The Immortality of the Soul; The Magnitude of the Soul; On Music; The Advantage of Believing; On Faith in Things Unseen

Introduction

INTRODUCTION I3UGUSTINE wrote De quantitate animae in Rome, l sometime during 387 or 388.1 In his Retractationes he states: 2 'In the same city I wrote a dialogue in which there is a lengthy treatment and discussion of the soul.' He adds that the treatise has been so entitled, since the question of the soul's magnitude was therein submitted to a careful and searching examination for the purpose of showing , if possible, that the soul lacks corporeal quantity, but is nevertheless a great reality (tamen magnum aliquid esse). The dialogue in which St. Augustine and his friend Evodius participate is divided into six unequal parts, according to the questions that Evodius proposes for discussion: (1) the origin of the soul; (2) the nature of the soul; (3) the magnitude of the soul; (4) the reason for its union with the body; (5) the nature of this union; (6) the nature of the soul separated from the body. The last three topics are touched on very briefly (Ch.36). A slightly less brief treatment is given to the first two questions (1-2). The main part of the dialogue, then, is devoted to the discussion of the soul's magnitude (3-35). Augustine's title is somewhat puzzling, at first. It is necessary to remember his own distinction between magnitude of extent and magnitude of power. When we speak of the height of Hercules, we are considering his magnitude of extent; when we talk of his valor and brave deeds as a hero, we are describing his magnitude of power (3.4; 17.30). 1 V. J. Bourke, Augustine's Quest of Wisdom 90, 105. 2 I, 8 (PL 112.594). 51 52 SAINT AUGUSTINE Augustine denies that the soul has magnitude of extent, in the real sense: 'But I can say this: that it [the soul] is not long, or wide, or strong, or any of those things that one usually looks for in measuring bodies.... And, far from concluding that the soul is nothing because you cannot find length in it or any such thing, you should rather deem it all the more precious precisely because it has none of these things' (3.4-). He will allow a metaphorical sense in which we speak of the enlargement of the soul that comes from 'studies of the moral good that are calculated to promote the good and happy life' (19.33). In excluding all magnitude of extent from the soul, Augustine mentions justice as an example of a reality that is neither long, nor wide nor strong (4.5); he would rather have Evodius think of the soul as something like justice than as something like the wind. Evodius wonders how the soul can picture to itself worlds as great as this and without number and in what space the soul can keep all these images (5.9). To answer this difficulty, Augustine turns the discussion to a consideration of geometrical figures (6.10-12.22). The conclusion is reached that it is because of the soul's power that it is able to hold in its memory the great spaces of sky, earth and sea (14.23). Evodius goes on to offer two main difficulties: one derived from the fact that the body grows and becomes stronger; the other from the fact that we feel anything pricking us at any part of the body. These facts seem to show that the soul grows with the body and that the soul is physically extended throughout the body in such a way that it has quantity (15.26). The first difficulty is answered in seven chapters (16-22); the second, in ten chapters (23-32). The soul does not become greater by reason of a growing body; the soul's greatness is not extent, but virtue. If virtue THE MAGNITUDE OF THE SOUL 53 results from the size of the body, then, the taller or stronger a man is, the more prudent he should be (16.28). But, Augustine drily remarks, the truth is quite different. Nor does the mere lapse of time increase the size of the soul. Why should it, when bodies themselves often get smaller, the older they become? (17.29) The power to speak is no proof that the soul grows in a real sense, for this absurdity would result: that, every time a man would acquire a new skill, his soul would...