On the Soul

-St. Basil the Great

To lavish excessive care on the adornment of the body is not the mark of a man who truly knows himself, nor of one who understands that profound moral teaching: that the visible is not the man. Far greater wisdom is required for each of us to know himself as he truly is. For an unenlightened mind to achieve this is far harder than for weak eyes to gaze upon the sun.

Just as one cannot write on wax without first erasing the letters already traced there, so it is impossible to imprint divine teachings upon the soul without first casting out the corrupt thoughts that have previously mastered it. When no good thoughts dwell in the soul, there is no enlightenment in it—not because the Enlightener is absent, but because the one who needs enlightenment does not attend. As a body without breath is not alive, so a soul that does not know its Creator cannot properly be called a soul. For ignorance of God is the death of the soul.

Therefore we must not serve the body except in cases of extreme necessity; rather, we must seek everything that is noblest for the soul, leading it forth, as from a prison, out of fellowship with bodily passions through the love of wisdom—yet without enslaving the body to the passions either. Those who care for the adornment of the body while despising the soul that governs it—how do they differ from men who fuss only over their tools and neglect the art that gives them life?

Turn your attention neither to your own possessions nor to all that surrounds you, but attend to yourself. For one thing is we ourselves, another is what belongs to us, and still another is everything that exists around us. We ourselves are soul and intellect, created according to the image of the Creator; what belongs to us is the body and its senses; everything that surrounds us is property, skills, and the other necessities of life. Therefore pay no heed to the flesh, nor be wholly concerned for its welfare; rather adorn the soul and bestow care upon it, that you may cleanse away by prayer every defilement born in it from ungodliness.

Just as an unclean mirror cannot receive the images of things, so likewise a soul distracted by worldly cares and darkened by the passions of fleshly thinking cannot receive the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. Everything that is by nature good must be accounted a good of the soul. The treasure of the soul consists in the poverty of the body; bodily riches are the soul’s poverty. For as on a balance-scale, when greater weight is placed on one side the other is necessarily lightened, so in the relation of flesh and soul: pre-eminence in one is inevitably the cause of deficiency in the other. When the body is healthy and weighed down with fatness, the intellect must be weak and utterly powerless for its proper actions; conversely, when the soul is in good estate and is lifted up to its proper greatness by contemplation of the good, the body of necessity wastes away.

Just as without any teaching we hate sickness and of ourselves turn away from everything unpleasant, so in the soul there is a certain aversion to evil that is not acquired by any instruction. Every vice is a weakness of the soul; virtue is the sign of the soul’s health. Some have justly defined health as the proper functioning of natural activities. Whoever applies this definition to the well-being of the soul will not depart from justice.

No one would neglect his child when it is about to fall into a pit, nor leave it lying there without raising it up. How much more grievous it is to abandon a soul that has fallen into the abyss of evils and leave it to perdition! The soul must therefore rule over the passions and serve God. It is impossible for it to serve both God and sin at once; rather, it must overcome wickedness and submit itself to the Lord of all.

As the proper virtue of trees consists in bearing ripe fruit (though leaves waving on the branches add a certain adornment), so the first fruit of the soul is truth. Yet it is not unseemly for the soul to clothe itself also in outward wisdom, as in leaves that both veil the fruit and give a pleasing appearance. For no painter can depict the features of the body as perfectly as the intellect can portray the inner realities of the soul.

Let us therefore care for the intellect as much as we can, that we may become partakers of the good things to come, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.