2. See Book V11.6,9—9,13.
400 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis
On the other hand there was a great amount of weighty evidence, which was there considered and discussed, that would not allow us to hold that on the same sixth day the man was also formed from mud and the woman from his side. No, we came to the conclusion that this was done after those primary works of God, in which he created all things simultaneously together. And so we asked ourselves what we should believe about the man's soul; and after discussing all the possibilities presented in the debate, we decided it would be more credible and tolerable to say that the man's soul was made among those works, while it was just the formula or idea of his body that was made, or so to say seeded, in the corporeal world. This was to get out of having to say against the words of scrip ture, either that the whole was made on the sixth day, the man from mud, that is, and the woman from his side; or else that in those works of the six days man was not made in any way at all; or else that it was only the human body's causal formula that was made then, not any such formula of the soul, though it was primarily with reference to the soul that man was made to God's image.
Or else again we would have to say something that would be very hard to tolerate, even if it did not go openly against the words of scripture; that is that the formula of the human soul was made in some spiritual material2 which had been created for this sole purpose, though the creation of such a thing is not mentioned among the works of God; or alternatively that the formula of the soul was made in one of the creatures that is mentioned among those works, in the same sort of way as the formula of children yet to be born has been made in human beings who already exist, but is only latent in them, and hence we would have to think of the soul as the daughter either of angels or even more unacceptably of some bodily material element.
A choice to be made between three possibilities: a) that theformula of the soul was made in some primary creature; b) that only thefirst man 's soul was made among those primary works, andfrom it all other human souls derive; c) that new souls are made subsequently, without anyformula of them being made in the works ofthefirst six days
3. 4. But now then, if the reason for the assertion that the woman did not receive her soul from the man but like him had it made for her by God is that God makes individual souls for all individuals, it follows that the woman's soul was not made among those primary works; or else if a general formula for all souls had been made then, like the formula for breeding children inherent in human beings, we find ourselves back with that hard stumbling block of having to say that human souls are the daughters of angels, or—what is totally abhorrent—of the material heaven or even of one of the lower elements.
2. See Book V11.6,9—9,13.