The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK SEVEN 21
CHAPTER 21
The soul is incorporeal.
27. Therefore, no attention should be paid to the opinion of those who have said that the soul is from a fifth corporeal element, not earth or water or air or fire (whether earthly fire familiar to us, which is always in motion, or heavenly fire, which is pure and bright), but some other kind of being, without any established name, which is a body.°° If those who follow this opinion agree with us on the definition of a body, namely, any substance occupying space with its length, breadth, and height,>! the soul is not that and must not be thought to be made of that. For whatever is of that nature, to put the matter briefly, can be divided or circumscribed by lines in any of its parts. But if the soul were capable of this, it could not know of lines that cannot be cut lengthwise, though it realizes full well that such lines cannot be found in the world of bodies.>?
28. The soul does not think of itself in this manner, for it cannot be ignorant of itself even when it is seeking to know itself. For when it seeks itself, it knows that it seeks itself, a fact it would not know unless it knew itself. For the source in which it seeks itself is itself. When, therefore, it knows itself as seeking, it certainly knows itself. Now, in its entire being it knows all that it knows; and therefore, when it knows itself as seeking, in its entire being it knows itself; and therefore it knows itself entirely. For it is not something else but itself that it knows in its entire being.
Why, then, is it still seeking itself if it knows itself as seeking? For if it did not know itself, it could not know itself as seeking itself. But this applies to the present. What it seeks to know about itself is what it was formerly or what it is going to be. Therefore, it should now cease suspecting that it is a body, because if it were, it would know itself as such, as it knows itself better than it knows heaven and earth, which it knows through the eyes of the body.
29. I pass over that power which the soul obviously possesses in common with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air