19 Preface to the Book on the Soul (1553) CR VII, 1125–8
19 Preface to the Book on the Soul (1553)
CR VII, 1125–8
Greetings from Philip Melanchthon to the most illustrious Hieronymus Baumgartnerus, son of Hieronymus Baumgartnerus who excels by his wisdom and virtue1
The divine voice has prophesied both that in this languid and deranged dotage of the world there would be greater commotions of humankind than there had been before, and that nevertheless the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified for us and resurrected, would gather to Himself the eternal Church even among the ruins of empires. In this hope He wants us to cherish the study of doctrine, and He promised a home for the Church. Strengthened by this divine prophecy, let us prepare our minds to bear wisely the most saddening lacerations of realms and the frequent panic commotions, and let us hope nevertheless that the Church will not perish. Let us cherish the study of doctrine, encouraged by this consolation, and let us serve public society, each in his place. This consideration keeps old men in government so that they do not, in such violent storms, throw away the oars, so to speak. It must also rouse the younger to study more eagerly the doctrine necessary for the Church and for public life, because the divine word promises us that these labours will not be without effect. Therefore Paul says: ‘in the Lord your labour is not in vain’ [1 Corinthians 15:58]. That is, God will attend to preserving the Church and some abodes for you, and that your labours in teaching, ruling and studying be prosperous and beneficial for yourselves and for others. You can often hear that your father is strengthened by these divine admonitions in the most difficult labours, and it is proper for you, too, to consider them in order to rouse yourself for studying the discipline necessary for life.
However, I have again compiled the teaching on the distribution of the powers of the soul which needs to exist in the Church. When I published it earlier I sent it to your father, who had no need of these books, but I wanted there to be a testimony of his continuous good will towards me, as well as of my love for him. Now I convey this gift to you because it adds to these initial causes, since your age is already appropriate for learning the first principles of the discipline that I have described here. By sending you
1 The son of Hieronymus Baumgartner, the addressee of the previous oration. See also note I of oration 9, p. 84.
these gifts I wanted to encourage you to proceed to the first principles of philosophy, and I strive, as much as I can, to show you and others the way in this part of philosophy.
I am certainly not ignorant of the fact that many mock this entire kind of teaching of natural philosophy. They say that the titles promise great wisdom about God, the world, the soul and the causes of changes in all bodies, but that then, once one has looked into the books, one finds only childish first principles. I acknowledge by all means that this knowledge is very thin and within narrow limits, and that it shows only a shadow of divine wisdom from afar. However, we who assent to the divine disclosures, and believe that there is an eternal life to follow after this mortal life, should reflect that we have two places of learning, and that they are made in that order.2And there is another eternal one, where God will be all for all, and will impart His wisdom and justice to us, where we shall see Him in person, and in the Son, the Word (logōi), we shall behold not only the ideas and causes of the workings of the world, but also the wonderful joining of divine and human nature, and the plan for the restoration of mankind. There we shall behold the Maker and contemplate the causes of things, and we shall have complete insight into nature. Thus, and not in any other way, the path is open to that companionship with God if first, in this mortal life, we begin with the first principles of that knowledge which He has handed on to us – and how much in it has He set before us that is incomprehensible, which He nevertheless wants us to consider in our foolishness? What wisdom of angels or men perceives of what kind the covenant is, so to speak, and the joining of divine and human nature in the Mediator? And nevertheless very frequently the divine voice addresses us3 on this great matter. Indeed, in our greatest suffering it wills us to be cheered particularly by the contemplation of that covenant. This entire human nature would have perished utterly if the Son of God had not joined to Himself a fleshy mass of our kind, in which He, so to speak, carries us wretches resting on His shoulders and saves us. Therefore you are not destroyed, therefore all of mankind is not annihilated, because the Son of God joined this physical mass to Himself. Devout minds know that this is the true and greatest consolation, and they ponder the many causes of that wonderful covenant, although they do not
2 According to the editors of the CR, there seems to be a lacuna here, since the sentences do not make clear sense here. Melanchthon seems to mean that there are two places of learning; one, the universities on earth, where the elements of knowledge are taught, albeit imperfectly; the other, in heaven, where complete insight into the workings of nature is possible.
