Tertullian — On the Soul 25
THAT SOUL AND FLESH ARE CONCEIVED TOGETHER. I will now return to the cause of this digression, to render how souls overflow from one, when and where and by what reason they are taken. It makes no difference whether the question meets us from a philosopher or a heretic or the crowd. First are those so bold as to presume that the soul is not conceived in the womb nor joined and brought forth with the fashioning of the flesh, but that after the birth is already poured out it is stamped from outside on the infant not yet alive; that the seed sequestered in the woman's places thickens by natural motion into the substance of flesh alone; and that this, brought forth smoking from the womb's furnace and loosened by heat, struck by the chill of air like iron heated and plunged in cold, snatches animal force and gives back a vocal sound. So the Stoics with Aenesidemus, and Plato himself at times.
Answer, mothers — you who are pregnant, you who have given birth; let the barren and males keep silence. Do you feel in the fetus a liveliness alien from your own, by which the inwards throb, the sides twitch, the whole circuit of the belly is struck, the region of the weight shifts everywhere? Are these motions your joy and sure security that you trust the infant both lives and plays? And if his restlessness ceases, do you fear for him first? Does he already hear within you when he is startled at a new sound? He who is served by nourishment and fasting, growth and decrease, fear and motion — lives. He ceases to live who ceases to be served. Infants are also brought forth dead; how, unless they were also alive? And who are the dead, unless those who were first alive? Yet even still in the womb the infant is cut down by a necessary cruelty when, turned askew at the exit, he refuses birth — a mother-killer unless about to die. So among the physicians' tools there is also a bronze spike by which the very throat-cutting is aimed in a blind robbery; they call it the embryosphaktes from the office of infant-killing — surely the destroyer of a living infant. Hippocrates, Asclepiades, Erasistratus, Herophilus, and even milder Soranus had this, sure the conceptus is an animal, and so pitied such most unhappy infancy that it is first killed lest it be torn while alive. Why did the old astrologers also direct a person's geniture from the beginning of conception, if from then there is not also a soul, to which the breath likewise belongs, if there is any?
Latin
ANIMAM ET CARNEM SIMVL CONCIPI. [1] Iam nunc regrediar ad causam huius excessus, uti reddam, quomodo animae ex una redundent, quando et ubi et qua ratione sumantur; de qua specie nihil refert, a philosopho an ab haeretico an a uulgo quaestio occurrat. [2] Nulla interest professoribus ueritatis de aduersariis eius, maxime tam audacibus quam sunt primo isti, qui praesumunt non in utero concipi animam nec cum carnis figulatione compingi atque produci, sed et effuso iam partu nondum uiuo infanti extrinsecus inprimi; ceterum semen ex concubitu muliebribus locis sequestratum motuque naturali uegetatum compinguescere in solam substantiam carnis; eam editam et de uteri fornace fumantem et calore solutam, ut ferrum ignitum et ibidem frigidae immersum, ita aeris rigore percussam et uim animalem rapere et uocalem sonum reddere. Hoc Stoici cum Aenesidemo et ipse interdum Plato, cum dicit perinde animam extraneam alias et extorrem uteri prima adspiratione nascentis infantis adduci, sicut exspiratione nouissima educi. Videbimus an ex sententia finxerit. Ne ex medicis quidem defuit Hicesius, et naturae et artis suae praeuaricator. [3] Puduit, opinor, illos id statuere quod feminae agnoscerent. Et quanto ruboratior exitus a feminis reuinci quam probari! In ista namque specie nemo tam idoneus magister arbiter testis quam sexus ipsius. Respondete, matres, uos quae praegnantes, uos quae puerperae, steriles et masculi taceant, uestrae naturae ueritas quaeritur, uestrae passionis fides conuenitur, an aliquam in fetu sentiatis uiuacitatem alienam de uestro, de quo palpitent ilia, micent latera, tota uentris ambitio pulsetur, ubique ponderis regio mutetur; an hi motus gaudia uestra sint et certa securitas, quod ita infantem et uiuere confidatis et ludere; an si desierit inquies eius, illi prius pertimescatis; an et audiat iam in uobis, cum ad nouum sonum excutitur; an et ciborum uanitates illi desideretis, illi etiam fastidiatis; an et ualetudinibus inuicem communicetis, ille quidem usque et contusionibus uestris, quibus et ipse intus per eadem membra signatur, rapiens sibi iniurias matris. [4] Si liuor ac rubor sanguinis passio est, sine anima non erit sanguis; si ualetudo omnis accessio est, sine anima non erit ualetudo; si alimonia inedia crementa decrementa pauor motus tractatio est animae, his qui fungitur uiuet. Denique desinit uiuere qui desinit fungi. Denique et mortui eduntur; quomodo, nisi et uiui? Qui autem et mortui, nisi qui prius uiui? Atquin et in ipso adhuc utero infans trucidatur necessaria crudelitate, cum in exitu obliquatus denegat partum, matricida, ni moriturus.
