Now the objects attracting the sun-rays to themselves- illuminated by a fire of the sense-order- are necessarily of the sense-order; there is...
(15) Now the objects attracting the sun-rays to themselves- illuminated by a fire of the sense-order- are necessarily of the sense-order; there is perceptibility because there has been a union of things at once external to each other and continuous, contiguous, in direct contact, two extremes in one line. But the Reason-Principle operating upon Matter is external to it only in a very different mode and sense: exteriority in this case is amply supplied by contrariety of essence and can dispense with any opposite ends ; or, rather, the difference is one that actually debars any local extremity; sheer incongruity of essence, the utter failure in relationship, inhibits admixture .
The reason, then, of the immutability of Matter is that the entrant principle neither possesses it nor is possessed by it. Consider, as an example, the mode in which an opinion or representation is present in the mind; there is no admixture; the notion that came goes in its time, still integrally itself alone, taking nothing with it, leaving nothing after it, because it has not been blended with the mind; there is no "outside" in the sense of contact broken, and the distinction between base and entrant is patent not to the senses but to the reason.
In that example, no doubt, the mental representation- though it seems to have a wide and unchecked control- is an image, while the Soul is in its nature not an image : none the less the Soul or Mind certainly stands to the concept as Matter, or in some analogous relation. The representation, however, does not cover the Mind over; on the contrary it is often expelled by some activity there; however urgently it presses in, it never effects such an obliteration as to be taken for the Soul; it is confronted there by indwelling powers, by Reason-Principles, which repel all such attack.
Matter- feebler far than the Soul for any exercise of power, and possessing no phase of the Authentic Existents, not even in possession of its own falsity- lacks the very means of manifesting itself, utter void as it is; it becomes the means by which other things appear, but it cannot announce its own presence. Penetrating thought may arrive at it, discriminating it from Authentic Existence; then, it is discerned as something abandoned by all that really is, by even the dimmest semblants of being, as a thing dragged towards every shape and property and appearing to follow- yet in fact not even following.
ANSWER: It must, first, be noted that there are a variety of modes in which an object may be said to be present to another or to exist in another. There is a...
(9) In answer: It must, first, be noted that there are a variety of modes in which an object may be said to be present to another or to exist in another. There is a "presence" which acts by changing the object- for good or for ill- as we see in the case of bodies, especially where there is life. But there is also a "presence" which acts, towards good or ill, with no modification of the object, as we have indicated in the case of the Soul. Then there is the case represented by the stamping of a design upon wax, where the "presence" of the added pattern causes no modification in the substance nor does its obliteration diminish it. And there is the example of Light whose presence does not even bring change of pattern to the object illuminated. A stone becoming cold does not change its nature in the process; it remains the stone it was. A drawing does not cease to be a drawing for being coloured.
The intermediary mass on which these surface changes appear is certainly not transmuted by them; but might there not be a modification of the underlying Matter?
No: it is impossible to think of Matter being modified by, for instance, colour- for, of course we must not talk of modification when there is no more than a presence, or at most a presenting of shape.
Mirrors and transparent objects, even more, offer a close parallel; they are quite unaffected by what is seen in or through them: material things are reflections, and the Matter on which they appear is further from being affected than is a mirror. Heat and cold are present in Matter, but the Matter itself suffers no change of temperature: growing hot and growing cold have to do only with quality; a quality enters and brings the impassible Substance under a new state- though, by the way, research into nature may show that cold is nothing positive but an absence, a mere negation. The qualities come together into Matter, but in most cases they can have no action upon each other; certainly there can be none between those of unlike scope: what effect, for example, could fragrance have on sweetness or the colour-quality on the quality of form, any quality on another of some unrelated order? The illustration of the mirror may well indicate to us that a given substratum may contain something quite distinct from itself- even something standing to it as a direct contrary- and yet remain entirely unaffected by what is thus present to it or merged into it.
