5. Man must therefore have as "reason" (or, as essence), something else
than the soul. Still, in this case, man might be something composite;
that is, the soul would subsist in a particular "reason," admitting
that this "reason" was a certain actualization of the soul, though this
actualization could not exist without its producing principle. Now such
is the nature of the "seminal reasons." They do not exist without the
soul; for the generating reasons are not inanimate; and nevertheless
they are not the soul purely and simply. There is therefore nothing
surprising in the statement that these (human) beings are ("seminal)
reasons."
THESE REASONS ARE THE ACTUALIZATIONS OF THE SOUL WHICH BEGETS THE
ANIMAL.
Of which soul are these reasons,[79] which do not beget the man
(though they do beget the animal), then the actualization? Not of the
vegetative soul; they are the actualizations of the (reasonable) soul
which begets the animal,[80] which is a more powerful, and therefore
a more living soul. Man is constituted[81] by the soul disposed in
some manner, when present to matter disposed in some particular
fashion--since the soul is some particular thing, according as she is
in some particular disposition--even in the body. In the bodies, she
fashions a resembling form. So far as the nature of the body allows
it, she thus produces an image of the man, as the painter himself
makes an image of the body; she produces, I repeat, an inferior man
(the sense-man, the animal), which possesses the form of man, his
reasons, morals, dispositions, faculties, although in an imperfect
manner, because he is not the first man (the intellectual man). He has
sensations of another kind; sensations which, though they seem clear,
are obscure, if they be compared to the superior sensations of which
they are the images. The superior man (the reasonable man) is better,
has a diviner soul, and clearer sensations. It is he doubtless to whom
Plato refers (when he says, Man is the soul[82]); in his definition he
adds, "which makes use of the body," because the diviner man dominates
the soul which uses the body, and thus uses the body only in an
indirect manner.[83]