Folio 81v - the nature of man, continued.
their gaze upon the earth, he gave to man an uplifted face and bade him look at heaven and raise his countenance to the stars.' (Metamorphoses, 1, 84-6). Standing erect, he looks at the heavens in search of God; he does not turn towards the ground, like the beasts who have been fashioned by nature and obedience to their appetite to bend their heads.
But man is twofold: inner and outer. The inner man is the soul; the outer, the body.
The soul gets its name, anima, from the pagans, because they conceived of it as the wind; for this reason it is also called wind in Greek, animos, because we seem to live by taking air in through our mouths. This is clearly wrong, because the soul is created long before it can take air into its mouth and it is already alive in its mother's womb. The soul, therefore, is not the same as air, as some believe, who cannot conceive of its nature as being without substance.
The spirit, spiritus, is the same as the soul, anima, of which the evangelist speaks, saying: 'I have the power to lay down my life, anima, and I have the power to take it again' (see John, 10:18). It is to this same thing that the evangelist, recalling the time of our Lord's passion, refers, in this way: 'He bowed his head and gave up the ghost, spiritus' (John, 19:30). What does 'to give up the ghost, spiritus,' mean if not that he laid down his life, anima? But the soul, anima, is so called because it lives. The spirit, spiritus, is so called either because of its spiritual nature, or because it gives breath, inspirare, to the body.
Again, the mind, animus, is the same as the soul, anima; but the soul is to do with life, the mind with thought. For this reason, philosphers say that life can continue even without the mind, animus, and the soul can endure without the intellect; this is demonstrated by those who are 'mindless', amentes. They call the intellect, mens, the faculty of knowing; the soul, anima, the faculty of willing.
The intellect, mens, is so called because it stands out, eminere, in the soul, or because it has the capacity to remember, meminisse. Thus, those who are forgetful are also called 'mindless', amentes. For this reason, it is not the soul itself, but the most eminent part of it, the equivalent of its head or eye, that we call the intellect, mens.
Thus man himself, because of his intellect, is called 'the image of God' (see Genesis, 1:26, 27). For in this way