St. Augustine (354-430)

De trinitate [On the Trinity]

399-426

"Well now, let us see where we are to locate what you might call the border between the outer and the inner man."

Well now, let us see where we are to locate what you might call the border between the outer and the inner man. Anything in our consciousness that we have in common with animals is rightly said to be still part of the outer man. It is not just the body alone that is to be reckoned as the outer man, but the body with its own kind of life attached, which quickens the body's structure and all the senses it is equipped with in order to sense things outside. And when the images of things sensed that are fixed in the memory are looked over again in recollection, it is still something belonging to the outer man that is being done. In all these things the only way that we differ from animals is that we are upright, not horizontal, in posture. This is a reminder to us from him who made us that in our better part, that is our consciousness, we should not be like the beasts we differ from in our upright posture. Not indeed that we should throw ourselves heart and soul onto what is most sublime in bodies; for to seek satisfaction for the will even in such noble bodies is to fell the consciousness into a prone position. But just as our body is raised up by nature to what is highest in bodies, that is, to the heavens, so our consciousness being a spiritual substance should be raised up toward what is highest in spiritual things--not of course by the elevation of pride but by the dutiful piety of justice.
(XII.1)

Uncategorized::Border

Reading Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989. p. 129. Text from Past Masters.

The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Series edited by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. Augustinian Heritage Published in print by New City Press 1999, InteLex Corporation, 2001. Vol 5.

Inner and Outer

01/14/2004

03/23/2009