A thing can be hurt only by something related to it, and similarly things are not changed or modified by any chance presence: modification comes by contrary acting upon contrary; things merely different leave each other as they were. Such modification by a direct contrary can obviously not occur in an order of things to which there is no contrary: Matter, therefore cannot be modified: any modification that takes place can occur only in some compound of Matter and reality, or, speaking generally, in some agglomeration of actual things. The Matter itself- isolated, quite apart from all else, utterly simplex- must remain immune, untouched in the midst of all the interacting agencies; just as when people fight within their four walls, the house and the air in it remain without part in the turmoil.
We may take it, then, that while all the qualities and entities that appear upon Matter group to produce each the effect belonging to its nature, yet Matter itself remains immune, even more definitely immune than any of those qualities entering into it which, not being contraries, are not affected by each other.
One of the most surprising features of this discovery is that we finally perceive that the two contrasting sets of qualities are really but two...
(43) One of the most surprising features of this discovery is that we finally perceive that the two contrasting sets of qualities are really but two aspects or phases of the whole thing—the real thing, or thing in itself—the unity of the two, instead of being two separated and distinct things. Or, stating it in other words, we discover that the two opposing sets of characteristics are merely relative to each other, and together form a correlated unity and balanced whole.
Sometimes there is a rapid change and shift on the scale of the opposites. Love is quickly transmuted to hate; the best friends and most ardent...
(46) Sometimes there is a rapid change and shift on the scale of the opposites. Love is quickly transmuted to hate; the best friends and most ardent lovers become the bitterest enemies. And, on the other hand, persons who originally detest each other frequently become ardent lovers after a time; and old enemies, when reconciled, frequently become the closest friends. The swing is often as far in one direction as was its former swing in the opposite direction. Up changes to down, as the earth revolves; and hot becomes cold when the vibrations are changed. This also applies to hard and soft, tenuous and solid, etc., the conditions depending entirely upon the rate of vibrations and relative positions of the particles of the matter of which the things are composed. Moreover, constant emphasis or activity of one opposite frequently leads to a manifestation of the other opposite. We often fly to the other extreme of feeling and action, when we have over-emphasized the former emotional states. We get tired and disgusted with one set or condition of things, and feel a desire to fly to the opposite condition or set. Too much of a good thing often causes us to dislike it. Likewise, if we travel far enough west, we finally reach the extreme east, and vice versa. If we travel far enough north, we pass the pole and find ourselves proceeding south. At the North Pole, no matter in what direction we may travel, we always find ourselves travelling south; while at the South Pole, we can travel north only, no matter which way we may step out.
Chapter XX: The True Gnostic Exercises Patience and Self - Restraint. (11)
And of things without life, plants, they say, are moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them that plants are without life. ...
(11) For of objects that are moved, some are moved by impulse and appearance, as animals; and some by transposition, as inanimate objects. And of things without life, plants, they say, are moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them that plants are without life. To stones, then, belongs a permanent state. Plants have a nature; and the irrational animals possess impulse and perception, and likewise the two characteristics already specified.
Further: If Matter were susceptible of modification, it must acquire something by the incoming of the new state; it will either adopt that state, or,...
(10) Further: If Matter were susceptible of modification, it must acquire something by the incoming of the new state; it will either adopt that state, or, at least, it will be in some way different from what it was. Now upon this first incoming quality suppose a second to supervene; the recipient is no longer Matter but a modification of Matter: this second quality, perhaps, departs, but it has acted and therefore leaves something of itself after it; the substratum is still further altered. This process proceeding, the substratum ends by becoming something quite different from Matter; it becomes a thing settled in many modes and many shapes; at once it is debarred from being the all-recipient; it will have closed the entry against many incomers. In other words, the Matter is no longer there: Matter is destructible.
No: if there is to be a Matter at all, it must be always identically as it has been from the beginning: to speak of Matter as changing is to speak of it as not being Matter.
