A Treatise on the soul and its origin,
by aurelius augustin, bishop of hippo;
written towards the end of 419.
Book I. 2343
Addressed to Renatus, the Monk.
On receiving from Renatus the two books of Vincentius Victor, who disapproved of Augustin’s opinion touching the nature of the soul, and of his hesitation in respect of its origin, Augustin points out how the young objector, in his self-conceit in aiming to decide on so abstruse a subject, had fallen into insufferable mistakes. He then proceeds to show that those passages of Scripture by which Victor thought he could prove that human souls are not derived by propagation, but are breathed by God afresh into each man at birth, are ambiguous, and inadequate for the confirmation of this opinion of his.