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| Recapitulation. Definition of the Soul. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXII.—Recapitulation. Definition of the Soul.
Hermogenes has already heard from us what are the
other natural faculties of the soul, as well as their vindication and
proof; whence it may be seen that the soul is rather the offspring of
God than of matter. The names of these faculties shall here be simply
repeated, that they may not seem to be forgotten and passed out of
sight. We have assigned, then, to the soul both that freedom of
the will which we just now mentioned, and its dominion over the works
of nature, and its occasional gift of divination, independently of that
endowment of prophecy which accrues to it expressly from the grace of
God. We shall therefore now quit this subject of the soul’s
disposition, in order to set out fully in order its various
qualities.1664
1664 Tertullian had shown
that “the soul is the breath or afflatus of
God,” in ch. iv. and xi. above. He demonstrated its
“immortality” in ch. ii.–iv., vi., ix., xiv.;
and he will repeat his proof hereafter, in ch. xxiv., xxxviii., xlv.,
li., liii., liv. Moreover, he illustrates the soul’s
“corporeity” in ch. v.–viii.; its
“endowment with form or figure,” in ch. ix.; its
“simplicity in substance” in ch. x. and xi.; its
“inherent intelligence,” in ch. xii.; its varied
development, in ch. xiii.–xv. The soul’s
“rationality,” “supremacy,” and
“instinctive divination,” Tertullian treated of in
his treatise De Censu Animæ against Hermogenes
(as he has said in the text); but he has treated somewhat of the
soul’s “rational nature” in the sixteenth chapter
above; in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters he referred to the
soul’s “supremacy or hegemony;” whilst we have
had a hint about its “divining faculty,” even in
infants, in ch. xix. The propagation of souls from the one archetypal
soul is the subject of the chapter before us, as well as of the five
succeeding ones (La Cerda). | The soul, then, we
define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal, possessing body,
having form, simple in its substance, intelligent in its own nature,
developing its power in various ways, free in its determinations,
subject to be changes of accident, in its faculties mutable, rational,
supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one
(archetypal soul). It remains for us now to consider how it is
developed out of this one original source; in other words, whence, and
when, and how it is produced.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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