St. Hesychius

"Nipsis is a method and science that, with the help of God, completely frees a person from passionate thoughts and words and from evil deeds if one continues this spiritual method for a long time and applies it willingly. Nipsis also provides secure knowledge of the incomprehensible God, as much as possible, and reveals divine and hidden mysteries. Additionally, through this method, a person achieves the fulfillment of all the commandments of the Old and New Testaments and provides all the benefits of the future age. It is primarily the purity of heart, which, due to its greatness and beauty, or, to be precise, due to our negligence, is extremely rare among monks. Chdist blesses this purity with the words: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). Therefore, being what it is, it requires a great price to obtain. Nipsis, when it becomes long-established in a person, becomes a guide to a correct and God-pleasimg life. This is also the seal of theoria (contemplation). It's teaches us to justly move all three parts of the soul (the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive) and to safely guard our senses. It also enlarges the four general virtues (prudence, courage, temperance, and justice) every day in the one who possesses it."

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St. Neilos

"114. Do not seek to receive any form or shape during prayer.

115. Do not desire to see angels or powers or Christ sensibly so that your mind does not completely leave you, as you would be receiving a wolf instead of a shepherd and worshipping enemy demons.

116. The beginning of the mind's deception is vainglory. From this, the mind moves and tries to define the divine with shapes and forms.

117. I will say my own word, which I have told younger ones: Blessed is the mind that has acquired perfect formlessness during prayer.

118. Blessed is the mind that, because it prays without distraction, always gains more desire for God.

119. Blessed is the mind that during prayer becomes immaterial and unpossessive.

120. Blessed is the mind that alienates itself from every sense (perception) of material things during prayer."

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St. Albert - That Our Labour Must Be With The Understanding And Not With The Senses

"Blessed is he who by continually cleansing his soul from the images and phantoms of earth draws its powers inward, and thence lifts them up to God.

At length he in a manner forgets all images, and by a simple and direct act of pure intellect and will contemplates God, Who is absolutely simple.

Cast from thee, therefore, all phantoms, images, and forms, and whatsoever is not God, that all thy intercourse with Him may proceed from an understanding, affection, and will, alike purified. This is, in truth, the end of all thy labours, that thou mayest draw nigh unto God and repose in Him within thy soul, solely by thy understanding and by a fervent love, free from entanglement or earthly image.

Not by his bodily organs or outward senses does a man attain to this, but by the intelligence and will, which constitute him man. So long as he lingers, trifling with the objects of the imagination and senses, he has not yet passed beyond the limits and instincts of his animal nature, which he possesses in common with the brute beasts. They know and feel through images and by their senses, nor can it be otherwise, for they have no higher powers. Not so is it with man, who, by his intelligence, affections, and will, is created in the image and likeness of God. Hence it is by these powers that he ought, without intermediary, purely and directly to commune with God, be united to Him, and cleave to Him.

The Devil does his very utmost to hinder us from this exercise, for he beholds in it a beginning and a foretaste of eternal life, and he is envious of man. Therefore he strives, now by one temptation or passion, now by another, to turn away our thoughts from God.

At one time he assails us by arousing in us unnecessary anxiety, foolish cares or troubles, or by drawing us to irregular conversations and vain curiosity. At another he ensnares us by subtle books, by the words of others, by rumours and novelties. Then, again, he has recourse to trials, contradictions, etc.

Although these things may sometimes seem but very trifling faults, if faults at all, yet do they greatly hinder our progress in this holy exercise. Therefore, whether great or small, they must be resisted and driven from us as evil and harmful, though they may seem useful and even necessary. It is of great importance that what we have heard, or seen, or done, or said, should not leave their traces or fill our imagination.

Neither before nor after, nor at the time, should we foster these memories or allow their images to be formed. For when the mind is free from these thoughts, we are not hindered in our prayer, in meditation, or the psalmody, or in any other of our spiritual exercises, nor do these distractions return to trouble us.

Then shouldst thou readily and trustfully commit thyself and all that concerns thee to the unfailing and most sure Providence of God, in silence and peace. He Himself will fight for thee, and will grant thee a liberty and consolation better, nobler, and sweeter than would be possible if thou gavest thyself up day and night to thy fancies, to vain and wandering thoughts, which hold captive the mind, as they toss it hither and thither, wearying soul and body, and wasting uselessly alike thy time and strength.

Accept all things, whatsoever their cause, silently and with a tranquil mind, as coming to thee from the fatherly hand of Divine Providence.

