The sources of De Anima

1. Plato 1 neutral · 5 refuted 6 citations · 7 passages

   de anima 7 passages anchored here

   Plato's teachings on the soul's unbegotten nature and shapelessness are explicitly cited and systematically refuted.

   Plato is unwilling, as if the immortality of the soul were thereby endangered.

2. Genesis Moses 3 authority 3 citations · 4 passages

   de anima 4 passages anchored here

   Genesis is cited via Adam's own prophetic words about marriage, read by Tertullian as a prefiguration of Christ and the Church.

   If it is that he prophesied that great mystery concerning Christ and the Church — ‘This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh;

3. Aristotle 2 neutral 2 citations

   de anima 2 passages anchored here

   Named as one of several philosophical positions surveyed without singling it out for special attack.

   We say that the human soul can in no way be transferred into beasts, even if, according to the philosophers, it were reckoned from elemental substances.

4. Gospel of Matthew Matthew 2 authority 2 citations · 6 passages

   de anima 6 passages anchored here

   The Gospel of Matthew is repeatedly cited as scriptural authority across several distinct arguments in this section.

   Therefore, if it is so, neither will God be able to raise up sons of Abraham from the stones, nor make the offspring of vipers bring forth fruits of repentance.

5. Homer 1 neutral · 1 refuted 2 citations

   de anima 2 passages anchored here

   Homer's division of dreams by gates of horn and ivory is reported as a poetic authority on dream truth.

   Homer divided two gates for dreams, the horn one of truth, the ivory one of falsehood.

6. Laws Plato 1 neutral · 1 endorsed 2 citations

   de anima 2 passages anchored here

   The Laws is cited as further Platonic authority for the claim that a region's character shapes the talents of its inhabitants.

   whence too in the Laws he himself prescribes to Megillus and Clinias to provide a place for the city to be founded.

7. Phaedo Plato 2 refuted 2 citations · 6 passages

   de anima 6 passages anchored here

   The Phaedo is quoted and cited as the key source of Plato's claim that bodily senses hinder the soul's attainment of wisdom, which Tertullian rebuts.

   For it is his, in the Phaedo, that souls go thither from here and come hither from there.

8. Psalms David 2 authority 2 citations

   de anima 2 passages anchored here

   A Psalm of David is cited as scriptural authority for the heart being the object of divine address and renewal.

   if David too says, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God,’ and Paul says that one believes with the heart unto righteousness, and John says that each one is reproved by his own heart;

9. Tertullian 2 extended 2 citations · 3 passages

   de anima 3 passages anchored here

   The author explicitly refers back to his own prior treatise against Hermogenes as settled groundwork being extended here.

   One contest having already been decided against Hermogenes, as we said before — since we claim that the soul is from the breath of God, not from matter, being fortified there too by the inerasable rule of the divine determination, ‘And God breathed the breath of life into the face of man, and man became a living soul,’ assuredly from the breath of God — about this nothing more need be turned over.

10. Timaeus Plato 1 neutral · 1 refuted 2 citations · 3 passages

    de anima 3 passages anchored here

    The Timaeus is cited both as the source of the skeptical view of the senses (refuted) and as authority for environmental influence on talent (used approvingly).

    and Plato certainly in the Timaeus, pronouncing sense-perception irrational and entangled with mere opinion.

11. De Rerum Natura Lucretius 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Lucretius' line is directly quoted as authoritative support for the principle underlying the soul's corporeality.

    But Chrysippus too lends him a hand, laying it down that corporeal things can in no way be deserted by incorporeal ones, since they are not even touched by them — whence Lucretius too says, ‘For nothing but body can touch or be touched’ — and that the body, being deserted by the soul, is affected by death.

12. Epistle to the Romans Paul (the Apostle) 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Cited by title ('the apostle') as authority undergirding the argument for the age's justice system.

    Who would not prefer the justice of the age, which the apostle too testifies is not armed with the sword in vain, which is religiously stern in the cause of man?

13. First Epistle to the Corinthians Paul (the Apostle) 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Quoted directly and attributed to 'the apostle' as authority for the argument.

    ‘Otherwise,’ he says, ‘they would be born unclean’ — wishing the children of the faithful to be understood as designated nevertheless for sanctity, and through this for salvation too, that by the pledge of this hope he might patronize the marriages which he had judged worthy of being retained.

14. Gospel of John John (Gospel of John) 1 authority 1 citation · 2 passages

    de anima 2 passages anchored here

    Two distinct Johannine sayings are quoted as authoritative across the window.

    ’ Did the Jews, then, ask John out of the Pythagorean opinion, ‘Are you Elias?

15. Gospel of Luke the angel (Gospel of Luke) 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    The angel's words are quoted as the decisive text explaining John's identification with Elias.

    ‘And he himself,’ he says, ‘shall go before the people in the power and in the spirit of Elias’ — not in his soul nor in his flesh.

16. Herodotus 1 authority 1 citation · 2 passages

    de anima 2 passages anchored here

    Herodotus is cited twice as the authoritative historical source for notable dream and ethnographic reports.

