have, as it were, three little bellies" (three ventricles).
334 The Literal Meaning of Genesis what a thing is before knowing what to do with it so sensation comes before movement. The soul therefore, being something non-bodily, first activates the kind of body which is nearest to being non-bodily, like fire (or rather light) and air; and then through these the other coarser elements of the body, like moisture and earth, which constitute the solid mass of the flesh, and which are more subject to being acted on than equipped to act.
16, 22. So then it seems to me that all that was meant where it said: the man was made into a live soul (Gn 2:7), is that he began to have sensation in the body, which is in fact the surest indication of flesh being animated and alive, because even bushes are moved not only by some external force acting on them, as when they are being shaken by winds, but also by that inner motion which drives what ever belongs to the growth and beauty of a tree, by which sap is drawn into the root, and there turned into all that constitutes the nature of the herb or tree. None of this happens, after all, without internal movement. But this movement is not deliberate, like the one which couples the control of the body to sensation, as in every kind of animal which scripture calls "live soul."16 Unless we too, of course, had that other kind of motion within us, our bodies would neither grow nor produce nails and hair. But if that were the only sort of movement in us, without sensation and the power of deliberate movement, the man would not have been said to have been made into a live soul.
17, 23. Accordingly, since the front part of the brain, from which all the senses are distributed, is situated at the forehead, and it is in the face that are to be found the instruments, so to say, of sensation, except for the sense of touch, which is spread through the whole body, this too, however, is shown to have its source in the front part of the brain, from which connections are led back through the crown and the neck to the marrow of the spine, of which we were speaking a moment or two ago; from there the face too of course has its sense of touch, like the whole body—apart from the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting which are located in the face alone. That in my opinion is why it is written that God blew into the man 'sface the puffof life, when he was made into a live soul (Gn 2:7). The front part naturally and rightly takes precedence over the back part, both because it leads while the other follows, and also because from it comes sensation while from the other comes movement—thus deliberation preceding action.
18, 24. And since bodily movement, which follows upon sensation, always involves intervals of time, and since we cannot perform deliberate movements over intervals of time without the aid of memory, that is why the brain is shown to have three ventricles;17 one in front, at the face, from which all sensation is
16. See Gn 1:20-24. 17. The Latin ventriculum means literally "little belly"; so he actually says "the brain is shown to have, as it were, three little bellies" (three ventricles).
Book VII 335 controlled; a second behind at the neck, from which all movement comes; the third between the two, in which they demonstrate that memory is active; other wise, since movement follows upon sensation, you may fail to link to your perceptions what has to be done, if you have forgotten what you have done on previous occasions.
These medical men say there are sure and certain indications to prove all this, as when these parts, affected by some disease or defect, have each made clear enough what they are for by failure in the functions of sense perception, or of movement of limbs, or of remembering how to move the body, and when the appropriate cure has been applied to them after examination has established what will be most effective for putting right what was wrong.18 But the soul is acting in these parts as in, or on, its instruments; it is not itself any of these, but it is quickening, animating and controlling them all, and through them looking after the interests of the body and of this life, in which "the man was made into a live soul."
Conclusion to thefindings ofmedical science; that the soul is not any kind ofbody
19, 25. While therefore we are inquiring where it comes from itself, that is from what material, so to say, God made this puff which is called the soul, we ought not to think ofany kind ofbody . Just as God, after all, surpasses every kind of creature, so the soul by the very worth of its nature surpasses every bodily creature. Nonetheless it administers the body through light and air, as being the kinds of body with the closest resemblance to spirit; in the world at large too, after all, they are the most excellent of the elements, better suited to acting than moisture and earth, whose mass makes them more liable to be acted upon. So then, bodily light conveys some message; but that to which it conveys the message is not what the light is; and that to which it conveys the message is the soul, not identical with the messenger.
And when the soul feels and is vexed by the body's afflictions, it is offended at the activity with which it governs and cares for the body being thwarted
1 8. 1n this last part of the sentence, from "and when the appropriate cure," 1 am paraphrasing, 1 trust correctly, what seems to me to be a sentence of totally uncoordinated syntax. 1t runs: . . . eisque adhibita curatio cui rei reparandae profecerit exploratum est. This is the reading both of the Maurist and the CSEL text, and there is no help in the apparatus criticus. The Latin of my translation would be. . . . eisque adhibita curatio postquam quid cuique rei reparandae profecerit exploratum est. 1 am suggesting that this must have been roughly what Augustine intended to dictate, but that being distracted by something, he dictated what the actual text has; or else that he did dictate something like what 1 have translated, but too quickly for his stenographers to keep up with him, so that they produced the text, surely defective, which we have. But if 1 could be shown how the text we have is in fact syntactically coherent, 1 would be delighted.
336 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis through the disturbance of the body's constitution—and this offense is called pain. And the air which is diffused through the nerves obeys the will to move the limbs, but is not itself the will. And that middle part of the brain passes on the message of the movement of the limbs to be held by the memory, but is not itself the memory.
Finally, when these services, so to call them, fail totally through some major defect or disorder, with the messengers of sensation and the ministers of move ment giving up altogether, the soul itself takes its departure, as having no reason why it should linger. lf however they do not fail as totally as usually happens in death, the soul's intentions are upset, as of one struggling to restore what is falling to bits and lacking the strength to do so; and from the area in which it is being upset it knows which section of its services is involved, so that if at all possible it may come to the rescue with some remedy.
Further evidence that the soul is quite differentfrom any of its bodily agents
20, 26. For indeed that the soul is one thing, another these its bodily services, or instruments, or tools (or whatever else they may more suitably be called) becomes crystal clear from this further evidence; it is frequently so utterly wrapped up in its thoughts that its attention is completely withdrawn from every thing else, and it is unaware of the many things there before its wide open and perfectly healthy eyes; and if the person is even more deeply absorbed in his thoughts, while walking along he may suddenly stop—withdrawing, you see, the well's commanding nod from the movement service by which the feet were being set in motion. If his concentration, however, is not quite intense enough to stop him in his tracks, but is still such that it is not free to nudge that middle part of the brain which records the body's movements, he sometimes forgets both where he is coming from and where he is going, and without noticing it passes the homestead he was making for—nothing wrong with the nature of his body, but his soul has been called away to some other matter.
So we have then these bodily particles of the bodily heaven, particles that is of light and air, which are the first to be at the beck and call of the animating soul, in that they are closer to its incorporeal nature than are moisture and earth, so that the whole mass of the body is administered through their immediate instrumen tality. But whether God took them from the surrounding and over-arching atmo sphere and mixed them in orjoined them to the body of the living man or whether like flesh he made them too from mud, is a question ofno relevance to the matter in hand. lt is quite credible that every kind of body can be changed into every other kind of body; but to suppose that any kind ofbody can be changed into soul is ridiculous.