66 The joicing in His own eternity, possessing in Himself wisdom and the vital senses, by which He also includes the twelve members of His light, which are the plentiful resources of his kingdom. Also in each of His members are stored thousands of untold and priceless treasures. But the Father Himself, chief in praise, incomprehensible in greatness, has united to Himself happy and glorious worlds, incalculable in number and duration, along with which this holy and illustrious Father and Progenitor resides, no poverty or infirmity being admitted in His magnificent realms. And these matchless realms are so founded on the region of light and bliss, that no one can ever move or disturb them." were produced by a word or sprung from mat- 'these two substances were divided. ter, I will answer you as is fit. For in va- empire of light was held by God the Father, rious writings and narratives we find different who is perpetual in holy origin, magnificent assertions made and different descriptions in virtue, true in His very nature, ever regiven by many authors. Now the real truth on the subject is unknown to all peoples, even to those who have long and frequently treated of it. For had they arrived at a clear knowl. edge of the generation of Adam and Eve, they would not have remained liable to corruption and death." Here, then, is a promise to us of clear knowledge of this matter, so that we shall not be liable to corruption and death, And if this does not suffice, see what follows: "Necessarily," he says, "many things have to be said by way of preface, before a discovery of this mystery free from all uncertainty can be made. This is precisely what I asked for, to have such evidence of the truth as to free my knowledge of it from all uncertainty. And even were the promise not made by this writer himself, it was proper for me to demand and to insist upon this, so that no opposition should make me ashamed of becoming a Manichæan from a Catholic Christian, in view of such a gain as that of perfectly clear and certain truth. Now, then, let us hear what he has to state. And 17. Where is the proof of all this? where did Manichæus learn it? Do not frighten me with the name of the Paraclete. For, in the first place, I have come not to put faith in unknown things, but to get the knowledge of undoubted truths, according to the caution enjoined on me by yourselves. For you know how bitterly you taunt those 15. "Accordingly," he says, "hear first, if who believe without consideration. you please, what happened before the con- what is more, this writer, who here begins stitution of the world, and how the battle to tell of very doubtful things, himself promwas carried on, that you may be able to dis- ised a little before to give complete and welltinguish the nature of light from that of dark-grounded knowledge. ness." Such are the utterly false and incredi And EDGE OF UNDOUBTED THINGS, AND THEN ble statements which this writer makes. Who CHAP. 14.-MANICHÆUS PROMISES THE KNOWLcan believe that any battle was fought before the constitution of the world? And even supposing it credible, we wish now to get something to know, not to believe. For to In the next place, if faith is what is resay that the Persians and Scythians long ago quired of me, I should prefer to keep to the fought with one another is a credible state- Scripture, which tells me that the Holy ment; but while we believe it when we Spirit came and inspired the apostles, to read or hear it, we cannot know it as a fact whom the Lord had promised to send Him. of experience or as a truth of the understand-You must therefore prove, either that what ing. So, then, as I would repudiate any such Manichæus says is true, and so make clear statement on the ground that I have been to me what I am unable to believe; or that promised something, not that I must believe Manichæus is the Holy Spirit, and so lead on authority, but that I shall understand me to believe in what you cannot make without any ambiguity; still less will I receive For I profess the Catholic faith, statements which are not only uncertain, but and by it I expect to attain certain knowlincredible. But what if he have some evi- edge. Since, then, you try to overthrow dence to make these things clear and intelli- my faith, you must supply me with certain gible? Let us hear, then, if we can, what knowledge, if you can, that you may convict follows with all possible patience and forbear- me of having adopted my present belief without consideration. You make two distinct propositions, one when you say that the speaker is the Holy Spirit, and another when you say that what the speaker teaches is ance. CHAP. 13.-TWO OPPOSITE SUBSTANCES. THE UNCERTAINTIES INSTEAD OF CERTAINTIES. clear. evidently true. I might fairly ask undeniable truths, and then demanding faith in doubtful proof for both propositions. But I am not things. And then, if he is asked to make it greedy and require to be convinced only plain that these things have been proved to of one. Prove this person to be the Holy himself, he fails again, and bids us believe Spirit, and I will believe what he says to this too. Who can tolerate such imposture be true, even without understanding it; or and arrogance? prove that what he says is true, and I will NOT ONLY UNCERTAIN, BUT FALSE.. HIS AB- believe him to be the Holy Spirit, even CHAP. 15.-THE DOCTRINE OF MANICHÆUS without evidence. Could anything be fairer or kinder than this? But you cannot prove either one or other of these propositions. You can find nothing better than to praise your own faith and ridicule mine. So, after having in my turn praised my belief and ridiculed yours, what result do you think we shall arrive at as regards our judgment and our conduct, but to part company with those who promise the knowledge of indubitable things, and then demand from us faith in doubtful things? while we shall follow those who invite us to begin with believing what we cannot yet fully perceive, that, strengthened by this very faith, we may come into a position to know what we believe by the inward illumination and confirmation of our minds, due no longer to men, but to God Himself. 