1. 1. If a discipline exists somewhere, and can exist only in that which lives, and exists always; and if nothing in which something exists always can fail to be always: then that in which a discipline exists lives always. If we are the ones who reason—that is, our mind—and cannot reason rightly without a discipline, and the mind cannot exist without a discipline except as a mind in which a discipline is not: then a discipline is in the mind of man. But a discipline does exist somewhere: for it exists, and whatever exists cannot be nowhere. Likewise, a discipline cannot exist except in that which lives. For nothing that does not live learns anything; and a discipline cannot be in that which learns nothing. Likewise, a discipline exists always. For what exists and is unchangeable must necessarily exist always. But no one denies that a discipline exists. And whoever admits that it cannot come about that a line drawn through the center of a circle is not the greatest of all those that are not drawn through the center, and that this belongs to some discipline, does not deny that the discipline is unchangeable. Likewise, nothing in which something exists always can fail to be always; for nothing that exists always allows that in which it always is to be withdrawn from it at any time. Now when we reason, the mind does this. For only one who understands does it; and the body does not understand, nor does the mind understand with the body's help, because when it wishes to understand, it turns away from the body. For what is understood is of such a kind always; and nothing of the body is of such a kind always: therefore the body cannot help the mind that strives toward understanding, for which it is enough that it not hinder. Likewise, no one reasons rightly without a discipline. For right reasoning is a knowledge striving from things certain toward the tracking down of things uncertain; and there is nothing certain in the mind that it does not know. But everything the mind knows it has within itself; nor does knowledge embrace any thing except what belongs to some discipline. For a discipline is the knowledge of things of whatever kind. Therefore the human mind always lives.

2. 2. Reason, surely, is either the mind or in the mind. But our reason is better than our body; and our body is some substance, and it is better to be a substance than nothing: therefore reason is not nothing. Again, whatever harmony of a body there is must necessarily be in the underlying body inseparably, and nothing else is to be believed to be in that harmony which is not equally and necessarily in that underlying body, in which the harmony itself is no less inseparably. But the human body is changeable, and reason is unchangeable. For everything that is not always in the same way is changeable. And it is always in the same way that two and four are six. Likewise it is always in the same way that four have what two and two have; but two do not have this: therefore two are not four. But this reasoning is unchangeable: therefore it is reason. Now in no way can it come about that, the underlying subject being changed, what is in it inseparably is not changed. Therefore the mind is not the harmony of the body. Nor can death befall unchangeable things. Therefore the mind always lives, whether it is itself reason, or reason is in it inseparably.

3. 3. There is a certain virtue of constancy, and all constancy is unchangeable, and every virtue can do something, nor, when it does nothing, is it a virtue. Furthermore, every action is moved, or moves. Therefore either not everything that is moved, or at least not everything that moves, is changeable. But everything that is moved by another, and does not itself move, is something mortal. And nothing mortal is unchangeable. Therefore it is now concluded for certain and without any disjunction that not everything that moves is changed. But there is no motion without substance; and every substance either lives or does not live; and everything that does not live is lifeless; and there is no lifeless action. Therefore that which moves in such a way that it is not changed cannot be anything but a living substance. And every such substance moves the body through whatever grades. Therefore not everything that moves a body is changeable. But the body is moved only according to time: for it pertains to this to be moved more slowly and more swiftly. It is concluded that there is something that moves in time and yet is not changed. But everything that moves a body in time, even if it tends toward one end, nevertheless can neither do all things at once nor can it do otherwise than several things; for by no means can what is being done, by whatever means, be either perfectly one, if it can be cut into parts, nor is there any body without parts, nor any time without an interval of delays, nor indeed can even the shortest syllable be uttered whose end you do not hear when you no longer hear the beginning. Furthermore, what is done in this way needs both expectation in order to be carried through, and memory in order to be grasped as far as it can be. And expectation is of future things, but memory of past ones. But the intention to act belongs to present time, through which the future passes into the past; nor can the end of a begun motion of a body be awaited without any memory. For how is it awaited that what either has slipped from memory as having begun, or has been moved at all, should cease? Again, the intention of carrying through, which is present, cannot exist without the expectation of the end, which is future; nor is there anything which either is not yet, or now is not. Therefore there can be in acting something that pertains to those things which are not yet. Several things can be at once in the agent, although those several things which are done cannot be at once. Therefore they can also be in the mover, although they cannot be in what is moved. But whatever things cannot be at once in time, and yet are transmitted from the future into the past, must necessarily be changeable.

