glory, like the Athenian Clydemus 478 when he is crowned with gold for the excellence of his historical style, even if during sleep, like Plato, even if while laughing, like Publius Crassus, death is much more ferocious, which attacks using what is alien to it, which expels the soul through the favorable, which comes when it is more pleasant to live - in rejoicing, in honor, in peace, in pleasure. 4. And this is violence against ships, when they, sailing far from the Kafarean rocks, not attacked by any tornadoes, not broken by any ninth 479 waves, with a gentle breeze, with a gliding run, with a cheerful crew, due to a sudden shock inside, sink to the bottom, despite all their safety. Even peaceful deaths are precisely such shipwrecks of life. It makes no difference whether the ship sank with an intact hull or with a destroyed one, when the voyage of the soul ends in disaster. Chapter III. The appearance of the extinction of the soul during illness arises due to the processes occurring in the patient’s body. 1. Where the soul then goes, naked and hissed, we will certainly trace in accordance with the order of our presentation; first, however, let us also say something that relates to this topic, so that no one expects from us, who have announced various deaths, an explanation of individual deaths, which should rather be left to doctors, special observers of all matters of death, its causes and the bodily states themselves. 2. In order to defend the immortality of the soul here, when mentioning death, I will add something about this kind of death, in which the soul melts little by little and gradually; after all, she leaves, bearing the imprint of illness; at the same time, she seems to be destroyed and allows us to assume the possibility of her death due to her gradual departure from life. The whole cause of this lies in the body and arises thanks to the body. After all, whatever the fatal outcome, undoubtedly, with it there is destruction of either substances, or an area, or life paths - substances, for example, bile and blood; areas such as the heart and liver; pathways such as veins and arteries. 3. So, while they, each due to its defect, are emptied in the body until the final destruction and destruction of vital (that is, natural) boundaries, structure and functions, involuntarily the soul itself, which itself is forced little by little to move with the gradual disintegration of its tools, home and space, seems to be diminishing for the same reason for which the driver himself is supposed to also weaken, when fatigue has deprived the strength of the horses; we are talking about the situation in which the person left without help found himself, and not his actual condition. In the same way, the charioteer of the body, the life-giving spirit, weakening because of the means of its transportation, does not weaken in itself; it abandons action, not energy, fades away through movement, not through state, loses persistence, not essence, because it ceases to manifest itself, and not because it ceases to be. 4. Thus, any quick death (such as beheading, which opens the door [for the soul] once and so widely, like a fall, which knocks out all the vital forces from a person at one time, like an apoplexy - an internal fall) does not provide the soul with any delay and does not torture, prolonging its departure for a long time. But when death is long, the soul, depending on how it is neglected, itself neglects [its affairs]; however, it is not cut up, but is expelled, and while it is expelled, it makes its remnant seem to be part of it. But no part is immediately cut off because it is the last; and because it is insignificant, it is not immediately doomed to destruction. Its outcome follows the whole, and the insignificant is extracted from the main, and the remnants associated with its completeness are expected by it, and not thrown away. So, perhaps, I will dare to say: the last part of everything is everything, for, although it is smaller and subsequent, it belongs to this whole. 5. Therefore, it often happens that the soul, when separated from the body, is more excited due to a more attentive look and extraordinary talkativeness, when from a greater height, already in a free state, through the remainder that is still retained in the body, it communicates what it sees, what it hears, what it begins to know. After all, if this body, according to Plato’s opinion, is a prison 480, however, according to the Apostolic opinion, it is the church of God 481 when in Christ, but still the soul with its fence obscures, darkens and stains the materiality of the flesh, because of which for it the light of things, as if passing through a horned window, is very darkened. 6. Without a doubt, when the soul is squeezed out of material flesh by the force of death and at this very squeeze is filtered, it, of course, breaks out of the corporeal shell into space, to its true and pure light, immediately recognizes itself in a liberated essence and returns to the prophetic gift thanks to freedom itself, as if emerging from a dream - from ghosts to reality. Then the soul both proclaims and sees, then it rejoices or trembles, depending on what refuge is prepared for it, which it immediately recognizes by the very face of the angel, the caller of souls, the Mercury of the poets. Chapter LIV. About the refuge of the soul after death according to various philosophers. 1. Now, therefore, we begin to tell where the soul is taken. Almost all philosophers [are divided into those] who, although in different ways, defend the immortality of the soul, like Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, and those who allot some time for it after leaving the body until the world conflagration, like the Stoics, who place only their own souls, that is, the sages, in the highest refuges. 2. Plato gives it not to all the souls of philosophers, but to the souls of those who invest philosophy with love for boys 482. Depravity has such a great advantage among philosophers! So, for him, wise souls rise into the ether, for Arius 483 - into the air, for the Stoics - under the Moon. 3. Looking at the latter, I am surprised because they leave foolish souls near the Earth, although they claim that they are taught by wise souls. Where will the seat of the school be located with such a great variety of refuges? How will students go to their mentors while being at such a great distance? What is the benefit and profit in posthumous education for those who are about to perish in a worldwide fire? 4. The remaining souls [philosophers] cast into the underworld. Plato describes it in the Phaedo as the bosom of the earth, into which all the evils of worldly impurities merge and, settling there, evaporate and, making breathing difficult with the evaporations of their impurities, fill the air there 484. Chapter LV. The Underworld according to the teachings of Christians; heaven immediately after death is the privilege of martyrs. 1. We do not believe either in a hollow of the underworld devoid of vegetation, or in some kind of cesspool of the world under the open sky, but we believe that in the rapids and abysses of the earth there is a desert region, and in its very belly there is a hidden abyss 485, since we read about the three days of death spent by Christ in the heart of the earth 486, that is, in the deepest and hidden depression, hidden in the earth itself, and closed within it, and located below the deepest abysses 487. 2. And if Christ, being God, died, since He was also a man, according to the Scriptures, 488 and, according to them, was buried, 489, also paid his debt to this law, resting in the underworld in the manner of human death, and not before ascending to the heights of heaven, before descending into the underworld of the earth, 490 in order there to make the patriarchs and prophets partakers of Himself, 491 then you must believe that the underworld is the lower region, and to behave decisively with those who are so arrogant that they do not consider that the souls of the faithful are worthy of the underworld; after all, they are slaves who are higher than the master, and disciples who are higher than the teacher 492, who did not want to receive consolation, awaiting the resurrection in the bosom of Abraham 493. 3. “But,” they say, “Christ entered the underworld so that we would not enter. However, what is the difference between pagans and Christians if the prison for the dead is the same? How then do you emit your soul into heaven, when Christ is still sitting there at the right hand of the Father, and the command through the trumpet of the Archangel 494 has not yet been heard, and yet those whom the Coming of the Lord will find in the world are not caught up into the air to meet Him, along with those who, having died in Christ, will rise first? 