On the Resurrection of the Dead 22

Besides what has been said, how is it not absurd that virtue and vice cannot even be conceived of in the soul by itself (for we know that the virtues are the virtues of a human being, just as the opposing vice belongs not to a soul separated from the body and existing by itself), and yet that the honor or punishment for them should fall on the soul alone? How could one even conceive of courage or endurance in a soul alone, which has no fear of death, of wounds, maiming, loss, or outrage, or of the pains and suffering these bring? How could one conceive of self-control and temperance, when no desire draws the soul toward food or intercourse or the other pleasures and delights, and nothing else troubles it from within or provokes it from without? How prudence, when nothing lies before it to be done or not done, to be chosen or avoided, or rather when there is no movement at all in it and no natural impulse toward anything to be done? And how could justice toward one another, or toward any other being of the same or a different kind, be natural to souls? They have neither the means nor the way nor the manner of giving what is equal according to merit or proportion (apart from the honor due to God), nor any impulse or movement toward using what is their own or refraining from what belongs to others. For using natural things, or refraining from them, is seen in beings naturally made to use them; but the soul needs nothing and is not naturally fitted to use anything or any one thing; and so the so-called “each part doing its own work” cannot be found in a soul in that condition.