3. 4. From this we now gather that there can be something which, when it moves changeable things, is not changed. For when the intention of the mover to bring to the end which it wills the body that it moves is not changed, and that body, from which something is made, is by the same motion changed through moments, and the intention of completing—which it is manifest remains unchanged—moves both the very limbs of the craftsman and the wood or stone set under the craftsman: who would doubt that what has been said follows? Therefore, if any change of bodies comes about through the moving mind, although it is intent upon that change, it is not on this account to be thought that the mind is necessarily changed, and for this reason even dies. For in this intention it can have at once both the memory of past things and the expectation of future ones, all of which cannot exist without life. And yet, even though there is no perishing without change, and no change without motion, nevertheless not every change brings about perishing, nor every motion change. For although one may say that our very body is for the most part both moved by some action and certainly changed by age, yet it has not yet perished—that is, it is not without life. Let it be allowed, then, not to think the mind straightway deprived of life, although perhaps some change befalls it through motion.

4. 5. For if something unchangeable remains in the mind which cannot exist without life, then eternal life must necessarily remain in the mind as well. For this matter stands precisely so, that if the first is the case, the second is also. But the first is the case. For who—to pass over all else—would dare to say either that the principle of numbers is changeable; or that any art whatever does not consist of this principle; or that an art is not in the craftsman even when he is not exercising it; or that it belongs to anything except the mind; or that it can exist where there is no life; or that what is unchangeable can at some time fail to exist; or that an art is one thing and a principle another? For although a single art may be said to be, as it were, a certain assemblage of many principles, nevertheless even a single art can most truly be said and understood to be a single principle. But whether this or that is the case, it is concluded no less that an art is unchangeable; and it is manifest that an art is not only in the mind of the craftsman, but is nowhere except in the mind, and that inseparably. For if an art is to be separated from the mind, either it will exist apart from the mind, or it will exist nowhere, or it will pass straightway from mind to mind. But just as there is no seat for an art without life, so neither is there life with reason for anything except the soul. Now, what is can in no way be nowhere, nor can what is unchangeable at some time not be. But if an art passes from mind to mind, destined to remain in the one while abandoning the other, then no one teaches an art except by losing it, or else one becomes skilled only by the teacher's forgetting, or even by his death. And since these things are most absurd and most false—as indeed they are—the human mind is immortal.

4. 6. But if an art at one time is, and at another time is not, in the mind—which is well enough known through forgetfulness and lack of skill—then this connected argument brings nothing to bear on the mind's immortality, unless the antecedent is denied in this way. Either there is something in the mind which is not in present thought; or the art of music is not in an educated mind when it is thinking of geometry alone. But this latter is false; therefore the former is true. Now the mind does not perceive that it has anything except what has come into thought. Therefore there can be something in the mind which the mind itself does not perceive to be in it. But how long it is there makes no difference. For if the mind has been occupied with other things too long to be able easily to bend its attention back to things thought of before, this is called forgetfulness or lack of skill. But when, either reasoning by ourselves with ourselves, or being well questioned by another about certain liberal arts, we find the things we find nowhere else than in our own mind—and finding is not the same as making or begetting; otherwise the mind would beget eternal things by a temporal finding (for it often finds eternal things; for what is so eternal as the principle of a circle, or anything else of the kind in arts of this sort, which is grasped neither as having at some time not existed nor as being destined at some time not to exist?)—then it is manifest also that the human mind is immortal, and that all true principles are in its secret depths, although it may seem, whether through ignorance or through forgetfulness, either not to have them or to have lost them.

