vacans. Augustine's whole drift is still clearly interrogative here, and he is still asking about
Book VII 339
Difficulties about supposing that a causalformula of the soul was inscribed in the original six days ofcreation
22, 32. But now, if it was quite simply nothing, the question has to be faced how we can understand its causal formula being said to have been there in the first works of God during the six days, when God made man to his image, which can only be rightly understood with reference to the soul. It is to be feared that when we say that God did not create the actual natures or substances which were going to exist in the future while he was creating all things simultaneously, but some sort of causal formulae of those future realities, we may be thought to be saying something quite meaningless. What, after all, are these causal formulae to which God could be said to have made the man to his image, when he had not yet molded his body from mud, not yet made him a soul by puffing? And even if there was some hidden formula of the human body, to which it could be formed in the future, at least there was also some actual material from which it could be formed, namely earth, in which that formula could be latent as in a seed. But as for making the soul, that is, for making the puff which would be the man's soul, what causal formula could then have been set up when God said, Let us make the man to our image and likeness (Gn 1 :26)—which can only be rightly understood with reference to the soul—ifthere was no actual nature there in which to set it?
33. lf this formula, you see, was in God, not in creation, then it had not yet been set up; so how then could it be said, God made the man to the image of God (Gn 1 :27)? But if it was already in creation, that is, in the things which God made simultaneously, in what sort of creature was it? ln a spiritual or a corporeal one? If in a spiritual one, was it activating anything in the bodily mass of the universe, whether in the heavens or on earth? Or was this formula just dormant in a spiri tual creature23 before the man was set up in his proper nature, just as in human beings already leading a human life the generative formula is present in a latent and dormant way, only functioning through copulation and conception? Or was that spiritual creature, in which this formula was latent, also not doing any of its proper work? Then what had it been created for? Was it just to contain the formula of the human soul to come, or of souls to come in the future, as if they could not exist by themselves but only in some creature already living its proper life, as the generative formula can only be found in some definite nature or other, already in complete existence?
So then some kind of spiritual creature has been put in place as a parent of the soul, to have in itself the formula of the future soul, which does not actually emerge from it except when God makes it to be breathed into the man. From a
23. Reading with the Maurists an in ea erat haec vacans instead of the CSEL text' s et in ea erat hoc vacans. Augustine's whole drift is still clearly interrogative here, and he is still asking about haec ratio, this formula.