VII. Whether Our
Soul is Rational.
That our soul is rational, one might demonstrate by many
arguments. And first of all from the fact that it has discovered
the arts that are for the service of our life. For no one could
say that these arts were introduced casually and accidentally, as no
one could prove them to be idle, and of no utility for our life.
If, then, these arts contribute to what is profitable for our life, and
if the profitable is commendable, and if the commendable is constituted
by reason, and if these things are the discovery of the soul, it
follows that our soul is rational.
Again, that our soul is rational, is also proved
by the fact that our senses are not sufficient for the apprehension of
things. For we are not competent for the knowledge of things by
the simple application of the faculty of sensation. But as we do
not choose to rest in these without inquiry,457
| 457
ἐπεὶ μηδὲ
στῆναι περὶ
αὐτὰ
θέλομεν. |
that
proves that the senses, apart from
reason, are felt to be incapable of discriminating between things which
are identical in form and similar in colour, though quite distinct in
their natures. If, therefore, the senses, apart from reason, give
us a false conception of things, we have to consider whether things
that are can be
apprehended in reality or not. And if they can be
apprehended, then the
power which enables us to get at them is one
different from, and superior to, the senses. And if they are not
apprehended, it will not be possible for us at all to
apprehend things
which are different in their
appearance from the reality. But
that objects are apprehensible by us, is clear from the fact that we
employ each in a way adaptable to utility, and again turn them to what
we please. Consequently, if it has been shown that things which
are can be
apprehended by us, and if the senses, apart from reason, are
an erroneous test of objects, it follows that the intellect
458
is what distinguishes all things in
reason, and
discerns things as they are in their actuality. But
the intellect is just the rational portion of the
soul, and
consequently the
soul is rational.
Finally, because we do nothing without having
first marked it out for ourselves; and as that is nothing else than
just the high prerogative459
| 459
ἀξίωμα. [Elucidation
II.] |
of
the soul,—for its knowledge of things does not come to it from
without, but it rather sets out these things, as it were, with the
adornment of its own thoughts, and thus first pictures forth the object
in itself, and only thereafter carries it out to actual fact,—and
because the high prerogative of the soul is nothing else than the doing
of all things with reason, in which respect it also differs from the
senses, the soul has thereby been demonstrated to be
rational.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
