(1) The soul: what dubious questions concerning it admit of solution, or where we must abide our doubt- with, at least, the gain of recognizing the problem that confronts us- this is matter well worth attention. On what subject can we more reasonably expend the time required by minute discussion and investigation? Apart from much else, it is enough that such an enquiry illuminates two grave questions: of what sphere the soul is the principle, and whence the soul itself springs. Moreover, we will be only obeying the ordinance of the God who bade us know ourselves.

Our general instinct to seek and learn, our longing to possess ourselves of whatsoever is lovely in the vision will, in all reason, set us enquiring into the nature of the instrument with which we search.

Now even in the universal Intellect there was duality, so that we would expect differences of condition in things of part: how some things rather than others come to be receptacles of the divine beings will need to be examined; but all this we may leave aside until we are considering the mode in which soul comes to occupy body. For the moment we return to our argument against those who maintain our souls to be offshoots from the soul of the universe .

Our opponents will probably deny the validity of our arguments against the theory that the human soul is a mere segment of the All-Soul- the considerations, namely, that it is of identical scope, and that it is intellective in the same degree, supposing them, even, to admit that equality of intellection.

They will object that parts must necessarily fall under one ideal-form with their wholes. And they will adduce Plato as expressing their view where, in demonstrating that the All is ensouled, he says "As our body is a portion of the body of the All, so our soul is a portion of the soul of the All." It is admitted on clear evidence that we are borne along by the Circuit of the All; we will be told that- taking character and destiny from it, strictly inbound with it- we must derive our souls, also, from what thus bears us up, and that as within ourselves every part absorbs from our soul so, analogically, we, standing as parts to the universe, absorb from the Soul of the All as parts of it. They will urge also that the dictum "The collective soul cares for all the unensouled," carries the same implication and could be uttered only in the belief that nothing whatever of later origin stands outside the soul of the universe, the only soul there can be there to concern itself with the unensouled.

(14) Thus also we know, that the Soul is a Spirit, generated out of God the Father, in the Throne and Entrance out of the recomprehended [or reconceived] Will, out of the Darkness into the Light, to the generating of the Heart of God; and that [Soul] is free to elevate itself above mit in the Will, or in the Meekness in the Will of the Father, to comprehend and incline itself to the Birth of the Heart of God the Father.

(6) For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way. Staying his body's every sense and every motion he stayeth still. And shining then all round his mond, It shines through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence. For it is possible, my son, that a man's soul should be made like to God, e'en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.

(57) But that they have hitherto ascribed such acute Knowledge to the Soul, after the Departure of the Body, that thing is very various, according as the Soul is variously armed. It it here (in this Body) entered into the new Birth, and if itself was entered, with its noble Champion [Jesus Christ,] through the Princely Potentates, Gates of the Deep, to God, so that it has received the Crown of the high Wisdom from the noble Virgin, then indeed it has great Wisdom and Knowledge, even above the Heavens, for it is in the Bosom of the Virgin, through whom the eternal Wonders of God are opened. This [Soul] has also great Joy and Clarity, [Brightness or Luster,] above the Heavens of the Elements; for the Glance of the holy Trinity shines from it, and clarifies, [brightens, or glorifies] it.

(67) We know that the Body without the Spirit is a Thing that lies still; for though the Body of Christ (which the holy Element generated in the P Mercy) is from God, yet the Mobility and Life stands only in the Deity; and in us Men in the Spirit of the Soul, and in the Spirit of the great World, which are unseparated in this Body upon Earth.

(1) IF we consider ourselves in our right Reason, and behold the Kingdom of this World, in which we stand with our Flesh and Blood, also with our Reason and Senses, then we find very well, that we have the Substance and Stirring of it in us; for we are its very proper own. Now all whatsoever we think, do, and purpose in the outward Man, that the Spirit of this World does in us Men; for the Body is nothing else but the Instrument thereof, wherewith it performs its Work; and we find, that as all other Instruments (which are generated from the Spirit of this World) decay, corrupt, and turn to Dust, so also our earthly Body, wherein the Spirit of this World works [and acts] for a While.

