Saint Augustine - On Magnitude of the Soul

[Freely translated from a Portuguese original at http://espaco-de-paz.awardspace.com/sta_poder_da_alma.html]

(For a somewhat different approach perhaps intended towards a similar meaning, take a look at:
- Coach Carter [posted on 2007-03-22] and
- Legends of the Fall [posted on 2007-03-22])

On Magnitude of the Soul

Saint Augustine - the power of the soul over the body, over herself, and on the seven degrees of her magnitude (extracted from the book "On Magnitude of the Soul")

What if we were able to ask those things to a very wise man, and that he was also eloquent, and perfect in the virtue. I imagine what he could teach us, explaining about the power of the soul over the body, over herself and in facing God, with whom she, while remaining in virtue, is very close, and in he she has all the good and the highest well being.

However, lacking someone here that could teach us, I dare not to disappoint your will to know, and it is in some way an example of what the soul can be, when I experiment it up to where I am able to know.

Initially, limit your expectation, and do not assume that I will state everything about the soul (or that it includes the vital vegetative and sensitive principles) rather I will only talk about the soul of a rational human being, the only one worthy of reference, if we happen to worry about ourselves.


First degree

The soul, as we can see it in all human beings, vivifies with her presence the terrestrial and mortal body, she unifies it, and she keeps it organized as an alive body, and she does not allow it to be dissolved in the elements of its organic composition. She makes the foods be equally distributed in the conservation of all the organism, preserves the harmony and the ratio of the members, not only in its appearance, but also in its growth and reproduction.

But these things can be understood as common to men and plants (= vegetative life), because we know that the vegetative species conserve its structures, feed and reproduce according to its species.


Second degree

Go up a little more and contemplate the power of the soul over sensible life, where life is manifested in a more evident form. And we should not have to pay attention to an unknown type of impiety, entirely rude, and more of woods than the plants, whose defenders say that the grapevine suffers when its grapes are harvested, or that plants feels when their branches are cut, and that they also listen and see. It is not time to speak of such a sacrilegious error.

As I had considered, we will observe the power of the human soul over the corporal senses and over the movement of the body, in that the body is livened up, and under such aspects we have nothing to do with the species that fix its roots in the ground.

The soul concentrate in touch, and by its means she identifies hot and cold, rough and smooth, hard and soft, light and heavy. And sampling, smelling, hearing and seeing, she distinguishes innumerable different tastes, smells, sounds and forms. She desires what pleases its corporal nature, repelling what she dislikes. For some time she retires from the senses, recouping her forces by resting, where the images of things acquired by the senses are left to run freely, doing it in sleeping and dreaming. Through exercise, she moves pleasantly, composing the harmony of the members. When possible, she looks for the union of sexes, and from the nature of two she makes one, in love and sociability. Not only does she generate children, as she shelters, protects and feeds them. She gets used to the environment, and to the things that support her body, the ones she hardly want to move away, as if they were one of her parts. And to the force of custom, which doesn't even hinder the separation of things, we call memory (sensible).

Still, no one can deny that the irrationals also make all these sensible things (sensitive life).


Third degree

Go up one more degree, arriving at the third, which is proper to man. Think about the souvenir of myriad, not as consequences of only the custom, or repeated habits, but of the intention applied to the things deliberately intended, and the conservation of many gotten things. There are a large variety of arts and techniques, in the culture of the fields, the construction of cities, and accomplishments of all types of produced largenesses. Invention of many representative signs, in the writing, the gestures and the pronounced word. In all the creative sounds, as in the painting and the sculpture, the variety of languages, the social institutions, in new things that always appear, as in the recovery of others. In the variety of books, and all the raised monuments delivered to the care of future generations. In the variety of occupations, in the constituted forces, in honors and dignities, either in family or in society. In the profane and sacred ceremonies, in peace and war, and everything produced by the human power of reasoning and imagination. Think about the loaded oratory production, the poetical art, and many other creations destined to diversion, to the sports, to music practice, to the precision of the art of calculus, and the conjectures of the future based on the accomplishments of the present.

Great are those things proper only to the human being. Still then, they will be common to the scholars and the ignorants, the good ones and the bad ones.


Forth degree

Pass on to the forth degree, where it starts the truly goodness and laudation. Here the soul dares not only to superpose itself over the body - that is an integrant part of the universe - but over that same universe. She does not consider as hers the things of this world, learns to esteem its power and beauty above these things, because she distinguishes the values, and despises mundane things. The more she uses these things to her advantage, the more she steps away from them, becoming free of all imperfection, becoming purer and more perfect, strenghtening herself against everything that can deter her from her intention and decision. She appreciates the social conviviality, does not desire to somebody else what she does not want for herself, obeys the legitimate authority and the rules of wisest, recognizing that God speaks by means of them.

In this noble activity of the soul it still exists a large effort and much fight against the impediments and seductions of the world. In the same effort for its purification, a certain fear of death still exists, small sometimes, and very great in certain cases. But she must believe surely that all things are under the guard and just providence of God, and that no death occurs without justice, even when caused by the badness of the human being (and only to the entirely purified souls it is given to see how much this is true). But if she fears death up to this point, when already in the forth degree, either she still have a weak faith in the just providence, or due to a lesser interior tranquility - necessary to understand what seems to be difficult - or because the tranquility is disturbed by fear.