Free thyself, therefore, from all the impressions of earthly things, in so far as thy state and profession require, so that with a purified mind and sincere affection thou mayest cleave to Him to Whom thou hast so often and so entirely vowed thyself.

Let nothing remain which could come between thy soul and God, that so thou mayest be able to pass surely and directly from the wounds of the Sacred Humanity to the brightness of the Divinity."

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St. Maximus

"The whole purpose of the monk's warfare against the demons is to separate the passions from conceptual images."

"A monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, psalmody and prayer cleaves to God."

"We carry about with us impassioned images of the things we have experienced."

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St. Thomas Aquinas

"For the end toward which the contemplative life, as we are now examining it, is ordained is the consideration of truth, of that truth, I say, which is uncreated..."

"God infuses into man, over and above the natural faculty of reason, the light of grace whereby he is internally perfected for the exercise of virtue... man's mind is elevated by this light to the knowledge of truths surpassing reason... man's affective power is raised by this light above all created things to the love of God..."

"Wisdom is twofold, created and uncreated. Man is said to be endowed with both..."

"...human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace. For the intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light; and sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed."

"...angels propose the intelligible truth to men under the similitudes of sensible things... the human intellect... is strengthened by the action of the angelic intellect."

"...the intellectual light itself which is in us, is nothing else than a participated likeness of the uncreated light in which are contained the eternal types."

"...man's natural light, which is what makes him intellectual, is from God."

"...God is the author of the intellect power, and... he can be seen by the intellect."

"All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is a participation of the divine light..."

"...understanding is an intellectual principle higher than our intellect - namely, God..."

"...reason... whereby it apprehends the truth about something. This act is not in our power: because it happens in virtue of a natural or supernatural light."

"The will is the name of the rational appetite; and consequently it cannot be in things devoid of reason."

"The knowledge which we have by natural reason contains two things: images derived from the sensible objects; and the natural intelligible light, enabling us to abstract from them intelligible conceptions."

"...the image of the Trinity is to be found in the acts of the soul, that is, inasmuch as from the knowledge which we possess, by actual thought we form an internal word; and thence break forth into love. But, since the principles of acts are the habits and powers, and everything exists virtually in its principle, therefore, secondarily and consequently, the image of the Trinity may be considered as existing in the powers, and still more in the habits, forasmuch as the acts virtually exist therein."

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St. Catherine of Siena

"Look at My glorious Thomas, who gazed with the gentle eye of his intellect at My Truth, whereby he acquired supernatural light and science infused by grace, for he obtained it rather by means of prayer than by human study."

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St. Silouan - Pure Prayer, Noetic Stillness, Imagination, Ascetic Struggle, Uncreated Light

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Counsels From The Holy Mountain

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Hesychia and Theology: The Context Of Man's Healing In The Orthodox Church

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Orthodox Psychotherapy

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Therapy of Spiritual Illness

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Fr. Chad Ripperger

"...demons are essentially trying to establish an abusive relationship with us as human beings. If one observes the structure of abusive human relationships, one will notice that the similarities are striking. In abusive human relationships, (1) the abuser humiliates or embarrasses the abused, (2) constantly putting the abused down, (3) subjecting the abused to hyper criticism, (4) uses sarcasm and an unpleasant tone of voice at the expense of the abused, (5) the abuser is extremely moody, (6) ridicules the abused, (7) threatens the abused, (8) attempts to dominate and control, (9) withholds affection, (10) subjects the abused to guilt trips, (11) blames the abused for everything (making everything the abused's fault) and (12) isolates the abused from friends and family."

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St. John Chrysostom

"Prayer is the light of the soul, giving us true knowledge of God."

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St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

 "...a person who allows himself to excite his blood and take pleasure in it is unfit to receive divine grace."

"This movement of the blood is all the more dangerous because very few understand it. On the contrary, many take the sinful movement of the blood in themselves as an effect of a good influence, and follow their mistaken impulse as if it were an impulse inspired by holy truth pleasing to God."

"The blood is set into contrary motion by the passions..."

"We go not only by a narrow way; we travel by night. Constant vigilance of mind is indispensable, so as not to be drawn away by our fallen nature, and by our fathers and brothers who are drawn away by it, and so as to escape all the snares and the furious malice and humanly incomprehensible cunning and wickedness of the fallen angels."

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St. Thomas Aquinas

"...intellect and will: these are not acts of any parts of the body."

"...the corporeal creature is governed by the angels."

"...in the brain... animal forces culminate..."

"...four interior powers of the sensitive [soul] - namely, the common sense, the imagination, and the estimative and memorative powers."