19. What if I shall have shown, with the help of God and of our Lord, that this writer's 66 'In one di statements are false as well as uncertain? What more unfortunate thing can be found than that superstition which not only fails to impart the knowledge and the truth which it promises, but also teaches what is directly opposed to more clearly from what follows: knowledge and truth? This will appear rection on the border of this bright and holy land there was a land of darkness deep and 18. And as I have asked this writer to tructive races. Here was boundless darkness, vast in extent, where abode fiery bodies, desprove these things to me, I ask him now where he learned them himself. If he replies abundance, with the productions properly beflowing from the same source in immeasurable that they were revealed to him by the Holy longing to it. Beyond this were muddy turSpirit, and that his mind was divinely enlight-bid waters with their inhabitants; and inside ened that he might know them to be certain of them winds terrible and violent with their and evident, he himself points to the distinc- prince and their progenitors. Then again a tion between knowing and believing. The fiery region of destruction, with its chiefs and knowledge is his to whom these things are peoples. And similarly inside of this a race fully made known as proved; but in the case full of smoke and gloom, where abode the of those who only hear his account of these things, there is no knowledge imparted, but only a believing acquiescence required. Whoever thoughtlessly yields this becomes a Manichæan, not by knowing undoubted truth, but by believing doubtful statements. Such were we when in our inexperienced youth we were deceived. Instead, therefore, of promising knowledge, or clear evidence, or the settlement of the question free from all uncertainty, Manichæus ought to have said that these things were clearly proved to him, but that those who hear his account of them must be lieve him without evidence. But were he to say this, who would not reply to him, If I must believe without knowing, why should I not prefer to believe those things which have a wide-spread notoriety from the consent of learned and unlearned, and which among all nations are established by the weightiest authority? From fear of having this said to him, Manichæus bewilders the inexperienced dreadful prince and chief of all, having around him innumerable princes, himself the mind and source of them all. Such are the five natures of the pestiferous land." 20. To speak of God as an aerial or even as an ethereal body is absurd in the view of all who, with a clear mind, possessing some measure of discernment, can perceive the na ture of wisdom and truth as not extended or scattered in space, but as great, and imparting greatness without material size, nor confined more or less in any direction, but throughout co-extensive with the Father of all, nor having one thing here and another there, but everywhere perfect, everywhere present.' CHAP. 16.—THE SOUL, THOUGH MUTABLE, HAS NO MATERIAL FORM. IT IS ALL PRESENT IN But why speak of truth and wisdom which I [This exalted view of God Augustin held in common with the by first promising the knowledge of certain Neo-Platonists.-A. H. N.] out leaving one in order to be in the other, and without having one part in one, and another in the other; but by this power showing itself to be all present at the same moment in separate places. Since it is all present in the sensations of these places, it proves that it is not bound by the conditions of space.' CHAP. 17.-THE MEMORY CONTAINS THE IDEAS OF PLACES OF THE GREATEST SIZE. of surpass all the powers of the soul, when the nature of the soul itself, which is known to be mutable, still has no kind of material extension in space? For whatever consists of any kind of gross matter must necessarily be divisible into parts, having one in one place, and another in another. Thus, the finger is less than the whole hand, and one finger is less than two; and there is one place for this finger, and another for that, and another for the rest of the hand. And this applies not to Again, if we consider the mind's power organized bodies only, but also to the earth, remembering not the objects of the intellect, each part of which has its own place, so that but material objects, such as we see brutes one cannot be where the other is. So in also remembering (for cattle find their way moisture, the smaller quantity occupies a without mistake in familiar places, and anismaller space, and the larger quantity a larger mals return to their cribs, and dogs recognize space; and one part is at the bottom of the the persons of their masters, and when asleep cup, and another part near the mouth. So in they often growl, or break out into a bark, air, each part has its own place; and it is im- which could not be unless their mind retained possible for the air in this house to have along the images of things before seen or perceived with itself, in the same house at the same by some bodily sense), who can conceive moment, the air that the neighbors have. rightly where these images are contained, And even as regards light itself, one part where they are kept, or where they are formed? pours through one window, and another If, indeed, these images were no larger than through another; and a greater through the the size of our body, it might be said that the larger, and a smaller through the smaller. mind shapes and retains them in the bodily Nor, in fact, can there be any bodily sub- space which contains itself. But while the stance, whether celestial or terrestrial, whether body occupies a small material space, the mind aerial or moist, which is not less in part than revolves images of vast extent, of heaven and in whole, or which can possibly have one part earth, with no want of room, though they in the place of another at the same time; but, come and go in crowds; so that clearly, the having one thing in one place and another in mind is not diffused through space: for inanother, its extension in space is a substance stead of being contained in images of the which has distinct limits and