First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

and diverse according to their diversity. These faculties, as they are the organs of the external senses in respect to Bodies, whose ministry the mind helps to perceive while occupied with material things, so, when spirits come into account, then all the bodily senses—if one excludes the effects of spirits upon matter—being as it were entirely extinguished, the naked mind is equally capable of perceiving and reasoning.

() The natural existence of those Spirits who are called Angels can likely be known, guided by experience, when such operations are perceived by the external senses that cannot but proceed from substances distinct from man, invisible, and apt for moving bodies, endowed with intellect and will. But as for their nature and essence, guided by reason alone, nothing can be known, such that we do not know whether they are Spirits devoid of all matter, or whether they have more subtle bodies attached to them. This is all the more so, since there are those who believe that even for us, established in the Christian light, this is difficult to define. See the Magnificent and most Reverend D. BUDDEUS, Elements of Theoretical Philosophy, Part VI, Chapter I, § IV-VII, p. 329, et seq.*

Hence, for example, we recognize God through reasoning and pure perception as an eternal, truthful, good essence, etc., as the most perfect example of virtue, no less than His will in particular as the rule of justice and the most exact norm. We understand Angels by the mind alone, with the senses contributing nothing, and we learn of their nature and essence—that it is spiritual—from the Sacred Scriptures, for we know it by no means from nature, even if we infer their existence by some reasoning.(*) Thus, we contemplate the soul inhabiting our bodies only by the very contemplation of the soul itself. And to that end, we see the soul granted the faculty of reflecting upon itself, which is entirely denied to the thoughts of all other animals, or rather to their perceptions, which only approach the nature of thought to some degree.

Now, therefore, just as it is incumbent upon us to properly use the faculty granted by nature to understand both corporeal and spiritual things, so, specifically regarding spiritual things, it is necessary that we consider those things of the soul which we can look into by any means whatsoever with industry before we proceed to the contemplation of superior spirits.