"...passion is properly to be found where there is corporeal transmutation. This corporeal transmutation is found in the act of the sensitive appetite, and is not only spiritual, as in the sensitive apprehension, but also natural. Now there is no need for corporeal transmutation in the act of the intellectual appetite: because this appetite is not exercised by means of a corporeal organ."

"...angels propose the intelligible truth to men under the similitudes of sensible things... the human intellect... is strengthened by the action of the angelic intellect."

"...human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace. For the intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light; and sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed."

"God infuses into man, over and above the natural faculty of reason, the light of grace whereby he is internally perfected for the exercise of virtue... man's mind is elevated by this light to the knowledge of truths surpassing reason... man's affective power is raised by this light above all created things to the love of God..."

"...the soul is the primary principle of our nourishment, sensation, and local movement; and likewise of our understanding."

"...the soul in its essence is the form of the body, and the faculties, too, are all rooted in the essence of the soul."

"...powers that are principles of the soul's operations, are united in the essence of the soul."

"...man's natural light, which is what makes him intellectual, is from God."

"...God is the author of the intellect power, and... he can be seen by the intellect."

"The intellect is above... time..."

"...the soul moves the body..."

"...the soul by its very essence is an act."

"...God alone is pure act..."

"...in God alone His action of understanding is His very Being. Wherefore in God alone is His Intellect His essence: while in other intellectual creatures, the intellect is power."

"All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is a participation of the divine light..."

"The meritorious knowledge and love of God can be in us only by grace."

"...understanding is an intellectual principle higher than our intellect - namely, God..."

"...reason... whereby it apprehends the truth about something. This act is not in our power: because it happens in virtue of a natural or supernatural light."

"...will is a power of the rational soul, which is caused by God..."

"Virtue... establishes the mean between passions."

"...the Word of God is born of God by the knowledge of Himself; and Love proceeds from God according as He loves Himself."

"...the intellect... is the form of the human body."

"Intelligence arises from memory..."

"...the higher part of the reason is the province of wisdom, while the lower part is the domain of knowledge... [St. Augustine] ...directs human acts according to Divine rules."

"...by like acts habits are formed..." [Aristotle]

"...the intellect knows itself not by its essence, but by its act."

"...habits, like the powers, are known by their acts."

"...the first thing understood of the intellect is its own act of understanding."

"...the human intellect, which neither is its own act of understanding, nor is its own essence the first object of its act of understanding, for this object is the nature of a material thing... that which is first known by the human intellect is an object of this kind, and that which is known secondarily is the act by which that object is known; and through the act the intellect itself is known, the perfection of which is this act of understanding."

"...the intellect in act is the object actually understood." (Matter, potency; Form, act)

"The necessity of prayer is based on the necessity of actual grace." [Adolphe Tanquerey]

"The will is the name of the rational appetite; and consequently it cannot be in things devoid of reason."

"...the intellectual light itself which is in us, is nothing else than a participated likeness of  the uncreated light in which are contained the eternal types."

"The knowledge which we have by natural reason contains two things: images derived from the sensible objects; and the natural intelligible light, enabling us to abstract from them intelligible conceptions."

"Our intellect both abstracts the intelligible species from the phantasms, inasmuch as it considers the natures of things in universal, and, nevertheless, understands these natures in the phantasms since it cannot understand even the things of which it abstracts the species, without turning to the phantasms..."

"...the image of the Trinity is to be found in the acts of the soul, that is, inasmuch as from the knowledge which we possess, by actual thought we form an internal word; and thence break forth into love. But, since the principles of acts are the habits and powers, and everything exists virtually in its principle, therefore, secondarily and consequently, the image of the Trinity may be considered as existing in the powers, and still more in the habits, forasmuch as the acts virtually exist therein."

"...the love of God is better than the knowledge of God; but, on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof."

"...the intellect understands that the will wills, and the will wills the intellect to understand."

"...the end of the spiritual life is that man be united to God, and this union is effected by charity..."

"Charity is not any kind of love of God, but that love of God, by which He is loved as the object of bliss, to which object we are directed by faith and hope."

"...charity, unlike faith and hope, is inseparable from the state of grace and from the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in us..." [Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange]

"...the primal union of man with God is by faith, hope and charity..."

"...whoever has charity has all the gifts of the Holy Ghost..."

"...God's act of understanding, which is His being, is measured by eternity..."

"Just as God's understanding is His existence, so likewise is His love."

"...when we pray we ought principally to ask to be united to God..."

"We need to pray to God, not in order to make known to Him our needs or desires but that we ourselves may be reminded of the necessity of having recourse to God's help in these matters."

