SUCH QUESTIONS DEMAND SCRUTINY OF THE INTELLIGIBLE MAN.
4. To answer these questions, we would have to go back to the nature of the intelligible Man. Before defining the latter, however, it would indeed be far better to begin by determining the nature of the sense-man, on the supposition that we know the latter very well, while perhaps of the former, we have only a very inexact notion.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MAN KNOWN BY THE SENSES AND THE INTELLIGIBLE MAN.
But there are some (Aristotelians or Peripatetics) who might think that the intelligible Man and the sense-man form but one. Let us first discuss this point. Does the sense-man have a being different from the soul which produces him, and makes him live and reason? Is he the soul that is disposed in some special manner? Is he the soul that uses the body in some particular way? If man be a reasonable living organism, and if the latter be composed of soul and body, this definition of man will not be identical with that of the soul. If the man be defined as being the composite of the reasonable soul and the body, how can he be an immortal hypostatic existence? This definition suits the sense-man only from the moment that the union of the soul and the body has occurred; it expresses what will be, instead of setting forth what we call the Man-in-himself; rather than being a real determination of his characteristics, it would be only a description which would not reveal the original being. Instead of defining form engaged in matter, it indicates what is the composite of soul and body, after the union has occurred. In this case, we do not yet know what is man considered in his being, which is intelligible. To the claim that the definition of sense-things should express something composite, it might be answered, that we do acknowledge that we must not determine the consistence of each thing. Now if it be absolutely necessary to define the forms engaged in matter, we must also define the being that constitutes the man; that is necessary especially for those (Peripateticians) who, by a definition, mean a statement of a being’s original “characteristics.”
MAN DEFINED AS A REASONABLE SOUL.
What then is the “being” of man? This really is asking for the “man-ness” of a man, something characteristic of him, and inseparable from him. Is the genuine definition of a man that “he is a reasonable animal”? Would not this rather be the definition of the composite man? What is the being that produces the reasonable animal ? In the above definition of man, “reasonable animal” means “reasonable life”; consequently, man maybe called the “reasonable life.” But can life exist without a soul? (No), for the soul will give the man reasonable life; and in this case, instead of being a substance, man will be only an actualization of the soul; or even, the man will be the soul herself. But if man be the reasonable soul, what objection will there be to his remaining man even when his soul should happen to pass into a different body (as that of a brute animal) ?