from God; the soul does approach and does absent itself from them without changing its place; therefore the soul is not a body.

"8th. The body moves through a place, from one place to another; the soul has no similar movement; therefore the soul is not a body.

"9th. The body has length, breadth, and depth; and that which has neither length, breadth, nor depth, is not a body. The soul has nothing of the kind; therefore the soul is not a body.

"10th. There is in all bodies the right hand and the left— the upper part and the lower part, the front and the back; in the soul there is nothing of the kind; therefore the soul is incorporeal."

Here are some of the principal developments in support of these propositions:

"I. You say that the soul is one thing, the thought of the soul another: you ought rather to say, that the things upon which the soul thinks . are not the soul; but thought is

nothing but the soul itself.

"The soul, you say, is in such profound repose, that it has no thought at all. This is not true; the soul can change its thought, but not be without thought altogether.

"What do our dreams signify if not that, even when the body is fatigued and immersed in sleep, the soul ceases not to think?

"What greatly deceives you concerning the nature of the soul, is that you believe that the soul is one thing, and its faculties another. What the soul thinks is an accident, but that which thinks is the substance of the soul itself.2

"II. The soul sees that which is corporeal through the medium of the body; what is incorporeal it sees by itself. Without the intervention of the body, it could see nothing corporeal, colored, or extensive; but it sees truth, and sees it with an immaterial view. If, as you pretend, the soul, corporeal itself, and confined within an external body, can see of itself a corporeal object, surely nothing can be more easy to it than to see the interior of that body in which it is confined. Well, then, to this-apply yourself to this work; direct inward this corporeal view of the soul, as you call it ;

1 Book iii., chap. 14, pp. 201, 202.

2 Book i., chap. 24, p. 83.

tell us how the brain is disposed, where the mass of the liver is situated; where and what is the spleen. what are the windings and texture of the veins, the origin of the nerves? . . . How! you deny that you are called upon to answer concerning such things: and wherefore do you deny it? Because the soul cannot see directly and of itself corporeal things. Why can it not, then, that which is never without thinking— that is to say, without seeing? Because it cannot see corporeal objects without the medium of the corporeal view. Now, the soul which sees certain things of itself, but not corporeal things, sees, therefore, with an incorporeal view; now an incorporeal being can alone see with an incorporeal view; therefore the soul is incorporeal.1

"III. If the soul is a body, what then is that which the soul calls its body, if not itself? Either the soul is a body, and in that case it is wrong to say my body, it ought rather to say me, since it is itself; or if the soul is right in saying my body, as we suppose, it is not a body.2

"IV. It is not without reason that it is said that memory is common to men and to animals; storks and swallows return to their nest, horses to their stable; dogs recognize their master. But as the soul of animals, although they retain the image of places, has no knowledge of its own being, they remain confined to the recollection of corporeal objects which they have seen by the bodily senses; and, deprived of the mind's eye, they are incapable of seeing, not only what is above them, but themselves.3

:

"V. A formidable syllogism, which is thought insolvable, is addressed to us; the soul, it is said, is where it is, and is not where it is not. The anticipation is, that we shall be driven to say, either that it is everywhere, or that it is nowhere and then it will be rejoined, if it is everywhere, it is God; if it is nowhere, it is non-existent. The soul is not wholly in the whole world, but in the same way that God is wholly in the whole universe, so the soul is wholly in the whole body. God does not fill with the smallest part of himself the smallest part of the world, and with the largest the largest; he is wholly in every part and wholly in the whole; so the soul does not reside in parts in the various parts of the

1 Book iii., chap. 9, pp. 187, 188. 3Book i, chap. 21, p. 65.

2 Book i., chap. 16, p. 53.

body. It is not one part of the soul which looks forth through the eye and another which animates the finger; the whole soul lives in the eye and sees by the eye, the whole soul animates the finger and feels by the finger.1

"VI. The soul which feels in the body, though it feels by visible organs, feels invisibly. The eye is one thing, seeing another: the ears are one thing, hearing another; the nostrils are one thing, smelling another; the mouth one thing, eating another; the hand one thing, touching another. We distinguish by the touch what is hot and what cold; but we do not touch the sensation of the touch, which in itself is neither hot nor cold; the organ by which we feel is a perfectly dif ferent thing from the sensation of which we are sensible."2

You will readily admit that these ideas are deficient neither in elevation nor profundity; they would do honor to the philosophers of any period; seldom have the nature of the soul and its unity been investigated more closely or described with greater precision. I might quote many other passages remarkable for the subtlety of perception, or energy of debate, and, at times, for a profound moral emotion, and a genuine eloquence.