495 The sky is not open to anyone while the earth is intact, not to say locked. After all, with the end of the world, the Kingdom of Heaven will open. 4. Is our Assumption in the air with Plato’s boys, or in the air with Arius, or near the Moon with the Endymions of the Stoics? “Oh no,” you say, “in paradise, where both the patriarchs and the prophets, to complete the Resurrection of the Lord, have already moved from the underworld.” And how is it that the region of paradise revealed to John in spirit, which is located under the altar 496, did not show any souls except the souls of the martyrs? But why did Perpetua 497, the most courageous woman, on the day of martyrdom in revelation see there only martyrs, if not because the sword 498, the gatekeeper of paradise, is not inferior to anyone except those who died in Christ and not in Adam? 5. A new death for God and an extraordinary death for Christ are accepted into a different and special refuge. So, comprehend the difference between the pagans and the faithful in death: [you can be classified among the latter,] if you die for God, as the Comforter calls, not from tender fevers on soft beds, but in martyrdom; if you pick up your cross and follow the Lord, as He Himself commanded 499. The only key to heaven is your blood. You know about heaven from our book 500, in which we establish that every soul in hell is preserved for the day of the Lord. Chapter LVI. Refuting the opinion that the souls of the unburied and those who died prematurely are among the living. 1. There is a debate ahead - does this happen immediately after death, or are some souls for some reason held here for some time, and are souls released from the underworld allowed to appear here at their own discretion or at the command of someone else? 2. There is no shortage of speeches defending this opinion. They believe that the souls of the unburied are not sent down to the underworld before they receive what is due, as was the case with Homer’s Patroclus, who in his dreams demanded burial from Achilles, since otherwise he could not enter the gates of the underworld, since the souls of the buried 501 drive him away. We see here not only the freedom of Homer, but also his piety. After all, he, having paid attention to the care of the burial, also condemned its delay as unfair in relation to souls, so that no one, keeping the deceased at home, would languish with him more because of the abnormal consolation that is fueled by grief. For this purpose, Homer invented the complaints of the unburied soul, so that the timeliness of burial and honoring of bodies would be observed and so that the memory of experiences would be dulled. 3. However, how stupid it is that the soul shares the honors shown to the body, as if it takes some of these honors with it to the underworld! It is even more stupid if postponing the burial, which should, perhaps, be accepted as a mercy, is considered a damage to the soul. In any case, the soul, which did not even want to die, will prefer to be taken to the underworld belatedly: it will love the wicked heir, thanks to whom it continues to enjoy the light. Or if somehow the injustice for her actually consists in being forced underground belatedly, and the name of the injustice is delay in burial, then it is completely wrong to consider that the soul is affected by injustice, which is not guilty of delaying the burial for which its loved ones are responsible. 4. They say that those who are overtaken by a premature death wander here until the missing number of years is fulfilled, which they would have lived if they had not died prematurely. Let us assume that either his time is established for each person, but then I will not believe that what has been established can be taken away; or, if it is established, but is reduced by God’s will or by some authority, then it is reduced without benefit if it is able to be replenished; if not established, then there will be no missing time that was not established. 5. I will also add: for example, a baby died, or a beardless youth, or already mature, who was to live eighty years. How is it possible that his soul could live here after death for these stolen years? After all, she cannot live to a certain age without a body, for age is achieved through the body. Let ours (i.e., Christians) also remember that souls at the resurrection will take on the same bodies in which they left. 6. Therefore, the same sizes of bodies will be expected, and the same ages that determine the sizes of bodies. Therefore, how can the soul of a baby spend the years taken away here in order to be resurrected at eighty years old in a one-month-old body? Or, if it is necessary for those years of life that were determined to be fulfilled here, is the soul really supposed to experience here a series of life events distributed over these years, so that it can study, moving from childhood to adolescence, and fight, rushing from youth to maturity, and, burdened with the burden of past years, make decisions, heading from maturity to old age, and strive for profit, and work in the field, sail on a ship, go to court, got married, suffered from illnesses, endured the sad and joyful things that awaited her over time? 7. But how will all this be accomplished without the body? Life without life? Unoccupied will be the time that will be filled with only one passage through it, [in your opinion]. But what in this case prevents it from being carried out in the underworld, where it is also not used in any way? Thus, we say that every soul, no matter at what age it leaves the body, remains at that age until the day on which it is promised perfection brought to the level of angelic completeness. 8. In the same way, those souls who are considered to be torn out by force, mainly during cruel executions, I mean executions by means of a cross, an ax, a sword and wild animals, are represented as exiles from the underworld; but those that are awarded by justice that punishes violence will not be violent deaths. “That’s why,” you say, “every criminal soul is expelled from the underworld.” Then I will ask you to determine whether the underworld is good or bad: if it seems bad to you, the worst souls should be thrown there; if good, why do you still consider the souls of those who died prematurely, unmarried and, according to their age, pure and innocent, to be unworthy of the underworld? Chapter LVII. Under the name of souls summoned by magicians, demons act. 1. Or to be held here is the best, if we mean ahoros 502, or the worst, if we mean biaeothanatos 503, if we use the very names that can be heard from the creator of such opinions - magic: in Ostanus, Typhon, Dardanus, Damiger, Nectabis and Berenice. 2. Literature is already available which promises that it will call from their home in the underworld even those souls who have died at the proper age, have been separated from the body by ordinary death and have been granted a speedy burial. So what do we call magic? What almost everyone considers it to be is a deception. But the essence of deception does not escape only Christians, who comprehend the spirits of wickedness not with friendly understanding, but with enemy knowledge, who deal with various infections of the human mind, the instigator of every error, the destroyer of salvation and the soul, not with the help of calling action, but thanks to the power that forces submission. [The essence of] magic also [does not escape Christians], that is, the second idolatry, in which demons pretend to be dead in the same way as in the first they pretend to be gods. Isn't that right? After all, even the gods are dead 504. 3. Thus [magicians] invoke ahoros and biaeothanatos on the basis of a belief in the likelihood that violence and injustice are committed primarily by those souls who have been forcibly or unjustly removed from their bodies by a cruel and premature death, as if they were avenging an injury done to them. 4. But under the guise of these souls, demons act and, most likely, those who were in them during their lives and pushed them to such a death. After all, we noticed above 505 that almost no one is without a demon; and most people know that under the influence of demons premature and terrible deaths occur, which are attributed to accidents. 