Chapter Six: Showing the Unity of Human Souls in Their Nature

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[9] and by the preponderance of the virtues and the vices, and the dominance of some of the humours (akhlāṭ) over others.” This opinion is the soundest of all opinions (1), because it agrees with the science of nature and with the science of the revealed Law. Others said: “All souls, animal and human alike, are one by nature; the difference arose among them from the bodies only” — meaning that if the soul of a horse were to inhere in the body of a man it would be rational, and conversely. This doctrine is false and impossible, because the soul of man is other than the soul of the animal, as its exposition will come hereafter. (2) Others said: “The souls of mankind are as a genus, and beneath it are many species, differing one from another by nature; and every species of them has proceeded from a species among the species of the separate intellects (al-ʻuqūl al-mujarradah), and resembles the species from which it proceeded. And for this reason the souls that have proceeded from one known species have a true love between them, and where that is not, it is not; and for this reason we sometimes see strangers who love one another and kinsmen who hate one another” (3). Others said: “The souls of mankind are one and all different by nature [10], and there is no accord among them save in the accidents of the virtues and the vices — after the manner of the natures of the sun, the moon and the stars, and the natures of the birds and the rest”

Chapter Six

On showing the unity of human souls in nature

So we say: were there a difference among souls by substantial differentiae, it would be necessary that

— Notes —

[12] 1 ) In the original: aṣīb al-rāyāt.

[12] 2 ) That is, in the nineteenth chapter.

[12] 3 ) In the original: mutaḥābūn wa-aqārib mutabāghiḍūn.