By progressing in this degree, she knows always more the differences between the purified and sinful soul, and in such a way she is even more afraid that, leaving this body, less could God bear she stained, than she would bear herself in that same state. And there is nothing more difficult than to fear death and to move away from the ambushes of the world, as demanded by the decurrent dangerous situations.

But the soul is so great, that she can make it all with the protection of the supreme and true God, whose justice conserves and governs the universe. And such justice of conservation makes not only all things to exist, but also to exist in a form that cannot have any other better.

Pray for it to God, merciful and confident, so that He helps the perfectioning in the difficult work of purification.


Fifth degree

Once here, that is, being the soul free from all imperfection, and purified from her sins, she finds pleasure in herself, fears nothing more, nor feels restless for anything, even the smallest, in the inner subjects.

That is the fifth degree. It is one thing to look for heart pureness, another thing is to have already reached this state. Distinct is the action by which she purifies herself from evil, another thing is to assent no more on sin.

In this state she can fully understand her greatness, and, being convinced, tends really towards God, with immense and inaudible trust, that is, to tend toward the very contemplation of the truth, and to the highest and secretest rewards for which she has so much striven.


Sixth degree

But the trend to understand what the soul really is, and she is in the mot sublime way, also comes to be the highest expression of the soul, and nothing exists that is more perfect, better and more correct. This is the sixth degree of its activity. It is one thing to purify the look of the mind, not to look uselessly and frightfully at the wrong vision. Another thing is to conserve and to reaffirm its moral integrity. And yet another one is to direct the look of the mind in a calm and adjusted way towards what must be seen.

The ones that tries to undertake this without being completely purified and upright, are dimmed by the same light of truth, up to the point of refusing to believe in anything that is good, and in the same truth. And censuring the medicine of purification, they take refuge in some miserable passion or pleasure, in the darknesses that this disease compels them to be. And for that says the prophet truthfully and by divine inspiration: "Create in me, dear God, a pure heart, and renew in my viscera the spirit of rectitude" (Sb 50,12).

I understand that the spirit of rectitude is what hinders the soul from deviating and falsifying in the search for the truth. And the spirit does not renew itself if the soul has not yet pureness, that is, if the thought does not turn away before all passion, purifying herself from the rancid mortal things.


Seventh degree

Certainly it is the same vision and contemplation of the truth what constitutes the seventh degree, the most higher degree of the soul, and it is not even a degree, it is a certain mansion or dwelling where one arrives through the degrees.

And I do not know which words to say about the joys of the supreme and true good, or which inspiration will have the soul in its serene eternity. Great souls of insuperable sanctity had spoken about this, when they judged opportune. We believe that they have also seen all that, and continue seeing eternally.

I dare to say this in a clear way. And if we keep ourselves in the route that God orders us to follow, and there we keep the constancy, we will arrive by the divine power in the Wisdom of God, Virtue of God, supreme cause and supreme author, supreme principle of all things, be as it may the way that we use to speak of something so high.

We will understand then how the things are true in which they had ordered us to believe in, and how the Church has fed us healthily as our mother did, and what is the advantage of the doctrine's milk that Saint Paul says to be given to the small ones (1Cor 3,2). When somebody still needs maternal milk, it is useful to receive such a food. Shameful would it be as a grown-up. To disdain it when it is needed is lamentable. To criticize the food or to detest it is criminal and impious. However, to conserve and to distribute the food conveniently is a praiseworthy proof of love.

We will also see that the corporal nature suffers changes and difficulties, obeying in this world the divine law, but we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, which some believe very little, and others deny, but we have it as absolutely certain, more than the certainty that the sun of the setting will be born again in the other day.

But there exist those who dare to mock the humanity of Christ, assumed by the powerful, the perpetual and incommutable Son of God. And those we disdain, as the children who, seeing an artist who reproduces recorded images, imagine that one can only paint a human figure by copying it from another one.

The joy to contemplate the truth is so great, either being the aspect under which we contemplate it; it is so great the perfection, the steadiness in the faith in the true things, that nobody will assume to have really known something before, when assuming to know something, without having contemplated the truth itself.

And so that the soul is not hindered from joining completely with the truth, she would then desire - as her supreme reward - the death that was before feared, that is, to disconnect herself totally from this body.

-- End of Translation --

From: http://pachacamacmonastery.yolasite.com/history-of-western-monasticism.php
In the treatise, De quantitate animae, St. Augustine lists seven stages through which the soul normally passes as it advances to contemplation. The first three stages refer to the vegetative, sensitive and rational levels of human life. But the Christian does not begin to make true progress toward perfection until the fourth stage, which is that of virtue, accompanied by purification. The fifth stage is called tranquillity, to denote the peace that follows from control of the passions. The sixth stage is called the entrance into the divine light (ingressio in lucem), in which the soul seeks to penetrate the divinity; there, if it succeeds, it passes on to the seventh and final stage which is that of habitual union and indwelling (mansio).(20)

...

20. De quantitate animae, 33, 70-76. In his commentary on the beatitudes and on Isa. I I:2, St. Augustine divides the stages according to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, beginning with fear of the Lord and terminating with wisdom.