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2. Thus, as the soul finds its perfection in that which is intellectual and rational, everything that is not so may indeed share the name of “soul,” but is not really soul, but a certain vital energy associated with the appellation of “soul 1644 .” And for this reason also He Who gave laws on every matter, gave the animal nature likewise, as not far removed from this vegetative life 1645 , for the use of man, to be for those who partake of it instead of herbs:—for He says, “Ye shall eat all kinds of flesh even as the green herb 1646 ;” for the perceptive energy seems to have but a slight advantage over that which is nourished and grows without it. Let this teach carnal men not to bind their intellect closely to the phenomena of sense, but rather to busy themselves with their spiritual advantages, as the true soul is found in these, while sense has equal power also among the brute creation.




Otherwise chap. xvi. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version gives the title:—“That the vital energy of the irrational creatures is not truly but equivocally called ‘soul’, and of the unspeakable communion of body and soul.”


τῇ τῆς ψυχῆς κλήσει συγκεκριμένη. The meaning is apparently something like that given; but if we might read συγκεχρημένη the sense of the passage would be much plainer.


Reading φυτικής for φυσικῆς as before, ch. 8, §4 (where see note).


Cf. Gen. ix. 3. The quotation, except the last few words, is not verbally from the LXX.


It does not seem of much consequence whether we read περιλαμβάνεται with Forbes and the mss., and treat it as of the middle voice, or περιλαμβάνει τι with the Paris Editt. The reading περιλαμβάνεται, taken passively, obscures the sense of the passage.