parts, or, so to largest spaces, it rather contains them; not, speak, sections. The nature of the soul, on the however, in any material receptacle, but by a other hand, though we leave out of account its mysterious faculty or power, by which it can power of perceiving truth, and consider only increase or diminish them, can contract them its inferior power of giving unity to the body, within narrow limits, or expand them indefiand of sensation in the body, does not ap-nitely, can arrange or disarrange them at pear to have any material extension in space. pleasure, can multiply them or reduce them For it is all present in each separate part of to a few or to one. its body when it is all present in any sensation. There is not a smaller part in the finger, and a larger in the arm, as the bulk of the finger is less than that of the arm; but the quantity everywhere is the same, for the whole is present everywhere. For when the finger is touched, the whole mind feels, though the sensation is not through the whole body. No part of the mind is unconscious of the touch, which proves the presence of the whole. And yet it is not so present in the finger or in the sensation as to abandon the rest of the body, or to gather itself up into the one place where the sensation occurs. For when it is all present in the sensation in a finger, if another part, say the foot, be touched, it does not fail to be all present in this sensation too: so that at the same moment it is all present in different places, with- Physiology, and CALDERWOOD: Mind and Brain.--A. H. N.] CHAP. 18.- THE UNDERSTANDING JUDGES OF What, then, must be said of the power of perceiving truth, and of making a vigorous resistance against these very images which take their shape from impressions on the bodily senses, when they are opposed to the truth? This power discerns the difference between, to take a particular example, the true Carthage and its own imaginary one, which it changes as it pleases with perfect ease. It 1 [Modern mental physiologists differ among themselves as re gards the presence of the mind throughout the entire nervous system; some maintaining the view here presented, and others making the brain to be the seat of sensation, and the nerves telegraphic lines, so to speak, for the communication of impressions from the various parts of the body to the brain. Compare CARPENTER; Mental OF TWO TERRITORIES. shows that the countless worlds of Epicurus, CHAP. 20.-REFUTATION OF THE ABSURD IDEA in which his fancy roamed without restraint, are due to the same power of imagination, and, not to multiply examples, that we get from the same source that land of light, with its boundless extent, and the five dens of the race of darkness, with their inmates, in which the fancies of Manichæus have dared to usurp for themselves the name of truth. What then is this power which discerns these things? Clearly, whatever its extent may be, it is greater than all these things, and is conceived of without any such material images. Find, if you can, space for this power; give it a material extension; provide it with a body of huge size. Assuredly if you think well, you cannot. For of everything of this corporeal nature your mind forms an opinion as to its divisibility, and you make of such things one part greater and another less, as much as you like; while that by which you form a judgment of these things you perceive to be above them, not in local loftiness of place, but in dignity of power. 22. But perhaps, instead of thus addressing carnal minds, we should rather descend to the views of those who either dare not or are as yet unfit to turn from the consideration of material things to the study of an immaterial and spiritual nature, and who thus are unable to reflect upon their own power of reflection, so as to see how it forms a judgment of material extension without itself possessing it. Let us descend then to these material ideas, and let us ask in what direction, and on what border of the shining and sacred territory, to use the expressions of Manichæus, was the region of darkness? For he speaks of one direction and border, without saying which, whether the right or the left. In any case, it is clear that to speak of one side implies that there is another. But where there are three or more sides, either the figure is bounded in all directions, or if it extends infinitely in one direction, still it must be limited in the directions where it has sides. If, then, on one side of the region CHAP. 19.—IF THE MIND HAS NO MATERIAL EX- of light there was the race of darkness, what TENSION, MUCH LESS HAS GOD. 21. So then, if the mind, so liable to change, whether from a multitude of dissimilar desires, or from feelings varying according to the abundance or the want of desirable things, or from these endless sports of the fancy, or from forgetfulness and remembrance, or from learning and ignorance; if the mind, I say, exposed to frequent change from these and the like causes, is perceived to be without any local or material extension, and to have a vigor of action which surmounts these material conditions, what must we think or conclude of God Himself, who remains superior to all intelligent beings in His freedom from perturbation and from change, giving to every one what is due? Him the mind dares to express more easily than to see; and the clearer the sight, the less is the power of expression. And yet this God, if, as the Manichæan fables are constantly asserting, He were limited in extension in one direction and unlimited in others, could be measured by so many subdivisions or fractions of greater or less size, as every one might fancy; so that, for example, a division of the extent of two feet would be less by eight parts than one of ten feet. For this is the property of all natures which have extension in space, and therefore cannot be all in one place. But even with the mind this is not the case; and this degrading and perverted idea of the mind is found among people who are unfit for such investigations. bounded it on the other side or sides? The Manichæans say nothing in reply to this; but when pressed, they say that on the other