{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050784.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050784.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050784.htm","text":"Chapter 28.\u2014Is the Soul Deformed by the Body\u2019s Imperfections?\nNow, again, what means it that you say, \u201cThe soul acquires form from the body, and grows and extends with the increase of the body,\u201d without keeping in view what a monstrosity the soul of either a young man or an old man would become if his arm had been amputated when he was an infant? \u201cThe hand of the soul,\u201d you say, \u201ccontracts itself, so that it is not amputated with the hand of the body, and by condensation it shrinks into other parts of the body.\u201d At this rate the aforesaid arm of the soul will be kept, wherever it holds its ground, as short as it was at first when it received the form of the body, because it has lost the form by the growth of which it might itself have increased at an equal degree of expansion. Thus the soul of the young man or the old man who lost his hand in his infancy advances with two hands, indeed (because the one which shrank back escaped the amputation of the bodily limb), but one of these was the hand of an adult, young or old, according to the hypothesis, while the other was only an infant\u2019s hand, just as it was when the amputation happened. Such souls, believe me, are not made in the mould and form of the body, but they are fictitiously framed under the deformed stamp of error. It seems to me impossible for you to be rescued from this error, unless with God\u2019s help you fully and calmly examine the visions of those who dream, and from these convince yourself that some forms are not real bodies, but only the semblances of bodies. Now, although even those objects which we suppose to be like bodies are of the same class, 2496 yet so far as the dead are concerned, we can form an after guess about them from persons who are asleep. For it is not in vain that Holy Scripture describes as \u201casleep\u201d those who are dead 2497 were it only because in a certain sense \u201csleep is akin to death.\u201d 2498\nThat is (in opposition to the really \u201cdead,\u201d afterwards mentioned), such as are seen by living persons in visions.\n366:2497 366:2498\nVirgil, \u00c6neid, vi. 279, \u201cConsanguineus Lethi sopor\u201d (Death\u2019s own brother, Sleep).","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: A Treatise on the...","type":"page"}