Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Anima Christiana 461
to the inward man but that he does nothing himself except the inward
man energizes him. And when he is so energized, who does the talking?
The outward man is a ventriloquist’s doll.
And yet that can hardly be Tertullian’s considered theory. It implies
an extravagant reduplication on the part of the divine artificer: why did
he give bodies ears if they can’t hear or mouths if they can’t talk? And it
goes against several propositions which Tertullian advances in On the
Soul. For example, some things, he says, are visible to the eyes of the
flesh and others to the eyes of the soul. The outward man can see – although
he cannot see everything which the inward man can see. (And
can the inward man see everything the outward man sees? Or is there a
division of ocular labour between the two chaps?)
But it is idle to press the question of which of the two men can do
what: the texts supply no clear and comprehensive answer, and it may
be suspected that Tertullian himself had never imagined things through.
If Tertullian’s theory is hazy at the edges, it is sharp enough in the centre.
Men, according to Tertullian, are not featherless bipeds: they are
featherless quadrupeds. They have two brains and two hearts, four
lungs and four kidneys. A week ago I heard Alfred Brendel playing
some Schubert. He looked (and sounded) as though he were using
two hands on the keyboard. In fact – if Tertullian is right – he was
using four. Not that he could have played music composed for four
hands. But then such music is in reality composed for eight hands.
Tertullian’s theory of the human soul is not a flight of fancy. On the
contrary, it is a theory constructed with some care and diligence on a
foundation made of philosophical reasoning and divine revelation.
But it is a batty theory – no more batty, to be sure, than (say) Plato’s
theory of the soul, but nonetheless quite, quite, batty.
What are the reasons or causes of this battiness? Does it derive from
certain peculiarities of Tertullian’s thought? Does it depend on some
more general Christian conceptions? Is it due to still broader and philosophical
notions? Undoubtedly, some of the oddities in Tertullian’s
account derive from his own theological idiosyncrasies – for example,
his interpretation of the story of Lazarus, which provides him with important
pieces of evidence, is unorthodox. Undoubtedly, some of the
oddities in the account are the consequences of general Christian doctrine
– and in particular, of the universally held doctrine of the General
Resurrection of the dead. But at bottom, what is wrong with Tertulli-