DIGRESSION.

It exercises certain duties both with the body and without the body. It has something in common with plants, with animals, and with the higher minds i.e., celestial or angelic beings. But this is most proper to it: that while it participates in the rest, it itself participates in a way that is unique, and nothing is so entirely similar to it. Those who have noted this less than is fitting have ascribed to it a certain communion, and have snatched part here and part there. But it should not be done in that way. For it was necessary to perceive and weigh with the mind, separately, the parts and their proper nature, and separately, that which is composed from those parts. They could have easily been admonished of this matter by Aristotle himself. For if he himself in the Metaphysics Aristotle's treatise on the nature of reality said that a syllable composed of 'a' and 'b' is not 'a' and 'b', but rather 'ab'—that is, the compound itself, not the extremes—how much more should the property of each part and that which is composed of them have been weighed in the composition of mortal and immortal nature? And from this, it is also given to observe that neither the division of mortality nor of immortality, which some have attempted to bring forth, is sufficient either simply or in any way to declare the nature of the soul. For those things which result from them are the soul's own properties, and they must be sought and detected: which, in this very digression, we shall endeavor to do according to our strength. Indeed, the human soul, joined to the body, is held as a bond of the higher and lower nature, and it has some things in common with the former, some with the latter, and it possesses something proper and peculiar. Nay, it possesses more things that belong to it properly by its own nature, and are not strictly common to it with the rest, than what is usually accepted as its property, which is held more gloriously in it; that is, that by which it is closest to the higher minds separated from matter.