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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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70 Pages
Page 16
X. That the mind works by means of the senses.
1. As the mind then produces the music of reason by means of our instrumental construction, we are born rational, while, as I think, we should not have had the gift of reason if we had had to employ our lips to supply the need of the body--the heavy and toilsome part of the task of providing food. As things are, however, our hands appropriate this ministration to themselves, and leave the mouth available for the service of reason.
2 [1621] . The operation of the instrument [1622] , however, is twofold; one for the production of sound, the other for the reception of concepts from without; and the one faculty does not blend with the other, but abides in the operation for which it was appointed by nature, not interfering with its neighbour either by the sense of hearing undertaking to speak, or by the speech undertaking to hear; for the latter is always uttering something, while the ear, as Solomon somewhere says, is not filled with continual hearing [1623] .
3. That point as to our internal faculties which seems to me to be even in a special degree matter for wonder, is this:--what is the extent of that inner receptacle into which flows everything that is poured in by our hearing? who are the recorders of the sayings that are brought in by it? what sort of storehouses are there for the concepts that are being put in by our hearing? and how is it, that when many of them, of varied kinds, are pressing one upon another, there arises no confusion and error in the relative position of the things that are laid up there? And one may have the like feeling of wonder also with regard to the operation of sight; for by it also in like manner the mind apprehends those things which are external to the body, and draws to itself the images of phenomena, marking in itself the impressions of the things which are seen.
4. And just as if there were some extensive city receiving all comers by different entrances, all will not congregate at any particular place, but some will go to the market, some to the houses, others to the churches, or the streets, or lanes, or the theatres, each according to his own inclination,--some such city of our mind I seem to discern established in us, which the different entrances through the senses keep filling, while the mind, distinguishing and examining each of the things that enters, ranks them in their proper departments of knowledge.
[1621] Here the Latin version begins chapter x. The title in the Bodleian ms. is:--"Of the five bodily senses."
[1622] That is, of the mind, in connection with reason.
[1623] Cf. Eccles. i. 8. The quotation is not from the LXX.: it is perhaps not intended to be verbal.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/making-man.asp?pg=16