3 Reading nos for nobis.
understand all the causes of the divine plan, nor the way in which this wonderful joining is done.
Therefore we do not have insight into the nature of the soul, nor do we completely understand, in this life, its wonderful actions, the shaping of images in thinking, its reasonings, memory, recollections, choices, or the impulses of the heart that result from thoughts. Nevertheless, we need to lay the foundations of this knowledge; and the foundations are necessary for understanding the doctrine of the Church and for the guidance of life, as we frequently demonstrate later in the entire book. Much is learnt that is necessary for life, even though it is not possible to investigate the entire art that God employed in the construction. There will be another university in the heavenly companionship, where this wisdom should be learnt for all eternity. Now, however, the beginning is necessary. There is nothing in this entire working of the world in which so many manifest proofs of God and such evident admonishments are set before us as in the soul of man. In it the numbers, knowledge of order, reasoning and an eternal and fixed distinction between what is proper and what is vile demonstrate that this nature of things has not flown together by chance from Democritus’ atoms, but that it was made by an eternal constructing mind. Therefore the soul of man teaches that God is the Maker of things, and that there is an intelligent being. And it teaches us what it should be like, that is, what fixed law there is in us; and it proves that God is just and an avenger, because He has established the order in us which cannot be destroyed, so that crimes are followed by cruel and horrendous torments of the heart. Such manifold wisdom shines in the contemplation of the soul, and it becomes even more manifest when we carefully behold the order and actions of its powers. But the benefits are mentioned frequently in the book, although no one has sufficient eloquence to set forth the greatness of the benefits provided by this knowledge of the soul, which I do not say is a perfect knowledge of the soul, but a beginning which beholds it from afar.
I recite the teaching customary in the universities, and collate it with the beliefs of the Church. I do not produce paradoxes or monstrous conjectures, nor am I so shaken and frightened by the trembling, however terrible, of the Baltic coast4 as to consider it vile to survey what are the beliefs received from those who were more rational, and to contemplate the perversity of nature in those who – out of ambition or from malice – corrupt what has been handed down correctly, and invent new and monstrous beliefs. And I
4 It seems that there occurred an earthquake on the Baltic coast around 1550.
have modestly followed the consensus of the more reasonable. Indeed, I strive to follow it in such a way that I should also like worthy and learned men everywhere to be censors and correctors of all my works – in particular your father and Joachim Camerarius. Many know what confusion of beliefs there was thirty years ago, when first the pile of monks,5 if I may say so, was cleared away. I declare, with an excellent conscience, that I wanted to search for simple and correct beliefs in such a variety; nevertheless it is not surprising that I or others have slipped somewhere in so much darkness, particularly since debates about many and the greatest and most weighty matters are set in motion at the same time – as when, in a fire in some town, several buildings catch fire at the same time in different places. And it is very true what the wise poet said: ‘No man is wise in relation to all things’ (Oudeis anthrōpōn estin hapanta sophos). However, God wants there to be judgements in the Church; therefore I never shunned the judgements of our Churches, and I should not want to live like Timon,6 separated from the learned and those who fear God. Therefore I have always declared that I would willingly listen to and follow the opinions of the learned, and would that I could often discuss doctrine with many of them.
I remember someone who said that he wanted to be a Stoic, and he only proclaimed this about himself with contentiousness (philoneikiai) in order to show that he professed a philosophy opposite to mine, and therefore he spread about in the court, very pleased with himself, some of his sayings which were not only paradoxical but also absurd. Although he was fatuous and both a knave and a fool (kai mōrokakos) by nature, he nevertheless kindled a fairly tempestuous loud applause (krotothorybon), as the Greeks say. But I have learnt often enough that the old saying is true which is quoted from Aeschylus: ‘Folly is most often the sister of knavery’ [Sophocles, fr. 925]. I did not reckon that, because of censors of that kind, I needed to desert these labours, since I believed that they were useful for those studying the proper arts.
To speak of this little book, I believe that the form of this work is properly designed for the use of universities, and I do not doubt that most things are handed on correctly. However, I have woven in some descriptions of the principal parts of the human body. For certainly the powers of the soul
5 ‘Lerna monachorum’ may well be a play on the phrase ‘Lerna malorum’ (an accumulation of ills) where the lake Lerna (where the Hydra lived) is taken as a place where everybody pitched their refuse: see Erasmus, Adages, I.iii.27.
