summa-contra-gentiles

224 THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES
speaking of forms, that he means that the intellect which is
the form of man, remains after the matter, namely after the
body.
It is also clear from the foregoing words of Aristotle that,
although he states the soul to be a form, he does not assert
it to be non-subsistent and therefore corruptible, as Gregory
of Nyssa^ would have him mean : since he excludes the
intellective soul from the generality of other forms, by
saying that it remains after the soul, and that it is a
substance.
The teaching of the Catholic Faith is in keeping with the
foregoing. For it is said in the book De Ecclesiasticis
Dogmatibus We :^ believe that tnan alone has a subsistent
soul, which survives even after it has put off the body, and
is the life-giving source of the senses and faculties; neither
does it die when the body dies, as the Arabian asserts, nor
after a short interval of time, as Zeno pretends, because it
is a living substance.
Hereby is set aside the error of the ungodly in whose
person Solomon says (Wis. ii. 2) We are born : of nothing,
and after this we shall be as if we had not been; and in
whose person Solomon says (Eccles. iii. 19) The death : of
man and of beasts is one, and the condition of them both is
equal: as man dieth, so they also die: all things breathe
alike, and man hath nothing more than beast. For it is
clear that he speaks not in his own person but in that of
the ungodly, since at the end of the book' he says as
though deciding the point : Before
. . . the dust return
into its earth from whence it was, and the spirit return to
Him (Vulg.,
— to God) Who gave
it. Moreover there are
innumerable passages of Holy Writ that declare the immortality
of the soul.
1 De Anima, serm. i.
(Migne, P.G. xlv., p. 200; cf. xl., p. 560).
« xvi.
^ xii. 6, 7.