Against the Epistle of Manichæus, Called…

 St. AUGUSTIN:

 Chapter 1.—To Heal Heretics is Better Than to Destroy Them.

 Chapter 2.—Why the Manichæans Should Be More Gently Dealt with.

 Chapter 3.—Augustin Once a Manichæan.

 Chapter 4.—Proofs of the Catholic Faith.

 Chapter 5.—Against the Title of the Epistle of Manichæus.

 Chapter 6.—Why Manichæus Called Himself an Apostle of Christ.

 Chapter 7.—In What Sense the Followers of Manichæus Believe Him to Be the Holy Spirit.

 Chapter 8.—The Festival of the Birth-Day of Manichæus.

 Chapter 9.—When the Holy Spirit Was Sent.

 Chapter 10.—The Holy Spirit Twice Given.

 Chapter 11.—Manichæus Promises Truth, But Does Not Make Good His Word.

 Chapter 12.—The Wild Fancies of Manichæus. The Battle Before the Constitution of the World.

 Chapter 13.—Two Opposite Substances. The Kingdom of Light. Manichæus Teaches Uncertainties Instead of Certainties.

 Chapter 14.—Manichæus Promises the Knowledge of Undoubted Things, and Then Demands Faith in Doubtful Things.

 Chapter 15.—The Doctrine of Manichæus Not Only Uncertain, But False. His Absurd Fancy of a Land and Race of Darkness Bordering on the Holy Region and

 Chapter 16.—The Soul, Though Mutable, Has No Material Form. It is All Present in Every Part of the Body.

 Chapter 17.—The Memory Contains the Ideas of Places of the Greatest Size.

 Chapter 18.—The Understanding Judges of the Truth of Things, and of Its Own Action.

 Chapter 19.—If the Mind Has No Material Extension, Much Less Has God.

 Chapter 20.—Refutation of the Absurd Idea of Two Territories.

 Chapter 21.—This Region of Light Must Be Material If It is Joined to the Region of Darkness. The Shape of the Region of Darkness Joined to the Region

 Chapter 22.—The Form of the Region of Light the Worse of the Two.

 Chapter 23.—The Anthropomorphites Not So Bad as the Manichæans.

 Chapter 24.—Of the Number of Natures in the Manichæan Fiction.

 Chapter 25.—Omnipotence Creates Good Things Differing in Degree. In Every Description Whatsoever of the Junction of the Two Regions There is Either Im

 Chapter 26.—The Manichæans are Reduced to the Choice of a Tortuous, or Curved, or Straight Line of Junction. The Third Kind of Line Would Give Symmetr

 Chapter 27.—The Beauty of the Straight Line Might Be Taken from the Region of Darkness Without Taking Anything from Its Substance. So Evil Neither Tak

 Chapter 28.—Manichæus Places Five Natures in the Region of Darkness.

 Chapter 29.—The Refutation of This Absurdity.

 Chapter 30.—The Number of Good Things in Those Natures Which Manichæus Places in the Region of Darkness.

 Chapter 31.—The Same Subject Continued.

 Chapter 32.—Manichæus Got the Arrangement of His Fanciful Notions from Visible Objects.

 Chapter 33.—Every Nature, as Nature, is Good.

 Chapter 34.—Nature Cannot Be Without Some Good. The Manichæans Dwell Upon the Evils.

 Chapter 35.—Evil Alone is Corruption. Corruption is Not Nature, But Contrary to Nature. Corruption Implies Previous Good.

 Chapter 36.—The Source of Evil or of Corruption of Good.

 Chapter 37.—God Alone Perfectly Good.

 Chapter 38.—Nature Made by God Corruption Comes from Nothing.

 Chapter 39.—In What Sense Evils are from God.

 Chapter 40.—Corruption Tends to Non-Existence.

 Chapter 41.—Corruption is by God’s Permission, and Comes from Us.

 Chapter 42.—Exhortation to the Chief Good.

 Chapter 43.—Conclusion.

Chapter 16.—The Soul, Though Mutable, Has No Material Form. It is All Present in Every Part of the Body.

But why speak of truth and wisdom which surpass all the powers of the soul, when the nature of the soul itself, which is known to be mutable, still has no kind of material extension in space? For whatever consists of any kind of gross matter must necessarily be divisible into parts, having one in one place, and another in another. Thus, the finger is less than the whole hand, and one finger is less than two; and there is one place for this finger, and another for that, and another for the rest of the hand. And this applies not to organized bodies only, but also to the earth, each part of which has its own place, so that one cannot be where the other is. So in moisture, the smaller quantity occupies a smaller space, and the larger quantity a larger space; and one part is at the bottom of the cup, and another part near the mouth. So in air, each part has its own place; and it is impossible for the air in this house to have along with itself, in the same house at the same moment, the air that the neighbors have. And even as regards light itself, one part pours through one window, and another through another; and a greater through the larger, and a smaller through the smaller. Nor, in fact, can there be any bodily substance, whether celestial or terrestrial, whether aerial or moist, which is not less in part than in whole, or which can possibly have one part in the place of another at the same time; but, having one thing in one place and another in another, its extension in space is a substance which has distinct limits and parts, or, so to speak, sections. The nature of the soul, on the other hand, though we leave out of account its power of perceiving truth, and consider only its inferior power of giving unity to the body, and of sensation in the body, does not appear to have any material extension in space. For it is all present in each separate part of its body when it is all present in any sensation. There is not a smaller part in the finger, and a larger in the arm, as the bulk of the finger is less than that of the arm; but the quantity everywhere is the same, for the whole is present everywhere. For when the finger is touched, the whole mind feels, though the sensation is not through the whole body. No part of the mind is unconscious of the touch, which proves the presence of the whole. And yet it is not so present in the finger or in the sensation as to abandon the rest of the body, or to gather itself up into the one place where the sensation occurs. For when it is all present in the sensation in a finger, if another part, say the foot, be touched, it does not fail to be all present in this sensation too: so that at the same moment it is all present in different places, without leaving one in order to be in the other, and without having one part in one, and another in the other; but by this power showing itself to be all present at the same moment in separate places. Since it is all present in the sensations of these places, it proves that it is not bound by the conditions of space.19 [Modern mental physiologists differ among themselves as regards the presence of the mind throughout the entire nervous system; some maintaining the view here presented, and others making the brain to be the seat of sensation, and the nerves telegraphic lines, so to speak, for the communication of impressions from the various parts of the body to the brain. Compare Carpenter: Mental Physiology, and Calderwood: Mind and Brain.—A.H.N.]