Another consideration: it is a general principle that a thing changing must remain within its constitutive Idea so that the alteration is only in the accidents and not in the essential thing; the changing object must retain this fundamental permanence, and the permanent substance cannot be the member of it which accepts modification.
Therefore there are only two possibilities: the first, that Matter itself changes and so ceases to be itself, the second that it never ceases to be itself and therefore never changes.
We may be answered that it does not change in its character as Matter: but no one could tell us in what other character it changes; and we have the admission that the Matter in itself is not subject to change.
Just as the Ideal Principles stand immutably in their essence- which consists precisely in their permanence- so, since the essence of Matter consists in its being Matter it must be permanent in this character; because it is Matter, it is immutable. In the Intellectual realm we have the immutable Idea; here we have Matter, itself similarly immutable.
Such, therefore, as the truth is, such also it is requisite to unfold it to others. It must be said, then, that the maker of images neither uses the...
(3) Such, therefore, as the truth is, such also it is requisite to unfold it to others. It must be said, then, that the maker of images neither uses the celestial circulations, nor the powers which are inherent in them, nor those powers which are naturally established about them; nor, in short, is it possible to come into contact with them. But he artificially, and not theurgically, applies himself to the last effluxions which openly proceed from the nature of them, about the last part of the universe. For these effluxions, I think, being mingled with a partial matter, are capable of being changed and transformed differently at different times. They likewise receive the transposition, from some things to others, of the powers which are in partial natures. The variety, however, of such like energies, and the composition of a multitude of material powers, are not only entirely separated from divine fabrication, but also from natural production. For nature produces her proper works collectively, and at once, and accomplishes all things by simple and incomposite energies. Hence it remains that a commixture of this kind, about the last and manifest celestial effluxion, and about the things which are moved by a celestial nature, is artificial.
When the object reaches a certain rate of vibration its molecules disintegrate, and resolve themselves into the original elements or atoms. Then the...
(8) When the object reaches a certain rate of vibration its molecules disintegrate, and resolve themselves into the original elements or atoms. Then the atoms, following the Principle of Vibration, are separated into the countless corpuscles of which they are composed. And finally, even the corpuscles disappear and the object may be said to Be composed of The Ethereal Substance. Science does not dare to follow the illustration further, but the Hermetists teach that if the vibrations be continually increased the object would mount up the successive states of manifestation and would in turn manifest the various mental stages, and then on Spiritward, until it would finally re-enter THE ALL, which is Absolute Spirit. The "object," however, would have ceased to be an "object" long before the stage of Ethereal Substance was reached, but otherwise the illustration is correct inasmuch as it shows the effect of constantly increased rates and modes of vibration. It must be remembered, in the above illustration, that at the stages at which the "object" throws off vibrations of light, heat, etc., it is not actually "resolved" into those forms of energy (which are much higher in the scale), but simply that it reaches a degree of vibration in which those forms of energy are liberated, in a degree, from the confining influences of its molecules, atoms and corpuscles, as the case may be. These forms of energy, although much higher in the scale than matter, are imprisoned and confined in the material combinations, by reason of the energies manifesting through, and using material forms, but thus becoming entangled and confined in their creations of material forms, which, to an extent, is true of all creations, the creating force becoming involved in its creation.
Timaeus: that they all interchange their places; for while the bulk of each Kind keeps apart in a region of its own because of the motion of the...
(57) Timaeus: that they all interchange their places; for while the bulk of each Kind keeps apart in a region of its own because of the motion of the Recipient, yet those corpuscles which from time to time become dissimilar to themselves and similar to others are carried, because of the shaking, towards the region which belongs to those corpuscles whereto they have been assimilated. Such are the causes which account for the generation of all the unmixed and primary bodies. But within these four Kinds other classes exist, whereof the cause must be sought in the construction of each of the two elemental triangles, each such construction having originally produced
The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they may neither...
