Chapter 9

Why the human soul is joined to only one body,
And to this body rather than that

690. If we consider that the intellective principle is cut off from the law of space, there is no reason why it should be determined to join one body rather than another, or one body rather than many. But the sufficient reason determining the intellective principle to be joined to one rather than another body is found in the way in which I have explained the formation of the rational principle. As we saw, it was first a sensitive subject, an animal, which then continued to perfect itself until it attained being in general.

The animal subject, however, is determined by the continuum (that which is felt), and thus bound to space and to a determined space. In addition, it is a law of the animal subject that it cannot terminate in several divided continua. On the contrary, given several continua, the subject, or sensitive principle, multiplies. The intellective act, when it originates and gives existence to the intellective soul in the depths of the individuated corporeal feeling, remains bound in its formation by the same laws of the sensitive principle which lay at its root. It cannot, therefore, perceive, or inform, any other animal feeling or other body, except that of which, at the start, it was act and form.