5. 7. But now let us see in what sense the change of the soul is to be understood. For if the soul is the subject, with an art existing in it as in a subject, and the subject cannot be changed without that which is in the subject being changed also, how can we maintain that the art and the principle are unchangeable, if the soul in which they are is shown to be changeable? And what change is greater than that into contraries? And who denies that the soul—to pass over the rest—is at one time foolish and at another wise? First, then, let us see in how many senses what is called the change of the soul is to be understood; of which, as I think, there are at least two kinds clearer and more manifest to us, while in species more are found. For the soul is said to be changed either according to the affections of the body, or according to its own. According to the body's, as through ages, through diseases, through pains, labors, injuries, through pleasures. According to its own, as by desiring, rejoicing, fearing, growing distressed, being eager, learning.

5. 8. All these changes, even if they are no necessary argument that the soul dies, are indeed not to be feared in themselves taken separately; but we must see that they do not oppose our argument, by which it was said that, the subject being changed, everything that is in the subject is necessarily changed. But they do not oppose it. For that change of a subject is so called by which the subject is altogether compelled to change its name. For if wax draws a black color from somewhere instead of white, it is no less wax; and if it takes on a round shape instead of square, and hardens from soft, and grows cold from hot—yet these are in the subject, and the wax is the subject. But the wax remains no more and no less wax when these things are changed. Therefore some change can come about in the things that are in the subject, while the subject itself, in respect of what it is and is called, is not changed. But if so great a change came about in the things that are in the subject that what was said to underlie could no longer be so called at all—as when, by the heat of fire, wax departs into vapor, and undergoes such a change that the subject is rightly understood to have been changed, which was wax and is now no longer wax—then in no way and by no reasoning would any of those things which were in that subject precisely because it was this be thought to remain.

5. 9. Therefore, if the soul is a subject, as we said above, in which the principle is inseparably—by that necessity by which whatever things are shown to be in a subject—and the soul cannot be a soul except as a living soul, and the principle cannot be in it without life, and the principle is immortal: then the soul is immortal. For surely in no way could the unchangeable principle remain when its subject did not exist. And this would come about if so great a change befell the soul as to make it not a soul—that is, to compel it to die. But none of those changes which come about either through the body or through the soul itself (although whether some come about through the soul itself—that is, of which it is itself the cause—is no small question) brings it about that it makes the soul not a soul. Therefore now they are not to be feared, not only in themselves, but not even in respect of our reasonings.

6. 10. Therefore I see that we must press on with all the powers of reasoning, so that it may be known what reason is, and in how many ways it can be defined, in order that according to all these ways the immortality of the soul may also be established. Reason is the gaze of the mind by which, through itself and not through the body, it beholds the true; or it is the very contemplation of the true, not through the body; or it is the very true which it contemplates. That the first is in the mind no one doubts; about the second and the third a question can be raised; but the second too cannot exist without the mind. About the third there is a great question: whether that true which the mind beholds without the instrument of the body is through itself, and is not in the mind, or can exist without the mind. But however it may stand, the mind could not contemplate it through itself unless there were some conjunction with it. For everything that we contemplate, whether we grasp it by thought, we grasp either by sense or by understanding. But those things which are grasped by sense are perceived to be also outside us, and are contained in places, whence they are affirmed not even to be able to be perceived. But those things which are understood are not understood as placed anywhere else than the very mind that understands; for they are at the same time also understood not to be contained in a place.

