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| The Soul's Supremacy.
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Chapter
XIII.—The Soul’s Supremacy.
It next remains to examine where lies the
supremacy; in other words, which of the two is superior to the other,
so that with which the supremacy clearly lies shall be the essentially
superior substance;1578
whilst that over
which this essentially superior substance shall have authority shall be
considered as the natural functionary of the superior substance. Now
who will hesitate to ascribe this entire authority to the soul, from
the name of which the whole man has received his own designation in
common phraseology? How many souls, says the rich man, do
I maintain? not how many minds. The pilot’s desire, also,
is to rescue so many souls from shipwreck, not so many minds;
the labourer, too, in his work, and the soldier on the field of battle,
affirms that he lays down his soul (or life), not his mind. Which of
the two has its perils or its vows and wishes more frequently on
men’s lips—the mind or the soul? Which of the two are dying
persons, said to have to do with the mind or the soul? In short,
philosophers themselves, and medical men, even when it is their purpose
to discourse about the mind, do in every instance inscribe on their
title-page1579
and table of
contents,1580
“De
Anima” (“A treatise on the
soul”). And that you may also have God’s voucher
on the subject, it is the soul which He addresses; it is the soul which
He exhorts and counsels, to turn the mind and intellect to Him. It is
the soul which Christ came to save; it is the soul which He threatens
to destroy in hell; it is the soul (or life) which He forbids being
made too much of; it is His soul, too (or life), which the good
Shepherd Himself lays down for His sheep. It is to the soul, therefore, that
you ascribe the supremacy; in it also you possess that union of
substance, of which you perceive the mind to be the instrument, not the
ruling power.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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