 In his commentary on De anima II, Brito goes on to discuss the description of the soul as the substantial form of the living body. The discussion is directly related to the debate between those (like Albert the Great) who describe the soul as the extrinsically given perfection of the living body, and those (like Thomas Aquinas) who describe it as the living body’s intrinsic substantial form. The first group of commentators refrained from describing the soul as the substantial form of the body because this seemed too close to the materialist account of Alexander of Aphrodisias, who seemingly would deny the possibility of the separation of the human soul after the body’s death. Albert therefore describes the soul as that which extrinsically perfects (perficit) a material body that has life potentially—a material body capable of performing the operations causally related to being alive. Aquinas, however, opts for a description more in accordance with Aristotelian doctrine: the soul is the intrinsic substantial form of the living body, for that which separates animate from inanimate bodies must belong essentially, and intrinsically, to animate bodies as their form. Brito, in turn, sides with Aquinas and describes the soul as the substantial form of the body. His position is supported by two arguments: a substantial form is that due to which something receives its specific name (e.g., ‘horse’); when this form is removed, its subject is called by that name only equivocally (e.g., a dead horse is called ‘a horse’ only equivocally); since the soul is that due to which an animate body is said to be animate per se, and since its removal makes the body animate only equivocally, the soul must be the substantial form of the animate body (QDA-2012-II: 319). More importantly, the substantial form is that due to which individuals belonging to a natural kind can perform the specific operations that distinguish them from other kinds belonging to the same genus. Hence, since the soul is that due to which the animate body can perform its specific operations of growth, nutrition, sensation, and understanding, the soul must be described as the substantial form of the animate body (QDA-2012-II: 320).