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| Tertullian Refutes, Physiologically, the Notion that the Soul is Introduced After Birth.
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Chapter
XXV.—Tertullian Refutes, Physiologically, the Notion that the
Soul is Introduced After Birth.
I shall now return to the cause of this digression, in
order that I may explain how all souls are derived from one, when and
where and in what manner they are produced. Now, touching this subject,
it matters not whether the question be started by the philosopher, by
the heretic, or by the crowd. Those who profess the truth care nothing
about their opponents, especially such of them as begin by maintaining
that the soul is not conceived in the womb, nor is formed and produced
at the time that the flesh is moulded, but is impressed from without
upon the infant before his complete vitality, but after the process of
parturition. They say, moreover, that the human seed having been duly
deposited ex concubiterin the womb, and having been by
natural impulse quickened, it becomes condensed into the mere substance
of the flesh, which is in due time born, warm from the furnace of the
womb, and then released from its heat. (This flesh) resembles the case
of hot iron, which is in that state plunged into cold water; for, being
smitten by the cold air (into which it is born), it at once receives
the power of animation, and utters vocal sound. This view is
entertained by the Stoics, along with Ænesidemus, and occasionally
by Plato himself, when he tells us that the soul, being quite a
separate formation, originating elsewhere and externally to the womb,
is inhaled1670
| 1670 “Inhaled”
is Bp. Kaye’s word for adduci, “taken up.” | when the new-born
infant first draws breath, and by and by exhaled1671
with the man’s latest breath. We shall
see whether this view of his is merely fictitious. Even the medical
profession has not lacked its Hicesius, to prove a traitor both to
nature and his own calling. These gentlemen, I suppose, were too modest
to come to terms with women on the mysteries of childbirth, so well
known to the latter. But how much more is there for them to blush at,
when in the end they have the women to refute them, instead of
commending them. Now, in such a question as this, no one can be so
useful a teacher, judge, or witness, as the sex itself which is so
intimately concerned. Give us your testimony, then, ye mothers, whether
yet pregnant, or after delivery (let barren women and men keep
silence),—the truth of your own nature is in question, the
reality of your own suffering is the point to be decided. (Tell
us, then,) whether you feel in the embryo within you any vital
force1672
other than your own, with which your bowels
tremble, your sides shake, your entire womb throbs, and the burden
which oppresses you constantly changes its position? Are these
movements a joy to you, and a positive removal of anxiety, as making
you confident that your infant both possesses vitality and enjoys
it? Or, should his restlessness cease, your first fear would be
for him; and he would be aware of it within you, since he is disturbed
at the novel sound; and you would crave for injurious diet,1673
or would even loathe your food—all on
his account; and then you and he, (in the closeness of your sympathy,)
would share together your common ailments—so far that with your
contusions and bruises would he actually become marked,—whilst
within you, and even on the selfsame parts of the body, taking to
himself thus peremptorily1674
the injuries of his
mother! Now, whenever a livid hue and redness are incidents of the
blood, the blood will not be without the vital principle,1675
or soul; or when disease attacks the soul or
vitality, (it becomes a proof of its real existence, since) there is no
disease where there is no soul or principle of life. Again, inasmuch as
sustenance by food, and the want thereof, growth and decay, fear and
motion, are conditions of the soul or life, he who experiences them
must be alive. And,
so, he at last ceases to live, who ceases to experience them. And
thus by and by infants are still-born; but how so, unless they had
life? For how could any die, who had not previously lived? But
sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb, an infant is
put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he impedes
parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die himself.
Accordingly, among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument,
which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the
uterus first of all, and keeping it open; it is further
furnished with an annular blade,1676
| 1676 Anulocultro. [To be
seen in the Museum at Naples.] | by means of
which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but
unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook,
wherewith the entire fœtus is extracted1677
| 1677 Or, “the whole
business (totem facinus) is despatched.” | by a violent delivery. There is also
(another instrument in the shape of) a copper needle or spike, by which
the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: they give
it, from its infanticide function, the name of ἐμβρυοσφάκτης
, the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such apparatus
was possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus,
and Herophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder Soranus
himself, who all knew well enough that a living being had been
conceived, and pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first
to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive. Of the necessity of
such harsh treatment I have no doubt even Hicesius was convinced,
although he imported their soul into infants after birth from the
stroke of the frigid air, because the very term for soul, forsooth, in
Greek answered to such a refrigeration!1678
| 1678 So Plato,
Cratylus, p. 399, c. 17. |
Well, then, have the barbarian and Roman nations received souls by some
other process, (I wonder;) for they have called the soul by another
name than ψυχή? How many nations are
there who commence life1679
under the broiling
sun of the torrid zone, scorching their skin into its swarthy hue?
Whence do they get their souls, with no frosty air to help them?
I say not a word of those well-warmed bed-rooms, and all that apparatus
of heat which ladies in childbirth so greatly need, when a breath of
cold air might endanger their life. But in the very bath almost a babe
will slip into life, and at once his cry is heard! If, however, a good
frosty air is to the soul so indispensable a treasure, then beyond the
German and the Scythian tribes, and the Alpine and the Argæan
heights, nobody ought ever to be born! But the fact really is, that
population is greater within the temperate regions of the East and the
West, and men’s minds are sharper; whilst there is not a
Sarmatian whose wits are not dull and humdrum. The minds of men, too,
would grow keener by reason of the cold, if their souls came into being
amidst nipping frosts; for as the substance is, so must be its active
power. Now, after these preliminary statements, we may also refer to
the case of those who, having been cut out of their mother’s
womb, have breathed and retained life—your Bacchuses1680
and Scipios.1681
| 1681 See Pliny,
Natural History, vii. 9. |
If, however, there be any one who, like Plato,1682
supposes that two souls cannot, more than two bodies could, co-exist in
the same individual, I, on the contrary, could show him not merely the
co-existence of two souls in one person, as also of two bodies in the
same womb, but likewise the combination of many other things in natural
connection with the soul—for instance, of demoniacal possession;
and that not of one only, as in the case of Socrates’ own
demon; but of seven spirits as in the case of the Magdalene;1683
and of a legion in number, as in the
Gadarene.1684
Now one soul is
naturally more susceptible of conjunction with another soul, by reason
of the identity of their substance, than an evil spirit is, owing to
their diverse natures. But when the same philosopher, in the sixth book
of The Laws, warns us to beware lest a vitiation of seed should
infuse a soil into both body and soul from an illicit or debased
concubinage, I hardly know whether he is more inconsistent with himself
in respect of one of his previous statements, or of that which he had
just made. For he here shows us that the soul proceeds from human seed
(and warns us to be on our guard about it), not, (as he had said
before,) from the first breath of the new-born child. Pray, whence
comes it that from similarity of soul we resemble our parents in
disposition, according to the testimony of Cleanthes,1685
if we are not produced from this seed of the
soul? Why, too, used the old astrologers to cast a man’s nativity
from his first conception, if his soul also draws not its origin from
that moment? To this (nativity) likewise belongs the inbreathing of the
soul, whatever that is.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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