No End to Snowdrops by Phillipa Bernard

Author:Phillipa Bernard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780856833595
Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd
Published: 2010-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 44

More on man:

how much regard he gives to the soul,

and how much to the body

IT IS WORTH CONSIDERING the importance Plato places on advising us that we should make every effort to know ourselves, to remember that God has committed to our charge everything beneath the Moon, and thus avoid ever subjecting ourselves, out of disregard for our own dignity, to those things that are beneath us. For at the very beginning of this entire dialogue a resolution was made that the whole cosmos should be discussed, right up to the birth of man. Again, in the central part of the discussion, the gods are enjoined by their Father to ennoble man, the lord of all creatures, whom He wishes to be pre-eminent and to be in His image and likeness. Then, after a few interpositions, man is returned to. Finally, towards the end of the dialogue, the resolution that was made at the beginning is taken up once more: to discuss the whole cosmos right up to the birth of man. And at all times it is asserted, just as Moses declared, that man is put first in this divine handiwork, and is also put last, as its summation.

And so now, leaving out other matters, he repeats the divine ordinance in creating man and the compliance of divine ministers in completing this work. And he is not without justification in doing so, for he had said earlier that, of all the creatures on earth, man alone would honour justice and the gods, so that it is in full accord with reason for the gods to have carefully nurtured the birth of man. But, leaving these things on one side, let us expound what follows.

The irrational soul is once more discussed, the soul that is constituted not directly by God but through the subsequent changeable causes and that is subject to the rational soul, which has been despatched from heaven by God. Now the followers of Plato consider that the irrational soul is not so much substantial as accidental , like an impression made by rational souls, something in which the senses do in fact exist, although they are divided and subject to suffering on account of the various instruments of the physical body.

But the followers of Plato locate the common sense – which is simple and not subject to suffering, and which does not in fact receive the effects conveyed by bodies, as another sense would, but perceives the senses of the irrational soul or, rather, assesses their effects – within the very substance of the rational soul.

In a similar way, they demonstrate that the undivided substance of the rational soul abides within itself and is not entrusted to the head for its support but is, as it were, equipped to act either on its own behalf or on behalf of something similar within its own class.

They also demonstrate that the irrational soul resides in some way within the limbs of the body, and that that portion of

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