(23) The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they may neither rest nor preserve their identity- and all to the end that they may be caught into that restlessness, that flustering excitability which is but an image of Life.
We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in the feet. Since the potentiality is invisible, we see of necessity only the active feet- that is to say, not feet simply, as would be the case if they were at rest, but something besides feet, something invisible but indirectly seen as an accompaniment by the fact that we observe the feet to be in ever-changing positions and no longer at rest. We infer alteration, on the other hand, from the qualitative change in the thing altered.
Where, then, does Motion reside, when there is one thing that moves and another that passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion? In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come? It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind.
Now, when the potentiality of Motion consists in an ability to walk, it may be imagined as thrusting a man forward and causing him to be continually adopting a different position; when it lies in the capacity to heat, it heats; when the potentiality takes hold of Matter and builds up the organism, we have growth; and when another potentiality demolishes the structure, the result is decay, that which has the potentiality of demolition experiencing the decay. Where the birth-giving principle is active, we find birth; where it is impotent and the power to destroy prevails, destruction takes place- not the destruction of what already exists, but that which intervenes upon the road to existence.
Health comes about in the same way- when the power which produces health is active and predominant; sickness is the result of the opposite power working in the opposite direction.
Thus, Motion is conditioned, not only by the objects in which it occurs, but also by its origins and its course, and it is a distinctive mark of Motion to be always qualified and to take its quality from the moved.
This is Plato's conception: to him participation does not, in the case of Matter, comport any such presence of an Ideal-form in a Substance to be...
(12) This is Plato's conception: to him participation does not, in the case of Matter, comport any such presence of an Ideal-form in a Substance to be shaped by it as would produce one compound thing made up of the two elements changing at the same moment, merging into one another, modified each by the other.
In his haste to his purpose he raises many difficult questions, but he is determined to disown that view; he labours to indicate in what mode Matter can receive the Ideal-forms without being, itself, modified. The direct way is debarred since it is not easy to point to things actually present in a base and yet leaving that base unaffected: he therefore devises a metaphor for participation without modification, one which supports, also, his thesis that all appearing to the senses is void of substantial existence and that the region of mere seeming is vast.
Holding, as he does, that it is the patterns displayed upon Matter that cause all experience in living bodies while the Matter itself remains unaffected, he chooses this way of stating its immutability, leaving us to make out for ourselves that those very patterns impressed upon it do not comport any experience, any modification, in itself.
In the case, no doubt, of the living bodies that take one pattern or shape after having borne another, it might be said that there was a change, the variation of shape being made verbally equivalent to a real change: but since Matter is essentially without shape or magnitude, the appearing of shape upon it can by no freedom of phrase be described as a change within it. On this point one must have "a rule for thick and thin" one may safely say that the underlying Kind contains nothing whatever in the mode commonly supposed.
But if we reject even the idea of its really containing at least the patterns upon it, how is it, in any sense, a recipient?
The answer is that in the metaphor cited we have some reasonably adequate indication of the impassibility of Matter coupled with the presence upon it of what may be described as images of things not present.
But we cannot leave the point of its impassibility without a warning against allowing ourselves to be deluded by sheer custom of speech.
Plato speaks of Matter as becoming dry, wet, inflamed, but we must remember the words that follow: "and taking the shape of air and of water": this blunts the expressions "becoming wet, becoming inflamed"; once we have Matter thus admitting these shapes, we learn that it has not itself become a shaped thing but that the shapes remain distinct as they entered. We see, further, that the expression "becoming inflamed" is not to be taken strictly: it is rather a case of becoming fire. Becoming fire is very different from becoming inflamed, which implies an outside agency and, therefore, susceptibility to modification. Matter, being itself a portion of fire, cannot be said to catch fire. To suggest that the fire not merely permeates the matter, but actually sets it on fire is like saying that a statue permeates its bronze.