6. 11. Therefore this conjunction of the beholding mind and the true which it beholds is either such that the mind is the subject, and that true is in the subject; or, on the contrary, the true is the subject, and the mind is in the subject; or each is a substance. Now of these three, if the first is the case, the mind is as immortal as reason, according to the earlier disputation, because that can be present only in what is living. The same necessity holds in the second. For if that true which is called reason has nothing changeable, as it appears, then nothing can be changed which is in it as in a subject. There remains, then, the whole struggle about the third. For if the mind is a substance, and the substance is conjoined to reason, one might not absurdly think that it could come about that, while reason remains, the mind ceases to be. But it is manifest that, so long as the mind is not separated from reason and adheres to it, it necessarily remains and lives. But by what force can it be separated? Surely not by a bodily one, whose power is weaker, and origin lower, and order more separated? In no way. By one belonging to a soul, then? But even in that, in what way? Or can some other mind, however more powerful, contemplate reason unless it has separated the other mind from it? But reason would be lacking to none who contemplate, if all contemplated; and since nothing is more powerful than reason itself, than which nothing is more unchangeable, in no way will a mind not yet conjoined to reason be more powerful than the one that is conjoined. It remains that either reason separates the mind from itself, or the mind is separated from it by the will. But there is nothing of envy in that nature, to keep it from offering itself for the mind to enjoy. Moreover, the more it is, the more it makes whatever is conjoined to it to be—to which perishing is contrary. But that the mind is separated from reason by the will, one might say not too absurdly, if there could be any separation of things from one another which place does not contain. Which indeed can be said against all the foregoing points, to which we have set other objections in opposition. What then? Is it now to be concluded that the mind is immortal? Or, even if it cannot be separated, can it be extinguished? But if that force of reason affects the mind by its very conjunction—and it cannot fail to affect it—then surely it so affects it that it bestows being upon it. For reason itself most fully is, where also the highest unchangeableness is understood. Thus, whatever things it affects from itself, it compels in some way to be. Therefore the mind cannot be extinguished unless separated from reason; but it cannot be separated, as we reasoned above: therefore it cannot perish.

7. 12. But the very turning away from reason, through which folly befalls the mind, cannot come about without a defect in it. For if it is the more in being when it is turned toward reason and clinging to it—because it clings to the unchangeable thing which is truth, which both most fully and primarily is—then, when it is turned away from it, it has that very being in lesser measure, which is to be deficient. But every defect tends toward nothing; and no perishing ought more properly to be understood than when that which was something becomes nothing. Therefore to tend toward nothing is to tend toward perishing. Why this does not fall upon the mind, in which the defect does fall, is hard to say. The other points are granted here; but it is denied to follow that what tends toward nothing perishes—that is, arrives at nothing. This can be observed in the body too. For since any body is a part of the sensible world, and therefore the greater it is and the more place it occupies, the more it approaches the whole; and the more it does this, the more it is. For the whole is more than the part. Therefore it is also necessary that it be less when it is diminished. Therefore it suffers a defect when it is diminished. Furthermore, it is diminished when something is taken from it by cutting. From which it follows that by such subtraction it tends toward nothing. But no cutting brings it all the way to nothing. For every part that remains is a body, and whatever is a body occupies a place of some extent, however small. Nor could it do so unless it had parts into which it could be cut again and again. Therefore by cutting infinitely it can be diminished infinitely, and so suffer defect and tend toward nothing, although it can never arrive there. The same can be said and understood of space itself and of any interval. For of these too, even when bounded—by taking away, for example, half a part, and from what remains always half—the interval is diminished, and proceeds toward an end which nevertheless is in no way reached. So much the less is this to be feared in the case of the mind. For it is surely better and more alive than the body, by which life is bestowed on the body.

8. 13. But if a body is made to be a body not by what is in the mass of the body, but by what is in its form—which opinion is approved by an argument more invincible: for a body is the more, the more shapely and beautiful it is, and the less, the fouler and more deformed; and this falling away comes about not by the cutting of the mass, of which enough has already been treated, but by the pruning away of form—then this matter must be diligently inquired into and sifted, lest anyone affirm that the mind perishes by such a defect: namely, that since it is deprived of some form of its own while it is foolish, this privation might be believed able to be increased so far as to despoil the mind of form altogether, and by that taint to reduce it to nothing and compel it to perish. Therefore, if we can succeed in showing that this cannot befall even a body—that it should be deprived even of that form by which it is a body—then perhaps we shall rightly maintain that much less can that be taken from the mind by which it is a mind. For no one who has examined himself well will fail to confess that any mind whatever is to be preferred to every body.

