Chapter 3
The Division Of Our Study
43. Having established the definition of human being, we must now analyse it according to the method we have described. The human being, which we already know synthetically in the definition, has to be dismembered and divided into its various elements.
44. The definition itself indicates three quite distinct elements: 1. the animal part; 2. the spiritual part, as we shall call the complex of intellectual and volitive powers; 3. and what we may call the middle part, which joins the first two parts in itself and makes an individual, a subject, of the human being.
These three parts give rise to the areas of study comprising this Anthropology. In the first section, we consider the animal part of the human being; in the second, the spiritual part; and finally, in the third section, the human subject, the principle which, uniting the first two parts in a marvellous way, becomes as it were their thalamus.