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St. John of the Cross

"Oh, miserable is the fortune of our life, which is lived in such great peril and wherein it is so difficult to find the truth! For that which is most clear and true is to us most dark and doubtful; wherefore, though it is the thing that is most needful for us, we flee from it. And that which gives the greatest light and satisfaction to our eyes we embrace and pursue, though it be the worst thing for us, and makes us fall at every step. In what peril and fear does man live, since the very natural light of his eyes by which he has to guide himself is the first light that dazzles him and leads him astray on his road to God! And if he is to know with certainty by what road he travels, he must perforce keep his eyes closed and walk in darkness, that he may be secure from the enemies who inhabit his own house - that is, his senses and faculties."

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Catechism Of The Catholic Church

"1722 Such beatitude surpasses the understanding and powers of man. It comes from an entirely free gift of God: whence it is called supernatural, as is the grace that disposes man to enter into the divine joy.

'"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." It is true, because of the greatness and inexpressible glory of God, that "man shall not see me and live," for the Father cannot be grasped. But because of God's love and goodness toward us, and because he can do all things, he goes so far as to grant those who love him the privilege of seeing him... For "what is impossible for men is possible for God." - St. Irenaeus

1734 Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.

1788 To this purpose, man strives to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times assisted by the virtue of prudence, by the advice of competent people, and by the help of the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

2015 The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes:

'He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows.' - St. Gregory of Nyssa"

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St. Symeon The New Theologian

"Apart from love nothing whatever has existed, nor ever will. Its names and actions are many. More numerous still are its distinctive marks; divine and innumerable are its properties. Yet it is one in nature, wholly beyond utterance whether on the part of angels or men or any other creatures, even such as are unknown to us. Reason cannot comprehend it; its glory is inaccessible, its counsels unsearchable. It is eternal because it is beyond time, invisible because thought cannot comprehend it, though it may perceive it."

"Truly, unless one is slaughtered like a sheep for any single virtue and pours out his own blood for it, he will never possess it."

"He who pleads in his defense should not add any [mental reservation] in his heart to what he speaks; he who seeks justice for himself must be dead to the world in the disposition of his heart."

"The Father is light, light the Son, light the Holy Spirit, one light, timeless, invisible, unmingled, eternal, uncreated, without quantity, without lack, invisible, outside and beyond all things, yet which both is and is perceived by the intellect, which no one among men has ever seen before having been purified, nor ever received before having seen it."

"...fasting is the beginning and foundation of every spiritual activity."

"Man is united to God spiritually and physically, since the soul is not separated from the mind, neither the body from the soul. By being united in essence man also has three hypostases by grace. He is a single god by adoption with body and soul and the divine Spirit, of whom he has become a partaker."

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St. Gregory of Nyssa

"A brief examination of the construction of our bodies from a medical point of view.

1. Now the exact structure of our body each man teaches himself by his experiences of sight and light and perception, having his own nature to instruct him; any one too may learn everything accurately who takes up the researches which those skilled in such matters have worked out in books. And of these writers some learned by dissection the position of our individual organs; others also considered and expounded the reason for the existence of all the parts of the body; so that the knowledge of the human frame which hence results is sufficient for students. But if any one further seeks that the Church should be his teacher on all these points, so that he may not need for anything the voice of those without (for this is the wont of the spiritual sheep, as the Lord says, that they hear not a strange voice), we shall briefly take in hand the account of these matters also.

2. We note concerning our bodily nature three things, for the sake of which our particular parts were formed. Life is the cause of some, good life of others, others again are adapted with a view to the succession of descendants. All things in us which are of such a kind that without them it is not possible that human life should exist, we consider as being in three parts; in the brain, the heart, and the liver. Again, all that are a sort of additional blessings, nature's liberality, whereby she bestows on man the gift of living well, are the organs of sense; for such things do not constitute our life, since even where some of them are wanting man is often none the less in a condition of life; but without these forms of activity it is impossible to enjoy participation in the pleasures of life. The third aim regards the future, and the succession of life. There are also certain other organs besides these, which help, in common with all the others, to subserve the continuance of life, importing by their own means the proper supplies, as the stomach and the lungs, the latter fanning by respiration the fire at the heart, the former introducing the nourishment for the internal organs.

3. Our structure, then, being thus divided, we have carefully to mark that our faculty for life is not supported in any one way by some single organ, but nature, while distributing the means for our existence among several parts, makes the contribution of each individual necessary for the whole; just as the things which nature contrives for the security and beauty of life are also numerous, and differ much among themselves.

