On the Immortality of the Soul

...and of a wild nature; and she has certain things in common with these, and certain things with those, and yet possesses something proper and peculiar to herself. Indeed, she possesses more things which properly belong to her by her very nature, and are not plainly common to her with the others, although that which is held most excellent in her is usually accepted as her proper attribute—that is, that by which she becomes nearest to the higher minds separated from matter.

Note diligently, thou assertor of mortality.

Wherefore they are most greatly deceived who have thought that they have explored and discovered the nature and properties of the human soul from the properties of corruptible forms. For they erred no differently—nay, even far more—than if they were to measure the properties of fire, never beheld, which are especially marvelous among sublunary things, from the properties of the earth placed before their eyes. [Like those] who would hunt, as it were, by the sagacity of their genius, for the properties of an olive tree from a plane tree, or the properties of a lion from a bear; far more, I say, because those species are compared with each other under one genus. These, however, differ by more than a genus, namely, by the mark of reason and irrationality. Therefore all things which have been objected are very easily diluted by various considerations brought forward, and are refuted with no labor by various distinctions.

The dissolution of the rejected reasons by which mortality was asserted, and their relegation to their proper places.

For as far as pertains to the binding of the subject and the corporeal object—as if for that reason the soul must necessarily be always joined to it—first, they are deceived because they perceive without condition and without supposition those things which were brought forward by Aristotle under condition and supposition, as will become very clearly evident a little later in this very digression. Next, they slip at that step which we marked above, because the soul joined to the body has that property in which she communicates with none of the lower things, so that she can be separated both in action and in nature from both the subject and the corporeal object: as will become clearly manifest in the progress of this work, both by reasons and by the authorities of the Peripatetics. Therefore she will be able both to understand by her own use and to remain, and she will not only be able to be a survivor, but she will be, as soon as she has been released from the body; and she will return, not by Pythagorean metempsychosis, but by Christian palingenesia, not to be idle in utter vanity, but to contemplate God in bliss, if she has acted well in life; but if otherwise, it will afflict with punishments. Although we hold this by faith, it is nevertheless not improbable by natural reason, as they suppose. Concerning which matter there are many things among our theologians. For there will be no departure into infinite souls that are to return to the body, nor

The passage of souls, regeneration.