Further, if what enters must be an Ideal-Principle how could it set Matter aflame? But what if it is a pattern or condition? No: the object set aflame is so in virtue of the combination of Matter and condition.
But how can this follow on the conjunction when no unity has been produced by the two?
Even if such a unity had been produced, it would be a unity of things not mutually sharing experiences but acting upon each other. And the question would then arise whether each was effective upon the other or whether the sole action was not that of one (the form) preventing the other from slipping away?
But when any material thing is severed, must not the Matter be divided with it? Surely the bodily modification and other experience that have accompanied the sundering, must have occurred, identically, within the Matter?
This reasoning would force the destructibility of Matter upon us: "the body is dissolved; then the Matter is dissolved." We would have to allow Matter to be a thing of quantity, a magnitude. But since it is not a magnitude it could not have the experiences that belong to magnitude and, on the larger scale, since it is not body it cannot know the experiences of body.
In fact those that declare Matter subject to modification may as well declare it body right out.
Of phenomena of this sphere some derive from the Kosmic Circuit and some not: we must take them singly and mark them off, assigning to each its...
(13) Of phenomena of this sphere some derive from the Kosmic Circuit and some not: we must take them singly and mark them off, assigning to each its origin.
The gist of the whole matter lies in the consideration that Soul governs this All by the plan contained in the Reason-Principle and plays in the All exactly the part of the particular principle which in every living-thing forms the members of the organism and adjusts them to the unity of which they are portions; the entire force of the Soul is represented in the All, but, in the parts, Soul is present only in proportion to the degree of essential reality held by each of such partial objects. Surrounding every separate entity there are other entities, whose approach will sometimes be hostile and sometimes helpful to the purpose of its nature; but to the All taken in its length and breadth each and every separate existent is an adjusted part, holding its own characteristic and yet contributing by its own native tendency to the entire life-history of the Universe.
The soulless parts of the All are merely instruments; all their action is effected, so to speak, under a compulsion from outside themselves.
The ensouled fall into two classes. The one kind has a motion of its own, but haphazard like that of horses between the shafts but before their driver sets the course; they are set right by the whip. In the Living-Being possessed of Reason, the nature-principle includes the driver; where the driver is intelligent, it takes in the main a straight path to a set end. But both classes are members of the All and co-operate towards the general purpose.
The greater and most valuable among them have an important operation over a wide range: their contribution towards the life of the whole consists in acting, not in being acted upon; others, but feebly equipped for action, are almost wholly passive; there is an intermediate order whose members contain within themselves a principle of productivity and activity and make themselves very effective in many spheres or ways and yet serve also by their passivity.
Thus the All stands as one all-complete Life, whose members, to the measure in which each contains within itself the Highest, effect all that is high and noble: and the entire scheme must be subordinate to its Dirigeant as an army to its general, "following upon Zeus"- it has been said- "as he proceeds towards the Intelligible Kind."
Secondary in the All are those of its parts which possess a less exalted nature just as in us the members rank lower than the Soul; and so all through, there is a general analogy between the things of the All and our own members- none of quite equal rank.
All living things, then- all in the heavens and all elsewhere- fall under the general Reason-Principle of the All- they have been made parts with a view to the whole: not one of these parts, however exalted, has power to effect any alteration of these Reason-Principles or of things shaped by them and to them; some modification one part may work upon another, whether for better or for worse; but there is no power that can wrest anything outside of its distinct nature.
The part effecting such a modification for the worse may act in several ways.
It may set up some weakness restricted to the material frame. Or it may carry the weakness through to the sympathetic Soul which by the medium of the material frame, become a power to debasement, has been delivered over, though never in its essence, to the inferior order of being. Or, in the case of a material frame ill-organized, it may check all such action upon the material frame as demands a certain collaboration in the part acted upon: thus a lyre may be so ill-strung as to be incapable of the melodic exactitude necessary to musical effect.
