[Dicta de arbore quae dicitur Imago hominis] (1476) - Page 23

insofar as it delights in things pertaining to the body, etc., it usurps for itself the office of sensuality. For it considers itself regarding material causes, since it snatches itself to nothingness and sin, and in these obligations it is rendered and blinded from all virtue and spiritual intelligence. But insofar as the soul is called spirit, then, having spurned all perishable things, it aspires to the eternal. It considers itself as from the efficient cause, namely God, and that it is created to the image and likeness of God, immortal, and seeks only those things that are of God and how it may please God. The soul, however, seeks what is of the world and how it may please the world. The difference between spirit and soul is placed by Solomon in Ecclesiastes where he says: "I have denied nothing to my soul," and this is the affliction of the spirit. And the Apostle: "The word of God is living and effectual and more piercing than any two-edged sword and reaching unto the division of soul and spirit." These are the two sons, Esau and Jacob, in the womb of the mother, that is, the heart of man, struggling, because the spirit tends toward being, the soul toward not-being; the spirit toward the cause, the soul toward the caused. The former thinks deeply on celestial things, the latter investigates natural things with subtle inquiry. And although soul and spirit have different acts, the spirit is not a creature more simple than the soul is, but it is so indivisible that it cannot be divided into any part. Augustine: when it is said of spirit and soul, understand a double affection, namely of reason and sensuality. Also Augustine says in the book "On Spirit and Soul": "Soul and spirit are one in essence, different in the quality of actions." Note that the soul is defined by the holy doctors now as soul, now as spirit, now as both. Whence Augustine in the same: The soul is said to be so because it animates the body to see; the spirit is indeed that same soul by spiritual nature. But as the soul embraces both, thus the philosopher defines it: the soul is the likeness of all things. Whence Augustine: The soul has a certain right within itself by which it comprehends all things, investigates, and exists similar to all, though it be one. It is similar to earth through sense; to water through imagination; to air through reason; to the firmament through intellect; to the heaven of heavens through intelligence; to stones through essence; to trees through life; to animals through sense and imagination; to men through reason; to angels through understanding. Whence well: O soul, signed