6 Timon of Athens (5th century BC), a misanthropic figure. See for instance, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, IV.8.9.
cannot be discerned unless their locations or machines in the body of man are shown in some way. For what silliness is it when someone speaks of local motion and cannot distinguish between nerves on the one hand and veins and arteries on the other? Furthermore, since throughout life, for protecting one's health and for judging about many actions in the body and in morals, it is useful to know the construction of the human body in some way, other writers before me have also judged that these foundations have to be laid straightaway with the very young, particularly in these elements of natural philosophy. Therefore, although complete anatomical knowledge cannot be contained in these little books, and the young must not be burdened suddenly with the descriptions of the smallest parts, it is nevertheless very useful for all men to know the principal, and larger, parts. I have followed the best writers, namely Galen, Vesalius and Leonhard Fuchs, and occasionally I have added friends, namely Jakob Milich and Peucer, my son-in-law.7 But since I was not intent upon only this one work with nothing else on my mind, and since our travels often interrupted the design which I preferred to weave, diligence could be found lacking in some places. Therefore I beseech those who will expound these first principles to others to emend the errors frankly, particularly since the pictures by Vesalius are already available, as well as his excellent descriptions, of which Paul Eber8 says: ‘Just as by night the moon habitually defeats the other stars, when it finishes its course with its brother's light, thus Vesalius alone strides ahead of the other books: bodies teaching by what art they are made.’
Although, Hieronymus, I leave it to your father's judgement whether he wants to set this my book or others before you, I nevertheless know that his judgement on the matter itself agrees with mine. He knows that what the wise historian Thucydides wrote is very true: ‘The strongest thing is to be educated in the most indispensable’ (kratiston einai en anankaiotatois paideuesthai) [Histories, 1.84.4], that is, that the most necessary things need to be studied. As in all of life the chief wisdom is to do the necessary, thus in studying, too, one needs first take care that what is necessary be learnt.
7 Galen's De usu partium and De administrandis anatomicis were the authoritative texts on anatomy in this period. Andreas Vesalius (1514–64) published in 1543 the De humani corporis fabrica. He was followed by Leonhard Fuchs (1501–66), Professor of Medicine at the University of Tübingen, who published the two-volume De humani corporis fabrica epitome (in which he praised Vesalius) in 1552. Note that Melanchthon frequently uses ‘humani corporis fabricationem’ to refer to the structure of the body. For Jakob Milich, see note 6, oration 18, p. 147. Kaspar Peucer (1525–1602) married Melanchthon's daughter Magdalena in 1550, and began his medical studies while teaching mathematics.
8 Paul Eber (1511–69) taught astronomy, mathematics, classics, natural philosophy and eventually theology at Wittenberg.
And your father declares truthfully that the knowledge of the doctrine that God has handed on to the Church by manifest testimonies is necessary for man, and he judges that these descriptions of the powers of the soul are a preparation for that. This knowledge also throws light on the laws by which the morals of men are to be ruled. For it shows how which parts can be curbed. Therefore in life and in the sciences these things are not secondary, but orientated towards the subject, and useful (parerga, alla kai pro ergou kai pro hodou) for understanding the doctrine of the Church and for the guidance of discipline and morals. Therefore, Hieronymus, learn from the judgement of your father, a wise and learned man, some such descriptions of the parts of man. Not only in these studies, but in other actions as well, give attention to your father's example. For just as in the mechanical arts no one becomes a master unless he constantly reflects upon the examples of his kind of art and attempt to imitate them, so, in shaping one's judgement on scholarship and in decisions on guiding one's life it is certainly of great use to choose certain and proven examples which you want to follow and represent. In fact God has set before you examples worthy of praise at home, your father and your uncle, whom you should chiefly strive to resemble. I pray to the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified for us and rose again, who truly is the protector of His Church, and said: ‘None will rob my sheep from my hands’: may He protect and guide you and your local Church. Farewell. Wittenberg, first of November of the year 1552.