I will read to you two extracts from the same book of the same man; Mamertius Claudienus is replying to the argument of Faustus, who maintains that the soul is formed of air, reasoning upon the ancient theory which regarded air, fire, earth, and water, as the four essential elements of nature: "Fire," says he, "is evidently a superior element to air, as well by the place which it occupies as by its intrinsic power. This is proved by the movement of the terrestrial fire, which, with an almost incomprehensible rapidity, and by its own natural impulse, reascends towards heaven as towards its own country. If this proof be not sufficient, here is another: the air is illumined by the presence of the sun, that is to say fire, and falls into darkness in its absence. And a still more powerful reason is, that air undergoes the action of fire and becomes heated, while fire does not undergo the action of air, and is never made cold by it. Air may be inclosed and retained in vases; fire never. The preeminence of fire, then, is clearly incontestable. Now, it is from fire (that is to say, from its light) that we derive the faculty of sight, a faculty

Book iii., chap. 2, p. 164.

Book i., chap. 6, p. 31.

common to men and to animals, and in which, indeed, certain irrational animals far surpass man in point of both strength and of delicacy. If, then, which is undeniable, sight proceeds from fire, and if the soul, as you think, is formed of air, it follows that the eye of animals is, as to its substance, superior in dignity to the soul of man.

This learned confusion of material facts and of intellectual facts, this attempt to establish a sort of hierarchy of merit and of rank among the elements, in order to deduce from them philosophical consequences, are curious evidences of the infancy of science and of thought.

I will now quote, in favor of the immateriality of the soul, an argument of as little value in itself, but less fantastic in its outward appearance. "Every incorporeal being is superior, in natural dignity, to a corporeal being; every being not confined within a certain space, to a localized being; every indivisible being to a divisible being. Now, if the Creator, sovereignly powerful and sovereignly good, has not created, as he ought to have done, a substance superior to the body, and similar to himself, it is either that he could not or would not; if he would, and could not, almightiness was wanting to him; if he could and would not (the mere thought is a crime), it could only have been through jealousy. Now, it is impossible that the sovereign power cannot do what it wills, that sovereign goodness can be jealous. It results that he both could and would create the incorporeal being; final result, he did create it.""

Was I wrong in speaking just now of the strange combinations, the mixture of high truths and gross errors, of admirable views and ridiculous conceptions, which characterize the writings of this period. Those of Mamertius Claudienus, I may add, present fewer of these contrasts than do those of most of his contemporaries.

You are sufficiently acquainted with this writer to appreciate his character; taken as a whole, his work is rather philosophical than theological, and yet the religious principle is manifestly predominant throughout, for the idea of God is the starting point of every discussion in it. The author does not commence by observing and describing human, special, actual facts, proceeding through them up to the Divinity: God is with him the primitive, universal, evident fact; the

1 Book i., chap. 9, p. 38.

2 Book i., chap. 5, p. 26.

fundamental datum to which all things relate, and with which all things must agree; he invariably descends from God to man, deducing our own from the Divine nature. It is evidently from religion, and not from science, that he borrows this method. But this cardinal point once established, this logical plan once laid down, it is from philosophy that he draws, in general, both his ideas and his manner of expressing them; his language is of the school, not of the church; he appeals to reason, not to faith; we perceive in him, sometimes the academician, sometimes the stoic, more frequently the platonist, but always the philosopher, never the priest, though the Christian is apparent, is manifest in every page.

I have thus exhibited the fact which I indicated in the outset, the fusion of pagan philosophy with Christian theology, the metamorphosis of the one into the other. And it is remarkable, that the reasoning applied to the establishment of the spirituality of the soul is evidently derived from the ancient philosophy rather than from Christianity, and that the author seems more especially to aim at convincing the theologians, by proving to them that the Christian faith has nothing in all this which is not perfectly reconcilable with the results derived from pure reason.

It might be thought that this transition from ancient philosophy to modern theology would be more manifest, `more strongly marked in the dialogue of the Christian Zacheus and the philosopher Apollonius, by the monk Evagrius, where the two doctrines, the two societies, are directly confronted and called upon to discuss their respective merits; but the discussion is only in appearance, exists, in fact, only on the title-page. I am not acquainted with any work, with any monument, which proves more clearly the utter indifference with which the popular mind regarded paganism. The philosopher Apollonius opens the dialogue in an arrogant tone, as if about utterly to overwhelm the Christian, and to deliver over to general scorn any arguments which he may adduce.' "If you examine the matter with care," says he, "you will see that all other religions and all other sacred rites had rational origins; whereas, your creed is so utterly vain and irrational, that it seems to me none but a madman could entertain it."

1 Dialogue of Zacheus and Apollonius, in the Spicilegium of D'Achery, vol. x., p. 3.