Introduction to the Philosophy of Saint Augustine (continued)
the body, is to see with a vision surpassing all other visions. 'There are various ways of seeing, and with God's help I shall try to explain them and show how they differ. When we read this one commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," we experience three kinds of vision: one through the eyes, by which we see the letters; a second through the spirit, by which we think of our neighbor even when he is absent; and a third through an intuition of the mind, by which we see and understand love itself. Of these three kinds of vision the first is clear to everyone: through it we see heaven and earth and in them everything that meets the eye. The second, by which we think of corporeal things that are absent, is not difficult to explain; for we think of heaven and earth and the visible things in them even when we are in the dark. In this case we see nothing with the eyes of the body but in the soul behold corporeal images: whether true images, representing the bodies that we have seen and still hold in memory, or fictitious images, fashioned by the power of thought. My manner of thinking about Carthage, which I know, is different from my manner of thinking about Alexandria, which I do not know. The third kind of vision, by which we see and understand love, embraces those objects which have no images at once resembling them, yet differing from them. A man, a tree, the sun, or any other bodies in heaven or on earth are seen in their own proper form when present and are thought of when absent, in images impressed upon the soul. There are two ways of seeing them: one through the bodily senses, the other through the spirit, in which images are contained. But in the case of love, is it seen in one manner, when present, in the form in which it exists, and in another manner, when absent, in an image resembling it? Certainly not. But in proportion to the clarity of our intellectual vision, love itself is seen by one more clearly, by another less so. If, however, we think of some corporeal image, it is not love that we behold.
7. These are the three kinds of visions about which we had something to say in the preceding books as occasion arose, though we did not there specify their number. Now that we have briefly explained them, since the question under consideration demands a somewhat fuller discussion of them, we must give them definite and appropriate names, in order to avoid the encumbrance of constant circumlocution. Hence let us call the first kind of vision corporeal, because it is perceived through the body and presented to the senses of the body. The second will be spiritual, for whatever is not a body, and yet is something, is rightly called spirit; and certainly the image of an absent body, though it resembles a body, is not itself a body any more than is the act of vision by which it is perceived. The third kind will be intellectual, from the word intellect, since mentale (mental) from mens (mind) , because it is just a newly coined word, is too ridiculous for us to employ.
. .. Accordingly it is sufficient to know that a thing is called corporeal either in the proper sense, when it refers to bodies, or in a metaphorical sense, as in the statement: "For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Now the Godhead is not a body, but because the Apostle calls the religious observances of the Old Testament shadows of what is to come (using the analogy of shadows in the physical world), he says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily; for in him was fulfilled all that was prefigured by those shadows, and thus in a certain sense he is the embodiment of the shadows; that is, he is the truth of those figures and symbols. The figures therefore are called shadows in a metaphorical rather than proper sense of the word; and similarly, in saying that the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, the Apostle is using a metaphor.
The word spiritual is used in different ways. Even our body, in the state in which: it will be in the resurrection of the saints, is called spiritual by the Apostle when he says: "What is sown a natural body shall rise a spiritual body," meaning that it will be subject to the spirit in a wonderful way and possess every facility and incorruption, and without any need of bodily nourishment will be vivified by the spirit alone, but not that it will have an incorporeal substance. Moreover, the body as we have it in this life does not have the essence of a soul, and it cannot be identified with the soul (anima) on the ground that is is a living thing (animale). Furthermore the air, or a wind (which is the motion of the air) is called spirit, as in the following words: "Fire, hail, snow, ice, and the spirit of the storm." The soul of man or beast also is called a spirit, as in the following passage: "And who knoweth if the spirit of the children of man ascend upward, and the spirit of the beast descend downward into the earth?" The word spirit is also used to designate the rational mind itself, in which there is so to speak an eye of the soul to which the image and knowledge of God pertains. Hence the Apostle urged: "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which has been created according to God"; and elsewhere he speaks of the interior man,.. . "which is being renewed unto the knowledge of God according to the image of his Creator." So too, after he had said: "Therefore I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin," he returned to