5. If I am not mistaken, we also prove this same deception of the unclean spirit, hiding under the masks of the dead, in practice, when during exorcism this spirit sometimes claims that he is one of the parents of the person [possessed by him], sometimes that he is a gladiator or a bestiary 506 (just as in other circumstances he declares himself to be a god), caring only about one thing: to refute what we preach, in order to complicate the belief that all souls are relegated to the underworld, and to shake the belief in judgment and resurrection. And, however, that demon, after trying to deceive those around him, defeated by the power of divine grace, is forced to admit what really is 507. 6. Likewise, that other type of magic, which is believed to call souls that have already calmed down from the underworld and reveal it to the eye, does not have a different nature of deception: here it is, of course, more effective, for both the ghost is revealed and the body is added to it; and it is not difficult to deceive the outer eyes of one for whom it is very easy to afflict the inner vision of the mind. 7. The serpents of magic wands seemed to be bodies to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, but the truth of Moses swallowed up the lie 508. The magicians Simon and Elima 509, of course, did a lot against the apostles, but they could not mislead anyone with the help of their deception. What's new about the evil spirit's rivalry with the truth? Today the art of that same heretic Simon is so strongly and unreasonably extolled that [the magicians] vow to deliver even the souls of the prophets from the underworld. 8. I believe this, because they can do this with the help of deception. After all, the Pythonic (“ventriloquist”) spirit was even then allowed to depict the soul of Samuel, when, having left God, Saul conferred with the dead 510. However, let us not believe that the soul of any saint, not to mention a prophet, is extracted from the underworld by a demon; for we have been taught that Satan himself will turn into an angel of light 511 , and even more so into a man of light, intending to proclaim himself in the end even God 512 and to perform extraordinary signs for the overthrow, if such a thing can happen, of the elect 513 . It is unlikely that [the evil spirit] did not dare to declare himself then a prophet of God, and even more so to do so with Saul, in whom he himself already resided. 9. So do not think that one was the one who played the role of a ghost, and the other was the one who recommended [to summon the soul], but the same spirit in both the false prophet and the apostate easily showed falsely what he made to believe; because of him, Saul's treasure was where his heart was, 514 that is, where God was not. And therefore Saul saw him by whom he believed that he would see, for he believed him by whom he saw. 10. If some refer to dreams at night, that it is not without reason that the dead often appear (after all, the Nasamons 515 receive oracles by staying at the tombs of their parents, as Heraclides, Nymphodorus 516 or Herodotus 517 writes; and the Celts, as Nikander claims 518, for the same reason spend the night at the places where the corpses of brave men are burned), then the actual appearances We no more allow the dead to appear in dreams than the appearance of the living; Moreover, when considering the appearances of the dead, the living, and everything that can be dreamed of, we are guided by the same principle. After all, what is true is so not because it seems true, but because it is fulfilled. The reliability of dreams is tested by the result, not by appearance. 11. The fact that the underworld is not open [for exit] to any soul was clearly confirmed by the Lord on behalf of Abraham in the famous story about the resting poor man and the lamenting rich man, [saying] that it is impossible to be released from there to announce the state of affairs in the lower region - then this could be allowed at least in order for the prophets and Moses to be believed 519. 12. But even if God’s power returns some souls to bodies to confirm its right, then, despite this, there will be nothing in common between faith and the audacity of magicians, the deception of dreams, the freedom of poets. But from the examples of the resurrection, when God's power, either through the prophets, or through Christ, or through the apostles, returns souls to bodies, thanks to the dense, tangible and complete authenticity of [bodies], it becomes clear that such [must be] their real appearance, so that you consider every incorporeal appearance of the dead to be a deception. Chapter LVIII 520. About the posthumous fate of souls. 1. “So, every soul is in the underworld?” - you ask. Whether you want it or not, there is already torment there, and consolation: you have the example of a poor man and a rich man. And since I have put something aside until the end of my work, the time has come to present it in conclusion. 2. Why don’t you think that the soul is both punished and rewarded in the underworld, awaiting either one or the other court decision, submitting in advance to a future verdict of conviction or acquittal? “Because,” you say, “her case should remain pending until the divine court, without any anticipation (weakening) of the sentence; and because then we should expect the restoration of the flesh as a partner in deeds and reward.” 3. What will happen at this time? Will we sleep? But souls do not sleep even in living people; sleep belongs to bodies, to which death itself belongs with its reflection - sleep. Or do you want nothing to happen where all humanity is carried away and where all hopes are placed? In your opinion, is the trial awaiting there or is it just beginning? Unnecessarily accelerated or pre-committed? But how unfair will it be to rest in the underworld if the guilty will still have a good time there, but the innocent will not! What do you prefer later: a mocking death with vague hope and uncertain expectation, or an examination of life and a threatening judgment? 4. Does the soul always need a body to suffer or rejoice? Isn't what is hers enough for her to experience both? How many times, with her body intact, is she alone tormented by vexation, anger, disgust, which in most cases is incomprehensible to her? How many times, when the body is affected, does the soul find hidden joy for itself and avoid communication with the body that is then inappropriate? 5. I’m lying, unless she alone is accustomed to being proud of bodily suffering itself and rejoicing in it. Remember also the soul of Mucius when he burned his right hand, remember also the soul of Zeno when Dionysius’ instruments of torture did not touch it 521. Bites from wild animals are an adornment of youth, as, for example, on Kira, the scars from a bear 522. Moreover, she will be able to rejoice and suffer in the underworld without the flesh, for both in the flesh, and unharmed, if she pleases, she suffers, and in the damaged, if she pleases, she rejoices. If she does this according to her will in life, how much more according to God’s judgment after death? 6. And the soul does not share all deeds with the service of the flesh; after all, even mere thoughts and unfulfilled desires are pursued by Divine power: Whoever looks with lust has already committed adultery in his heart 523. Therefore, for this reason alone, it is very suitable for the soul, without waiting for the flesh, to be punished for what it has done apart from the flesh. Likewise, for pious and good thoughts, for the possession of which she did not need the flesh, she will be encouraged without the flesh. 7. What now, if in the works of the flesh the main one is the one who conceives, who plans, who instructs, who forces? And even if against her will, she is the first to explore what she intends to accomplish through the body; understanding never comes later than what is done. Thus, in accordance with this order, it is necessary that the one to whom it is due first receive reward first. 8. In general, if we understand the prison that the Gospel shows as the underworld, and the last modest codrant 524 as an offense that must be atoned for by delaying the resurrection, no one will doubt that the soul atones for something in the underworld, while the fullness of the resurrection remains intact, which will also be realized through the flesh. The Comforter has conveyed this very many times, if anyone accepts His words, recognizing the promised gifts 525. 