That the mind works by means of the senses.
That the nature of mind is invisible.
An examination of the question where the ruling principle is to be considered to reside; wherein also is a discussion of tears and laughter, and a physiological speculation as to the interrelation of matter, nature, and mind.
A rationale of sleep, of yawning, and of dreams.
That the mind is not in a part of the body; wherein also is a distinction of the movements of the body and of the soul.
That the soul proper, in fact and name, is the rational soul, while the others are called so equivocally: wherein also is this statement, that the power of the mind extends throughout the whole body in fitting contact with every part.
A contemplation of the Divine utterance which said—“Let us make man after our image and likeness;” wherein is examined what is the definition of the image, and how the passible and mortal is like to the Blessed and Impassible, and how in the image there are male and female, seeing these are not in the Prototype.
What we must answer to those who raise the question—“If procreation is after sin, how would souls have come into being if the first of mankind had remained sinless?”
That our irrational passions have their rise from kindred with irrational nature.
To those who say that the enjoyment of the good things we look for will again consist in meat and drink, because it is written that by these means man at first lived in Paradise.
What was the life in Paradise, and what was the forbidden tree.
That the resurrection is looked for as a consequence, not so much from the declaration of Scripture as from the very necessity of things.
To those who say, “If the resurrection is a thing excellent and good, how is it that it has not happened already, but is hoped for in some periods of time?”
That he who confesses the beginning of the world’s existence must necessarily agree also as to its end.
An argument against those who say that matter is coeternal with God.
How one even of those who are without may be brought to believe the Scripture when teaching of the resurrection.
That the resurrection is not beyond probability.
That it is possible, when the human body is dissolved into the elements of the universe, that each should have his own body restored from the common source.
To those who say that souls existed before bodies, or that bodies were formed before souls: wherein there is also a refutation of the fables concerning transmigrations of souls.
An establishment of the doctrine that the cause of existence of soul and body is one and the same.
A brief consideration of the construction of our bodies from a medical point of view.
On the Making of Man
I
Wherein is a partial inquiry into the nature of the world, and a more minute exposition of the things which preceded the genesis of man.3
“This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth,”4 saith the Scripture, when all that is seen was finished, and each of the things that are betook itself to its own separate place, when the body of heaven compassed all things round, and those bodies which are heavy and of downward tendency, the earth and the water, holding each other in, took the middle place of the universe; while, as a sort of bond and stability for the things that were made, the Divine power and skill was implanted in the growth of things, guiding all things with the reins of a double operation (for it was by rest and motion that it devised the genesis of the things that were not, and the continuance of the things that are), driving around, about the heavy and changeless element contributed by the creation that does not move, as about some fixed path, the exceedingly rapid motion of the sphere, like a wheel, and preserving the indissolubility of both by their mutual action, as the circling substance by its rapid motion compresses the compact body of the earth round about, while that which is firm and unyielding, by reason of its unchanging fixedness, continually augments the whirling motion of those things which revolve round it, and intensity5 is produced in equal measure in each of the natures which thus differ in their operation, in the stationary nature, I mean, and in the mobile revolution; for neither is the earth shifted from its own base, nor does the heaven ever relax in its vehemence, or slacken its motion.
These, moreover, were first framed before other things, according to the Divine wisdom, to be as it were a beginning of the whole machine, the great Moses indicating, I suppose, where he says that the heaven and the earth were made by God “in the beginning,”6 that all things that are seen in the creation are the offspring of rest and motion, brought into being by the Divine will. Now the heaven and the earth being diametrically opposed to each other in their operations, the creation which lies between the opposites, and has in part a share in what is adjacent to it, itself acts as a mean between the extremes, so that there is manifestly a mutual contact of the opposites through the mean; for air in a manner imitates the perpetual motion and subtlety of the fiery substance, both in the lightness of its nature, and in its suitableness for motion; yet it is not such as to be alienated from the solid substance, for it is no more in a state of continual flux and dispersion than in a permanent state of immobility, but becomes, in its affinity to each, a kind of borderland of the opposition between operations, at once uniting in itself and dividing things which are naturally distinct.
In the
