On the Immortality of the Soul

The manifold intellect in Ammonius, from which the immortality of the soul is asserted. ...is composed, which they establish as both separate from the body and incorruptible and unbegotten. Ammonius himself also mentions a manifold intellect, but in a far different manner; nevertheless, he agrees with them regarding the first intellect, that is, the human one, which is both a form of species and also a recipient of species; which, insofar as it is a species, is not in potentiality but in act, and insofar as it can receive species, it does not have the principles of things within itself. He wishes it to have, indeed, a knowledge of all things within itself, yet not an unimpeded and exact one, but rather like a description or a shadowed hand-painting, which he called σκιαγραφίαν in his own language. In this matter he condemned Alexander for thinking of the intellect as matter deprived of forms, since Aristotle himself called the soul the "form of forms." He placed the second naming of the intellect when it knows things themselves but does not consider them in act. The third is that which assumes both habit and act together, just as happens to those who contemplate in the very act those things which they already know. The fourth acceptation of the intellect in his work is that which is superior, or rather the supreme of all, and which is said to come from without; concerning which he himself did not wish mention to be made by Aristotle in this third book, but rather of that which is congenital to the soul. Theophrastus and Themistius both said and explained that the intellect of power is congenital to the soul, and also that it comes from without. Most others, however, did not.

The opinion of Sophonius is similar to that of Ammonius, yet Philoponus's is dissimilar from both.

For besides Ammonius, of whom we have spoken, Sophonius also, of whom we shall make mention in what follows, denies that it comes from without. Philoponus, however, in this very thing which they wish to enter from without, or from the gate or door (in Greek it is read as θυράθεν), laid a great foundation for immortality. That (as we have already said) was placed in the second book on the generation of animals; he also took many things from the first book on the parts of animals, which books he writes immediately precede the books on the soul.

What Philoponus thought concerning immortality, according to the opinion of Aristotle.

From these he collected whatever he could for the purpose of abolishing mortality itself. For he proves, according to the opinion of Aristotle, the separation of the soul from the body after its destruction, teaching that there were various opinions of the philosophers concerning the separation of the soul, among which some have stood out by which [they] decre-