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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 8
But what, I asked, if, insisting on the great differences which, in spite of a certain quality of matter shared alike by all elements in their visible form, exist between each particular kind of matter (motion, for instance, is not the same in all, some moving up, some down; nor form, nor quality either), some one were to say that there was in the same manner incorporated in, and belonging to, these elements a certain force [1763] as well which effects these intellectual insights and operations by a purely natural effort of their own (such effects, for instance, as we often see produced by the mechanists, in whose hands matter, combined according to the rules of Art, thereby imitates Nature, exhibiting resemblance not in figure alone but even in motion, so that when the piece of mechanism sounds in its resonant part it mimics a human voice, without, however, our being able to perceive anywhere any mental force working out the particular figure, character, sound, and movement); suppose, I say, we were to affirm that all this was produced as well in the organic machine of our natural bodies, without any intermixture of a special thinking substance, but owing simply to an inherent motive power of the elements within us accomplishing [1764] by itself these operations--to nothing else, in fact, but an impulsive movement working for the cognition of the object before us; would not then the fact stand proved of the absolute nonexistence [1765] of that intellectual and impalpable Being, the soul, which you talk of?
Your instance, she replied, and your reasoning upon it, though belonging to the counter-argument, may both of them be made allies of our statement, and will contribute not a little to the confirmation of its truth.
Why, how can you say that?
Because, you see, so to understand, manipulate, and dispose the soulless matter, that the art which is stored away in such mechanisms becomes almost like a soul to this material, in all the various ways in which it mocks movement, and figure, and voice, and so on, may be turned into a proof of there being something in man whereby he shows an innate fitness to think out within himself, through the contemplative and inventive faculties, such thoughts, and having prepared such mechanisms in theory, to put them into practice by manual skill, and exhibit in matter the product of his mind. First, for instance, he saw, by dint of thinking, that to produce any sound there is need of some wind; and then, with a view to produce wind in the mechanism, he previously ascertained by a course of reasoning and close observation of the nature of elements, that there is no vacuum at all in the world, but that the lighter is to be considered a vacuum only by comparison with the heavier; seeing that the air itself, taken as a separate subsistence, is crowded quite full. It is by an abuse of language that a jar is said to be "empty"; for when it is empty of any liquid it is none the less, even in this state, full, in the eyes of the experienced.
[1763] ei tina touton kata ton authon logon sunousiomenen tis einai legoi dunamin, k.t.l. The difficulty here is in touton, which Krabinger takes as a partitive genitive after einai, and refers to the "elements"; and this is perhaps the best way of taking it. But still, as Schmidt points out, it is rather the human body than the elements themselves that ought here to be spoken of as the efficient cause of thought: and so he would either refer touton to ton auton ("in the same way as these instances just given"), and compares Eurip. Helen., onoma de tauton tes emes echousa tis damartos alle (Matt. Gr. p. 706); or else would join touton with the preceding diaphoros (with Codd. Mon. D, E).
[1764] Cod. Mon. D, apotelouses. This seems a better reading than that preferred by Krabinger, apotelesma einai: for apotelesma must be pressed to mean, in order to preserve the sense, "mere result," i.e. something secondary, and not itself a principle or cause: the following he, besides, cannot without awkwardness be referred to energeian
[1765] Reading ousian ouk an apodeiknuoito e to med' holos einai;
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/soul-resurrection.asp?pg=8
