1. Are you both a person and an animal?

If so, are there two things sitting in your

chair?

Yes, one can be both a person and an animal, in the sense that the rational soul possessed by human
beings includes the potencies of the sensitive soul. However, there will still be only one substance in
the human being.

It is our common knowledge that there are three basic kinds of living things namely plants, animals
and humans. Accordingly, we can speak of three degrees of life: vegetative life, sensitive life and
intellectual life. St. Thomas in his Summa Theologiae gives a philosophical basis for the above
division. His argument is as follows. If there are degrees of self-movement, then there are degrees of
life, because self-movement is, as it were, a measure of life.Life is that perfection by which a thing
can move itself or by which a thing has immanent movements.The ultimate source of life is generally
called by the name ‘soul.’The soul is the first act of a living physical organic body in potency. It is
alsothe first principle by which we live, sense, move and understand. Based on the degree of self-
movement, the soul is categorized into the vegetative, sensitive and rational soul. The vegetative
soul is possessed by plants, whereas the sensitive soul is possessed by animals and the rational soul
is possessed by human beings.

A higher degree of life includes the lower ones. This does not mean that a higher soul includes a
lower soul. But what is meant is that a higher soul possesses the potencies or powers of the lower
soul and also some additional powers proper to it. Thus, the operative potencies of nutrition, growth
and generation which are found in vegetative life are present also in sensitive life. In addition to
these three, a sensitive soul has two operative potencies, namely those of sense knowledge and
sense appetite.

Sense knowledge is always limited to concrete and individual objects. Man has always knowledge
not only of concrete and individual things but also of abstract and universal things. For e.g., I know
not only of concrete and individual men but I have the concept of man, which is abstract and
universal. Since such abstract and universal knowledge is beyond the power of the sense, we must
admit that man has a supra-sensitive cognitive potency, which we call the intellect. The knowledge
attained by the intellect is called intellectual knowledge.

The will being an appetite tends towards what is suitable or convenient to it, or what fulfils it,
namely the good. Thus the object of the will is the good. There is only one being, which is goodness
in itself and hence can be called the good. This being we call the First being. So the first being is the
proper object of the will. Other beings are objects of the will in so far as they share or participate in
the good and hence possess limited goodness.

A person has, in addition to his vegetative and sense operations, the two operations of intellection
and willing. The potencies of these two operations are respectively the intellect and the will, which
reside immediately in the human soul. The formal object of the intellect is the essence of thing, and
that of the will is the good, both are immaterial. Hence it follows that these two potencies and the
human soul itself are immaterial. Hence the intellect and will are two accidents inhering in a human
soul. That in which the accidents inhere is a substance. So the human soul is a substance.A human
soul informs primary matter to constitute one substance or composite, namely man. Thus, the
dualism of matter and spirit are reconciled in the monism of being.

That person is one substance is also evident from the fact that his vegetative and sense operations
proceed from the composites itself is the one principle of all human operations. If the composite is
one principle of operation it must be one substance because distinct substances act distinct principle
of operation. So, a man is a single substance, a spirit-material substance.