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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 34
What, then, is to be said about these theories? This that those who would have it that the soul migrates into natures divergent from each other seem to me to obliterate all natural distinctions; to blend and confuse together, in every possible respect, the rational, the irrational, the sentient, and the insensate; if, that is, all these are to pass into each other, with no distinct natural order [1866] secluding them from mutual transition. To say that one and the same soul, on account of a particular environment of body, is at one time a rational and intellectual soul, and that then it is caverned along with the reptiles, or herds with the birds, or is a beast of burden, or a carnivorous one, or swims in the deep; or even drops down to an insensate thing, so as to strike out roots or become a complete tree, producing buds on branches, and from those buds a flower, or a thorn, or a fruit edible or noxious--to say this, is nothing short of making all things the same and believing that one single nature runs through all beings; that there is a connexion between them which blends and confuses hopelessly all the marks by which one could be distinguished from another. The philosopher who asserts that the same thing may be born in anything intends no less than that all things are to be one; when the observed differences in things are for him no obstacle to mixing together things which are utterly incongruous. He makes it necessary that, even when one sees one of the creatures that are venom-darting or carnivorous, one should regard it, in spite of appearances, as of the same tribe, nay even of the same family, as oneself. With such beliefs a man will look even upon hemlock as not alien to his own nature, detecting, as he does, humanity in the plant. The grape-bunch itself [1867] , produced though it be by cultivation for the purpose of sustaining life, he will not regard without suspicion; for it too comes from a plant [1868] : and we find even the fruit of the ears of corn upon which we live are plants; how, then, can one put in the sickle to cut them down; and how can one squeeze the bunch, or pull up the thistle from the field, or gather flowers, or hunt birds, or set fire to the logs of the funeral pyre: it being all the while uncertain whether we are not laying violent hands on kinsmen, or ancestors, or fellow-country-men, and whether it is not through the medium of some body of theirs that the fire is being kindled, and the cup mixed, and the food prepared? To think that in the case of any single one of these things a soul of a man has become a plant or animal [1869] , while no marks are stamped upon them to indicate what sort of plant or animal it is that has been a man, and what sort has sprung from other beginnings,--such a conception as this will dispose him who has entertained it to feel an equal amount of interest in everything: he must perforce either harden himself against actual human beings who are in the land of the living, or, if his nature inclines him to love his kindred, he will feel alike towards every kind of life, whether he meet it in reptiles or in wild beasts. Why, if the holder of such an opinion go into a thicket of trees, even then he will regard the trees as a crowd of men. What sort of life will his be, when he has to be tender towards everything on the ground of kinship, or else hardened towards mankind on account of his seeing no difference between them and the other creatures?
[1866] eirmo, i.e. as links in a chain which cannot be altered. Sifanus' "carcere et claustro" is due to heirgmo against all the mss. Krabinger's six have diateichizomena for diastoichizomena of the Editt.
[1867] oude...ton botrun. The intensitive need not surprise us, though a grape-bunch does seem a more fitting body for a human soul than a stalk of hemlock: it is explained by the sentence in apposition, "produced...for the purpose of sustaining life," i.e. it is eaten, and so a soul might be eaten; which increases the horror.
[1868] kai gar kai autos ton phuomenon estin, i.e. the fruit, and not the tree only, belongs to the kingdom of plants: phuta in the next sentence is exactly equivalent to ta phuomena, i.e. plants. The probability that this is the meaning is strengthened by Krabinger's reading houtos, from five of his Codd. But still if autos be retained, it might have been taken to refer to the man who must needs look suspiciously at a bunch of grapes; "for what, according to this theory, is he himself, but a vegetable!" since all things are mixed, panta homou.
[1869] Two Codd. Mon. (D, E) omit phuton e zoon, which is repeated below.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=34
