He that hates his soul: the self beneath the self

HE THAT HATETH HIS SOUL

Qui odit animam suam in hoc mundo in vitam aeternam custodit eam (Joh. 12:25). I quote in Latin the gospel saying of our Lord, "He that hateth his soul in this world shall keep it in eternal life." Now mark what it is our Lord means when he speaks of a man hating his soul. He that loveth his soul in this mortal life and as she exists in this world shall lose her in eternal life; but he that hateth her mortal guise shall keep her unto life eternal.

There are two reasons for his using here the word soul. According to one authority soul is a name for the ground (or soil) and has nothing to do with the nature (or ground) of the soul. As a master has said, Whoso discourses of moveable things trenches not on the nature or ground of the soul. Try to name the soul as she is in herself, in her pure and abstract nature, and not a name can we find. They call her soul as they call a carpenter, neither a human being nor after any being at all but after his work. What our Lord means is this: he that loveth his soul in her nakedness, her impartible soul-nature, to wit, will hate and despise her in this dress. She hates and detests and rues being so far from the pure light she is in herself.

Our doctors say the soul is called fire because of the force and because of the heat and because of the light that is in her. Others declare she is a spark of the celestial nature. A third school calls her a light. A fourth calls her a breath. A fifth dubs her a number. They are trying to describe the soul by something pure and luminous. Number exists in the angels and in light there is number as well, but to name her after the highest and after the brightest is still to fall short of the ground of the soul. God is nameless, is ineffable and in her ground the soul too is ineffable as he is ineffable. There is another reason for his saying that she hates. This term we apply to the soul is the name of the soul as she is in the prison of the body, so he means the soul in her individual state, still at the stage of taking thought, still in her prison-house. By taking thought for these nether things, by taking them in by her senses at all, she is confined: words cannot name any higher nature within her.

See also Spamer's Texte, etc., A. 5. One Latin and two German versions.

There are three reasons why my soul should hate herself. The first, that in so far as she is mine she is not God's. The second, because my soul is not wholly imbedded and set and re-cast into God. Augustine says, "To have God for one's own one must needs first be God's." The third reason is: the soul's enjoying herself as the soul while enjoying God with the soul, which is wrong. She should be enjoying God in herself since he is entirely hers. As Christ says, "he that loveth his soul shall lose it." What the soul is in this world or beholds in this world: things comprehended, apparent at all, she shall hate. A master declares that the soul at her highest and purest transcends the whole world, nothing attaching the soul to the world but affection. Sometimes she has a natural love of the body. Sometimes she has a will inclined towards creatures. Another says the soul has no natural concern with the things of this world any more than the ear has with colour or the eye has with song. Our natural philosophers teach that the body is much rather in the soul than the soul is in the body. Even as the cask contains the wine and not the wine the cask, so does the soul keep the body in her rather than the body the soul. What the soul loves in this world she is pure from by nature. According to one philosopher, it is the soul's nature and her natural end to achieve within herself a feat of understanding, God informing her with the general idea. He that can say he has attained his nature finds all things within himself, fashioned in light as they are in God; not as they are in nature but as they are in God. Neither spirit nor angel touches the ground or nature of the soul. In it she comes into the first, into the beginning, whence God breaks out in goodness into all creatures. There she loves all things in God, not pure as they are in her uncompounded nature, but merely impartible as they are in God. God has made this whole world as it were out of coal. Its pattern in gold is more lasting than this one in coal. Likewise the things in the soul are purer and nobler than they are in this world. The material which God made things out of is (to its exemplar in God) baser than coal is to gold. For the purpose of making a crock a man takes a handful of clay; that is the medium he works in. He gives it a form he has in him, nobler than his material. And the moral of this is that the things in the intelligible world, the soul, to wit, are infinitely nobler than they are in this; even as the image hewn and graven in gold so the types of all things are onefold in the soul. A master says, "The soul has a natural gift for being impressed with the forms of all things." Another one says, Never did soul get to her virgin nature without finding all things imaged therein in the intelligible world which is incomprehensible, unthinkable. Gregory says: All reasoning in words about divine things is but a stammering.

One word more about the soul and I have done. "O ye daughters of Jerusalem, look not upon me because I am brown! The sun hath coloured me and the children of my mother have striven against me" (Cant. 1:5). She refers to the children of this world, to them the soul speaks. The sun is the lust of this world: the visible, tangible things thereof do turn me swarthy and brown. Brown is not a pure colour: it is part light and part darkness. When the soul thinks or acts with her powers how enlightened soever these be, still, there is confusion. And therefore she says,

'My mother's children have striven against me.' These children being the lower powers of the soul, all clashing and at strife with her. The heavenly Father is our father and Christendom is our mother. What though she be fair and well-favoured and good at her work, yet this is not perfect. Wherefore he cries, "O thou fairest among women go forth and depart." This world is like a woman, weak. But why does he address her, 'O fairest among women?' The angels are fair and are far above the soul. He says, 'fairest': in her light-nature. 'Go forth and depart': go forth from this world and depart from such things as thy soul is still prone to. And anything grasped let her hate.