262 SHEiLAH o'flynn brennan 



Finally, an even more perfect soul, the rational, can be a 

 principle of intellection which, since it does not require an 

 organ, does not involve movement at all. It is an actus perjecti 

 and is called movement only because like sensation it requires 

 a transition from potency to act. Since the intellectual opera- 

 tion is no more than metaphorically movement " (or, at least, 

 movement according to an analogical extension even beyond 

 that required to include sensation) , the rational soul as its 

 principle, considered precisely in this way, is nature only in 

 the same improper (or extended) sense. However, because 

 the proper operation of the rational soul cannot take place 

 without the instrumentality of the senses which do involve 

 movement, the study of this soul, also, belongs to philosophy 

 of nature. It must be remembered too that there are some 

 properly human movements that spring from the rational soul 

 AS such— laughing and talking, for example. What is more, the 

 soul is an act corresponding to a natural potency, the form of 

 a natural body. And it is as a rational soul that it is the form 

 of a particular type of body, a human body. In this respect, 

 the human soul, even as rational, is properly nature. 



Hence, as the form emerges from matter, the thing which it 

 determines rises above passivity, and then above movement, 

 and therefore above mere nature also. Not that it loses what 

 belongs to nature. It has all this and something more. And, in 

 each case, this something more constitutes what is most proper 

 to the particular thing, e. g., sensation for the animal, under- 

 standing for man. In this sense, then, we can say that what 

 is primary or most fundamental in a thing is also most purely 

 natural. Indeed, it is what is least perfect in a natural being 

 that is also what is most fundamental. And this is also what is 

 most common since in nature the more perfect things always 

 keep something of the less perfect. 



We might note too, incidentally, that as the form rises above 



^^ Note that in his commentary on the De Anima, I, lect. 10, n. 160, St. Thomas 

 says: " In the least proper sense of all, indeed only in a metaphorical sense, is 

 movement to be found in the intellect." See nn. 157 to 162 for a distinction of 

 the three kinds of movement found in the soul's activities. 