sides the region of light, as they call it, is infinite, that is, extends throughout boundless space. They do not see, what is plain to the dullest understanding, that in that case there could be no sides? For the sides are where it is bounded. What, then, he says, though there are no sides? But what you said of one direction or side, implied of necessity the existence of another direction and side, or other directions and sides. For if there was only one side, you should have said, on the side, not on one side; as in reference to our body we say properly, By one eye, because there is another; or on one breast, because there is another. But if we spoke of a thing as being on one nose, or one navel, we should be ridiculed by learned and unlearned, since there is only one. But I do not insist on words, for you may have used one in the sense of the only one. CHAP. 21. THIS REGION OF LIGHT MUST BE What, then, bordered on the side of the region which you call shining and sacred? The region, you reply, of darkness. Do you then allow this latter region to have been material? Of course you must, since you as sert that all bodies derive their origin from it. number of parts than to a single one, so that How then is it that, dull and carnal as you the region of light should have six, three are, you do not see that unless both regions upwards and three downwards, they have were material, they could not have their sides made this region be split up, instead of sunjoined to one another? How could you ever dering the other. For, according to this figbe so blinded in mind as to say that only the ure, though there may be no commixture of region of darkness was material, and that darkness with light, there is certainly penethe so-called region of light was immaterial tration. and spiritual? My good friends, let us open our eyes for once, and see, now that we are told of it, what is most obvious, that two regions cannot be joined at their sides unless both are material. CHAP. 23.-THE ANTHROPOMORPHITES NOT SO BAD AS THE MANICHEANS. 25. Compare, now, not spiritual men of the Catholic faith, whose mind, as far as is pos23. Or if we are too dull and stupid to see sible in this life, perceives that the divine this, let us hear whether the region of dark- | substance and nature has no material extenness too has one side, and is boundless in the sion, and has no shape bounded by lines, but other directions, like the region of light. the carnal and weak of our faith, who, when They do not hold this from fear of making it they hear the members of the body used figseem equal to God. Accordingly they make uratively, as, when God's eyes or ears are it boundless in depth and in length; but up-spoken of, are accustomed, in the license of wards, above it, they maintain that there is fancy, to picture God to themselves in a an infinity of empty space. And lest this re- human form; compare these with the Mangion should appear to be a fraction equal in ichæans, whose custom it is to make known amount to half of that representing the region their silly stories to anxious inquirers as if of light, they narrow it also on two sides. As they were great mysteries: and consider who if, to give the simplest illustration, a piece of have the most allowable and respectable ideas bread were made into four squares, three of God, those who think of Him as having white and one black; then suppose the three a human form which is the most excellent of white pieces joined as one, and conceive its kind, or those who think of Him as havthem as infinite upwards and downwards, ing boundless material extension, yet not in and backwards in all directions: this repre- all directions, but with three parts infinite and sents the Manichæan region of light. Then solid, while in one part He is cloven, with an conceive the black square infinite downwards empty void, and with undefined space above, and backwards, but with infinite emptiness above it: this is their region of darkness. But these are secrets which they disclose to very eager and anxious inquirers. CHAP. 22.—THE FORM OF THE REGION OF LIGHT THE WORSE OF THE TWO. Well, then, if this is so, the region of darkness is clearly touched on two sides by the region of light. And if it is touched on two sides, it must touch on two. So much for its being on one side, as we were told before. while the region of darkness is inserted wedge-like below. Or perhaps the proper expression is, that He is unconfined above in His own nature, but encroached on below by a hostile nature. I join with you in laughing at the folly of carnal men, unable as yet to form spiritual conceptions, who think of God as having a human form. Do you too join me, if you can, in laughing at those whose unhappy conceptions represent God as having a shape cloven or cut in such an unseemly and unbecoming way, with such an 24. And what an unseemly appearance is empty gap above, and such a dishonorable this of the region of light!-like a cloven curtailment below. Besides, there is this difarch, with a black wedge inserted below, ference, that these carnal people, who think bounded only in the direction of the cleft, of God as having a human form, if they are and having a void space interposed where content to be nourished with milk from the the boundless emptiness stretches above the breast of the Catholic Church, and do not rush region of darkness. Indeed, the form of the headlong into rash opinions, but cultivate in region of darkness is better than that of the the Church the pious habit of inquiry, and region of light: for the former cleaves, the there ask that they may receive, and knock latter is cloven; the former fills the gap which that it may be opened to them, begin to is made in the latter; the former has no void understand spiritually the figures and parables in it, while the latter is undefined in all direc- of the Scriptures, and gradually to perceive tions, except that where it is filled up by the that the divine energies are suitably set forth wedge of darkness. In an ignorant and under the name, sometimes of ears, somegreedy notion of giving more honor to a times of eyes, sometimes of hands or feet, or |