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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 22
9. [1632] And here, I think there is a view of the matter more close to nature, by which we may learn something of the more refined doctrines. For since the most beautiful and supreme good of all is the Divinity Itself, to which incline all things that have a tendency towards what is beautiful and good [1633] , we therefore say that the mind, as being in the image of the most beautiful, itself also remains in beauty and goodness so long as it partakes as far as is possible in its likeness to the archetype; but if it were at all to depart from this it is deprived of that beauty in which it was. And as we said that the mind was adorned [1634] by the likeness of the archetypal beauty, being formed as though it were a mirror to receive the figure of that which it expresses, we consider that the nature which is governed by it is attached to the mind in the same relation, and that it too is adorned by the beauty that the mind gives, being, so to say, a mirror of the mirror; and that by it is swayed and sustained the material element of that existence in which the nature is contemplated.
10. Thus so long as one keeps in touch with the other, the communication of the true beauty extends proportionally through the whole series, beautifying by the superior nature that which comes next to it; but when there is any interruption of this beneficent connection, or when, on the contrary, the superior comes to follow the inferior, then is displayed the misshapen character of matter, when it is isolated from nature (for in itself matter is a thing without form or structure), and by its shapelessness is also destroyed that beauty of nature with which [1635] it is adorned through the mind; and so the transmission of the ugliness of matter reaches through the nature to the mind itself, so that the image of God is no longer seen in the figure expressed by that which was moulded according to it; for the mind, setting the idea of good like a mirror behind the back, turns off the incident rays of the effulgence of the good, and it receives into itself the impress of the shapelessness of matter.
11. And in this way is brought about the genesis of evil, arising through the withdrawal of that which is beautiful and good. Now all is beautiful and good that is closely related to the First Good; but that which departs from its relation and likeness to this is certainly devoid of beauty and goodness. If, then, according to the statement we have been considering, that which is truly good is one, and the mind itself also has its power of being beautiful and good, in so far as it is in the image of the good and beautiful, and the nature, which is sustained by the mind, has the like power, in so far as it is an image of the image, it is hereby shown that our material part holds together, and is upheld when it is controlled by nature; and on the other hand is dissolved and disorganized when it is separated from that which upholds and sustains it, and is dissevered from its conjunction with beauty and goodness.
[1632] The Latin version (as well as several of the Greek mss.) makes this the beginning of chap. xiii. The Bodleian ms. gives as the title:--"That as the mind is governed by God, so is the material life of the body by the mind."
[1633] kalon and to kalon seem in the following passage to be used of goodness, alike moral and aesthetic: once or twice kalon seems to be used as equivalent to agathon or as opposed to kakon, in a sense capable of being rendered simply by "good"; it also seems to carry with it in other phrases the distinct idea of aesthetic goodness, or "beauty," and the use of kallos and kallopizein, in other phrases still, makes it necessary to preserve this idea in translation. The phrases "beautiful and good," or "beauty and goodness," have therefore been here adopted to express the single adjective kalon.
[1634] Omitting tou, which Forbes inserts before katakosmeisthai: it appears to be found in all the mss., but its insertion reduces the grammar of the passage to hopeless confusion. Perhaps the true reading is tou prototupou kallistou
[1635] Reading ho, with several of Forbes' mss., for the heof the Paris ed., and the ho of Forbes' text.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/making-man.asp?pg=22
