like that? But they are ideas to be feared, not to be laughed at. Would he ever
BookX 427 increased—even if it is also increased while it is being stretched out; for increasing it by working it is permissible, while doing so by adding to it as it stands is not.48 At that point too the actual brilliance of the gold or silver is heightened, which was indeed there before in the mass, but darker—not totally lacking though. At that point too it acquires various other qualities, depending on the skill with the material which the goldsmith has who is fashioning it, and who brings nothing more to the model than the engraved design. Accordingly the soul' s increments too are not to be reckoned as substantive but as elicited."49
45. Who would believe that this man could have been so eloquent with ideas like that? But they are ideas to be feared, not to be laughed at. Would he ever have been driven to this, after all, ifhe had been able to envisage anything that is both real, and not a body? What, though, could be more absurd than to think that a mass of any kind of metal can expand in one direction while it is being hammered, unless it contracts in another, or that its breadth can increase unless its thickness diminishes? Or that there is any material body which grows all round while keeping its natural quantity, unless its density is thinned out?
How therefore will the soul from that droplet of seed fill the whole extent of the body it animates, if it too is a body the substance ofwhich grows without any addition to it? How, l ask you, will it fill the flesh which it animates, unless it becomes thinner and thinner as the body it has animated grows stouter and stouter? He was afraid, remember, that if it could grow it would also fade away altogether by diminishing—and he was not afraid of its fading away by thinning out when it grew!
But why should l dwell on the point any longer when on the one hand my discourse is verging on that more copious style which the necessity ofbringing it to a conclusion demands, and on the other it is already well enough known what my opinions are, both what I hold as certain and what l am still doubtful about and why? Accordingly this book too must now be concluded, so that we may go on to take a look at what comes next.50
48. Tertullian's Latin is much more idiosyncratic than Augustine's, and 1 suspect that in this comparison with gold or silver he is using some technical goldsmith's language. 1n particular at the end of this passage he contrasts increasing the mass of metal habiiu, which is permissible, with doing so statu, which is not. 1 havejust had to guess what that means; the dictionaries give me no clue. The beginning of the passage is also very obscure; the Latin for what 1 have translated as "it is heaped together in a pile" being collectus habitus est Mi. 1 think the picture he has in mind is of a certain weight of precious metal given to a goldsmith for working into gold leaf, and consisting of perhaps some gold dust, some coins, and other such odds and ends that the owners do not want. Possibly he also had in mind Exodus 32, Aaron collecting all the gold rings from the people to make them the golden calf. Another word 1 have difficulty with in the passage is modulus; 1 eventually decided that "model" was the best rendering of it. 49. On the Soul 37. 50. At what comes next in Genesis, which is the story of the fall.