I think, in fact, that Plato had this in mind where he justly speaks of the Images of Real Existents "entering and passing out": these particular...
(11) I think, in fact, that Plato had this in mind where he justly speaks of the Images of Real Existents "entering and passing out": these particular words are not used idly: he wishes us to grasp the precise nature of the relation between Matter and the Ideas.
The difficulty on this point is not really that which presented itself to most of our predecessors- how the Ideas enter into Matter- it is rather the mode of their presence in it.
It is in fact strange at sight that Matter should remain itself intact, unaffected by Ideal-forms present within it, especially seeing that these are affected by each other. It is surprising, too, that the entrant Forms should regularly expel preceding shapes and qualities, and that the modification should affect what is a compound and this, again, not a haphazard but precisely where there is need of the incoming or outgoing of some certain Ideal-form, the compound being deficient through the absence of a particular principle whose presence will complete it.
But the reason is that the fundamental nature of Matter can take no increase by anything entering it, and no decrease by any withdrawal: what from the beginning it was, it remains. It is not like those things whose lack is merely that of arrangement and order which can be supplied without change of substance as when we dress or decorate something bare or ugly.
But where the bringing to order must cut through to the very nature, the base original must be transmuted: it can leave ugliness for beauty only by a change of substance. Matter, then, thus brought to order must lose its own nature in the supreme degree unless its baseness is an accidental: if it is base in the sense of being Baseness the Absolute, it could never participate in order, and, if evil in the sense of being Evil the Absolute, it could never participate in good.
We conclude that Matter's participation in Idea is not by way of modification within itself: the process is very different; it is a bare seeming. Perhaps we have here the solution of the difficulty as to how Matter, essentially evil, can be reaching towards The Good: there would be no such participation as would destroy its essential nature. Given this mode of pseudo-participation- in which Matter would, as we say, retain its nature, unchanged, always being what it has essentially been- there is no longer any reason to wonder as to how while essentially evil, it yet participates in Idea: for, by this mode, it does not abandon its own character: participation is the law, but it participates only just so far as its essence allows. Under a mode of participation which allows it to remain on its own footing, its essential nature stands none the less, whatsoever the Idea, within that limit, may communicate to it: it is by no means the less evil for remaining immutably in its own order. If it had authentic participation in The Good and were veritably changed, it would not be essentially evil.
In a word, when we call Matter evil we are right only if we mean that it is not amenable to modification by The Good; but that means simply that it is subject to no modification whatever.
Chapter 16: Of the Seventh Species, Kind, Form, or Manner of Sin's Beginning in Lucifer and his Angels. (15)
Therefore also the figures, and transitory forms and creatures, are changed according to the condition of the seventh nature-spirit, in which they ris...
(15) Therefore also the figures, and transitory forms and creatures, are changed according to the condition of the seventh nature-spirit, in which they rise up.
The discovery that "opposites are identical," in the sense of being but the two contrasting poles of the same thing, opens up a wonderful field of...
(47) The discovery that "opposites are identical," in the sense of being but the two contrasting poles of the same thing, opens up a wonderful field of mastery to the occultist who has acquainted himself with the law of Polarization, in its phases of Transmutation and Balance.
When the lowest point in the scale of Involution was reached, then the Law of Rhythm asserted itself, and the upward climb began—the first movement...
(13) When the lowest point in the scale of Involution was reached, then the Law of Rhythm asserted itself, and the upward climb began—the first movement of Evolution began to manifest itself. And, at this precise point, there was begun the manifestation of what may be termed "individualization," or the forming of centres of activity and consciousness. The World Soul descended into the depth of Involution en masse , and then began to emerge from those depths by an apparent "splitting up" process, in which the active new-born centres of activity began to assert themselves and to move upward toward self-expression. The simpler centres which occultists know to be the centers of activity in the electrons of matter began to form molecules. There was of course manifested the presence of mind within this gross matter—but only the faint glimmerings were manifested, for the gross enveloping sheaths of matter almost smothered the mental principles involved within them.