8. 14. Let this, then, be the starting point of our reasoning: that no thing makes or begets itself, otherwise it was before it was; and if this is false, the other is true. Likewise, what has not been made or come to be, and yet is, must necessarily be everlasting. Whoever gives this nature and excellence to any body errs vehemently indeed. But why do we contend? For we are far more strongly compelled to give it to the mind. So if any body is everlasting, no mind is not everlasting—since any mind whatever is to be preferred to any body, and all everlasting things to non-everlasting ones. But if, as is truly said, the body has been made, it has been made by some maker, and that not an inferior one. For what was making it would not be capable of giving to what it made whatever it is that it is. Nor even by an equal one: for the maker must have something better for making than is that which it makes. For of the begetter it is not absurdly said that it is what that which is begotten by it is. Therefore the whole body has been made by some force and nature more powerful and better, and certainly not corporeal. For if a body were made by a body, the whole could not have come to be. For it is most true, as we set down at the start of this reasoning, that no thing can be made by itself. But this incorporeal force and nature, the maker of the whole body, holds the whole by its present power. For it did not make it and then depart and abandon what it had made. For that substance which is not a body, and is not, so to speak, moved locally, so as to be able to be separated from the substance which holds a place; and that productive force cannot be at leisure but must guard what has been made by it, and not allow it to lack the form by which it is, in whatever measure it is. For what does not exist through itself, if it be forsaken by that through which it exists, surely will not be; and we cannot say that the body received, when it was made, the power to be already content with itself, even if it were forsaken by its founder.

8. 15. And yet, if this is so, the mind has this all the more, which it is manifest excels the body. And thus it is proved immortal at once, if it can exist through itself. For whatever is such must necessarily be incorruptible, and on this account cannot perish, because nothing forsakes itself. But the changeableness of the body is plain, which the universal motion of the whole body itself sufficiently shows. Whence, to those who inspect diligently, so far as such a nature can be inspected, it is found that what is changeable imitates, by an ordered changeableness, that which is unchangeable. But what exists through itself needs no motion at all, since all its abundance exists for it through itself; for all motion is toward something else, of which what is moved stands in need. Therefore form is present to the whole body, the better nature, which made it, sufficing and holding it. For this reason that changeableness does not take from the body its being a body, but makes it pass from form to form by a most ordered motion. For no part of it is allowed to be reduced to nothing, since that productive force lays hold of the whole, with a power neither laboring nor idle, granting that everything which is through it should be, in the measure in which it is. Therefore no one ought to be so far astray from reason that either it is not certain to him that the mind is better than the body, or, granting this, he should think that it does not befall the body to be no body, while it befalls the mind to be no mind. And if this does not befall, and the mind cannot exist except as living, then surely the mind never dies.

9. 16. But if anyone says that the perishing to be feared for the mind is not that by which it comes about that what was something is nothing, but that by which we call those things dead which lack life, let him attend that no thing lacks itself. But the mind is a certain life; whence everything that is animated is understood to live, while everything inanimate which can be animated is understood to be dead—that is, deprived of life. Therefore the mind cannot die. For if it could lack life, it would be not a mind but something animated. But if this is absurd, much less is this kind of perishing to be feared for the mind, which is certainly not to be feared for life. For if the mind dies precisely when that life forsakes it, then that very life which forsakes it is much better understood to be the mind—so that whatever is forsaken by life is now not the mind, but that very life which forsakes is. For whatever is called dead, as forsaken by life, is understood to be forsaken by the soul; but this life which forsakes the things that die, since it is itself the mind, and does not forsake itself, the mind does not die.

10. 17. Unless perhaps we ought to believe life to be some tempering of the body, as certain people have supposed. To these, surely, this would never have seemed so, if they had been able to see, with that same mind made foreign to the habit of bodies and purified, the things that truly are and remain unchangeable. For who, examining himself well, has not experienced that he understood something the more purely the more he was able to remove and withdraw the attention of the mind from the senses of the body? But if the mind were a tempering of the body, this could not happen. For that thing which had no nature of its own, and would not be a substance, but would be in the underlying body inseparably, like color and shape, would in no way try to turn itself away from that same body in order to perceive intelligible things, and to be able to behold them in the measure in which it could do so, and to become better and more excellent by that vision. For in no way can form or color, or even that very tempering of the body—which is a fixed mixture of those four natures by which the body subsists—turn itself away from that in which it is inseparably as a subject. Besides, those things which the mind understands when it turns itself away from the body are surely not corporeal; and yet they are, and most fully are, for they always remain in the same way. For nothing more absurd can be said than that the things we see with our eyes are, while the things we discern by understanding are not; since to doubt that understanding is incomparably to be set before the eyes is the mark of one out of his mind. But these things which are understood, remaining in the same way, when the mind beholds them, sufficiently show that it is conjoined to them by a certain marvelous and likewise incorporeal manner—namely, not locally. For either they are in it, or it is in them. And whichever of these is the case, either one is in the other as in a subject, or each is a substance. But if the first is the case, the mind is not in the underlying body, like color and shape; because either it is itself a substance, or it is in another substance, which is not a body, as in a subject. But if this second is true, the mind is not in the underlying body like color, because it is a substance. But the tempering of the body is in the underlying body like color: therefore the tempering of the body is not the mind, but the mind is life; and no thing forsakes itself; and that dies which life forsakes: therefore the mind cannot die.

11. 18. Again, then, if anything is to be feared, it is to be feared lest the mind perish by becoming deficient—that is, while it is deprived of the very form of existing. About this matter, although I think enough has been said, and it has been shown by certain reasoning that this cannot happen, yet this too must be attended to: that there is no other cause of this fear than that it must be confessed that the foolish mind is in a certain defect, and the wise mind in a more certain and fuller essence. But if—as is doubtful to no one—the mind is then most wise when it beholds the truth, which is always in the same way, and clings to it unmoved, conjoined by divine love; and that truth most highly and greatly is, of all the things which in any way are: then either the mind is from it, in the measure in which it is, or it is through itself. But if it is through itself, then, since it is itself the cause of its own existing, and never forsakes itself, it never perishes, as we have also argued above. But if it is from that truth, we must diligently inquire what thing can be contrary to it—a thing that would take from the mind its being a mind, which that truth bestows. What is it, then? Is it perhaps falsity, since that is truth? But it is manifest, and lies ready to hand, how much falsity can harm the mind. For can it do more than deceive? But no one is deceived except one who lives. Therefore falsity cannot destroy the mind. But if this—which is contrary to truth—cannot take from the mind its being a mind, which truth gave to it (for so unconquerable is truth), what else will be found that can take from the mind that which is the mind? Surely nothing: for nothing is more powerful than the contrary for taking away that which is made by its contrary.

12. 19. But if we seek what is contrary to truth, not insofar as it is truth, but insofar as it most highly and greatly is—although it is itself precisely in the measure in which it is truth, since we call that truth by which all things are true in whatever measure they are, and they are in the measure in which they are true—nevertheless I would in no way shun what supports me more evidently. For if no essence, insofar as it is essence, has anything contrary, much less does that first essence, which is called truth, have a contrary insofar as it is essence. But the first is true. For every essence is essence for no other reason than that it is. But to be has no contrary except not to be: whence nothing is contrary to essence. In no way, then, can any thing be contrary to that substance which most fully and primarily is. From which, if the mind has its very being (for it cannot have this from elsewhere, having it not from itself, except from that thing which is more excellent than the mind itself), there is no thing by which it may lose this, because no thing is contrary to that thing by which it has it; and therefore it does not cease to be. But wisdom, since it has it by a turning toward that from which it is, it can lose by a turning away. For to a turning toward, a turning away is contrary. But that which it has from him to whom no thing is contrary, there is no source from which it can lose it. Therefore it cannot perish.

