On the Making of Man

On the Making of Man was intended to supplement and complete the Hexaëmeron of St. Basil, and it presupposes an acquaintance with that treatise. The narrative of the creation of the world is not discussed in detail: it is referred to, but chiefly in order to insist on the idea that the world was prepared to be the sphere of man’s sovereignty. On the other hand, Gregory shows that man was made with circumspection, fitted by nature for rule over the other creatures, made in the likeness of God in respect of various moral attributes, and in the possession of reason, while differing from the Divine nature in that the human mind receives its information by means of the senses and is dependent on them for its perception of external things. The body is fitted to be the instrument of the mind, adapted to the use of a reasonable being: and it is by the possession of the rational soul, as well as of the natural or vegetative and the sensible soul, that man differs from the lower animals.