Previously Unpublished Works, Fascicle 1

...is freed from mortality and conceives a confidence in future immortality. And therefore, they posited the happiness not only of souls but of bodies that are to be resurrected and glorified along with the soul. Avicenna and the ancient Democritus both affirm this. Pliny reports this concerning Democritus, as do many others; indeed, all who philosophize correctly do so, since they have drawn from the fountain of philosophy. For according to them, virtue belongs to the union original: "conjuncti", referring to the composite of soul and body, just as understanding and building do, as Aristotle maintains.

And for this reason, they posited that happiness belongs to the union. Thus, they did not only posit that a human being is a soul within a body, but truly a composite of soul and body. They held that the essence of a human being is established from both soul and body, and not that his essence is the soul alone residing in a body. 25 b 1. For they posited that nobler part of man to be the precise substance of virtue and happiness; this, however, is the union as such. This is because the human being, who is composed of soul and body, is nobler than the soul alone, since the human body is a noble substance.

And although spiritual happiness and virtue exist within a human being by reason of the soul, they do not belong to the soul alone as its final state. Rather, they exist for the sake of the joined human being himself. Therefore, they posited that happiness, which is the end of a human being, fulfills the whole person, both on the part of the body, as is its due, and on the part of the soul. And so, they posited that the body would eventually be joined with the soul, so that each might be perfected according to its own nature.

For they knew through reason that form is matched to matter and vice versa; therefore, an incorruptible form the soul claims for itself an incorruptible matter the resurrected body. They also knew that the desire of a form is not fulfilled except in its own matter, and they posited that the desire of the soul is totally fulfilled through happiness; for this reason, they posited that this happens in the body.

But they fell short in some respects, and one must return to those things which pure faith holds in this matter. Thus, they showed themselves to know that there is and ought to be happiness for the body and soul. But what it is, what kind, how great, how it should be acquired, and other specific properties, they did not know; for these are obtained from revelation. And they posited that God has prepared for the obedient a happy promise which eye has not seen, nor has it entered into the heart of man; just as Avicenna says 1 explicitly in the Roots of Political Science 2, and

1 Avicenna, Metaphysics, book 10, chapter 2, at the end.
2 book 9, chapter 7, at the end.