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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 55
§27. He falsely imagines that the same energies produce the same works, and that variation in the works indicates variation in the energies.
Of the same strain is that which he adds in the next paragraph; "the same energies producing sameness of works, and different works indicating difference in the energies as well." Finely and irresistibly does this noble thinker plead for his doctrine. "The same energies produce sameness of works." Let us test this by facts. The energy of fire is always one and the same; it consists in heating: but what sort of agreement do its results show? Bronze melts in it; mud hardens; wax vanishes: while all other animals are destroyed by it, the salamander is preserved alive [155] ; tow burns, asbestos is washed by the flames as if by water; so much for his sameness of works from one and the same energy.' How too about the sun? Is not his power of warming always the same; and yet while he causes one plant to grow, he withers another, varying the results of his operation in accordance with the latent force of each. That on the rock' withers; that in deep earth' yields an hundredfold. Investigate Nature's work, and you will learn, in the case of those bodies which she produces artistically, the amount of accuracy there is in his statement that sameness of energy effects sameness of result.' One single operation is the cause of conception, but the composition of that which is effected internally therein is so varied that it would be difficult for any one even to count all the various qualities of the body. Again, imbibing the milk is one single operation on the part of the infant, but the results of its being nourished so are too complex to be all detailed. While this food passes from the channel of the mouth into the secretory ducts [156] , the transforming power of Nature forwards it into the several parts proportionately to their wants; for by digestion she divides its sum total into the small change of multitudinous differences, and into supplies congenial to the subject matter with which she deals; so that the same milk goes to feed arteries, veins, brain and its membranes, marrow, bones, nerves [157] , sinews, tendons, flesh, surface, cartilages, fat, hair, nails, perspiration, vapours, phlegm, bile, and besides these, all useless superfluities deriving from the same source. You could not name either an organ, whether of motion or sensation, or anything else making up the body's bulk, which was not formed (in spite of startling differences) from this one and selfsame operation of feeding. If one were to compare the mechanic arts too it will be seen what is the scientific value of his statement; for there we see in them all the same operation, I mean the movement of the hands; but what have the results in common? What has building a shrine to do with a coat, though manual labour is employed on both? The house-breaker and the well-digger both move their hands: the mining of the earth, the murder of a man are results of the motion of the hands. The soldier slays the foe, and the husbandman wields the fork which breaks the clod, with his hands. How, then, can this doctrinaire lay it down that the same energies produce sameness of work?' But even if we were to grant that this view of his had any truth in it, the essential union of the Son with the Father, and of the Holy Spirit with the Son, is yet again more fully proved.
[155] is preserved alive; xoogoneitai. This is the LXX., not the classical use, of the word. Cf. Exod. i. 17; Judges viii. 19, &c. It is reproduced in the speech of S. Stephen, Acts vii. 19: cf. Luke xvii. 33, "shall preserve (his life)."
[156] apokritikous, activè, so, the Medical writers. The Latin is in meatus destinato descendit' takes it passivè (apokritikous).
[157] neura. So since Galen's time: not tendon.'
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius.asp?pg=55
