Again, St. Augustine said:[19] "I do not know how the soul came into my body; he knows who gave it, whether he drew it [_traxerit_] from my father, or created it new as in the first man." In the _Book of Retractions_,[20] speaking of the articles he had written against the Academicians before he was a bishop, he says: "As to the origin of the soul, how it is set in the body--whether it is from that one man who first was created ... or, as in his case, is made particularly for each particular individual, I did not then know, and I do not know now." St. Gregory the Great also said he could not tell whether the human soul descends from Adam or is given particularly to each man. [19] _De Anima et ejus Origine_, i, xv. [20] I, cap. i, n. 3. St. Gregory of Nyssa, however, who died about 385, thirty years before St. Augustine wrote the letter to St. Jerome, held that the soul is infused into the body at the moment of conception, and he argues with absolute precision for his opinion.[21] St. Maximus the Theologian, who was martyred in 662, inveighs[22] against the notion that the soul is vegetative at first, then sensitive, and finally intellectual, and he thinks the assertion of Aristotle that the fetus is not animated before the fortieth day is altogether untrue. [21] Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, vols. xliv and xlvi. [22] Migne, _Ibid._, vol. xci, col. 1335. St. Anselm, who died in 1109, very dogmatically denied that the fetus is animated at conception,[23] and after his time the doctrine of Aristotle, which is commonly called the Thomistic opinion, became almost general. Vincent of Beauvais, however, a contemporary of St. Thomas, opposed the Thomistic doctrine. Albertus Magnus[24] had the same opinion as St. Thomas, and probably taught it to St. Thomas. In the middle ages all held that each soul is directly created by God, and is infused into the embryo, not at the instant of conception, but when the embryo is sufficiently formed to receive it, which, as Aristotle said, happens at about the fortieth day in males and the eightieth day in females. The Thomists maintained the succession of the three souls; many others opposed this particular opinion. [23] _De Conceptione Virginis_, cap. xii. [24] _Summa, De Homine_, q. xvi, art. 3.