4. We ought, however, I think, first to discuss briefly the first beginnings of the things which contribute to the constitution of our life. As for the material of the whole body which serves as a common substratum for the particular members, it may for the present be left without remark; for a discussion as to natural substance in general will not be of any assistance to our purpose with regard to the consideration of the parts.

5. As it is then acknowledged by all that there is in us a share of all that we behold as elements in the universe— of heat and cold, and of the other pair of qualities of moisture and dryness — we must discuss them severally.

6. We see then that the powers which control life are three, of which the first by its heat produces general warmth, the second by its moisture keeps damp that which is warmed, so that the living being is kept in an intermediate condition by the equal balance of the forces exerted by the quality of each of the opposing natures (the moist element not being dried up by excess of heat, nor the hot element quenched by the prevalence of moisture); and the third power by its own agency holds together the separate members in a certain agreement and harmony, connecting them by the ties which it itself furnishes, and sending into them all that self-moving and determining force, on the failure of which the member becomes relaxed and deadened, being left destitute of the determining spirit.

7. Or rather, before dealing with these, it is right that we should mark the skilled workmanship of nature in the actual construction of the body. For as that which is hard and resistent does not admit the action of the senses (as we may see in the instance of our own bones, and in that of plants in the ground, where we remark indeed a certain form of life in that they grow and receive nourishment, yet the resistent character of their substance does not allow them sensation), for this reason it was necessary that some wax-like formation, so to say, should be supplied for the action of the senses, with the faculty of being impressed with the stamp of things capable of striking them, neither becoming confused by excess of moisture (for the impress would not remain in moist substance), nor resisting by extraordinary solidity (for that which is unyielding would not receive any mark from the impressions), but being in a state between softness and hardness, in order that the living being might not be destitute of the fairest of all the operations of nature — I mean the motion of sense.

8. Now as a soft and yielding substance, if it had no assistance from the hard parts, would certainly have, like molluscs, neither motion nor articulation, nature accordingly mingles in the body the hardness of the bones, and uniting these by close connection one to another, and knitting their joints together by means of the sinews, thus plants around them the flesh which receives sensations, furnished with a somewhat harder and more highly-strung surface than it would otherwise have had.

9. While resting, then, the whole weight of the body on this substance of the bones, as on some columns that carry a mass of building, she did not implant the bone undivided through the whole structure: for in that case man would have remained without motion or activity, if he had been so constructed, just like a tree that stands on one spot without either the alternate motion of legs to advance its motion or the service of hands to minister to the conveniences of life: but now we see that she contrived that the instrument should be rendered capable of walking and working by this device, after she had implanted in the body, by the determining spirit which extends through the nerves, the impulse and power for motion. And hence is produced the service of the hands, so varied and multiform, and answering to every thought. Hence are produced, as though by some mechanical contrivance, the turnings of the neck, and the bending and raising of the head, and the action of the chin, and the separation of the eyelids, that takes place with a thought, and the movements of the other joints, by the tightening or relaxation of certain nerves. And the power that extends through these exhibits a sort of independent impulse, working with the spirit of its will by a sort of natural management, in each particular part; but the root of all, and the principle of the motions of the nerves, is found in the nervous tissue that surrounds the brain.

10. We consider, then, that we need not spend more time in inquiring in which of the vital members such a thing resides, when the energy of motion is shown to be here. But that the brain contributes to life in a special degree is shown clearly by the result of the opposite conditions: for if the tissue surrounding it receives any wound or lesion, death immediately follows the injury, nature being unable to endure the hurt even for a moment; just as, when a foundation is withdrawn, the whole building collapses with the part; and that member, from an injury to which the destruction of the whole living being clearly follows, may properly be acknowledged to contain the cause of life.

11. But as furthermore in those who have ceased to live, when the heat that is implanted in our nature is quenched, that which has become dead grows cold, we hence recognize the vital cause also in heat: for we must of necessity acknowledge that the living being subsists by the presence of that, which failing, the condition of death supervenes. And of such a force we understand the heart to be as it were the fountain-head and principle, as from it pipe-like passages, growing one from another in many ramifications, diffuse in the whole body the warm and fiery spirit.

12. And since some nourishment must needs also be provided by nature for the element of heat — for it is not possible that the fire should last by itself, without being nourished by its proper food — therefore the channels of the blood, issuing from the liver as from a fountainhead, accompany the warm spirit everywhere in its way throughout the body, that the one may not by isolation from the other become a disease and destroy the constitution. Let this instruct those who go beyond the bounds of fairness, as they learn from nature that covetousness is a disease that breeds destruction.

