namely, the spirit within us, which has been described in terms of affirmative and negative attributes. The scriptural texts tell us that it ascends and rises from one heaven to another, and that it is taken from the body and drawn out of it as a hair is drawn out of dough. People hold conflicting views about it.
Some groups of speculative theologians regard it as a part of the body or one of its attributes. Some say that it is the soul or the air that circulates within the body; others say that it is life, temperament, or the body itself.
Some groups of philosophers describe it in the same terms they use to describe what they regard as the Necessary Existent—descriptions that could apply only to something whose existence is impossible. They say that it is neither inside the body nor outside it, neither separate from it nor interpenetrating it, neither moving nor at rest; that it neither ascends nor descends, and is neither a body nor an accident. They may also say that it does not apprehend particular things or realities existing outside the mind, but apprehends only abstract universals.
They may say that it is neither inside the world nor outside it, neither separate from it nor interpenetrating it. Sometimes they say that it is neither inside the bodies of the world nor outside them, while defining a body as that which cannot be pointed to by the senses. Thus, they describe it as something that cannot be pointed to, and assign it similar negative attributes that place it alongside the nonexistent and the impossible.