9. Having examined, as I believe, all the opinions of people about the soul on the basis of the teachings of faith, we have satisfied, at least, a legitimate and inevitably arising curiosity; the excessive and idle will lack knowledge as long as he has the desire to seek it. We are talking about the lost work of Tertullian De censu animae. Hermogenes is a heretic of the 2nd century of the Christian era who recognized the eternity of matter, which, in his opinion, was the source of evil. Tertullian begins his work with a discussion about Socrates. Compare, for example, the beginning of Clement of Alexandria’s “Protrepticus” (1, 2), whose cicadas evoke an association with the chorus of cicadas in Plato’s “Phaedrus” (230c). On this see: Plato. Phaedo, 64c–115a. Phaedo, in Plato’s dialogue of the same name (58a–c), talks about this ship as follows: “According to the Athenians, this is the same ship on which Theseus once took the famous seven couples to Crete. He saved their lives, and he himself remained alive. And the Athenians, as legend says, then made a vow to Apollo: if everyone was saved, they would send a sacred embassy to Delos every year. From then until now, they have been sending him religiously, year after year. And since the embassy has already been equipped for its journey, the law requires that the entire time until the ship arrives at Delos and returns back, the city should be kept clean, and not a single death sentence should be carried out. And the voyage sometimes drags on for a long time if nasty winds blow. The beginning of the sacred embassy is considered to be the day when the priest of Apollo lays a wreath at the stern of the ship. And this happened on the eve of the trial... That’s why it turned out that Socrates spent so long in prison between the verdict and his death” (Translated by S.P. Markish). According to Xenophon, Socrates lived in prison for a month. See: Xenophon. Memoirs of Socrates, 4. 8. 2, and also: Plato. Crito, 43c–44a; Phaedo, 59d–e. The conversation about the soul was conducted, according to Plato, before Socrates took poison. Socrates in Plato (Apology, 34d) says that he has three sons, one adult and two infants. Phaedo, in the dialogue of the same name (60a), reports that on the day of his execution, his wife Xanthippe came to Socrates with a child in her arms. She sobbed and wailed, and Socrates asked to take her home. See also: Plato. Crito, 45c–d; cf.: Phaedo, 116b. Xenophon says that a certain Apollodorus, grieving over the unjust condemnation of Socrates, heard him ask whether it would be more pleasant for him if Socrates were convicted fairly (Xenophon. Defense of Socrates at the Trial, 28). inviscatus palmas. The word palma means both "palm" and "palm branch", the reward of victors; viscum - bird glue, which was used to coat branches when catching birds. The phrase viscatae manus means “sticky, that is, thieves’ hands.” Apparently, Tertullian uses the adjective inviscatus here with irony, hinting, on the one hand, at the dishonesty of Socrates’ accusers, and on the other hand, at the ephemerality of their victory. Anytus and Melitus (Meletus) are the accusers of Socrates at the trial. See: Plato. Apology of Socrates, 23e; Xenophon. Defense of Socrates at his trial, 29–30. On the daimon of Socrates, see the work of the same name by Plutarch, as well as: Apuleius. About the deity of Socrates. For the reason that there was a demon with him, the “accomplice” of the Pythian, that is, Apollo. For the answer of the Delphic oracle to the question of who is the wisest of all the Greeks, see: Plato. Apology of Socrates, 21a–23c. “This wisdom of the heavenly school, in denying the gods of this world, is freer [than the wisdom of Socrates].” See: Plato. Phaedo 118a, where Socrates asks Crito to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius. Those who were recovering donated to Asclepius. This is how Socrates considered himself, or rather, his soul. On the ability of Christians to cast out demons, see: Tertullian. Apologetic, 23, 4–6. Socrates was accused of introducing new deities and corrupting youth by not recognizing the old ones. See: Plato. Apology of Socrates, 24b–c; Diogenes Laertius. On the lives, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, II 40. Compare: nomen ipsum (Pliny the Younger. Letters. X 96, 2). Compare: Plato. Phaedo, 117b–c. Cebes and Phaedo are students of Socrates who were present at his death. Following Tertullian and Peter Damiani, at the beginning of the 20th century, the power of God over necessity was defended by Lev Shestov (see: L. Shestov. Athens and Jerusalem. St. Petersburg, 2001). See: Plato. Phaedrus, 274c–e; Philebus, 18b–d. The myth of Silenus, to whom Midas provided his ears, “suitable for great fables,” is also used by Tertullian in his essay “On the Cloak” (2, 1). In his essay “Against Hermogenes” (25, 5), Tertullian writes that Silenus “proved to King Midas the existence of another world, as Theopompus writes.” Aelian in “Motley Tales” (III 18) tells us the following: “Theopompus tells about the conversation of the Phrygian Midas with Silenus. (This son of a nymph is strong; by nature he is lower than a deity, but higher than a man, since he is endowed with immortality.) They talked about various subjects; By the way, Silenus told Midas the following: Europe, Asia and Libya are islands washed on all sides by the ocean; the only existing continent lies outside the inhabited world. Whoever the Chian wants to believe, let him believe it, but it seems to me that here, and in general, he often tells fables” (Translated by S.V. Polyakova). Theopompus of Chios gives an interesting interpretation of the words in his work “The Mystery of the West. Atlantis - Europe" (7, 3) D. S. Merezhkovsky. In Ovid (Metamorphoses, XI 90–96) we read about how Silenus was captured by Thracian peasants and brought to King Midas, who, delighted with his guest, organized a holiday. Herodotus (History, VIII 138) talks about the gardens of Midas, son of Gordius, in which wild sixty-petalled roses grow; according to Tertullian (On the wreath, 14, 4), those roses had a hundred petals. In these gardens, Herodotus writes, referring to the Macedonian legend, Silenus was captured. Pausanias (Description of Hellas, 14, 5; cf. Xenophon. Anabasis, 12, 13) mentions the city of Ancyra (anchor), built by Midas, and the so-called “spring of Midas,” into which Midas is said to have mixed wine to catch Silenus. The song of the captured Silenus forms the main part of Virgil's sixth Eclogue. Ovid tells how Apollo awarded Midas with donkey ears because he wanted to award victory to the latter in the musical competition between the god and Pan (or Marsyas: Hyginus. Myths, 191) (Metamorphoses, XI 173–179). Musaeus is the son of Semele, a mythical poet-soothsayer, student of Orpheus. Ferecydes - philosopher, was born on the island of Syros at the beginning of the 6th century. BC. Author of the work “Seminary” (or “Pentatery”), which describes the process of the emergence of the world. Diogenes Laertius reports: “A book written by him has been preserved from Pherecydes of Syros with the following beginning: “Zeus and Time have always been, and Gaia too, her name is Earth, for Zeus gave the earth, greatly honoring it.” And on Syros a sundial has been preserved from him” (On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, I 119) (Translated by M. L. Gasparov). Here we see the consequences of the influence of Montanism on Tertullian. These words reveal Tertullian's legal education. Heraclitus of Ephesus (2nd half of the 6th century - 1st half of the 5th century BC), the most significant philosopher of the Ionian school, nicknamed “The Dark One” because his style was extremely difficult to understand and his train of thought was confused. See: Diogenes Laertius. On the lives, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, IX 1–16; cf.: Cicero. On the nature of the gods, I 26, 74 See: 1 Cor.11:19. Tertullian has probabiles, “worthy of approval.” Compare: Tertullian. Against Hermogenes, 8, 3. See: Acts 17:22–33. Wed. Tertullian. On the prescription of heretics, 7, 8. That is, it also has no beginning. Zeno of Kition, founder of the Stoic school (c. 335 c. 262 BC) Empedocles of Acraganthus, Greek philosopher (c. 495/490–435/430 BC). According to legend, he died by throwing himself into the crater of Etna. We are talking about the essay De censu animae. T. D. Barnes, who considers the treatise “On the Soul” as a speech, believes that its exordium ends here (Barnes T. D. Tertullian: a historical and literary study. 