13. But since the Divinity alone is free from needs, while human poverty requires external aid for its own subsistence, nature therefore, in addition to those three powers by which we said that the whole body is regulated, brings in imported matter from without, introducing by different entrances that which is suitable to those powers.

14. For to the fount of the blood, which is the liver, she furnishes its supply by food: for that which from time to time is imported in this way prepares the springs of blood to issue from the liver, as the snow on the mountain by its own moisture increases the springs in the low ground, forcing its own fluid deep down to the veins below.

15. The breath in the heart is supplied by means of the neighbouring organ, which is called the lungs, and is a receptacle for air, drawing the breath from without through the windpipe inserted in it, which extends to the mouth. The heart being placed in the midst of this organ (and itself also moving incessantly in imitation of the action of the ever-moving fire), draws to itself, somewhat as the bellows do in the forges, a supply from the adjacent air, filling its recesses by dilatation, and while it fans its own fiery element, breathes upon the adjoining tubes; and this it does not cease to do, drawing the external air into its own recesses by dilatation, and by compression infusing the air from itself into the tubes.

16. And this seems to me to be the cause of this spontaneous respiration of ours; for often the mind is occupied in discourse with others, or is entirely quiescent when the body is relaxed in sleep, but the respiration of air does not cease, though the will gives no co-operation to this end. Now I suppose, since the heart is surrounded by the lungs, and in the back part of its own structure is attached to them, moving that organ by its own dilatations and compressions, that the inhaling and exhaling of the air is brought about by the lungs: for as they are a lightly built and porous body, and have all their recesses opening at the base of the windpipe, when they contract and are compressed they necessarily force out by pressure the air that is left in their cavities; and, when they expand and open, draw the air, by their distention, into the void by suction.

17. This then is the cause of this involuntary respiration — the impossibility that the fiery element should remain at rest: for as the operation of motion is proper to heat, and we understand that the principle of heat is to be found in the heart, the continual motion going on in this organ produces the incessant inspiration and exhalation of the air through the lungs: wherefore also when the fiery element is unnaturally augmented, the breathing of those fevered subjects becomes more rapid, as though the heart were endeavouring to quench the flame implanted in it by more violent breathing.

18. But since our nature is poor and in need of supplies for its own maintenance from all quarters, it not only lacks air of its own, and the breath which excites heat, which it imports from without for the preservation of the living being, but the nourishment it finds to fill out the proportions of the body is an importation. Accordingly, it supplies the deficiency by food and drink, implanting in the body a certain faculty for appropriating that which it requires, and rejecting that which is superfluous, and for this purpose too the fire of the heart gives nature no small assistance.

19. For since, according to the account we have given, the heart which kindles by its warm breath the individual parts, is the most important of the vital organs, our Maker caused it to be operative with its efficacious power at all points, that no part of it might be left ineffectual or unprofitable for the regulation of the whole organism. Behind, therefore, it enters the lungs, and, by its continuous motion, drawing that organ to itself, it expands the passages to inhale the air, and compressing them again it brings about the exspiration of the imprisoned air; while in front, attached to the space at the upper extremity of the stomach, it warms it and makes it respond by motion to its own activity, rousing it, not to inhale air, but to receive its appropriate food: for the entrances for breath and food are near one another, extending lengthwise one alongside the other, and are terminated in their upper extremity by the same boundary, so that their mouths are contiguous and the passages come to an end together in one mouth, from which the entrance of food is effected through the one, and that of the breath through the other.

20. Internally, however, the closeness of the connection of the passages is not maintained throughout; for the heart intervening between the base of the two, infuses in the one the powers for respiration, and in the other for nutriment. Now the fiery element is naturally inclined to seek for the material which serves as fuel, and this necessarily happens with regard to the receptacle of nourishment; for the more it becomes penetrated by fire through the neighbouring warmth, the more it draws to itself what nourishes the heat. And this sort of impulse we call appetite.

21. But if the organ which contains the food should obtain sufficient material, not even so does the activity of the fire become quiescent: but it produces a sort of melting of the material just as in a foundry, and, dissolving the solids, pours them out and transfers them, as it were from a funnel, to the neighbouring passages: then separating the coarser from the pure substance, it passes the fine part through certain channels to the entrance of the liver, and expels the sedimentary matter of the food to the wider passages of the bowels, and by turning it over in their manifold windings retains the food for a time in the intestines, lest if it were easily got rid of by a straight passage it might at once excite the animal again to appetite, and man, like the race of irrational animals, might never cease from this sort of occupation.

