Just think, I beseech you: can you imagine this wonderful power of memory to be sown in or to be a part of the composition of the earth, or of this dark and gloomy atmosphere? Though you cannot apprehend what it is, yet you see what kind of thing it is, or if you do not quite see that, yet you certainly see how great it is.
What, then? Shall we imagine that there is a kind of measure in the soul, into which, as into a vessel, all that we remember is poured? That indeed is absurd; for how shall we form any idea of the bottom, or of the shape or fashion of such a soul as that?
And, again, how are we to conceive how much it is able to contain? Shall we imagine the soul to receive impressions like wax, and memory to be marks of the impressions made on the soul? What are the characters of the words, what of the facts themselves?
And what, again, is that prodigious greatness which can give rise to impressions of so many things?
What, lastly, is that power which investigates secret things, and is called invention and contrivance? Does that man seem to be compounded of this earthly, mortal, and perishing nature who first invented names for everything; which, if you will believe Pythagoras, is the highest pitch of wisdom? Or he who collected the dispersed inhabitants of the world, and united them in the bonds of social life? Or he who confined the sounds of the voice, which used to seem infinite, to the marks of a few letters? Or he who first observed the courses of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws?
These were all great men. But they were greater still who invented food, and raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization among us, and armed us against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished, and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments.
For we have provided great entertainments for the ears by inventing and modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learned to survey the stars, not only those that are fixed, but also those which are improperly called wandering; and the man who has acquainted himself with all their revolutions and motions is fairly considered to have a soul resembling the soul of that Being who has created those stars in the heavens: for when Archimedes described in a sphere the motions of the moon, sun, and five planets, he did the very same thing as Plato’s God, in his Timaeus, who made the world, causing one revolution to adjust motions differing as much as possible in their slowness and velocity.
Now, allowing that what we see in the world could not be effected without a God, Archimedes could not have imitated the same motions in his sphere without a divine soul.
I’m fairly certain I don’t have the smarts to be a biologist or a psychiatrist, though I have known a good number of them, and I do notice how often they will make quite striking philosophical claims. The most prominent of these is a general assumption of materialism, such that it is taken for granted how any act of consciousness must be completely reducible to the functions of the flesh.
I am fascinated to learn about the relationship of certain regions in the brain with specific thoughts and emotions, and I have no doubt that the nervous system is the physical manifestation of such an awareness, yet I remain hesitant to say that there is nothing more involved in the whole process.
My concern is not from any superstitious spiritualism, and instead arises from the very standard of what should be taken as reasonable: I will not make the unwarranted leap, from saying that we come to know what is real by means of the sensible, to the hasty conclusion that therefore only the sensible can be real.
Like Cicero, I do not wish to rush to the elaborate construction of a whole new spiritual realm, somehow existing independently of the material, and I only suggest that the very nature of mind itself indicates a degree of existence that acts in a distinctly different way from the immediately sensible.
Is mind more rarified, like fire or air, or is it more subtle, like a pervading essence or a binding energy? Leaving the more refined metaphysics aside for the moment, I know only that thought cannot be measured in cups and inches.
The mere presence of matter does not suffice to account either for life or for consciousness, and so I will find no signs of vitality in a stone, or no signs of judgment in a blade of grass. That I cannot see or touch the types of “souls” directly does not mean that I cannot understand something about their behaviors indirectly.
Once again, analogies, as helpful as they are for a general visualizing, will fail to define as precisely as we would wish. To speak of receiving knowledge like the pouring of a liquid into a jar, or the process of learning like the imprint of a seal on hot wax, does not explain anything about the remarkable way an idea contains within itself the formal identity of an object known, while also not taking on the materiality of an object known.
When I conceive of a dog, apprehending the whatness of it, my head does not physically become a dog.
When I consider the deeper nature of the mind, a sort of reflection which is itself a profound act, I will discern how such awareness uncovers unchanging and absolute principles out of a changing and relative experience.
From this we have acquired a sense of noble duty to social bonds, a refined mastery over the abstractions of language, and an awe-inspiring grasp of the laws of the natural world.
If this seems too lofty, I can also think of the invention of cooking, the making of clothing, or the building of houses. It all highlights the transformative power of the intellect.
The example of Archimedes points to the how understanding reveals the inner order and purpose in things. In observing the positions of the stars and the planets, the ancient astronomers mapped their patterns, and Cicero tells of how Archimedes used this knowledge to construct a sort of mechanical planetarium, which duplicated the motions of the heavens.
Now by finding structure and meaning in Nature, and creating a smaller model of the Cosmos, can it not be said that the human mind of Archimedes was participating in the Divine Mind of the Creator?
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