In Descartes, the soul or mind is complete on its own; the embodied mind or human being, though it forms a kind of unity, is a secondary and metaphysically inferior kind of thing. Finite souls or minds can conceivably exist not only in the absence of human beings but in the absence of all bodies; on the other hand, there is no such thing as a human being without a mind, at least as Descartes understands human beings. What is more, normal human beings are only temporary unities of minds and bodies; when death occurs, the body disintegrates, ceases to function, and loses its connection with the soul; but the soul loses only its powers of sensation and imagination and some of the emotions. These are no real loss, according to Descartes, because within the soul not all capacities are on a level. Reason and understanding are essential in ways that perception and imagination, pleasure, pain, and many other emotions are not. The soul or mind not only stands above what is human in a certain sense: It stands apart from everything that is animal. Nonhuman animals have some sort of inner life, at least as I read Descartes; but it largely consists of sensation, which is one of those capacities a soul can lack while remaining a soul.