 Citing Origen, Erasmus speaks of a tripartite human nature, made up of spirit, soul, and flesh. The soul, which is “the middle part”, may through free will align itself either with the divine spirit and “itself become spiritual, but if it abandons itself to the cupidities of the flesh, it will degenerate into the body” (CWE 66: 51). This is a characteristic humanistic position and recalls the wording of Pico della Mirandola’s iconic Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496 [1996], 8), which describes the choice as one between “descend[ing] to the lower, brutish forms of life…[or] ris[ing] again to the superior orders whose life is divine”.