13. 20. Here perhaps some question may arise: whether, just as the mind does not perish, so neither is it changed into a worse essence. For it can seem to someone, and not without cause, that this has been brought about by this reasoning—that the mind cannot arrive at nothing—but that perhaps it can be turned into a body. For if what was before a mind has been made a body, it surely will not be utterly nothing. But this cannot happen unless either the mind itself wills it, or it is compelled by another. And yet the mind, whether it has sought this itself or has been compelled, will not straightway be able to be a body. For this follows: that, if it is, it wills or is compelled. But this does not follow: that, if it wills or is compelled, it is. But it will never will it: for all its appetite toward a body is either to possess it, or to give it life, or in some way to fashion it, or in any manner to take counsel for it. But none of these can come about if it is not better than the body. But if it should be a body, it surely will not be better than the body. Therefore it will not will to be a body. Nor is there any surer argument of this matter than when the mind questions itself about it. For thus it easily discovers that it has no appetite except for doing something, or knowing, or perceiving, or merely living, in the measure in which the power is in its own control.

13. 21. But if it is compelled to be a body, by whom, after all, is it compelled? By someone, certainly by a more powerful one. Therefore it cannot be compelled by the body itself. For in no way is any body more powerful than any mind. But a more powerful mind does not compel into anything except what is subject to its power. And in no way is a mind subject to the power of another mind, except by its own desires. Therefore that mind compels no further than the desires of the one it compels allow. But it was said that the mind cannot have the desire to be a body. This too is manifest: that it arrives at no fulfillment of its desire while it loses all desire; and it loses it while it becomes a body. Therefore it cannot be compelled to become so by one who has no right of compelling except through the desires of the one subjected. Further, whatever mind has another mind in its power, it must rather will to have it in its power than as a body, and wills to take counsel for it out of goodness, or to rule it out of malice. Therefore it will not will it to be a body.

13. 22. Finally, this compelling mind either is a living being, or lacks a body. But if it lacks a body, it is not in this world. And if it is so, it is supremely good, and cannot will so base a change for another. But if it is a living being, then either the one it compels is also a living being, or is not. But if it is not, it can be compelled by another to nothing. For it has no more powerful than itself, since it is in the highest place. But if it is in a body, it is again compelled by one who is in a body, through the body, to whatever it is compelled. But who would doubt that so great a change can in no way come about for the mind through a body? For it would come about if a body were more powerful than the mind; though whatever it is to which the mind is compelled through a body, it is surely compelled not through the body, but through its own desires, of which enough has been said. But what is better than the rational soul, by the consent of all, is God. And he surely takes counsel for the soul, and therefore the soul cannot be compelled by him to be turned into a body.

14. 23. If, then, the soul suffers this neither by its own will nor by another compelling it, from what source can it suffer it? Or, because sleep for the most part overcomes us against our will, is it to be feared lest by some such defect the soul be turned into a body? As if, because our limbs grow slack in sleep, the mind should on that account become in any part weaker. It only does not sense sensible things, because whatever it is that causes sleep is from the body and operates in the body. For it lulls and in a way closes the bodily senses, in such a way, indeed, that the soul yields with pleasure to such a change of the body; because such a change, which refreshes the body from its labors, is according to nature. Yet this does not take from the mind either the power of sensing or of understanding. For it has at hand the images of sensible things, with so great an expressiveness of likeness that at that very time they cannot be distinguished from the things whose images they are; and if it understands anything, it is true equally for the sleeper and the waker. For if, for example, one seems in a dream to be debating with himself, and, following true principles in debating, has learned something, then even when he is awakened the same principles remain unchangeable, although the rest is found false—such as the place where the debate, and the person with whom the debate, had seemed to take place, and the very words, as far as sound is concerned, by which it seemed to be debated, and other things of this kind; which, even when they are sensed by the senses themselves and done by the waking, nevertheless pass away, and in no part attain the everlasting presence of true principles. From which it is gathered that by such a change of the body as sleep is, the soul's use of that same body can be diminished, but not its own power.

