Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] What remains to examine is where the primacy lies — that is, which governs which — so that whichever proves to have the primacy may be reckoned the bulk of the substance, while that which the bulk of the substance governs is to be reckoned a natural function of the substance. Now who will not give the whole sum to the soul, in whose name the whole person is entitled and named? [2] “How many souls do I feed,” says the rich man — not “minds.” And the helmsman prays for souls kept safe — not minds. And the farmer at his labor and the soldier in battle both declare they stake their soul — not their mind. Whose dangers, whose vows, are named more often — the mind’s or the soul’s? And what are the dying said to give up — mind, or soul? Even the philosophers themselves, even the physicians themselves, though they mean to argue about mind as well, each still headed and fronted his treatise “On the Soul.” [3] And that you may learn this from God too: it is always the soul that God addresses; the soul he summons and calls, so that it may turn its mind toward him. It is the soul that Christ came to save; the soul he threatens to destroy in hell; the soul he forbids us to value too dearly; the soul, once more, is what the Good Shepherd himself surrenders on behalf of his flock. There you have the primacy of the soul; there too you have, within it, the union of substance, of which the mind, you should grasp, serves merely as tool, not master.