Question Five of Chapter Ten
How many names the soul obtains
It is asked by how many names the rational soul is named in the Scriptures.
To this it is answered as follows: according to its diverse offices, the soul obtains a variety of names.
For it is called soul insofar as it communicates life to the body. Hence it is said in Genesis, chapter 2: “Man was made into a living soul”—that is, one giving life to the body.
The principle or first source of life is the vegetative soul, whose works are to use nourishment, to generate, and to grow. Therefore, the rational soul, insofar as a soul gives life and consequently the other works of life to the body, is called soul.
But it is called spirit insofar as it gives the body an immaterial, intellectual, and immortal power.
Therefore, in the present state the rational soul is called soul insofar as it communicates life and the consequent works of life to the body. But after the judgment and the general resurrection it will be called spirit, insofar as it will communicate immortality to the body with respect to all who are to be saved and damned, but impassibility, glory, and power with respect to the good, whose bodies will be spiritual and adorned with the endowments of bodies. For the elect alone, and not the damned, will possess the endowments of bodies.
The soul is also called spirit insofar as it breathes.
The soul is called animus while it wills. It is mind while it knows. It is memory while it recollects. It is reason while it judges rightly. It is sense while it senses something.
For from this the soul is called sense in place of those things which it senses, whence also it received the name sententia.
See Thomas in the First Part, question 97, article 3; Isidore in Book XII of the Etymologies; and Thomas again in the disputed questions On the Soul, question 12, article 2.