The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK TEN t31
CHAPTER 26
Tertullian's views on the growth of the soul with the growth of the body.
44. Tertullian was unwilling to say that the substance of the soul grows with the body. He feared to say this "lest its substance be said to decrease also and so be thought capable of annihilation."!09 However, since he imagined the soul to be extended in space throughout the body, he did not fix a limit to its increase, and he held that from a small seed it became equal in size to the body. "But the power of the soul that contains the natural endowment implanted in it is gradually developed along with the body without any change in the limit of the substance which it received when breathed into the man at the beginning, **°
We probably would not understand this had Tertullian not made his meaning clear by a comparison.!!! This is what he says: Take a certain quantity of gold or silver, a rough mass as yet. It is in a compressed condition, and at the moment it is smaller than it will be, but within the limits of the mass there is nothing but gold or silver. Afterwards, when it is beaten out into a sheet, it becomes larger than it was before through the flattening out of the original mass, not by any increment to it, for it is stretched out but not increased. And yet there is also an increase when it is extended. For it can be increased in its dimensions, though not in its substance. Then the sheen of the gold or silver, which was there in the mass, is now brought out. It was obscure in the original state, but it was not entirely lacking. Then different shapes are given to the metal according to its malleability as the artisan shapes it, adding nothing to the mass except its form. Thus the increase in the soul is to be thought of not as adding to its bulk but as calling forth its potentialities. !!2