 Because the human intellectual soul depends on the operations of the sensitive soul, which are part of a material and perishable body, it cannot function after the body has been destroyed. Accordingly, in Pomponazzi’s view, the human intellectual soul is immortal only in a relative or qualified sense. Because the act of understanding does not require a material organ as subject, the human intellectual soul is more immortal than the sensitive soul or the souls of animals. The human soul partakes in the immortal through its limited knowledge of the forms of species, without being immortal in itself. Yet because it cannot function without the sensitive soul, it is lower than God’s intelligence and than the intelligences that move the celestial spheres, which are separated substances. Moreover, the human soul differs from these separated intelligences in that it is the actualization of a body while the intelligences merely actuate, that is, set in motion, the celestial spheres without receiving anything from the matter of the orb. The human’s soul dependency on matter means that human cognition is less abstracted than that of the intelligences, which know through intuition not sensation. Accordingly, the human soul cannot know universals unqualifiedly but only in relation to singulars. Thereby, the human rational soul, with its functioning tied to material objects, sits midway between the material and the immaterial and between the eternal and the perishable; and human knowledge, while partaking in the knowledge of universals, possesses it in limited manner (ch. 8).