Of the second part of the siftings.

From the sixth book of Avicenna on the soul.

Anima does not cease to be, nor is it transformed into other bodies. For they are without doubt separate from bodies, having previously had being and essence through themselves before each one, due to the diversity of the matters which it possessed, and due to the diversity of the time of its creation, and due to the diversity of their affections which it had according to the diverse bodies it possessed—this is Avicenna.

The opinion of Algazel on the soul from his book on the human soul.

A soul is as if a brief tablet containing the sum of all things that are in the world, in which is found an example of every thing, and through which it is possible to know all things. The soul, however, after death feels pain for its ignorance and delight for its wisdom. But sensible delight has no comparison to intelligible delight. The delight of the angels, which they have from the contemplation of the First, surpasses the delight they have from the apprehension of themselves. But their delight is because they know themselves to be servants of God. Although souls come to be with bodies, they do not come to be for the sake of the body. The cause of them is the Giver of Forms, which is an eternal intelligible substance. The soul flows from the agent intelligence; for the soul itself signifies the agent intelligence, and within it, the abstract intellects are made.

The opinion of the impious Averroes on the soul.

Animal intellect is unique in all men. For human intellect is a certain nature and intellectual quiddity, subsisting and un-multipliable, containing every perfection both on the part of the individual and on the part of the species, which can pertain to it, in no way determinable and contractible to multiple individuals, in the way that anything immaterially and simply abstracted is un-multipliable according to Aristotle. For the intellectual soul is composed of the agent and possible intellect, which two are not essential parts of the soul, but potential parts, such that they are two powers, though the same in reality with the substance of the intellectual soul. Elsewhere, however, the Commentator posits that the intellect, both agent and possible, are two substantial parts of the intellectual soul, such that the intellectual soul is a certain spiritual substance entirely abstracted from matter, subsisting through itself, in which the agent intellect, in the reason of an active principle, regards the possible intellect as an inadequate passive; this intellectual soul, although it is not a form informing the human body, nevertheless cannot be without the human body, to such an extent that if, by the impossible, the whole human species were destroyed, there would be no intellectual soul. Thus the intellectual soul is said to depend on the body, that its primary act and the understood intentions, at least in the particular, are generable and corruptible, whatever may be the case regarding intentions with respect to the universal. And this was the opinion of the impious Averroes.

The opinion of Symphorien Champier, Lord of Faverges, on the soul.

Three greatest philosophers of three religions, who illuminated the entire globe with their doctrines, were born from Arabia. For Avicenna was an Arab by origin and a Spaniard by birth, a Mahometan by law. Algazel was an Arab by origin and a Christian by religion; for he calls Peter and John, the apostles of God, by name in his philosophy. Averroes, however, was a Gentile. Gentiles are those who have never come to the light of our faith; in Latin they are called infidels, in Greek they are called ethnici pagans/heathens. They are called Gentiles. For ethnos nation/people signifies nations. They are also called pagans, that is, rustics, who are not reborn in the spirit like Christians, but remain forever in the rusticity in which they were born; just as that impious Averroes was, without law, an infidel rustic, a pagan, and a Gentile, who alone dreamed of the unity of the intellect against the mind of Aristotle, whose interpreter he claimed to be. We, however, elsewhere having rejected the unity of the intellect with many reasons, have previously defined this question—which was obscure and very difficult—in these words: the substance of the human soul is thus defined. The soul is such a substance from which flow powers, both separate from matter and also not at all separate, and in itself it is incorruptible and permanent, although according to the being of certain powers it may be corruptible. And this, indeed, concerning the human soul only, insofar as they profess to understand and feel. Our philosophers have made much from the origin of the rational soul in many volumes of our philosophy, and have shown its true relationship with the First Mover, from whom it is one and perfect; many and almost countless things could be brought forth to prove this opinion on the immortality of the soul. Yet one way is more certain and more fitting than all others: the reason, cognition, and anticipation of the end of this truth we are investigating. This, indeed, makes the end necessary for those things that are toward the end. Aurelius—truly the golden Augustine—was the first to explain this in those books which he wrote, most corrected, both on the Trinity and on the City of God: the Almighty and Eternal Father simultaneously infuses and creates souls in bodies. Averroes, in philosophizing, never knew the reason for this creation; because he wished to know more than he ought, he managed, by trying to understand, to understand nothing.

That Avicenna affirms that only the second proceeds from the first intelligence, and that it in turn produces the third. First Error. Champier.

A woodcut decorative initial letter 'A' contains a landscape with a tower and figures.Avicenna, a Spaniard by fatherland, an Arab by origin and tongue, in the sixth book of natural things, part five, and in the ninth book of his Metaphysics, thought and falsely supposed this order to be held by intelligences separate from matter and from every condition of matter, so that the second would hang from the first, the third from the second, the fourth from the third, and so on in order. And he supposed that it pertained not only to essence and nature, but also to intellection, and so proceeded step by step until the one that was the lowest would produce all human souls through its intellection. He added that the rational soul could not understand except when it turned itself in that very act toward the superior intelligence from which it hung; and he added that, due to the purity of the soul itself, it could come to pass that it might join itself to the intelligence from God, so that it might draw forth secrets, foresee the future, and become powerful over the subject matter through the application of the imagination. These things from Avicenna, and someone else as if under the clouds.