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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online.Please note that a bilingual edition (Greek original / English translation) is being prepared and will be published in print soon; if you are interested bookmark this page to know when it is ready and available.
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53 Pages
Page 14
We must therefore neglect the Platonic chariot and the pair of horses of dissimilar forces yoked to it, and their driver, whereby the philosopher allegorizes these facts about the soul; we must neglect also all that is said by the philosopher who succeeded him and who followed out probabilities by rules of art [1786] , and diligently investigated the very question now before us, declaring that the soul was mortal [1787] by reason of these two principles; we must neglect all before and since their time, whether they philosophized in prose or in verse, and we will adopt, as the guide of our reasoning, the Scripture, which lays it down as an axiom that there is no excellence in the soul which is not a property as well of the Divine nature. For he who declares the soul to be God's likeness asserts that anything foreign to Him is outside the limits of the soul; similarity cannot be retained in those qualities which are diverse from the original. Since, then, nothing of the kind we are considering is included in the conception of the Divine nature, one would be reasonable in surmising that such things are not consubstantial with the soul either. Now to seek to build up our doctrine by rule of dialectic and the science which draws and destroys conclusions, involves a species of discussion which we shall ask to be excused from, as being a weak and questionable way of demonstrating truth. Indeed, it is clear to every one that that subtle dialectic possesses a force that may be turned both ways, as well for the overthrow of truth [1788] as for the detection of falsehood; and so we begin to suspect even truth itself when it is advanced in company with such a kind of artifice, and to think that the very ingenuity of it is trying to bias our judgment and to upset the truth. If on the other hand any one will accept a discussion which is in a naked unsyllogistic form, we will speak upon these points by making our study of them so far as we can follow the chain [1789] of Scriptural tradition. What is it, then, that we assert? We say that the fact of the reasoning animal man being capable of understanding and knowing is most surely [1790] attested by those outside our faith; and that this definition would never have sketched our nature so, if it had viewed anger and desire and all such-like emotions as consubstantial with that nature. In any other case, one would not give a definition of the subject in hand by putting a generic instead of a specific quality; and so, as the principle of desire and the principle of anger are observed equally in rational and irrational natures, one could not rightly mark the specific quality by means of this generic one. But how can that which, in defining a nature, is superfluous and worthy of exclusion be treated as a part of that nature, and, so, available for falsifying the definition? Every definition of an essence looks to the specific quality of the subject in hand; and whatever is outside that speciality is set aside as having nothing to do with the required definition. Yet, beyond question, these faculties of anger and desire are allowed to be common to all reasoning and brute natures; anything common is not identical with that which is peculiar; it is imperative therefore that we should not range these faculties amongst those whereby humanity is exclusively meant: but just as one may perceive the principle [1791] of sensation, and that of nutrition and growth in man, and yet not shake thereby the given definition of his soul (for the quality A being in the soul does not prevent the quality B being in it too), so, when one detects in humanity these emotions of anger and desire, one cannot on that account fairly quarrel with this definition, as if it fell short of a full indication of man's nature.
[1786] i.e.the syllogism.
[1787] that the soul was mortal. Aristotle, guided only by probabilities as discoverable by the syllogism, does indeed define the soul, "the first entelechy of a physical, potentially living, and organic body." Entelechy is more than mere potentiality: it is "developed force" ("dormant activity;" see W. Archer Butler's Lectures, ii. p. 393), capable of manifestation. The human soul, uniting in itself all the faculties of the other orders of animate existence, is a Microcosm. The other parts of the soul are inseparable from the body, and are hence perishable (De Animâ, ii. 2); but the nous exists before the body, into which it enters from without as something divine and immortal (De Gen. Animal. ii. 3). But he makes a distinction between the form-receiving, and the form-giving nous: substantial eternal existence belongs only to the latter (De Animâ, iii. 5). The secret of the difference between him and Plato, with whom "all the soul is immortal" (Phaedrus, p. 245 C), lies in this; that Plato regarded the soul as always in motion, while Aristotle denied it, in itself, any motion at all. "It is one of the things that are impossible that motion should exist in it" (De Animâ, i. 4). It cannot be moved at all; therefore it cannot move itself. Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as Nemesius the Platonizing Bishop of Emesa (whose treatise De Animâ is wrongly attributed to Gregory), attacked this teaching of an "entelechy." Cf. also Justin Martyr (ad Graec. cohort, c. 6, p. 12); "Plato declares that all the soul is immortal; Aristotle calls her an entelechy,' and not immortal. The one says she is ever-moving, the other that she is never-moving, but prior to all motion." Also Gregory Naz., Orat. xxvii. "Away with Aristotle's calculating Providence, and his art of logic, and his dead reasonings about the soul, and purely human doctrine!"
[1788] for the overthrow of the truth. So c. Eunom. iii. (ii. 500).
[1789] eirmon.
[1790] most surely, e. This is the common reading: but the Codd. have mostly kai.
[1791] Aristotle, Ethic. i. 13, dwells upon these principles. Of the last he says, i.e. the common vegetative, the principle of nutrition and growth: "One would assume such a power of the soul in everything that grows, even in the embryo, and just this very same power in the perfect creatures; for this is more likely than that it should be a different one." Sleep, in which this power almost alone is active, levels all.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=14
