being the same, "like themselves," all through life.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 149 more beautiful that body is.71 Coming now to souls, not only is their friendship with each other cemented by their having similar habits and morals, but also in each individual soul it is similar actions and virtues, without which there can be no constancy,72 that indicate a happy or blessed life.
Now we can say that all these things are similar or like, but not that they are likeness or similarity itself. Therefore, if the universe consists of things that are like one another among themselves, in order that each may be whatever it is, and all of them together may complete the universe, which God both established and governs, it is assuredly through the over-arching and unchangeable and undefilable likeness of the one who created all things, that they were made such as to be beautiful with their mutually similar parts—not all of them, however, such as to be made to the likeness itself, but only those of a rational nature. Thus all things through the likeness, but not all to the likeness.
The divine likeness located in the human reason or mind
60. And so the rational nature was made both through the likeness and to it; there is no other nature, you see, placed between them, seeing that the human mind (and this is something it fails to perceive except when it is completely puri fied and blessed73) attaches itself to nothing but truth itself, which is also called the likeness and the image of the Father and his wisdom. We are quite right, therefore, to take the words. Let us make man to our image and likeness as refer ring to this, the innermost and principal element in humanity, that is, as referring to the mind. It is from this element, after all, which holds the leading place in human nature, which separates it from that of the brute beasts, that the worth of the whole human being is to be reckoned. The other things in us, though beau tiful in their kind, are still common to us and animals, and therefore in us are to be priced cheaply.
Unless perhaps the fact that the human body is constructed to stand erect, for looking up at the sky avails to support the belief that the body itself was also made to the likeness of God, so thatjust as that likeness is not turned away from the Father, so the human body is not turned away from the sky as are the bodies of other animals, which are laid out prone on their bellies. But all the same this comparison is not to be taken as applying in every respect. Our bodies, after all, are very different from the sky, whereas in that likeness, which is the Son, there cannot be anything unlike the one he is like. Any other things that are like each
7 1 . Not a widely accepted principle of aesthetics, 1 suspect. 72. By similar actions and virtues he evidently means consistency in behavior and virtues, their being the same, "like themselves," all through life. 73. 1n other words, when it is enjoying the beatific vision. See his work, The Trinity V111, 2 for a fuller treatment, and qualification, of this idea that the mind knows things by attaching itself to the truth which is God.