[5] Itaque est inter arma medicorum et cum organo, ex quo prius patescere secreta coguntur tortili temperamento, cum anulocultro, quo intus membra caeduntur anxio arbitrio, cum hebete unco, quo totum facinus extrahitur uiolento puerperio. Est etiam aeneum spiculum, quo iugulatio ipsa dirigitur caeco latrocinio; ἐμβρυοσφάκτην appellant de infanticidii officio, utique uiuentis infantis peremptorium. Hoc et Hippocrates habuit et Asclepiades et Erasistratus et maiorum quoque prosector Herophilus et mitior ipse Soranus, certi animal esse conceptum atque ita miserti infelicissimae huiusmodi infantiae, ut prius occidatur, ne uiua lanietur. [6] De qua sceleris necessitate nec dubitabat, credo, Hicesius, iam natis animam superducens ex aeris frigidi pulsu, quia et ipsum uocabulum animae penes Graecos de refrigeratione respondens. Num ergo barbarae Romanaeque gentes aliter animantur, quia animam aliud quid quam ψυχήν cognominauerunt? Quantae uero nationes sub feruentissimo axe censentur colorem quoque excoctae? Vnde illis animam, quibus aeris rigor nullus? Taceo cubiculares aestus et omnem illic caloris paraturam enitentibus necessariam, quas afflari uel maxime periculum est. In ipsis paene balneis fetus elabitur, et statim uagitus auditur. [7] Ceterum si aeris rigor thesaurus est animae, extra Germanias et Scythias et Alpes et Argaeos nemo debuit nasci. Atquin et populi frequentiores apud orientalem et meridialem temperaturam et ingenia expeditiora, omnibus Sarmatis etiam mente torpentibus. Et animi enim de rigoribus scitiores prouenirent, si animae de frigusculis euenirent; cum substantia enim et uis. [8] His ita praestructis possumus illos quoque recogitare qui exsecto matris utero uiui aerem hauserunt, Liberi aliqui et Scipiones. Quodsi qui, ut Plato, perinde non putat duas animas in unum conuenire, sicut nec corpora, ego illi non modo duas animas in unum congestas ostendissem, sicut et corpora, in fetibus, uerum et alia multa cum anima conserta, daemonis scilicet <substantiam>, nec unius, ut in Socrate ipso, uerum et septenarii spiritus, ut in Magdalena, et legionarii numeri, ut in Geraseno, quo facilius anima cum anima conseretur ex societate substantiae quam spiritus nequam ex diuersitate naturae. [9] At idem in sexto Legum monens cauere, ne uitiatio seminis ex aliqua uilitate concubitus labem corpori et animae supparet, nescio de pristina magis an de ista sententia sibi exciderit. Ostendit enim animam de semine induci, quod curari monet, non de prima aspiratione nascentis. Vnde, oro, similitudine animae quoque parentibus de ingeniis respondemus secundum Cleanthis testimonium, si non et ex animae semine educimur? Cur autem et ueteres astrologi genituram hominis ab initio conceptus dirigebant, si non exinde et anima est, ad quam aeque pertinet, si quid est, flatus?