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The City of God

Chapter 5.--That the Opinion of the Platonists Regarding the Nature of Body and Soul is Not So Censurable as that of the Manichaeans, But that Even It is Objectionable, Because It Ascribes the Origin of Vices to the Nature of The Flesh.

There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse the nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh is good; but to desert the Creator good, and live according to the created good, is not good, whether a man choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by the name soul alone. For he who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly both in his love of the soul and hatred of the flesh; for these his feelings arise from human fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not so foolish as, with the Manichaeans, to detest our present bodies as an evil nature; ¹ for they attribute all the elements of which this visible and tangible world is compacted, with all their qualities, to God their Creator. Nevertheless, from the death-infected members and earthly construction of the body they believe the soul is so affected, that there are thus originated in it the diseases of desires, and fears, and joy, and sorrow, under which four perturbations, as Cicero ² calls them, or passions, as most prefer to name them with the Greeks, is included the whole viciousness of human life. But if this be so, how is it that Aeneas in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in Hades that the souls should return to bodies, expresses surprise at this declaration, and exclaims:

"O father! and can thought conceive

That happy souls this realm would leave,

And seek the upper sky,

With sluggish clay to reunite?

This direful longing for the light,

Whence comes it, say, and why?" ³

This direful longing, then, does it still exist even in that boasted purity of the disembodied spirits, and does it still proceed from the death-infected members and earthly limbs? Does he not assert that, when they begin to long to return to the body, they have already been delivered from all these so-called pestilences of the body? From which we gather that, were this endlessly alternating purification and defilement of departing and returning souls as true as it is most certainly false, yet it could not be averred that all culpable and vicious motions of the soul originate in the earthly body; for, on their own showing, "this direful longing," to use the words of their noble exponent, is so extraneous to the body, that it moves the soul that is purged of all bodily taint, and is existing apart from any body whatever, and moves it, moreover, to be embodied again. So that even they themselves acknowledge that the soul is not only moved to desire, fear, joy, sorrow, by the flesh, but that it can also be agitated with these emotions at its own instance.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput V: Quod de corporis animaeque natura tolerabilior quidem Platonicorum quam Manichaeorum sit opinio, sed et ipsa reprobanda, quoniam uitiorum omnium causas naturae carnis adscribunt.

Non igitur opus est in peccatis uitiisque nostris ad creatoris iniuriam carnis accusare naturam, quae in genere atque ordine suo bona est; sed deserto creatore bono uiuere secundum creatum bonum non est bonum, siue quisque secundum carnem siue secundum animam siue secundum totum hominem, qui ex anima constat et carne - unde et nomine solius animae et nomine solius carnis significari potest - eligat uiuere. nam qui uelut summum bonum laudat animae naturam et tamquam malum naturam carnis accusat, profecto et animam carnaliter adpetit et carnem carnaliter fugit, quoniam id uanitate sentit humana, non ueritate diuina. non quidem Platonici sicut Manichaei desipiunt, ut tamquam mali naturam terrena corpora detestentur, cum omnia elementa, quibus iste mundus uisibilis contrectabilisque conpactus est, qualitatesque eorum deo artifici tribuant; uerumtamen ex terrenis artubus moribundis que membris sic adfici animas opinantur, ut hinc eis sint morbi cupiditatum et timorum et laetitiae siue tristitiae; quibus quattuor uel perturbationibus, ut Cicero appellat, uel passionibus, ut plerique uerbum e uerbo Graeco exprimunt, omnis humanorum morum uitiositas continetur. quod si ita est, quid est quod Aeneas apud Vergilium, cum audisset a patre apud inferos animas rursus ad corpora redituras, hanc opinionem miratur exclamans: o pater, anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandum est sublimes animas iterumque ad tarda reuerti corpora? quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido? numquidnam haec tam dira cupido ex terrenis artubus moribundis que membris adhuc inest animarum illi praedicatissimae puritati? nonne ab huiusmodi corporeis, ut dicit, pestibus omnibus eas adserit esse purgatas, cum rursus incipiunt in corpora uelle reuerti? unde colligitur, etiamsi ita se haberet, quod est omnino uanissimum, uicissim alternans incessabiliter euntium atque redeuntium animarum mundatio et inquinatio, non potuisse ueraciter dici omnes culpabiles atque uitiosos motus animarum eis ex terrenis corporibus inolescere, siquidem secundum ipsos illa, ut locutor nobilis ait, dira cupido usque adeo non est ex corpore, ut ab omni corporea peste purgatam et extra omne corpus animam constitutam ipsam esse conpellat in corpore. unde etiam illis fatentibus non ex carne tantum adficitur anima, ut cupiat metuat, laetetur aegrescat, uerum etiam ex se ipsa his potest motibus agitari.