(133) Indeed the soul had its life before the body, but it stood in the Heart of God, hidden in the mass in heaven, and was a kind of holy seed, qualifying, mixing or uniting with God, which seed is eternal, incorruptible and indestructible; for it was a new and pure seed for an angel and image of God.

(20) So also the whole, full and perfect knowledge of God does not stand in the angelical body, but in the spirit, which is generated in the heart, which goeth forth from the light, which qualifieth or operateth also with the heart and. spirit of God, wherein the whole, full and perfect knowledge of God stands. But the body cannot apprehend that animated or soulish spirit; as also the seventh nature-spirit comprehendeth not the deepest birth or geniture of God.

(3) The Soul once seen to be thus precious, thus divine, you may hold the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God: in the strength of this power make upwards towards Him: at no great distance you must attain: there is not much between.

But over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward neighbour of the soul, its prior and source.

Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle: reason uttered is an image of the reason stored within the soul, and in the same way soul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle: it is even the total of its activity, the entire stream of life sent forth by that Principle to the production of further being; it is the forthgoing heat of a fire which has also heat essentially inherent. But within the Supreme we must see energy not as an overflow but in the double aspect of integral inherence with the establishment of a new being. Sprung, in other words, from the Intellectual-Principle, Soul is intellective, but with an intellection operation by the method of reasonings: for its perfecting it must look to that Divine Mind, which may be thought of as a father watching over the development of his child born imperfect in comparison with himself.

Thus its substantial existence comes from the Intellectual-Principle; and the Reason within it becomes Act in virtue of its contemplation of that prior; for its thought and act are its own intimate possession when it looks to the Supreme Intelligence; those only are soul-acts which are of this intellective nature and are determined by its own character; all that is less noble is foreign and is accidental to the soul in the course of its peculiar task.

In two ways, then, the Intellectual-Principle enhances the divine quality of the soul, as father and as immanent presence; nothing separates them but the fact that they are not one and the same, that there is succession, that over against a recipient there stands the ideal-form received; but this recipient, Matter to the Supreme Intelligence, is also noble as being at once informed by divine intellect and uncompounded.

What the Intellectual-Principle must be is carried in the single word that Soul, itself so great, is still inferior.

(2) Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.

And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.

The Soul's disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty- the appropriate dwelling-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part- thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.

For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.

(13) Now then the principles of man are this-wise vehicled: mind in the reason (logos), the reason in the soul, soul in the spirit Spirit pervading [body] by means of veins and arteries and blood, bestows upon the living creature motion, and as it were doth bear it in a way. For this cause some do think the soul is blood, in that they do mistake its nature, not knowing that [at death] it is iteh spirit that must first withdraw into the soul, whereon the blood congeals and veins and arteries are emptied, and then the living creature

(51) For the soul comprehendeth the highest sense, it beholdeth what God its Father acteth or makes, also it cooperateth in the heavenly imaging or framing: and therefore it makes a description, draught, platform or model for the nature-spirits, shewing how a thing should be imaged or framed.

(4) And there is no difference here, but only such as is between the body and soul in man; and so the body signifieth or resembleth the seven qualifying spirits of the Father; and the soul signifieth or resembleth the only begotten Son of God the Father. ["The spirit of the soul signifieth or representeth the heart of God; and the soul the eye of God in the first Principle; as is declared in " our third book, Concerning the Threefold Life of Man."]

(2) So, then, although it may do good to few alone, ’tis proper to develope and explain this thesis:—wherefore Divinity hath deigned to share His science and intelligence with men alone. Give ear, accordingly! When God, [our] Sire and Lord, made man, after the Gods, out of an equal mixture of a less pure cosmic part and a divine,—it [naturally] came to pass the imperfections of the cosmic part remained commingled with [our] frames, and other ones [as well], by reason of the food and sustenance we have out of necessity in common with all lives ; by reason of which things it needs must be that the desires, and passions, and other vices, of the mind should occupy the souls of human kind.

