The Human Soul

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Kosambī, in Ghosita’s Monastery. Now at that time two renunciates— the wanderer Muṇḍiya and Jāliya, the pupil of the wood-bowl ascetic—came to

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Having treated of the spiritual and of the corporeal creature, we now proceed to treat of man, who is composed of a spiritual and corporeal substance. We shall treat first of the nature of man, and se

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advertisement to the reader on the following treatise. ———————————— The occasion of these four books was furnished by a young man named Vincentius Victor, a native of Mauritania Cæsariensis, a conve

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Chapter 17 [XII.]—A Twofold Question to Be Treated Concerning the Soul; Is It “Body”? and is It “Spirit”? What Body is. And now, as far as the Lord vouchsafes to enable me, I must reply also to that

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Chapter 34 [XXI.]—Prophetic Visions. Not every semblance of a body is itself a body. Fall asleep and you will see this; but when you awake again, carefully discern what it is you have seen. For in yo

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Chapter 6 [V.]—Questions About the Nature of the Body are Sufficiently Mysterious, and Yet Not Higher Than Those of the Soul. What do you say to the statement, that amongst the works of God there are

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Chapter 26 [XVIII.]—St. Perpetua Seemed to Herself, in Some Dreams, to Have Been Turned into a Man, and Then Have Wrestled with a Certain Egyptian. Some notice must be taken of sundry accounts of mar

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Chapter 19 [XIII.]—Whether the Soul is a Spirit. But again, why you would have the soul to be a body, and refuse to deem it a spirit, I cannot see. For if it is not a spirit, on the ground that the a

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Chapter 25.—Just as the Mother Knows Not Whence Comes Her Child Within Her, So We Know Not Whence Comes the Soul. How I wish that, on so profound a question, so long as he is ignorant what he should

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Chapter 20.—Other Ways of Taking the Passage. There are also some persons who understand the prophet’s words, “He gave breath to the people upon it,” that is to say, upon the earth, as if the word “b

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Chapter 4 [IV.]—The Errors Contained in the Books of Vincentius Victor. He Says that the Soul Comes from God, But Was Not Made Either Out of Nothing or Out of Any Created Thing. I will now proceed to

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Chapter LI.—Death Entirely Separates the Soul from the Body. But the operation of death is plain and obvious: it is the separation of body and soul. Some, however, in reference to the soul’s immortal

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Chapter XLV.—Dreams, an Incidental Effect of the Soul’s Activity. Ecstasy. We are bound to expound at this point what is the opinion of Christians respecting dreams, as incidents of sleep, and as no

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Chapter XXXII.—Empedocles Increased the Absurdity of Pythagoras by Developing the Posthumous Change of Men into Various Animals. But the fact is, Empedocles, who used to μετενσωμάτωσις or putting him

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Chapter IV.—In Opposition to Plato, the Soul Was Created and Originated at Birth. After settling the origin of the soul, its condition or state comes up next. For when we acknowledge that the soul or

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Chapter XXXVII.—On the Formation and State of the Embryo. Its Relation with the Subject of This Treatise. Now the entire process of sowing, forming, and completing the human embryo in the womb is no

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Chapter VIII.—Other Platonist Arguments Considered. Besides, it would be a harsh and absurd proceeding to exempt anything from the class of corporeal beings, on the ground that it is not exactly like

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Chapter XI.—Spirit—A Term Expressive of an Operation of the Soul, Not of Its Nature. To Be Carefully Distinguished from the Spirit of God. But the nature of my present inquiry obliges me to call the

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Chapter II.—The Christian Has Sure and Simple Knowledge Concerning the Subject Before Us. Of course we shall not deny that philosophers have sometimes thought the same things as ourselves. The testim

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Chapter LIII.—The Entire Soul Being Indivisible Remains to the Last Act of Vitality; Never Partially or Fractionally Withdrawn from the Body. But where at last will the soul have to lodge, when it is

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