Chapter II.
What is man, and in what part does he chiefly consist; and what kind of soul does he have, both in terms of its nature and through its irrational part, which is subject to corruption.
So consider, O man, who you are and how you protect your well-being and life. What, then, is a man? Is he a soul, or flesh, or the union of both? For we are one thing, and our body is another: one that is clothed, and another that is clothing. We read in the Old Testament: 'All the souls who came to Egypt' (Gen. 46:26), speaking of humans. And elsewhere it is said: 'My spirit will not remain in these humans, for they are flesh' (Gen. 6:3). Therefore it is read in both senses, because man is said both of the soul and of the flesh. But there is this distinction, that where the soul is put for man, it signifies adhering to God, not to the body, as in this passage: The blessed soul is every man's friend (Prov. XI, 20). But where the flesh is called man, the sinner is expressed, as in this passage: But I am carnal, sold under sin; what I am working, I do not understand. For what I am willing, that I am not doing: but what I am hating, that I do (Rom. VII, 14 and 15). This is now later and about both. For one person wants, another person hates, another person does. Ultimately, he added: If therefore I do what I hate, I consent to the law, because it is good. But now I do not do that, but what sin dwells in me (Ibid., 16 and 17). That also more explicitly: I see the law of my flesh opposing the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin (Ibid., 23). And yet, when he declared both struggling within himself, that is, the inner and outer, he preferred to establish himself more in the part of the soul than the body, so that his captive soul would be drawn to sin, in which he would rather be, and affirms saying: Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? As if from a foreign enemy, so he desires to be freed from the flesh.
4. Therefore blood is not the soul, because the blood is of the flesh; nor is harmony the soul, because harmony of this kind belongs to the flesh; nor is air the soul, because breath is one thing, soul is another; nor is fire the soul, nor is it actuality; but the soul is a living soul, because Adam was made into a living soul (Gen. II, 7); because the soul gives life to and governs the insensible and lifeless body. And man is superior, of whom it is said: But the spiritual man judges all things; himself he is judged by no one (I Cor. II, 15). Here is the most excellent among the others. From where David also says: What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you visit him (Psalm 8:5)?... Man has become like vanity (Psalm 143:4). He is not a man of vanity according to the image of God, but he who has lost that image and fallen into sin, and has been dissolved into these material things, he is a man of vanity.
5. Therefore, the soul, according to its nature, is the best thing: but often it is corrupted by its own irrationality, so that it inclines towards bodily pleasures and impudence, while it does not hold the measure of things, or is deceived by opinion, and leaning towards matter, it adheres to the body. Thus its invisibility is hindered and filled with wickedness; because while it directs itself towards wickedness, it is filled with its vices, and becomes more intemperate by the lack of goodness.