(19) The soul in man, however - not every soul, but one that pious is - is a daimonic something and divine. And such a soul when from the body freed, if it have fought the fight of piety - the fight of piety is to know God and to do wrong to no man - such a soul becomes entirely mind. Whereas the impious soul remains in its own essence, chastised by its own self, and seeking for an earthly body where to enter, if only it be human. For that no other body can contain a human soul; nor is it right that any human soul should fall into the body of a thing that doth possess no reason. For that the law of God is this: to guard the human soul from such tremendous outrage.

(14) Then our dexterous man and Gnostic is revealed in righteousness already even here, as Moses, glorified in the face of the soul, as we have formerly said, the body bears the stamp of the righteous soul. For as the mordant of the dyeing process, remaining in the wool, produces in it a certain quality and diversity from other wool; so also in the soul the pain is gone, but the good remains; and the sweet is left, but the base is wiped away. For these are two qualities characteristic of each soul, by which is known that which is glorified, and that which is condemned.

(18) . . . . After the Paternal Conception I the Soul reside, a heat animating all things. . . . . For he placed The Intelligible in the Soul, and the Soul in dull body, Even so the Father of Gods and Men placed them in us.

(20) But the Soul was breathed into Man, merely out of the original Birth of the Father by the moving Spirit, (understand, the Holy Ghost which goes forth from the Father out of the Light of the Father:) Which original Birth is before the Light of Life, which is in the four Anguishes, out of which the Light of God is kindled, wherein is the Original of the Name of God; and therefore the Soul is God's own Essence or Substance.

(35) Behold, thou reasonable Soul, to thee I speak, and not to the Body, thou only apprehendest it:- When the Birth is thus continually generated, then every Form has a Center to the Regeneration; for the whole divine Essence [or Substance] stands in continual and in eternal P Generating (but unchangeably) like the Mind of Man, the Thoughts being continually generated out of the Mind, and the Will and Desiring out of the Thoughts. Out of the Will and Desirousness [is] the Work [generated] which is made a Substance, in the Will, and then the Mouth and Hands, go on to perform what was substantial in the Will.

(18) There remains the question whether the body possesses any force of its own- so that, with the incoming of the soul, it lives in some individuality- or whether all it has is this Nature we have been speaking of, the superior principle which enters into relations with it.

Certainly the body, container of soul and of nature, cannot even in itself be as a soulless form would be: it cannot even be like air traversed by light; it must be like air storing heat: the body holding animal or vegetive life must hold also some shadow of soul; and it is body thus modified that is the seat of corporeal pains and pleasures which appear before us, the true human being, in such a way as to produce knowledge without emotion. By "us, the true human being" I mean the higher soul for, in spite of all, the modified body is not alien but attached to our nature and is a concern to us for that reason: "attached," for this is not ourselves nor yet are we free of it; it is an accessory and dependent of the human being; "we" means the master-principle; the conjoint, similarly is in its own way an "ours"; and it is because of this that we care for its pain and pleasure, in proportion as we are weak rather than strong, gripped rather than working towards detachment.

The other, the most honourable phase of our being, is what we think of as the true man and into this we are penetrating.

Pleasure and pain and the like must not be attributed to the soul alone, but to the modified body and to something intermediary between soul and body and made up of both. A unity is independent: thus body alone, a lifeless thing, can suffer no hurt- in its dissolution there is no damage to the body, but merely to its unity- and soul in similar isolation cannot even suffer dissolution, and by its very nature is immune from evil.

But when two distinct things become one in an artificial unity, there is a probable source of pain to them in the mere fact that they were inapt to partnership. This does not, of course, refer to two bodies; that is a question of one nature; and I am speaking of two natures. When one distinct nature seeks to associate itself with another, a different, order of being- the lower participating in the higher, but unable to take more than a faint trace of it- then the essential duality becomes also a unity, but a unity standing midway between what the lower was and what it cannot absorb, and therefore a troubled unity; the association is artificial and uncertain, inclining now to this side and now to that in ceaseless vacillation; and the total hovers between high and low, telling, downward bent, of misery but, directed to the above, of longing for unison.