THE ANIMATE AND THE MAN by Plotinus

"[F]rom the organized body and something else, let us say a light, which the Soul gives forth from itself, it forms a distinct Principle, the Animate; and in this Principle are vested Sense-Perception and all the other experiences found to belong to the Animate. "But the We? How have We Sense-Perception? "By the fact that We are not separate from the Animate so constituted, even though other and nobler elements go to the make up the entire many-sided nature of Man. "The faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of impressions printed on the Animate by sensation: these impressions are already Intelligibles, while the outer sensation is a mere phantom of the other (of that in the Soul) which is nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of Ideal-Forms. "And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields single lordship over the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning, Sense-Knowledge and Intellection. From this moment we have peculiarly the We: before this there was only the 'Ours;' but at this stage stands the We (the authentic Human -Principle) loftily presiding over the Animate. "There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be described as the Animate or Living-Being--mingled in a lower phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man, distinct from all that is kin to the lion, all that is in the order of the multiple brute. And since The Man, so understood , is essentially the associate of the reasoning Soul, in our reasoning it is this 'We' that reasons, in that the use and act of reason is a characteristic act of the Soul." P.8-9, "The Animate and The Man," THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991)