- United States Secretary of Defense (Wikipedia)
The United States Secretary of Defense (SecDef) is the head of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the executive department of the U.S. Armed Forces, and is a high-ranking member of the federal cabinet. The SecDef’s position of command and authority over the military is second only to that of the president of the United States, who is the commander-in-chief. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a defense minister in many other countries. The president appoints the SecDef with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is by custom a member of the Cabinet and by law a member of the National Security Council.
- For, when I examined the kind of functions which might, as consequences of this supposition, exist in this body, I found precisely all those which may exist in us independently of all power of thinking, and consequently without being in any measure owing to the soul; in other words, to that part of us which is distinct from the body, and of which it has been said above that the nature distinctively consists in thinking,—functions in which the animals void of Reason may be said wholly to resemble us; but among which I could not discover any of those that, as dependent on thought alone, belong to us as men, while, on the other hand, I did afterwards discover these as soon as I supposed God to have created a Rational Soul, and to have annexed it to this body in a particular manner which I described.