On the Reasons of the Holy Spirit, Book II

accidentally) He is going to lead back all men of whatever age to the most perfect period of thirty-three years, or thereabouts, at which age Christ rose. But enough of the solid man; let the chapter on the resurrection in the first book of On the Concord of the World be consulted. We must speak of the soul.

The Soul. Chapter 5.

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I see that it is agreed among all philosophers and theologians that the soul, or spirit, is the form of the human body and is of a nature diverse from it. There is no ambiguity concerning the form. For since man consists of body and soul, it is customary to take one as the form and the other as the body; otherwise, man would have no form, even though he is the most perfect of creatures. Surely, there is a need for the most perfect nature to also have the most excellent form. Whatever is of such a kind in the genus of forms is immortal and of a nature diverse from the body. For since the good is the more divine the more common it is, there is a need for God to have given the most excellent things to the most excellent form, which possesses within itself the most excellent thing, which is eternity, and in addition to those things, to have given it so that it would be by condition most alien to bodily corruption. Therefore, by countless arguments taken from the nature of the thing, it can be seen that it has nothing in common with the brutes, nor with its own body. For reason persuades us that it differs from the brutes, and that it differs from the body is taught by the fact that the prescriptions of virtues are proposed to it by natural judgment itself and by laws—as much those of the mind as sacred and profane ones—by which, through daily diligence, opposing