Vitae philosophorum

Hence, so long as the soul is in the body, it never loses sentience through the removal of some other part. The containing sheath[*](Since the participle στεγάζον is also found in the plural (στεγάζοντα), it seems best to assume with Bignone that the whole frame is regarded as the sum of parts, each of which serves as the envelope, sheath, or container of some part of the soul. Thus the loss of a limb is not fatal to life, because the rest of the frame has served in its capacity of envelope to preserve a sufficient number of soul-atoms in working order.) may be dislocated in whole or in part, and portions of the soul may thereby be lost; yet in spite of this the soul, if it manage to survive, will have sentience. But the rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms

For we cannot think of it[*](It = the soul, the logical subject, the neuter replacing the more appropriate feminine pronoun.) as sentient, except it be in this composite whole and moving with these movements; nor can we so think of it when the sheaths which enclose and surround it are not the same as those in which the soul is now located and in which it performs these movements. [He says elsewhere that the soul is composed of the smoothest and roundest of atoms, far superior in both respects to those of fire; that part of it is irrational, this being scattered over the rest of the frame, while the rational part resides in the chest, as is manifest from our fears and our joy; that sleep occurs when the parts of the soul which have been scattered all over the composite organism are held fast in it or dispersed, and afterwards collide with one another by their impacts. The semen is derived from the whole of the body.]