Up to here we have treated of the two lowest faculties of our soul, which are of the soul that they call vegetative, which has for office to maintain and sustain our bodies, and of the one that they call sensitive, whence proceed the five exterior senses of our body and the four interior ones of our soul. Now it will be reason to treat of the highest part of the soul, which is the one that they call intellective, which is spiritual substance like the angels, and for this reason is not affixed in any bodily organ as all the other senses are, both exterior and interior.
And to treat of this soul, and of the variety and multitude of its offices and faculties, it will be necessary to bring to memory what above we said, treating of the virtue and subtlety of the animal spirits, where, proceeding by a discourse both of the elements and of all the other things that are composed of them, we came to conclude that, the more things depart from the heaviness and matter of the earth, and the more they are thinned and draw near to the condition of spiritual things, so much the more perfect they are and so much the greater virtue and efficacy they have for working. Then according to this, since our soul passes beyond these things, and is a spiritual substance, it follows that it must be more perfect than they, and have greater power and efficacy for working.
And beginning to treat of the dignity and offices of this intellective soul, we say first that it is the one that differentiates us from the brute animals, and makes us similar to God and to his holy angels, which the Maker himself testified when at the beginning of creation he said: “Let us make man to our image and likeness,” which likeness we say that he has by reason of this intellective soul.
Where first it must be noted with how much authority the Creator began to treat of the creation of man, because in that of the other things he did no more than say: “Let this be made,” and then it was made, and thus he said: “Let light be made,” and then light was made, and: “Let lights be made in the heaven,” and then the sun and the moon came out to light together with all the stars. But having to create man, he used this new language, saying: “Let us make,” etc. Which are words not of one divine person alone, but of many, which is of all the Most Holy Trinity, which understood in the fabric of this noble creature. But another greater one is discovered to us in saying: “To our image and likeness.” For to be image of God belongs to man alone and to the angel. For the other creatures (although they be sun and moon, and stars with all the rest) are not called images, but footprints or tracks of God, for the little that they represent of his greatness. But because man and the angel represent much more of that highest nature, they are called images of God. And even this is conformed by another particularity that intervened in the formation of man, because God having formed his body from the mud of the earth, when he created the soul Scripture says that God breathed into him spirit of life. And because the breath proceeds from the interior part of the one who breathes, he wished to give us to understand in this that the soul is a divine thing, as a thing that came out from the breast of God, not because it is a particle of that divine substance, as some heretics said, but because it participates in many things in the condition and properties of God, as we shall presently see.
But here it is much to note that one of the created things in which, with the greatest admiration of all the wise, the greatness of the power of God shines forth, is the virtue that he placed in our soul. For although this power shines forth much in the angels, yet they are simple and purely spiritual substances. But our soul on the one hand is spiritual substance (as the angels), and on the other is form of this material body that sustains it and gives it life, as the soul of any brute animal does. And because the distance that there is from purely spiritual things to those that are purely material is so great, and the disproportion that there is for the one to be adjoined with the other is so great, it is held as one of the great marvels of God to have given such virtue and faculty to our soul that on the one hand it should understand things like an angel, and on the other engender like a horse, because it is the one that gives faculty for this generation. So that this is as if God made a creature that was at once horse and angel, since this soul has in itself the faculty and power of these two creatures so different, whereby with much reason Saint Augustine could say that, among as many marvels as God made for man, the greatest was man himself, as above we said.