ABSTRACT
In Thomas Aquinas's schema of the created universe, human beings straddle the profane and the divine as no other creature above or below. As he sees things, human beings are conspicuously unique in the whole of creation: they look, by their very nature, Janus-faced toward both the angels and the brutes, and they are what they see. Consequently, when Aquinas analyzes human beings and their nature, and when he characterizes the human soul and the human body, he sets himself a difficult task. Living things, however, encompass more than human beings: dogs, cats, and other nonhuman animals are surely alive; plants of all kinds are living beings; and then there are various simple organisms, pond scum and bacteria, which also qualify as living beings. A human being is a substantial unity of soul and body and is neither an unensouled body nor an unembodied soul. Human beings are essentially corporeal and essentially psychic.
