Skip to content

Hippolytus · The Refutation of All Heresies · Chapter XIV

Hippo; His Duality of Principles; His Psychology

Page 17 of 526

Hippo, a native of Rhegium, asserted as originating principles, coldness, for instance water, and heat, for instance fire. And that fire, when produced by water, subdued the power of its generator, and formed the world. And the soul, he said, is107 sometimes brain, but sometimes water; for that also the seed is that which appears to us to arise out of moisture, from which, he says, the soul is produced.

So far, then, we think we have sufficiently adduced (the opinions of) these; wherefore, inasmuch as we have adequately gone in review through the tenets of physical speculators, it seems to remain that we now turn to Socrates and Plato, who gave especial preference to moral philosophy.

Notes

  1. 107

    Or, "holds."

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 5, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (1885–96). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.