Scripture, which we have commented on from the opening (continued)
BOOK TEN 99 made, although the creature in which the reason-principle was alleged to have been made was not mentioned in the works of creation; or that it was in some creature mentioned in the works of creation that the reason-principle of the soul was made (as in men who are already in existence there is hidden the reasonprinciple of children to be procreated); and thus we should assume the soul to be the offspring of angels or (a still more intolerable hypothesis) the offspring of some corporeal element.®
CHAPTER 3
Three hypotheses considered concerning the origin of human souls.
4. But if it is now asserted that the first woman received her soul not from the man but like him from God who made it, on the ground that God creates an individual soul for each individual human being, then the soul of the woman was not made in the original works of creation. On the other hand, if a universal reason-principle of all souls had been created, as there is in men the reason-principle of procreation, we return to the strange and troublesome necessity of saying that human souls are the children either of angels or (worse yet!) of the corporeal heaven or even of some inferior element.
As a result, although the truth is hidden from us, we must consider what could be at least the most reasonable hypothesis to solve this problem. Is the origin of the soul to be explained as I have just now explained it?? Or was there in the original works of creation only one soul created, that of the first man, so that all human souls would be created as the progeny of it? Or are new souls subsequently made without even a created causal principle preceding them in God's works of the six days? Of these three hypotheses, the first two do not contradict what Scripture says about the original works of creation, in which God created everything simultaneously. In one case (the second hypothesis) there was created in a creature, as in a parent, the reason-principle of soul so that all souls would be reproduced by