2nd edition. Oxford, 1985. P. 206). See: Plato. Phaedrus, 245c–246a. According to T. D. Barnes, the narrative of speech begins here (Barnes T. D. Tertullian: a historical and literary study. P. 207). Probably Eubulus of Alexandria (c. 200–130 BC), a skeptic of the Pyrrhonian school. Critolaus - Peripatetic from Lycia. In 156 BC, X arrived in Rome as the Athenian ambassador. He taught that the soul is connected with a certain etheric body by an inextricable connection. Xenocrates - philosopher of the 4th century. BC, head of the Platonic Academy. For Aristotle's disagreement with Plato, see: Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, I 4 (VI) 1096a, 11–16. Compare: Amicus est Plato, sed magis amica est veritas. The famous mathematician and astronomer Hipparchus from Nicaea in the 2nd century. BC Lived in Rhodes and Alexandria. The fifth element (or quintessence) is ether (that is, the upper layers of air). Heraclides of Pontus and Critolaus identified the soul with the quintessence. Lucretius. On the nature of things, I 304. Trans. F.A. Petrovsky. T. D. Barnes sees a propositio of speech in the last sentence of this chapter. From this chapter, according to T.D. Barnes, confirmatio and reprehensio of speech begin. Soranus was a Greek physician from Ephesus. He lived in Rome and Alexandria in the 1st half. II century after P. X., was the head of the school of “methods” in medicine. Methods, refusing to study the hidden aspects of phenomena, sought to explore what is common in diseases that can be comprehended through the senses. The works of Soranus “The Life of Hippocrates”, “On the signs of fractures”, “On bandages”, “On the uterus and female genital organs”, “On female diseases” (partially) have been preserved. From the work “On Acute and Chronic Diseases” there are excerpts in Greek and a Latin translation by Kelius Aurelian. Here is how Tertullian writes about this in another place: “It is not without reason that the Milesian Thales, while exploring the sky and wandering through it with his eyes, shamefully fell into a well. The Egyptian ridiculed him, saying: “You don’t notice anything on earth, what do you care about heaven?” So, his fall figuratively points to those of the philosophers who show foolish curiosity in relation to nature, and not to its Creator and Preserver (To the Gentiles, II 4, 18-19). Compare: “They say that when he (that is, Thales), observing the heavenly bodies and looking up, fell into a well, some Thracian woman, a pretty and lively servant, laughed at him, that he was trying to know what was in the sky, but did not notice what was nearby and under his feet. This mockery applies to everyone who spends their life in the study of philosophy” (Plato. Theaetetus 174a) (Translated by T.V. Vasilyeva). “They also say that one day an old woman took him (that is, Thales) out to watch the stars, and he fell into a hole and began to shout for help, and the old woman said to him: “What, Thales? You do not see what is under your feet, but you hope to know what is in the heavens”” (Diogenes Laertius. About the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, 134) (Translated by M. L. Gasparov). Wed: Aesop. Fables, 40. Hellebore is a plant used by the ancients as a medicine against mental illness. Wed. Martial. Epigrams, IX 94, 6; Lucian. Hermotim, or On the choice of philosophy, 86. This is what Tertullian calls Lazarus. Lazarus, ancient Greek Λάζαρος, - a derivative from ancient Hebrew. El'āzār. Tertullian forgets that in his essay “Against Praxeus” (7) he also called God a body of “a kind” (sui generis). However, God is impassive. Compare: Tertullian. On the resurrection of the dead, 17, 2: “Here we declare the soul to be corporeal, and in the work dedicated to it we prove that it has a special essence and density, thanks to which it can both feel and suffer: after all, the fact that even now souls in the underworld suffer and rejoice, although they are naked and deprived of flesh, is confirmed by the example of Lazarus.” In Apologetics (48, 4), Tertullian argued the opposite: “And therefore bodies will be restored, because the soul alone without solid matter, that is, flesh, cannot endure anything.” According to the teachings of the Greek philosopher Empedocles, friendship and enmity are universal forces that unite and separate elements. In this regard, the opinion expressed about the soul by Bishop Nemesius of Emesa (Egypt, 4th century) in the third chapter of the essay “On the Nature of Man” (See: Migne. Patrologia Graeca. T. XL. Col. 597–600) seems interesting. My friend, Abbot Alexander (Alexey Karlikov), pointed me to this curious place. Nemesius writes: “Just as the sun with its presence transforms, illuminating, the air into light, and the light, unmerging, unites with the air, so the soul, uniting with the body, remains completely unmerged, differing only from the sun in that it, being a body, occupies a certain place and is not located wherever its light is. Fire is the same: after all, it remains in the logs or on the wick of the lamp, as if attached to the place. The soul, being incorporeal and not connected with a specific place, resides entirely both where all its light is and where the body [animated by it] is. And there is no part illuminated by it in which it is not entirely present. For it is not her body that holds her, but she herself holds it (my italics - A.B.); and it is not she who dwells in the body, as in a certain vessel or wineskin, but rather the body in her. So, when it is said that the soul is in the body, we are not talking about the fact that it is in the body as in a certain place, but as if in a certain state; abides just as they say God abides in us.” Compare: “as true “children of light” (Eph. 5:8), let us raise our eyes and look at him, so that the Lord does not expose us as illegal, - in the same way the sun tests the eagles” (Clement of Alexandria. Exhortation to the Gentiles, 10:92, 5). Compare: Plato. Laws. X 896d. Compare: Plato. Phaedo, 79a–b. The Montanists believed in receiving such gifts. Play on words: teneri – “to be held”, tenera – “tender”. Aenesidemus - skeptic philosopher of the 1st century. BC from Knossos on Crete. Anaximenes - Greek natural philosopher of the 6th century. BC, representing, along with Thales and Anaximander, the Milesian school. Heraclides of Pontus is the author of works on ethics, physics, grammar, history, and geography (mid-4th century BC). According to the reading of Fulvius Ursinus, not “the people” (populus), but Paul (Paulus). Compare: 2 Cor.12:2–4. See: Plato. Phaedo, 78b–c; Timaeus, 35a. The soldiers made noise by striking their spears against their shields. Sophia Achamoth, according to the teachings of Valentine, leads the Demiurge who organizes the world, without whose knowledge she puts a spiritual seed into a person. See: Karsavin L.P. Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church. M., 1994. P. 34. Animus siue mens. Animus can mean both "mind" and "spirit". According to the teachings of Valentine, Mind (Νοῦς) is born from the first couple - Abyss (Βυϑός) and Silence (Σιγή). Νοῦς is also called “Father” and “Only Begotten” (Karsavin L.P. Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church. P. 31). Anaxagoras taught that the Mind was the source of the movement of inert matter. See, for example, Aristotle's work of the same name. See: Plato. State, X 604b–e. Panetius - philosopher of the 2nd century. BC, founder of the Middle Stoa. Apollophanes - Greek philosopher from Antioch, Stoic. Posidonius - Greek philosopher of the 2nd half. II century – 1st floor I century BC, historian, geographer, astronomer, student of Panetius. According to the edition of James Pamelius, "by twelve." Strato of Lampsacus - philosopher of the 3rd century. BC, head of the Peripatetic school, nicknamed Physicist. Dicaearchus - Peripatetic philosopher of the 4th century. BC, student of Aristotle. Asclepiades - Greek physician of the 1st century. BC, lived in Rome. He applied the teachings of Epicurus in medicine. Herophilus - famous Greek physician from Chalcedon, born c. 300 BC. Lived in Alexandria under the first Ptolemies. He was engaged in the dissection of corpses and vivisection of criminals sentenced to death. He studied the activity of the brain and nervous system. Created the doctrine of the pulse. Erasistratus - Greek physician, born c. 300 BC on Keos. Studied anatomy and physiology. He studied the activity of the brain, the nervous system, and the functioning of the heart. In his research, he was guided by the atomistic teachings of Democritus and the theory of Strato. Diocles - Greek physician of the 4th century. BC from Euboea, follower of Hippocrates; studied anatomy. See: Matthew 9:4; Wed: Ps.139:23. Moschion is a famous doctor, an opponent of Soran. He described the signs of an upcoming miscarriage and gave instructions