On the Soul against the Philosophers

1God fills all things and is limited by no one. For the one who is not limited by place will certainly be in every place, according to the hymnody of David. If he were said to be outside some place, he would necessarily be limited by that very place of which he is deprived. Being wholly present in all things, then, he does not move from one place to another, since he fills all things.

The divine is not subject to fixed circumscriptions of laws and times.

But since they clearly know that they are caught by this, they change course and fabricate the water of forgetfulness, which they say each person drinks and thereby forgets the births of their former lives. That these things are mythical and far from philosophy, no one of sound mind seems to be ignorant. For what do we say, Pythagoreans and Platonists? Have you yourselves taken and drunk the water of forgetfulness?

2Or the opposite: did you flee and escape notice? If you were able to escape the water of forgetfulness, then clearly many others were too. But if you drew in the common air that belongs to all and drank the water of forgetfulness in gulps, how and from what source do you fabricate myths about souls? How do you know at all the kind of these streams? For if you did not experience their use, you are ignorant of the dispensing of the waters. But if you were within the experience of them, you destroyed the memory of their use by forgetfulness and spat out the knowledge. Yet you turned to these things with barbaric superstition and went astray, using Egyptians as guides. That souls are not unbegotten is shown more clearly by the age of infants just born.

3For if children at the very moment of birth had been attached to complete wisdom, it would perhaps be possible for some to feign folly. But if they are lacking in mind and reason and understanding, then souls have not been established as unbegotten in nature. We all know, then, that the soul has been stretched out together with the masses of the body—not only in the size or smallness of its limbs, but also in the other irrationalities of the disposition. As long as these infants are newly formed, these infants are at a loss for every thought everywhere and for counsel. But as they advance little by little and gradually, it takes on mind and wisdom and reason in addition.

4But if these powers belong to the soul itself, and it receives its better additions superabundantly, then surely the soul grows together with the body. Just as the body gradually develops its powers, so too the soul advances in mind. And those who never step toward what is better but remain foolish clearly have incomplete souls because some part has been damaged, just like those who have fallen ill with the disease of madness. Certainly the body of the first-formed human also lay dead after it was shaped—breathless, motionless, yet arranged to the highest degree in its limbs and joints, and fittingly adorned in form and beauty, since it was created by the Creator God himself as a first-model statue and impressed as the finest copy from the most divine image. But it was without sensation, without speech, and without breath. Then, when God breathed into its face in the manner of a craftsman, it immediately received movement. From that moment it walks and breathes and speaks; it rules, reasons, acts, administers. In this way, sleep is a condition common to body and soul.