human person, the body is the person's dwelling, its senses the windows through which the
486 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis element causes more acute agitation, the more acutely it is affected itself. Well, there is plenty of evidence to show that the soul in its turn is sometimes acted on by the body, sometimes by the spirit, to rouse it to seeing things that it is not being informed about by the body's senses but by some incorporeal reality, and to wake it up to noticing them in such a way that it cannot make out whether they are actual bodies or the likenesses of bodies.
The body acts on it to this effect either by its natural interaction, as in the case ofdreams—it is our bodies, after all, that need sleep; or by disturbing the senses with some kind of ill health, as when delirious patients simultaneously see actual bodies and visions like bodies as if they were there in front of their very eyes; or when the senses are totally blocked off, as when people have been seriously injured, and as their condition grows worse they are often absent from the body for a long time,35 and then on being restored to their fellows they say they have seen many things.
The spirit36 is the agent, on the other hand, when souls are snatched away into a state of alienation while the body is in good health and uninjured, whether this happens to them in such a way that they both see bodies with the senses of the body and also some similar things in the spirit which they cannot distinguish from bodies, or whether they are totally removed from the senses of the flesh, and while perceiving through them nothing whatsoever are dwelling by that spiritual vision among the likenesses of bodies. But when it is an evil spirit that snatches souls away like this, it makes them into demoniacs or fanatical enthusi asts or false prophets, while when a good spirit does so, it makes them faithful speakers of mysteries or true prophets if their understanding is also enlightened, or ensures that they see and make public what it was opportune for them to be shown at that time.
Strict limits to the influence of the body
20, 42. But when the cause of such visions being observed comes from the body, it is not the body that displays them; it does not, after all have the power to form anything spiritual. But sometimes the route of the brain's attention, which governs the mode of sense perception, is either stilled or disturbed, or even blocked off. Thus the soul, which cannot of its own accord cease from func tioning in this way, finds itself not allowed by the body (or not fully and freely allowed) to sense bodily realities or direct the force of its attention to bodily things. So it throws up the likenesses of bodily things in its spirit or else gazes at
35. Just to remind ourselves that for Augustine, in the Platonic tradition of thought, the soul is the human person, the body is the person's dwelling, its senses the windows through which the person looks out onto the bodily world. 36. That part or factor of the soul responsible for what he has been calling spiritual vision, not to be confused of course with the good and evil spirits he is shortly going to mention.