ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

...Therefore, it is by itself, not by participation, and entirely removed from matter, and immortal. Aristotle, discussing On the Generation of Animals, teaches at length that it does not depend on the body as far as its origin is concerned, but that it enters from outside original: "θυρᾳθεν ἐπεισιέναι" (thura-then epeisienai); I speak of the rational part, which he calls the nous mind or intellect. Aristotle frequently brings the same word, nous, into the middle, and the author himself declares that he does not wish for it to be understood as an intellect entirely separated from the body. In the third book On the Soul, text 2, while he opens its essence, he teaches that he is about to dispute peri morion about a particle of the soul, by which he means the mind is made prudent, so that he shows he is disputing about the joined and intimate part of the human soul, not about one disjointed and separated. The same nous is placed in man in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics and is asserted to be divine original: "θεῖον" (theion). And he decrees that it exists in man original: "ὑπάρχειν" (hyparchein): by which he wanted man to be possessed of immortality, and to use his word, to be made immortal original: "ἀπαθανατίζειν" (athanatizein). But what Aristotle decreed regarding this matter, both by the reasons and by the opinions of the Greek Peripatetics, will become clear a little later. It is enough to have shown in few words that the rational soul is not subject to corruption, as indicated by Aristotle by its origin, essence, and actions. Those who held it under suspicion by the name of mortality seem to depart from the very law of nature, not even waiting for a final judgment.