Our genuine selves are what is essentially "us"; we are the principle
to which Nature has given the power to triumph over the passions. For,
if we be surrounded by evils because of the body, nevertheless, the
divinity has given us virtue, which "knows of no master"[223] (is not
subject to any compulsion). Indeed we need virtue not so much when we
are in a calm state, but when its absence exposes us to evils. We must,
therefore, flee from here below;[230] we must divorce ourselves from
the body added to us in generation, and apply ourselves to the effort
to cease being this animal, this composite in which the predominant
element is the nature of the body, a nature which is only a trace of
the soul, and which causes animal life[231] to pertain chiefly to the
body. Indeed, all that relates to this life is corporeal. The other
soul (the reasonable soul, which is superior to the vegetative soul),
is not in the body; she rises to the beautiful, to the divine, and to
all the intelligible things, which depend on nothing else. She then
seeks to identify herself with them, and lives conformably to the
divinity when retired within herself (in contemplation). Whoever is
deprived of this soul (that is, whoever does not exercise the faculties
of the reasonable soul), lives in subjection to fatality.[222] Then
the actions of such a being are not only indicated by the stars, but
he himself becomes a part of the world, and he depends on the world of
which he forms a part. Every man is double,[232] for every man contains
both the composite (organism), and the real man (which constitutes the
reasonable soul).