Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/64

44 which the arts, such as architecture, agriculture, medicine, and navigation are acquired. The intellectual power is that by which one, when he intends to do an act, reflects upon what he has premeditated, considers the possibility of performing it, and, if he thinks it possible, decides how it should be done.

This is all we have deemed it necessary to say in this regard concerning the soul. Know, however, that the soul, whose faculties and parts we have described above, and which is a unit, may be compared to matter in that it likewise has a form, which is reason. If the form (reason) does not communicate its impression to the soul, then the disposition existing in the soul to receive that form is of no avail, and exists to no purpose, as Solomon says, “Also in the want of knowledge in the soul there is nothing good”. This means that if a soul has not