15. 24. Finally, if the soul is nevertheless joined non-locally to a body that occupies a place, while it is affected by those highest and eternal principles, which remain unchangeably and are surely not contained in a place, the soul is affected before the body—and not only before, but also more. For it is affected the sooner the nearer it is; and by the same cause the more, the better it is than the body. And let this nearness be spoken of not by place, but by the order of nature. By this order it is understood that form is bestowed on the body by the highest essence through the soul, by which it is in whatever measure it is. Through the soul, then, the body subsists, and is by that very thing by which it is animated, whether universally, as the world, or particularly, as each living being within the world. Therefore it would follow that the soul should become a body through the soul, nor could it be otherwise at all. And because this does not happen—since, the soul remaining in that by which it is a soul, the body subsists through it, giving form, not taking it away—the soul cannot be changed into a body. For if it does not hand on the form which it takes from the highest good, the body is not made through it; and if it is not made through it, either it is not made at all, or it takes form as nearly as the soul does; but the body both is made, and, if it took form so nearly, it would be what the soul is: for this is the difference, and the soul is better in that it takes form more nearly. But the body too would take form as nearly, if it did not take it through the soul. For with nothing interposed it would surely take it as nearly. Nor is anything found which is between the highest life, which is unchangeable wisdom and truth, and that which is last given life—that is, body—except the life-giving soul. But if the soul hands on form to the body, so that the body is in the measure in which it is, it surely does not take away form by handing it on. But it would take it away by transmuting the soul into a body. Therefore the soul does not become a body, whether through itself, since the body is made through it only while the soul remains; or through another, since the body is made through the soul only by the handing on of form, and the soul would be turned into a body by the taking away of form, if it were turned.

16. 25. This too can be said of the irrational soul or life: that the rational soul is not turned into it either. For that soul too, unless it were subjected to the rational by an inferior order, would equally take form and be such. Therefore the more powerful hand on, by the natural order, to the weaker the form received from the highest beauty. And surely, when they hand it on, they do not take it away. And the things that are weaker are, in the measure in which they are, by the fact that form, by which they are, is handed on to them by the more powerful; and these more powerful are also better. This is granted to those natures which are more powerful than smaller masses not by a greater mass, but, without any swelling of local magnitude, are more powerful by the same form by which they are better. Of this kind is the soul, better and more powerful than the body. Therefore, since the body subsists through it, as has been said, it can in no way be turned into a body. For no body comes to be except by receiving form through the soul. But the soul, in order to become a body, could come to be not by receiving form, but by losing it; and therefore it cannot come to be—unless perhaps the soul is contained in a place, and joined locally to the body. For if it is so, perhaps a greater mass can turn it, though more shapely, into its own worse form, as a greater body of air turns a smaller fire. But it is not so. For every mass which occupies a place is not whole in each of its parts, but in all. Therefore one part of it is in one place, and another in another. But the soul is present whole at once not only to the whole mass of its body, but also to each particle of it. For it senses with its whole self the affection of a part of the body, yet not in the whole body. For when something hurts in the foot, the eye attends, the tongue speaks, the hand is moved. This would not happen unless that which is of the soul in those parts also sensed in the foot; nor could it sense, being absent, what was done there. For it is not credible that this comes about by some messenger that does not itself sense what it reports; for the affection which comes about does not run through a continuous mass, so as not to let the other parts of the soul, which are elsewhere, lie hidden from it; but the whole soul senses that which comes about in the particle of the foot, and senses it only there where it comes about. Therefore it is present whole, at once, to the several parts, sensing whole, at once, in each. And yet it is not present whole in such a way as whiteness or some other quality of this kind is whole in each part of the body. For what the body undergoes in one part by a change of whiteness can fail to pertain to the whiteness that is in another part. Therefore, according to the parts of the mass which are distant from one another, it itself is proved to be distant from itself. But that it is not so in the soul is proved by the sense of which we have spoken.