Chapter 28.--Is the Soul Deformed by the Body's Imperfections?
Now, again, what means it that you say, "The soul acquires form from the body, and grows and extends with the increase of the body," without keeping in view what a monstrosity the soul of either a young man or an old man would become if his arm had been amputated when he was an infant? "The hand of the soul," you say, "contracts itself, so that it is not amputated with the hand of the body, and by condensation it shrinks into other parts of the body." At this rate the aforesaid arm of the soul will be kept, wherever it holds its ground, as short as it was at first when it received the form of the body, because it has lost the form by the growth of which it might itself have increased at an equal degree of expansion. Thus the soul of the young man or the old man who lost his hand in his infancy advances with two hands, indeed (because the one which shrank back escaped the amputation of the bodily limb), but one of these was the hand of an adult, young or old, according to the hypothesis, while the other was only an infant's hand, just as it was when the amputation happened. Such souls, believe me, are not made in the mould and form of the body, but they are fictitiously framed under the deformed stamp of error. It seems to me impossible for you to be rescued from this error, unless with God's help you fully and calmly examine the visions of those who dream, and from these convince yourself that some forms are not real bodies, but only the semblances of bodies. Now, although even those objects which we suppose to be like bodies are of the same class, [2496] yet so far as the dead are concerned, we can form an after guess about them from persons who are asleep. For it is not in vain that Holy Scripture describes as "asleep" those who are dead [2497] were it only because in a certain sense "sleep is akin to death." [2498]
[2496] That is (in opposition to the really "dead," afterwards mentioned), such as are seen by living persons in visions.
[2497] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[2498] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 279, "Consanguineus Lethi sopor" (Death's own brother, Sleep).
Chapter 29 [XIX.]--Does the Soul Take the Body's Clothes Also Away with It?
If, indeed, the soul were body, and the form were also a corporeal figure in which it sees itself in dreams, on the ground that it received its expression from the body in which it is enclosed: not a human being, if he lost a limb, would in dreams see himself bereft of the amputated member, although actually deprived of it. On the contrary, he would always appear to himself entire and unmutilated, from the circumstance that no part has been cut away from the soul itself. But since persons sometimes see themselves whole and sometimes mutilated in limb, when this happens to be their actual plight, what else does this fact show than that the soul, both in respect of other things seen by it in dreams and in reference to the body, bears about, hither and thither, not their reality, but only their resemblance? The soul's joy, however, or sadness, its pleasure or pain, are severally real emotions, whether experienced in actual or in apparent bodies. Have you not yourself said (and with perfect truth): "Aliments and vestments are not wanted by the soul, but only by the body"? Why, then, did the rich man in hell crave for the drop of water? [2499] Why did holy Samuel appear after his death (as you have yourself noticed) clothed in his usual garments? [2500] Did the one wish to repair the ruins of the soul, as of the flesh, by the aliment of water? Did the other quit life with his clothes on him? Now in the former case there was a real suffering, which tormented the soul; but not a real body, such as required food. While the latter might have seemed to be clothed, not as being a veritable body, but a soul only, having the semblance of a body with a dress. For although the soul extends and contracts itself to suit the members of the body, it does not similarly adapt itself to the clothes, so as to fit its form to them.
[2499] Luke xvi. 24.
[2500] 1 Sam. xxviii. 14.