    Herodotus relates that Astyages, king of the Medes, saw in a dream that the bladder of his daughter Mandane, still a virgin, flowed forth into a deluge of Asia;

17. Jeremiah Jeremiah 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    The prophecy of Jeremiah is explicitly invoked and its content reported.

    So too you read the voice of God to Jeremiah:

18. Malachi the prophet Malachi 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Explicitly quoted as the prophetic source of the promise of Elias's return.

    ’ — and not out of the divine preaching, ‘And behold, I will send you Elias the Tishbite’?

19. Phaedrus Plato 1 refuted 1 citation

    de anima

    The Phaedrus is cited as evidence that Plato, through Socrates, denies confident self-knowledge, undermining trust in the senses.

    But indeed Plato, that he might set no mark of testimony upon the senses, therefore in the Phaedrus too, in the person of Socrates, denies that he can know himself, as the Delphic inscription admonishes, and in the Theaetetus takes from himself knowing and perceiving, and in the Phaedo defers his verdict until after death, a posthumous verdict on truth, namely — and yet, not yet dead, he was philosophizing.

20. Sallust 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Sallust's characterizations of the Moors and Dalmatians are cited as authority for the effect of nationality on temperament.

    Sallust strikes the Moors as vain and the Dalmatians as fierce;

21. Strabo 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Strabo is explicitly named as the source Tertullian learned this account from.

    Mithridates too, from a dream, I learn from Strabo, took possession of Pontus;

22. Suetonius 1 authority 1 citation

    de anima

    Suetonius is explicitly named as reporting Nero's dreamlessness.

    But Suetonius too says that Nero, and Theopompus that Thrasymedes, never dreamed, save that Nero scarcely did, at his last end, after his terrors.

23. Theaetetus Plato 1 refuted 1 citation

    de anima

    The Theaetetus is cited alongside the Phaedrus and Phaedo as evidence of Plato's skepticism about sense-knowledge.

    But indeed Plato, that he might set no mark of testimony upon the senses, therefore in the Phaedrus too, in the person of Socrates, denies that he can know himself, as the Delphic inscription admonishes, and in the Theaetetus takes from himself knowing and perceiving, and in the Phaedo defers his verdict until after death, a posthumous verdict on truth, namely — and yet, not yet dead, he was philosophizing.

Each stands at a single passage. The chapter carries the anchors.

de anima 63 sources

Acts of the Apostles · Acts of the Apostles (Paul at Athens) · Apelles' doctrine of pre-existent souls · Asclepiades' teaching on the age of reason · Carpocratian doctrine of metempsychosis and soul-debt · Commentaries on Human Antiquities · Epicurean doctrine (atoms; on death) · Epistle to Timothy · Epistle to the Corinthians · First Book of Samuel · Genesis (Adam's words on Eve) · Genesis (God sent an ecstasy upon Adam) · Genesis (Mosaic account of creation) · Gnostic doctrine of the spiritual seed from Sophia · Gospel account of the rich man and Lazarus · Gospel and First Epistle of John · Hermetic teaching attributed to the Egyptian Mercury · Law of Moses · On the Soul (four volumes) · Pauline Epistles · Prophetic writings on spirit and breath · Pythagorean doctrine of numbers and metempsychosis · Reputed sacred writings of Mercury, Silenus, Orpheus, Musaeus, and Pherecydes · Revelation (souls beneath the altar) · Seneca's sayings on death · Simonian doctrine · Stoic teaching on the soul as breath · account of Alexander's dream-portent · account of Laodice's dream of Seleucus' kingdom · account of the Celts at the barrows · accounts of the Nasamones' tomb-oracles · comic fragment (the mind sees, the mind hears) · commentaries recording the dream about Augustus · corroborating account of Astyages' dream · denial of dream-truth and of providence · denial that death is a debt of nature · discourses of the Paraclete · doctrine of the transmigration of souls · doctrine on dreams as natural oracle · doctrine on sleep as diminution of animal spirit · doctrine on the causes of sleep · doctrine that dreaming is not voluntary · elevation of dreams among kinds of divination · five-volume history of dreams and dream-oracles · magical writings on the aori and biaeothanatoi · medical opinion opposing the nightmare-spirit explanation · observations on nail and hair growth in graves · poetic tradition of metempsychosis (Ennius' dream of Homer) · prophecy that the dead in Christ shall rise first · report of Baralis' dream-guided rule · report of the Himeran woman's dream of Dionysius · report that Thrasymedes never dreamed · saying on the implanted seeds of the arts · sayings/fragments of Empedocles · teaching of Menander the Samaritan on baptismal immortality · teaching on the value of memory · the Delphic inscription (Know Thyself) · the Gospel (sayings on lust, the prison, and the last farthing) · the Gospel parable of the rich man and the poor man · the Law and the Prophets (mountain of the Lord, house of the God of Jacob) · the law of Moses (Exodus narrative of Pharaoh's magicians) · the legend of Helen (epic and lyric poetry) · verse on the blood about the heart