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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 16
And yet, I rejoined to the virgin, we see no slight help afforded for improvement to the virtuous from all these conditions. Daniel's desire was his glory; and Phineas' anger pleased the Deity. We have been told, too, that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and learnt from Paul that salvation is the goal of the "sorrow after a godly sort." The Gospel bids us have a contempt for danger; and the "not being afraid with any amazement" is nothing else but a describing of courage, and this last is numbered by Wisdom amongst the things that are good. In all this Scripture shows that such conditions are not to be considered weaknesses; weaknesses would not have been so employed for putting virtue into practice.
I think, replied the Teacher, that I am myself responsible for this confusion arising from different accounts of the matter; for I did not state it as distinctly as I might have, by introducing a certain order of consequences for our consideration. Now, however, some such order shall, as far as it is possible, be devised, so that our essay may advance in the way of logical sequence and so give no room for such contradictions. We declare, then, that the speculative, critical, and world-surveying faculty of the soul is its peculiar property by virtue of its very nature [1796] , and that thereby the soul preserves within itself the image of the divine grace; since our reason surmises that divinity itself, whatever it may be in its inmost nature, is manifested in these very things,--universal supervision and the critical discernment between good and evil. But all those elements of the soul which lie on the border-land [1797] and are capable from their peculiar nature of inclining to either of two opposites (whose eventual determination to the good or to the bad depends on the kind of use they are put to), anger, for instance, and fear, and any other such-like emotion of the soul divested of which human nature [1798] cannot be studied--all these we reckon as accretions from without, because in the Beauty which is man's prototype no such characteristics are to be found. Now let the following statement [1799] be offered as a mere exercise (in interpretation). I pray that it may escape the sneers of cavilling hearers. Scripture informs us that the Deity proceeded by a sort of graduated and ordered advance to the creation of man. After the foundations of the universe were laid, as the history records, man did not appear on the earth at once; but the creation of the brutes preceded his, and the plants preceded them. Thereby Scripture shows that the vital forces blended with the world of matter according to a gradation; first, it infused itself into insensate nature; and in continuation of this advanced into the sentient world; and then ascended to intelligent and rational beings. Accordingly, while all existing things must be either corporeal or spiritual, the former are divided into the animate and inanimate. By animate, I mean possessed of life: and of the things possessed of life, some have it with sensation, the rest have no sensation. Again, of these sentient things, some have reason, the rest have not. Seeing, then, that this life of sensation could not possibly exist apart from the matter which is the subject of it, and the intellectual life could not be embodied, either, without growing in the sentient, on this account the creation of man is related as coming last, as of one who took up into himself every single form of life, both that of plants and that which is seen in brutes. His nourishment and growth he derives from vegetable life; for even in vegetables such processes are to be seen when aliment is being drawn in by their roots and given off in fruit and leaves. His sentient organization he derives from the brute creation.
[1796] Reading kata phusin auten, kai tes theoeidous charitos, k. t. l. with Sifanus.
[1797] hosa de tes psuches en methori& 251; keitai. Moller (Gregorii Nysseni doctrina de hominis naturâ) remarks rightly that Krabinger's translation is here incorrect: "quaecunque autem in animae confinio posita sunt"; and that tes psuches should on the contrary be joined closely to hosa. The opposition is not between elements which lie in, and on the confines of the soul, but between the divine and adventitious elements within the soul: methori& 251; refers therefore to "good and bad," below.
[1798] This is no contradiction of the passage above about Moses: there it was stated that the Passions did not belong to the essence (ousia) of man.
[1799] hode de. The Teacher introduces this logos with some reserve. "We do not lay it down ex cathedrâ, we put it forward as open to challenge and discussion as we might do in the schools (hos en gumnasi& 251;)." It is best then to take diaphugoi as a pure optative. Gregory appears in his answer to congratulate her on the success of this "exercise." "To any one that reflects...your exposition...bears sufficiently upon it the stamp of correctness, and hits the truth." But he immediately asks for Scripture authority. So that this logos, though it refers to Genesis, is not yet based upon Scripture. It is a "consecutive" and consistent account of human nature: but it is virtually identical with that advanced at the end of Book I. of Aristotle's Ethics. It is a piece of secular theorizing. The sneers of cavillers may well be deprecated. Consistent, however, with this view of the logos here offered by Macrina, there is another possible meaning in hos en gumnasi& 251;, k. t. l., i.e. "Let us put forward the following account with all possible care and circumspection, as if we were disputing in the schools; so that cavillers may have nothing to find fault with": hos an expressing purpose, not a wish. The cavillers will thus refer to sticklers for Greek method and metaphysics: and Gregory's congratulation of his sister's lucidity and grasp of the truth will be all the more significant.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=16
