That we may have more perfect knowledge of Human Goodness, as it is
the original cause in us of all good that can be called Nobility, it
is requisite to explain clearly in this especial chapter how this
Goodness descends into us.
In the first place, it comes by the Natural way, and then by the
Theological way, that is to say, the Divine and Spiritual. In the
first place, it is to be known that man is composed of Soul and body;
but that Goodness or Nobility is of the Soul, as has been said, and is
after the manner of seed from the Divine Virtue. By different
philosophers it has been differently argued concerning the difference
in our Souls; for Avicenna and Algazel were of opinion that Souls of
themselves and from their beginning were Noble or Base. Plato and some
others were of opinion that they proceeded by the stars, and were
Noble more or less according to the nobility of the star. Pythagoras
was of opinion that all were of one nobility, not only human Souls,
but with human Souls those of the brute animals and of the trees and
the forms of minerals; and he said that all the difference in the
bodies is form. If each one were to defend his opinion, it might be
that Truth would be seen to be in all. But since on the surface they
seem somewhat distant from the Truth, one must not proceed according
to those opinions, but according to the opinion of Aristotle and of
the Peripatetics. And therefore I say that when the human seed falls
into its receptacle, that is, into the matrix, it bears with it the
virtue or power of the generative Soul, and the virtue or power of
Heaven, and the virtue or power of the aliments united or bound
together, that is the involution or complex nature of the seed. It
matures and prepares the material for the formative power or virtue
which the generating Soul bestows; and the formative power or virtue
prepares the organs for the celestial virtue or power, which produces,
from the power of the seed, the Soul in life; which, as soon as
produced, receives from the power of the Mover of the Heaven the
passive intellect or mind, which potentially brings together in itself
all the universal forms according as they are in its producer, and so
much the less in proportion as it is farther removed from the first
Intelligence.