Animate and ensoul

Meaning

The two linked verbs describe God’s original endowment of the matter with a heavenly spirit. Here gesäliget is explained by its immediate association with animirt and by the following analogy between the human soul’s activity throughout the body and the world-spirit’s activity throughout elemental creatures. “Animated and ensouled” therefore suits the local argument better than reading the second word solely as final blessedness or salvation. The passage then attributes the designation of this spirit as the world’s soul to Avicenna. It does not identify the matter as a human person or assert that laboratory work confers an immortal human soul.