Chapter 3.—The Higher
Reason Which Belongs to Contemplation, and the Lower Which Belongs
to Action, are in One Mind.
3. But that of our own which thus
has to do with the handling of corporeal and temporal things, is
indeed rational, in that it is not common to us with the beasts;
but it is drawn, as it were, out of that rational substance of our
mind, by which we depend upon and cleave to the intelligible and
unchangeable truth, and which is deputed to handle and direct the
inferior things. For as among all the beasts there was not found
for the man a help like unto him, unless one were taken from
himself, and formed to be his consort: so for that mind, by which
we consult the supernal and inward truth, there is no like help for
such employment as man’s nature requires among things corporeal
out of those parts of the soul which we have in common with the
beasts. And so a certain part of our reason, not separated so as to
sever unity, but, as it were, diverted so as to be a help to
fellowship, is parted off for the performing of its proper work.
And as the twain is one flesh in the case of male and female, so in
the mind one nature embraces our intellect and action, or our
counsel and performance, or our reason and rational appetite, or
whatever other more significant terms there may be by which to
express them; so that, as it was said of the former, “And they
two shall be in one flesh,”
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it may be said of these, they two
are in one mind.
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Gen. ii. 24