quintessence was precisely the "fire" of which the celestial spheres and bodies are composed, a
Book VII 337
The soul not madefrom some fifth element, norfrom anything material at all
21, 27. Accordingly, we should pay no attention either to the idea some people have entertained, that there is a sort offifth bodily element from which souls may be made, which is neither earth nor water nor air nor fire, whether this more tempestuous kind on earth, or that pure and bright fire of heaven19 but heaven knows what different kind of thing, which lacks any familiar name, but is still some kind of body. If those who hold this opinion mean by "body" the same as we do, which is anything that has length, breadth and height so as to occupy some local space, then this is not soul nor may we suppose that soul is made from it. Whatever it is, after all, it can, to put the matter briefly, be divided or circum scribed in any of its parts by lines, whereas if the soul could thus be treated, in no way would it be able to know about lines which are not capable of being cut down the middle lengthwise, such as it nonetheless knows cannot be found in actual bodily form.20
28. Nor does the soul strike itself as being any such thing—since it is unable to be ignorant of itself—even when it is seeking to know itself. When it is seeking itself, after all, it knows that it is seeking itself, which it could not know if it did not know itself. Nor does it seek, or go looking for itself from anywhere else than from itself. So then since it knows itself looking for itself it obviously knows itself; and the whole of it knows everything it knows. And so since it knows itself looking, the whole of it knows itself; therefore it also knows the whole of itself; nor is it knowing anything else, but all of it knows itself. So why then does it still go on seeking itself, if it knows itself seeking? I mean, if it were ignorant of itself, it could not possibly know itself seeking itself.
But this is all in the present, while what it is seeking about itself is what it was before or what it is going to be. So let it stop now suspecting that it may be some sort ofbody, because if it were such it would know itselfto be such, seeing that it knows itselfmore surely than it knows heaven and earth, which it knows through the eyes of its body.21
19. But for Aristotle at least, with whom the idea seems to have originated, the fifth element or quintessence was precisely the "fire" of which the celestial spheres and bodies are composed, a distinct element from our familiar fire, because it manifestly has a distinct kind of natural motion. Just another little indication of how Aristotle was misinterpreted in this thoroughly neo-Platonic age of late antiquity. 20. Pure mathematics, a purely intellectual form of knowledge, further proof of the immateriality of the soul—that is, of the mind. 2 1 . A much more coherent and satisfactory account of what it means for the mind to seek to know itself is to be found in The Trinity X,3,5—xi,16. There he is commenting at length on the Delphic command, Know thyself, and says that it means, essentially, "Think about yourself." 1t is to be noted that in The Trinity, a work of much more mature and profound reflection, he identifies the self with the mind, mens, while here in The Literal Meaning of Genesis he identifies it with the soul, cituma.