regarding the care of newborns. Moschion owns the essay “On Women’s Diseases.” Diels excludes the words "Straton and". Compare: Empedocles. Fragmenta, 105 (3) (Diels): ἀνϑρώποις περικάρδιόν ἐστι νόημα. Protagoras is a famous sophist from Abdera of the 5th century. BC Apollodorus - Greek grammarian of the 2nd century. BC See: Matthew 23:13–15, Matthew 23:23, Matthew 23:25, Matthew 23:27, Matthew 23:29; Luke 11:44. See: 1 Timothy 3:1: “This is a true saying: if anyone desires a bishopric, he desires a good work.” In the treatise “On Baptism” (17, 2), Tertullian, however, writes that although everyone can baptize, the laity should be modest and not assume the duties of a bishop, for “the desire for episcopacy is the mother of schisms (episcopatus aemulatio scismatum mater est).” See: Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13. Philosophers who belonged to the so-called Middle Academy (270–150 BC) challenged the principle of the knowability of reality from the standpoint of skepticism. See: Plato. Timaeus, 27d–28a. Orestes in the tragedy of the same name by Euripides (vv. 255–256), addressing his sister Electra, calls her mother. The example of the mad Orestes was used in Alcibiades II (143d). Horace in the Satires says that Orestes called his sister a fury (II 3, 137–141). Compare: Ovid. Sorrowful Elegies, V 6, 25–28. Juvenal compares Orestes with Nero (Satires, III 8, 215–221). Ovid mentions Ajax and Orestes as examples of madmen (Love Elegies, 17.7–10). Compare: Juvenal. Satires, V 14, 284–287. Virgil compares the distraught Dido either with Pentheus or with Orestes (Aeneid, IV 464–473). See: Sophocles. Ajax, 51 pp. Compare: Ovid. Metamorphoses, IV 514–518. See: Euripides. Bacchae, 1109–1145. Compare: Ovid. Metamorphoses, III 721–731; Horace. Satires, II 3, 303–304. Plutarch, in his essay “On Superstition,” 5, states that Athamas and Agave, who mistook their children for animals, were even more unhappy than Tiresias, who did not see his children. See: Luke 10:18; cf.: Rev.9:1; Isaiah 14:12. See: Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5; Mark 1:11; Mark 9:7; Luke 3:22; Luke 9:35. See: Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:30–31; Luke 4:38–39. See: Matthew 26:7–12; Mark 14:3–8; John 12:3–7. See: Matthew 26:27–29; Mark 14:23–25; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25–26. See: Matthew 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–13; Luke 9:28–36. Plato. Phaedo 65a-b: “Now let us look at how the faculty of thinking is acquired. Does the body prevent this or not, if we take it as an accomplice in philosophical research? What I mean is this. Can people have any confidence in their hearing and vision? After all, even poets endlessly repeat that we don’t hear or see anything for sure” (Translated by S.P. Markish). Epicharmus - Greek comedian of the 2nd half. VI – 1st floor. V century BC Lived in Syracuse. He became famous for his philosophical maxims. Valentine taught about the Pleroma ("Fullness") of the Godhead, consisting of thirty aeons (spiritual entities), some of which gave birth to others. Disputes about “genealogies” (or “genealogies”) are mentioned by the Apostle Paul (1 Tim. 1:4; Tit. 3:9). “With the mind”: according to the edition of Sigismund Gelenius (1550), “with the soul.” For example, in the treatise “Against Marcion”. See: Plato. Timaeus 29a–b. Aristotle. On the soul, II 2 (413a 26–33). There was a custom of placing the newborn on the ground. By raising the child, the father recognized him as his own. Compare: “The seeds of every age and every knowledge are embedded in us, and God is the mentor who brings talents out of the unknown” (Seneca. Questions of Nature, 3, 29. Translated by P. Krasnov). Col(l)it – dem in attic fillet. The birthplace of Plato (Diogenes Laertius. On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, III 3). Sallust - Roman historian of the 1st century. BC He was a praetor with proconsular powers in the province of Africa. We are talking about Tertullian’s unsurvived treatise “On Fate” (De fato). That is, from the material, mental and spiritual parts. See: Tertullian. Against Hermogenes, 12–14. Earthly man, according to the teachings of Valentin, is tripartite: he consists of matter, soul and spirit. Therefore, “there are three kinds of people: material people doomed to destruction (iliks, hoiki), spiritual people (psychics), who can achieve salvation, although not perfection, through faith and good deeds, and spiritual people (pneumatics), who are already saved by virtue of the spiritual seed embedded in them and, possessing gnosis, do not need either works or faith.” (Karsavin L.P. Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church. P. 34.) See: Matthew 7:16–18; Luke 6:43–44. See: Matthew 3:7–8; Luke 3:7–8. Compare: Clement of Alexandria. Exhortation to the Gentiles, 1, 4, 3; 10, 106, 1. See: Tertullian. Against Marcion, II 5–7. In the unpreserved treatise De censu animae. According to T. D. Barnes, here, instead of the expected peroratio, the amplificatio provided by rhetorical reference books appears. Tertullian, Barnes believes, could feel the weakness of his argument, which would be vulnerable if his opponent denied the presence of one single essence in all souls; Tertullian needed to consider where, at what point in time and how the soul arises (See: Barnes T. D. Tertullian: a historical and literary study. P. 207). Carpocrates was a Gnostic from Alexandria who lived in the 1st half. II century after R. X. According to his teaching, the world was created by angels who rebelled against the unborn Father. These cosmogonic forces deliver human souls, captivated by desires and lusts, into slavery to material nature. The soul of Jesus Christ, freed from this bondage, showed the way to others. For spiritual liberation, according to Carpocrates, one should renounce the world and despise its creators. This contempt was expressed among the Carpocrats by committing all kinds of carnal sins. For Carpocrates, see: Irenaeus. Against all heresies, I 25; Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History, IV 7, 9. Compare: Irenaeus. Against heresies, I 25, 2: “they went so far in their arrogance that some said that they were like Jesus; others said that they were in some respects more powerful than Him, and others considered themselves superior to His disciples, Peter and Paul and the other apostles, whom, however, they rank in no way lower than Jesus, for their souls, which came from the same sphere and also despised the creators of the world, were awarded the same power and returned to the same place. If someone despises earthly things more than He, then he can be superior to Him” (Translated by P. Preobrazhensky). The Milesian Stories is a very popular collection of erotic stories compiled at the turn of the 2nd–1st centuries. BC by Aristides of Miletus. They were translated into Latin by L. Cornelius Sisenna in the 1st century. BC. Since then, the Romans began to call such works “Milesian stories”, fabulae Milesiae. Compare: Plato. Timaeus, 42e–43a. Compare: Plato. Philebus, 34a, and also: Works of the Platonic school. Definitions, 414a; Plato. Theaetetus, 163d–164d. Berenice is one of the queens of Hellenistic Egypt. “He will look for a monkey”, “he will be afraid of a rooster” - Tertullian, obviously, sets out the ideas of the ancients about the behavior of lions. There is an insert here “that is, in childhood.” Tertullian demonstrates his knowledge of feminine nature in other places. In the essay “On the Flesh of Christ” (20, 6) he writes, for example: “Let midwives, doctors and experts of nature talk about the property of the nipples - whether there is discharge from them without the birth pangs of the birth - for only after this does the blood rise through the veins from the lower reservoir to the breast and as a result of this very movement is transformed into a more nutritious matter - milk. It is for this reason that there are no monthly bleedings during pregnancy” (Translated by A. A. Stolyarova). Plato in Cratylus (400b) explains the origin of the word ψυχή differently, namely from the word he invented ψυσέχη, “nature-bearer.” Liber (that is, Dionysus) was extracted by his father Jupiter from the womb of Semele, who died in the fire. See: Pliny the Elder. Natural History, VII 9. See: Matthew 8:28: Γαδαρηνῶν (options: Γερασηνῶν and Γεργεσηνῶν); Mark 5:1: Γερασηνῶν (options: Γαδαρηνῶν, Γεργυστηνῶν and Γεργεσηνῶν); Luke 8:26: Γερασηνῶν (options: Γεργεσηνῶν and Γαδαρηνῶν). Astrologers determined the position of the heavenly bodies at the moment of conception. We are talking about Holy