> as lemmas

a1398 J. Trevisa tr. Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum (BL Add.) f. 330 Þe cercle tokeneþ þe soule racional.

c1450 tr. G. Boccaccio De Claris Mulieribus (1924) 894 (MED) This witty lady togyder didd them call..Persuadynge them..To thynke that they were creatures racionall And vndirstondyng hadd of goode and ill.

1547 A. Borde Breuiary of Helthe i. f. Cxxi^v The racionall sences consysteth in reason, the which doth make a man or woman a reasonable beest.

1598 J. Marston Scourge of Villanie iii. x. sig. H5^v This ill-stuft truncke of iests, whose very soule Is but a heape of Iibes, should once inroule His name mong creatures termed rationall.

1615 H. Crooke Μικροκοσμογραϕια 432 We determine that the Braine is the Pallace of the Rationall Soule.

a1641 R. Montagu Acts & Monuments (1642) 409 Other bodies, not onely of rationall creatures, men and women, but also of irrational, birds and beasts.

c1670 R. Cudworth Treat. Freewill (1961) 62 The idea of these things is nothing so unapt as that of an imperfect rational being.

1682 W. Bacon Key to Helmont i. 3 Now here I understand not, by the Spirit moving on the Waters, an absolute immaterial substance, or the rational soul of man, but the sensitive, common to us and Beasts, and only comparatively immaterial in respect of grosser substances.

1711 J. Addison Spectator No. 120. ⁋10 This natural Love in Brutes is much more violent and intense than in rational Creatures.

1746 R. Whatley Christian 5 Our natural State must be confess'd, for rational Creatures, to be a very unnatural one.

1783 W. Cowper Let. 29 Sept. (1981) II. 164 We are Rational, but we are Animal too.

1846 C. Dickens Dombey & Son (1848) ii. 9 If you're a rational being, don't make such ridiculous excuses.

1908 Jrnl. Abnormal Psychol. 3 166 Everyone feels that as a rational creature he must be able to give a connected..account of himself.

1936 W. F. R. Hardie Study in Plato xi. 141 Aristotle..makes use of the misleading simplificatory language according to which the rational soul commands the irrational soul.

1975 J. Plamenatz Karl Marx's Philos. of Man i. 17 He always speaks of man as a self-conscious, rational, active being who can make choices and can initiate change deliberately.

2000 L. G. Patterson in A. Hastings et al. Oxf. Compan. Christian Thought 561/2 The purpose of the divine economy of salvation is the return of all rational creatures to their original state at the ‘consummation of all things’ (apokatastasis ).