Tertullian — A Treatise on the Soul 24

In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of divine quality as to put it on a par with God . He makes it unborn , which single attribute I might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then adds that the soul is immortal , incorruptible, incorporeal — since he believed God to be the same — invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to the soul , if he wanted to call it God?

We, however, who allow no appendage to God (in the sense of equality), by this very fact reckon the soul as very far below God: for we suppose it to be born, and hereby to possess something of a diluted divinity and an attenuated felicity, as the breath (of God), though not His spirit; and although immortal , as this is an attribute of divinity, yet for all that passible, since this is an incident of a born condition, and consequently from the first capable of deviation from perfection and right, and by consequence susceptible of a failure in memory. This point I have discussed sufficiently with Hermogenes.

But it may be further observed, that if the soul is to merit being accounted a god, by reason of all its qualities being equal to the attributes of God , it must then be subject to no passion, and therefore to no loss of memory; for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to that of which you predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato himself deems the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties, and which Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. Now we need not raise the doubt whether so divine a faculty as the soul was capable of losing memory: the question rather is, whether it is able to recover afresh that which it has lost. I could not decide whether that, which ought to have lost memory, if it once incurred the loss, would be powerful enough to recollect itself.

Both alternatives, indeed, will agree very well with my soul , but not with Plato's . In the second place, my objection to him will stand thus: ( Plato ,) do you endow the soul with a natural competency for understanding those well-known ideas of yours? Certainly I do, will be your answer. Well, now, no one will concede to you that the knowledge , (which you say is) the gift of nature, of the natural sciences can fail.