Scripture. Compare: Tertullian. On the resurrection of the dead, 45, 1–5. See: Plato. Phaedo, 70c-d. Albin - Platonist philosopher, taught in Asia Minor in the middle. II century after R. X. Compare: Apologetics, 19, 3, where Tertullian claims that Moses is a contemporary of Inachus, being 393 years older than Danaus and almost a thousand years older than the defeat of Priam. Ephalis - son of Hermes, messenger of the Argonauts. Thanks to Hermes, he retained his memory in Hades. His soul was either underground or among the living (Apollonius of Rhodes. Argonautica, 1640–648). Euphorbus is a Trojan hero (see: Homer. Iliad, XVI 807–811; XVII 9, 47–81), whose soul allegedly moved into Pythagoras (see: Ovid. Metamorphoses, XV 160–164). Diogenes Laertius (On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, VIII 4) writes: “He [Pythagoras] said about himself (according to Heraclides of Pontus) that he was once Ephalides and was revered as the son of Hermes; and Hermes offered him a choice of any gift, except immortality, and he asked to leave him, both living and dead, the memory of what happened to him. Therefore, during his life he remembered everything, and in death he retained the same memory. Subsequently, he entered Euphorbus and was wounded by Menelaus; and Euphorbus told that he was once Ephalides, that he received his gift from Hermes, how his soul wandered, what plants and animals it ended up in, what it suffered in Hades and what other souls endure there. After the death of Euphorbus, his soul passed into Hermotimus, who, wanting to prove this, appeared in Branchida and in the church of Apollo pointed out a shield dedicated to the god Menelaus - sailing from Troy, he said, Menelaus dedicated this shield to Apollo, and now it was all rotten, only the ivory lining remained. After the death of Hermotimus, he became Pyrrhus, a Delian fisherman, and still remembered everything about how he was first Ephalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, then Pyrrhus. And after the death of Pyrrhus, he became Pythagoras and also retained the memory of all of the above” (Translated by M. L. Gasparov). Compare: Tertullian. About the cloak, 2, 7. Compare: Plato. Phaedrus, 249b; State, X 615a. “Pythagoras was seized when he was leaving [the house] - in front there was a vegetable garden, all covered in beans, and he stopped: “better captivity than trampling them,” he said, “better death than being branded an idle talker.” Here he was overtaken and stabbed to death" (Diogenes Laertius. On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, VIII 39; cf.: 45) (Translated by M. L. Gasparov). Nestor is the oldest of the Greek heroes who fought at Troy. He became famous for his eloquence and wisdom. Philo of Alexandria thought differently: “After all, it is necessary that the entire universe be animated in all its parts, if each of the primary elements that lie at its basis contains appropriate and appropriate living beings: the earth - terrestrial, the sea and rivers - living in water, fire - fire-born (there is a rumor that they are mostly found in Macedonia), the sky - stars" (Philo of Alexandria. On the Giants, 2, 7). “Fire-born” here obviously means salamanders. “In the eagle... in the eel” is a play on words: “in aquila... in anguilla.” Apicius - gourmet of the late 1st century. BC early I century according to R. X. Having squandered his fortune, he poisoned himself, preferring death to poverty. The work De re culinaria comes under his name. See: Grigorieva A. A. About some productive word-formation models of Latin culinary vocabulary in the Apician corpus // Colloquia classica et indo-europeica. II. St. Petersburg, 2000, pp. 140–145. Neck stocks were worn on those sentenced to crucifixion. Parricides were drowned in leather furs. With the help of hooks, the bodies of the executed were dragged from the prison to the Tiber. Compare: Ovid. Ibis, 166. Aquileg is the head of water supply. Tertullian also speaks about the infusion of Homer’s soul into the peacock in other places (On the soul, 34, 1; On the resurrection of the dead, 1, 5). Persius (Satires, VI 9–11) and Horace (without mention of the peacock) wrote about Ennius’ dream (Epistle, II 1, 50–52). Cm:. Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32. Tertullian begins to expound the teachings of Simon the Samaritan (34. 3–4). See: Irenaeus. Against all heresies, 125, 4: “And they, in their madness, have reached the point where they say that it is permissible for them to do everything godless and wicked, because, they say, only for human opinion there are good and bad deeds” (Translated by P. Preobrazhensky). See: Matthew 5:26; Luke 12:59; Irenaeus. Against all heresies, I 25, 4: “The word will not come out of there until you give back even the last half penny. They explain it in such a way that no one escapes the power of the angels who created the world, but until then he moves from body to body until he experiences all kinds of deeds in this world” (Translated by P. Preobrazhensky). See: Matthew 5:25; Luke 12:58. That is, with him [the pagan]. See: Matthew 5:25–26; Luke 12:58–59. Irenaeus. Against all heresies, I 25, 4: “by adversary they mean one of the angels in the world, whom they call the devil, saying that he exists in order to bring lost souls from the world to the supreme leader - they call him the first of the creators of the world - and he transfers such souls to another angel, who serves him, to imprison them in other bodies, for the body, according to them, is a prison” (Translated by P. Preobrazhensky). Wed: Rev. 12:10; Zechariah 3:1; Job 1:6–12; Job 2:1–7. See: Irenaeus. Against all heresies, I 25, 4: “And souls must continue to pass from one body to another until they learn every way of life and every kind of action (unless someone, in one migration, simultaneously commits all those actions about which we should not only talk and listen, but even think and believe that such things were carried out among our fellow citizens) so that, as their writings say, their souls, tested in every way life, at the end of their life they did not need anything more” (Translated by P. Preobrazhensky). Pun: et sui nominis et sui hominis. The basis of the original Roman religion was the belief in certain forces that personified certain actions, states, places, etc. Alemone is a goddess whose name Tertullian associates with the verb alere, “to nourish, to nourish.” Nona is one of the Parcas, the goddess of the ninth month of pregnancy; Decima is the goddess of the tenth month of pregnancy. Partula is a goddess whose name Tertullian associates with the word partus, “birth.” Lucina is a goddess whose name Tertullian associates with the word lux, “light.” See Chapter XX (4) of this work. The Fates of Scribunda are deities who record the fate of a person at birth. They were called upon on the last day of the first week after the birth of the baby. Compare: Tertullian. To the Gentiles, II 11.8: “Statina is the goddess, thanks to whom the child rises to his feet.” See: Rom.8:12; Gal.5:16. Compare: Tertullian. On the testimony of the soul, 2; Wed “thank you” (from “save, God”). See: Epic. sent. II, p. 71 Used. We are talking about Epicurus, who taught about the decomposition of the soul after death. Xenophanes of Colophon, philosopher of the 6th beginning. V century BC, founder of the Eleatic school. The dream is reasonable, therefore not supernatural. See: Gen.2:23; cf.: Eph.5:31 and chapter XXI (2) of this work. Epimenides - priest from Crete 7th–6th centuries. BC. Many prose and poetic works were attributed to him. Among them there is a well-known oracle about the deceit of the Cretans, which is given by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to Titus (Titus 1:12). According to legend, Epimenides fell asleep as a young man in the Dictaean cave and slept for 57 years. Compare: Goethe. The Awakening of Epimenides. Theopompus from Chios - rhetorician and historian of the 4th century. BC Son of Nestor, participant in the Trojan War. See: Homer. Iliad, IX 81. See: Suetonius. Lives of the Twelve Caesars, VI 46, 1. Compare: Homer. Odyssey, XIX 562–567; Virgil. Aeneid, VI 893–896. See: Herodotus. History, I 107–108. Charon of Lampsacus is a Greek logographer, author of Persian History and a chronicle of the city of Lampsacus. J. Pepin understands the words of Arnobius (Against the Pagans, IV 29) Pelaeus Leon as a “simple metaphor” for Alexander the Great. See: Pépin J. Christianisme et mythologie. L’evhémérisme des auteurs chrétiens // Pépin J. De la Philosophie ancienne à la théologie patristique. Variorum reprints. London, 