Our investigation may be furthered by enquiring: Whether light finally perishes or simply returns to its source. If it be a thing requiring to be...
(7) Our investigation may be furthered by enquiring: Whether light finally perishes or simply returns to its source.
If it be a thing requiring to be caught and kept, domiciled within a recipient, we might think of it finally passing out of existence: if it be an Act not flowing out and away- but in circuit, with more of it within than is in outward progress from the luminary of which it is the Act- then it will not cease to exist as long as that centre is in being. And as the luminary moves, the light will reach new points- not in virtue of any change of course in or out or around, but simply because the act of the luminary exists and where there is no impediment is effective. Even if the distance of the sun from us were far greater than it is, the light would be continuous all that further way, as long as nothing checked or blocked it in the interval.
We distinguish two forms of activity; one is gathered within the luminary and is comparable to the life of the shining body; this is the vaster and is, as it were, the foundation or wellspring of all the act; the other lies next to the surface, the outer image of the inner content, a secondary activity though inseparable from the former. For every existent has an Act which is in its likeness: as long as the one exists, so does the other; yet while the original is stationary the activity reaches forth, in some things over a wide range, in others less far. There are weak and faint activities, and there are some, even, that do not appear; but there are also things whose activities are great and far-going; in the case of these the activity must be thought of as being lodged, both in the active and powerful source and in the point at which it settles. This may be observed in the case of an animal's eyes where the pupils gleam: they have a light which shows outside the orbs. Again there are living things which have an inner fire that in darkness shines out when they expand themselves and ceases to ray outward when they contract: the fire has not perished; it is a mere matter of it being rayed out or not.
But has the light gone inward?
No: it is simply no longer on the outside because the fire is no longer outward going but has withdrawn towards the centre.
But surely the light has gone inward too?
No: only the fire, and when that goes inward the surface consists only of the non-luminous body; the fire can no longer act towards the outer.
The light, then, raying from bodies is an outgoing activity of a luminous body; the light within luminous bodies- understand; such as are primarily luminous- is the essential being embraced under the idea of that body. When such a body is brought into association with Matter, its activity produces colour: when there is no such association, it does not give colour- it gives merely an incipient on which colour might be formed- for it belongs to another being with which it retains its link, unable to desert from it, or from its activity.
And light is incorporeal even when it is the light of a body; there is therefore no question, strictly speaking, of its withdrawal or of its being present- these terms do not apply to its modes- and its essential existence is to be an activity. As an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an activity exercised by the reflected object upon the potential recipient: there is no outgoing from the object ; it is simply that, as long as the object stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there, the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the conditions were favourable.
So it is with the soul considered as the activity of another and prior soul: as long as that prior retains its place, its next, which is its activity, abides.
But what of a soul which is not an activity but the derivative of an activity- as we maintained the life-principle domiciled in the body to be- is its presence similar to that of the light caught and held in material things?
No; for in those things the colour is due to an actual intermixture of the active element ; whereas the life-principle of the body is something that holds from another soul closely present to it.
But when the body perishes- by the fact that nothing without part in soul can continue in being- when the body is perishing, no longer supported by that primal life-giving soul, or by the presence of any secondary phase of it, it is clear that the life-principle can no longer remain; but does this mean that the life perishes?
No; not even it; for it, too, is an image of that first out-shining; it is merely no longer where it was.
The cause of things is predicated in a threefold manner. One, What the cause is, as the statuary; a second, Of what it is the cause of becoming, a...
(7) The cause of things is predicated in a threefold manner. One, What the cause is, as the statuary; a second, Of what it is the cause of becoming, a statue; and a third, To what it is the cause, as, for example, the material: for he is the cause to the brass of becoming a statue. The being produced, and the being cut, which are causes to what they belong, being actions, are incorporeal.