How the Soul Turned from the Truth

Having left the contemplation of the things known by thought, the soul used the body’s various activities to the full and took pleasure in contemplating the body. Seeing that pleasure was good for her, she was led astray and misused the name of good: she thought that pleasure was the very essence of good. It was as though a man out of his mind were to ask for a sword to use against everyone he met, and to think that this was soundness of mind. But once she had fallen in love with pleasure, she began to pursue it in various ways. For by nature she is always in motion, and even when she has turned away from what is good, she does not lose that motion. So she moves, no longer in the way of virtue or so as to see God, but imagining false things. She makes a new use of her power, misusing it as a means to the pleasures she has thought up, since after all she was made with power over herself. [a]

For she is able to lean toward what is good, and she is just as able to reject it. But in rejecting the good she naturally takes up the thought of its opposite, since she cannot stop moving at all, being, as I said before, in motion by nature. And knowing her own power over herself, she sees that she can use the members of her body in either direction, toward what is or toward what is not. Now good is, while evil is not. By “what is” I mean what is good, since it has its pattern in God, who is. By “what is not” I mean what is evil, since it consists in a false imagining in people’s thoughts. For the body has eyes to see creation and, through its perfectly harmonious structure, to recognize the Creator. It has ears to listen to God’s words and laws, and hands both to do the work that must be done and to lift up to God in prayer. Yet the soul turns away from the contemplation of what is good and from moving within its proper sphere, and wanders off and moves toward its opposites.

Then, seeing this, as I said before, and misusing her power, she has noticed that she can also move the members of the body the opposite way. So instead of looking at creation, she turns the eye to cravings, showing that she has this power too. She thinks that by the mere fact of moving she is keeping her own dignity, and that she commits no sin in doing as she pleases. She does not know that she was made not merely to move, but to move in the right direction. That is why a saying of the apostle assures us: “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.”