1986. VII. P. 8. Ephorus - historian of the 4th century. BC from Asia Minor, author of the first “General History”, student of Isocrates. Euphorion is the author of historical and literary works, epics, elegies and epigrams of the 3rd century. BC It was popular in Rome. Strabo - Greek geographer and historian of the 2nd half. I century before P. X. beginning I century by P. X. Author of “Geography” and “Historical Commentaries”. Callisthenes is a Greek historian, a relative of Aristotle, a comrade of Alexander the Great, who was killed by the latter. This refers to Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC). We are talking about Octavian Augustus. The Battle of Philippi took place in 42 BC. See: Appian. Civil Wars, IV 110: “having put the army to flight, they [Brutus’s soldiers] began to pursue him until they took the camp that was common to Antony and Caesar. Caesar himself was not in the camp: because of a dream he had, he was wary of this day, as he himself writes about it in his “Memoirs”” (Translated by S. A. Zhebelev and O. O. Kruger); Plutarch. Brutus, 41: “As Caesar himself relates in his Memoirs, one of his friends, Marcus Artorius, had a vision in a dream, commanding Caesar to get out of bed and leave the camp. He obeyed - and barely managed to get out of the camp fortifications” (Translated by S.P. Markish). Compare: Suetonius. Lives of the Twelve Caesars, II 13, 1. See: Herodotus. History, III 124–125: “The dream of Polycrates’ daughter came true when he was crucified: indeed, Zeus washed him just when it was raining, and Helios anointed him when his body was moistened from the heat” (Translated by G. A. Stratanovsky). See: Olympiodor. Life of Plato: “They say that when Socrates was about to receive Plato, he dreamed that a swan without wings was sitting on his lap, and then suddenly the swan’s wings appeared and he flew up with a ringing cry, enchanting everyone’s ears: this was how Plato’s future glory was foretold” (Translated by M. L. Gasparov). Wed: Lives of Sophocles, 12. Artemon from Magnesia. Wrote “Tales of Explorers of Female Valor.” Antiphon is famous, an orator from Attica in the 5th century. BC, and Antiphon, a tragedian who lived in Athens, then at the court of the tyrant Dionysius I the Elder. Philochorus - Greek historian of the 3rd century. BC, an opponent of Demetrius Poliorcetes, was interested in fortune telling. His main work is Attic History. Cratippus - Peripatetic from Pergamum of the 1st century. BC His work on predictions from dreams has not reached us. Hermippus of Berit (Berit is a port city in Phenicia, now Beirut), a student of Philo, wrote in the 1st half. II century according to R. X. about astrology. According to another punctuation: “unless Aristotle lived before everyone else.” Hartel attributes the words “excuse the one who laughs” not to the reader, but to Aristotle, believing that ridicule in this case becomes more effective [Hartei W. von. Patristische Studien, IV: Zu Tertullian De oratione, De baptismo, De pudicitia, De ieiunio, De anima // Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Classe der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1890. Bd. 121. 14. Abh. S. 83]. It is possible that in this case Tertullian had in mind a certain work attributed to Stagirites, which spoke about the dreams of Saturn. Oropus is a city on the border of Boeotia and Attica. Mallus is a city in Cilicia, on the Pyramus River. The Stoics viewed mantics in close connection with their system. So, for example, the Stoic Lucilius Balbus in Cicero (On ​​the Nature of the Gods, II 3, 7 ff.), based on the truth of the predictions, leads listeners to the conclusion about the power of the gods. See: Herodotus. History, IV 184. Conjecture by E. Kroymann - “Herodotus”. The Lyncests are a tribe in southwestern Macedonia. Colophon is a city in Asia Minor. Not far from Colophon flows the Galens, the coldest river in Ionia, whose waters are glorified by elegiac poets. See: Pausanias. Description of Hellas, VII 5.10; VIII 28.3. Near the city of Nonacris, according to the Arcadians, there was a source of the Styx (Herodotus. History, VI 74). According to Pausanias, the water flowing from the cliff near Nonacre brings death (Pausanias. Description of Hellas, VIII 17, 6; 18, 4). Below (VIII 18, 6) Pausanias writes that, according to rumors, Alexander the Great died from this poison. According to Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica, IV 865–879), Thetis, in order to make her son Achilles immortal, burned his body with fire at night in the oven, and rubbed it with ambrosia in the morning. When Peleus, her husband, saw this, cried out, Thetis left him in anger. Compare: Apollodorus. Mythological Library, III 13.6. For the cry of Thetis, see: Homer. Iliad, XXIV 83–86. Obviously, an allusion to the comedies of another Menander, the ancient Greek comedian (c. 342–c. 290 BC). Typical Tertullian hyperbole. Compare, for example, “Apologetics”, 37, 4, where Tertullian claims that Christians filled the whole world, leaving the pagans only their temples. In Scorpiacus, polemicizing with heretics who reject martyrdom, Tertullian speaks of the cruelty of the Christian God: “He who does not comprehend the cruel God believes in Him” - Crudelem deum, qui non intellegit, credit (7, 5). Medea's malice is interpreted as her failure (cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII 297–349). According to myth, Medea was able to rejuvenate Jason's father Eson. (See: Ovid. Metamorphoses, VII 285–293; I Vatican Mythographer, II 86, 2). See: Ovid. Metamorphoses, VII 312–321. Pausanias. Description of Hellas, VIII 11, 2. See: Gen.5:24; Hebrews 11:5. See: Plato. State, X, 614b. Known: Chilo, one of the Seven Wise Men, and Chilo, rival of the Spartan legislator Lycurgus. Klidem - historian of the 4th century. BC Literally: “tithes”, “huge”. See: 1 Cor.3:16; 1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16. Arius - Alexandrian philosopher of the Augustan era. Compare: Tertullian. Apologetic, 47, 12. Wed: Ps.85:13; Ps.29:4; Ps.70:20. See: 1 Peter 3:19; 1 Peter 4:6. See: Matthew 10:24. Wed: Ch. XXIII (2). See: Matthew 24:31; 1 Corinthians 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16. Tertullian was credited with writing “The Martyrdom of St. Perpetua, Felicity and comrades." Tertullian uses the Greek word used in the Septuagint, see: Gen. 3:24. See: Matthew 16:24; Matthew 10:38; Mark 8:34; Luke 14:27. Tertullian's treatise "On Paradise" (De Paradiso), which has not survived. See: Homer. Iliad, XXIII 59–92. Violently killed. On this see: Nock A. D. Essays on Religion and the ancient World. Cambridge, Mass., 1972. Vol. 2. P. 712 ff. Compare: Virgil. Aeneid, VI 426–451. That is, people deified after death. Bestiary is a circus fighter with wild animals. In “Apologetics” (23, 6) we read: “This Virgin Celestis herself, the promise of rain, this Aesculapius himself, showing drugs, if they do not admit that they are demons [during exorcism], not daring to lie to a Christian, immediately shed the blood of this impudent Christian!” See: Acts 8:9–24; Acts 13:8–11. The Nasamones are a tribe in Libya. Probably Nymphodorus of Amphipolis, who wrote an essay on barbarian customs. See: Herodotus. History, IV 172. Nikander of Colophon is a Hellenistic poet, author of didactic poems about antidotes for snake and scorpion bites and antidotes for food poisoning. Here, according to T. D. Barnes, the peroratio of speech begins, marked by the use (for the first time in the treatise) of the rhetorical method of interpellatio or contrapositio. To the question of an imaginary opponent: “So, every soul is in the underworld?” Tertullian answers in the affirmative and states that he deliberately postponed certain topics until the conclusion of his work. This is followed by a series of questions, mostly rhetorical (58, 2–4). When they end, Tertullian uses another rhetorical method: enumeration of examples, exempla (58, 5) (see: Barnes T. D. Tertullian: a historical and literary study. P. 208). We are talking about Zeno of Elea, who, according to Hermippus, was beaten to death in a mortar (see: Diogenes Laertius. On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, IX 27) when he planned to overthrow the tyrant Nearchus (or Diomedon) (IX 26). In Apologetics (50.9), Tertullian says that Zeno of Elea was severely scourged by Dionysius. In the same place (59.6) we read about the courage of Anaxarchus, executed in a mortar (cf.: Diogenes Laertius. On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers, IX 59). See: Xenophon. Anabasis, I 9, 6 You might be interested in: