Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
ON THE SHAPE OF THE SOUL. [1] Since we assert that the soul is a body of its own particular quality and its own kind, this condition of its distinctness already prejudges the matter of every other accident of corporeality — either that these accidents, which we show belong to body, belong to it too, though each after its own kind in keeping with the soul's own bodily nature, or, even if they are not present in it, that this very absence is itself a mark of its distinctness: that the properties which attach to other bodies do not attach to the body of the soul. And yet we shall not be inconsistent in professing that the more customary and altogether necessary attributes of corporeality belong to the soul as well — such as shape, such as boundary, and that threefold spatial extent — namely a stretch in length, in breadth, and in height — by which philosophers take the measure of bodies. [2] What then of our giving the soul a shape, against Plato's will, as though the soul's immortality were thereby put at risk? For he maintains that everything shaped is composite and constructed, and that everything composite and constructed is dissoluble; but the soul is immortal, and therefore indissoluble — and, insofar as immortal, also unshaped, insofar as indissoluble; whereas, if shaped, it would be composite and constructed after all — as though, forming it in another way, he were shaping it with intellectual forms, beautiful through justice and the disciplines of philosophy, but ugly through the opposite arts. [3] But we, for our part, trace bodily lines on it too — not merely out of confidence in its corporeality reached by inference, but also from the sure warrant of grace received by revelation. For since we recognize spiritual gifts, we too, after John, have been found worthy to attain the gift of prophecy. [4] There is among us today a sister who has been allotted gifts of revelations, which she experiences in the church during the Sunday services through ecstasy in the Spirit; she holds conversation with angels, and on occasion with the Lord Himself, and she both sees and hears hidden things, and discerns the hearts of certain people, and dispenses remedies to those who ask for them. And indeed, according as the scriptures are read, or psalms are sung, or addresses are delivered, or petitions are offered, so material for visions is supplied to her from these. It happened once that we had been discoursing about the soul, of all things, while that sister was in the Spirit. After the service was over and the congregation dismissed, she — as is her custom — reported to us what she had seen (for these things are most carefully sifted, so that they may also be tested), and said: 'Among other things, a soul was shown to me in bodily form, and it appeared as a spirit, but not one of empty and vacant quality — rather, one that promised it could even be grasped: tender, and luminous, and of the color of air, and human in shape through and through. This was the vision.' And God is witness, and the apostle a sufficient guarantor of the gifts yet to come in the church; so even if the fact itself has not yet persuaded you of every particular, you may still believe. [5] For if the soul is body, then without doubt, along with the other attributes we have already professed above, a distinct color too will belong to it, as to every body. What color, then, will you reckon the soul's, other than airy and luminous? Not that air is its very substance — though this was Aenesidemus's view, and Anaximenes's, and I think according to some, Heraclitus's too — nor that it is light, though that was the opinion of Heraclides of Pontus. [6] For fiery gems are not made of a fiery substance merely because they flash with a ruddy glow, nor are beryls made of a watery substance merely because they shimmer with a clear brilliance (for color unites many things that nature keeps distinct) — but because everything fine and translucent has an affinity with air, and this the soul will be, since breath and spirit are derived from it, seeing that on account of its very fineness of texture its claim to corporeality is itself called into question. [7] So too, form a notion of the soul's shape from your own perception, one to be attributed to the human soul and no other than the human — indeed, the very shape of the body each person has carried about. Let contemplation of that first origin lead us to grasp this for the present. Consider: when God had blown into the face of that first man the breath of living, and the man was thereby turned into a living soul, the whole of him, surely, through the face that breath was at once carried into his inner parts and diffused through the entire extent of the body, and at the same moment, condensed by the divine inbreathing, it was stamped throughout with every inner line which, once condensed, it had filled, and, as it were, congealed into a shape. [8] From this, then, the soul's corporeal substance was solidified by condensation, and its shape was formed by the impression. This will be the inner man, distinct from the outer, one man in two forms, having eyes and ears of his own, by which the people ought to have heard and seen the Lord, and having the other limbs too, through which he functions both in thoughts and in dreams. So too the rich man in the underworld has a tongue, and the poor man a finger, and there is Abraham's bosom. Through these same outlines the souls of the martyrs under the altar are understood as well. For from the beginning, in Adam, the soul was formed and shaped together with the body, so that, as it furnished the seed of the whole substance, it furnished also the seed of this very condition.