22. As we saw, however, that the liver has special need of the co-operation of heat for the conversion of the fluids into blood, while this organ is in position distant from the heart (for it would, I imagine, have been impossible that, being one principle or root of the vital power, it should not be hampered by vicinity with another such principle), in order that the system may suffer no injury by the distance at which the heat-giving substance is placed, a muscular passage (and this, by those skilled in such matters, is called the artery) receives the heated air from the heart and conveys it to the liver, making its opening there somewhere beside the point at which the fluids enter, and, as it warms the moist substance by its heat, blends with the liquid something akin to fire, and makes the blood appear red with the fiery tint it produces.

23. Issuing thence again, certain twin channels, each enclosing its own current like a pipe, disperse air and blood (that the liquid substance may have free course when accompanied and lightened by the motion of the heated substance) in various directions over the whole body, breaking at every part into countless branching channels; while as the two principles of the vital powers mingle together (that alike which disperses heat, and that which supplies moisture to all parts of the body), they make, as it were, a sort of compulsory contribution from the substance with which they deal to the supreme force in the vital economy.

24. Now this force is that which is considered as residing in the cerebral membranes and the brain, from which it comes that every movement of a joint, every contraction of the muscles, every spontaneous influence that is exerted upon the individual members, renders our earthen statue active and mobile as though by some mechanism. For the most pure form of heat and the most subtle form of liquid, being united by their respective forces through a process of mixture and combination, nourish and sustain by their moisture the brain, and hence in turn, being rarefied to the most pure condition, the exhalation that proceeds from that organ anoints the membrane which encloses the brain, which, reaching from above downwards like a pipe, extending through the successive vertebræ, is (itself and the marrow which is contained in it) conterminous with the base of the spine, itself giving like a charioteer the impulse and power to all the meeting-points of bones and joints, and to the branches of the muscles, for the motion or rest of the particular parts.

25. For this cause too it seems to me that it has been granted a more secure defense, being distinguished, in the head, by a double shelter of bones round about, and in the vertebræ of the neck by the bulwarks formed by the projections of the spine as well as by the diversified interlacings of the very form of those vertebræ, by which it is kept in freedom from all harm, enjoying safety by the defense that surrounds it.

26. So too one might suppose of the heart, that it is itself like some safe house fitted with the most solid defences, fortified by the enclosing walls of the bones round about; for in rear there is the spine, strengthened on either side by the shoulder-blades, and on each flank the enfolding position of the ribs makes that which is in the midst between them difficult to injure; while in front the breast-bone and the juncture of the collar-bone serve as a defense, that its safety may be guarded at all points from external causes of danger.

27. As we see in husbandry, when the rain fall from the clouds or the overflow from the river channels causes the land beneath it to be saturated with moisture (let us suppose for our argument a garden, nourishing within its own compass countless varieties of trees, and all the forms of plants that grow from the ground, and whereof we contemplate the figure, quality, and individuality in great variety of detail); then, as these are nourished by the liquid element while they are in one spot, the power which supplies moisture to each individual among them is one in nature; but the individuality of the plants so nourished changes the liquid element into different qualities; for the same substance becomes bitter in wormwood, and is changed into a deadly juice in hemlock, and becomes different in different other plants, in saffron, in balsam, in the poppy: for in one it becomes hot, in another cold, in another it obtains the middle quality: and in laurel and mastick it is scented, and in the fig and the pear it is sweetened, and by passing through the vine it is turned into the grape and into wine; while the juice of the apple, the redness of the rose, the radiance of the lily, the blue of the violet, the purple of the hyacinthine dye, and all that we behold in the earth, arise from one and the same moisture, and are separated into so many varieties in respect of figure and aspect and quality; the same sort of wonder is wrought in the animated soil of our being by Nature, or rather by Nature's Lord. Bones, cartilages, veins, arteries, nerves, ligatures, flesh, skin, fat, hair, glands, nails, eyes, nostrils, ears — all such things as these, and countless others in addition, while separated from one another by various peculiarities, are nourished by the one form of nourishment in ways proper to their own nature, in the sense that the nourishment, when it is brought into close relation with any of the subjects, is also changed according to that to which it approaches, and becomes adapted and allied to the special nature of the part. For if it should be in the neighbourhood of the eye, it blends with the visual part and is appropriately distributed by the difference of the coats round the eye, among the single parts; or, if it flow to the auditory parts, it is mingled with the auscultatory nature, or if it is in the lip, it becomes lip; and it grows solid in bone, and grows soft in marrow, and is made tense with the sinew, and extended with the surface, and passes into the nails, and is fined down for the growth of the hair, by correspondent exhalations, producing hair that is somewhat curly or wavy if it makes its way through winding passages, while, if the course of the exhalations that go to form the hair lies straight, it renders the hair stiff and straight.

28. Our argument, however, has wandered far from its purpose, going deep into the works of nature, and endeavouring to describe how and from what materials our particular organs are formed, those, I mean, intended for life and for good life, and any other class which we included with these in our first division.

29. For our purpose was to show that the seminal cause of our constitution is neither a soul without body, nor a body without soul, but that, from animated and living bodies, it is generated at the first as a living and animate being, and that our humanity takes it and cherishes it like a nursling with the resources she herself possesses, and it thus grows on both sides and makes its growth manifest correspondingly in either part:— for it at once displays, by this artificial and scientific process of formation, the power of soul that is interwoven in it, appearing at first somewhat obscurely, but afterwards increasing in radiance concurrently with the perfecting of the work.

30. And as we may see with stone-carvers — for the artist's purpose is to produce in stone the figure of some animal; and with this in his mind, he first severs the stone from its kindred matter, and then, by chipping away the superfluous parts of it, advances somehow by the intermediate step of his first outline to the imitation which he has in his purpose, so that even an unskilled observer may, by what he sees, conjecture the aim of his art; again, by working at it, he brings it more nearly to the semblance of the object he has in view; lastly, producing in the material the perfect and finished figure, he brings his art to its conclusion, and that which a little before was a shapeless stone is a lion, or a man, or whatsoever it may be that the artist has made, not by the change of the material into the figure, but by the figure being wrought upon the material. If one supposes the like in the case of the soul he is not far from probability; for we say that Nature, the all-contriving, takes from its kindred matter the part that comes from the man, and moulds her statue within herself. And as the form follows upon the gradual working of the stone, at first somewhat indistinct, but more perfect after the completion of the work, so too in the moulding of its instrument the form of the soul is expressed in the substratum, incompletely in that which is still incomplete, perfect in that which is perfect; indeed it would have been perfect from the beginning had our nature not been maimed by evil. Thus our community in that generation which is subject to passion and of animal nature, brings it about that the Divine image does not at once shine forth at our formation, but brings man to perfection by a certain method and sequence, through those attributes of the soul which are material, and belong rather to the animal creation.

31. Some such doctrine as this the great apostle also teaches us in his Epistle to the Corinthians, when he says, When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things 1 Corinthians 13:11; not that the soul which arises in the man is different from that which we know to be in the boy, and the childish intellect fails while the manly intellect takes its being in us; but that the same soul displays its imperfect condition in the one, its perfect state in the other.

32. For we say that those things are alive which spring up and grow, and no one would deny that all things that participate in life and natural motion are animate, yet at the same time one cannot say that such life partakes of a perfect soul — for though a certain animate operation exists in plants, it does not attain to the motions of sense; and on the other hand, though a certain further animate power exists in the brutes, neither does this attain perfection, since it does not contain in itself the grace of reason and intelligence.

33. And even so we say that the true and perfect soul is the human soul, recognized by every operation; and anything else that shares in life we call animate by a sort of customary misuse of language, because in these cases the soul does not exist in a perfect condition, but only certain parts of the operation of the soul, which in man also (according to Moses' mystical account of man's origin) we learn to have accrued when he made himself like this sensuous world. Thus Paul, advising those who were able to hear him to lay hold on perfection, indicates also the mode in which they may attain that object, telling them that they must put off the old man, and put on the man which is renewed after the image of Him that created him Colossians 3:9-10.

34. Now may we all return to that Divine grace in which God at the first created man, when He said, Let us make man in our image and likeness; to Whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen."

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St. Augustine (Fr. Jordan Aumann Excerpt)

"In the treatise, De quantitative animae, St. Augustine lists seven stages through which the soul normally passes as it advances to contemplation. The first three stages refer to the vegetative, sensitive and rational levels of human life. But the Christian does not begin to make true progress toward perfection until the fourth stage, which is that of virtue, accompanied by purification. The fifth stage is called tranquility, to denote the peace that follows from control of passions. The sixth stage is called the entrance into the divine light (ingressio in lucem), in which the soul seeks to penetrate the divinity; there, if it succeeds, it passes on to the seventh and final stage which is that of habitual union and indwelling (mansio). That this last stage is truly mystical contemplation and not the philosophical contemplation of a neo-Platonist is evident..."

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