put it, but ‘because its corporeity is the rational soul itself’ (art. cit.: 105). Our body is such as the soul has organized it: ‘matter exists for the sake of the soul’ (art. cit.: 107). The third encomium is that Aquinas’s theory of intellectual knowledge by abstraction conditions and limits very seriously the operational capacity of the separated soul. By leaving the body, the soul loses ontologically and enters a stage that is outside the condition of its nature, praeter naturam (art. cit.: