As human beings we are, with our bodies, part of the material world; but importantly, we are living organisms that can place ourselves in opposition to the needs and concerns of the body and reflect upon our own condition. Nothing just material would be able do that, according to the Neoplatonists, and therefore we have what the ancients called a “soul”. Moreover, our souls operate on a level of consciousness and intelligence that surpasses the cognition of all other creatures. Finally, just as everything else that has being, we are individual units and participate, again, as the Neoplatonists would express it, in the form of Unity.