But- keeping to our illustration, by which the body is warmed by soul and not merely illuminated by it- how is it that when the higher soul withdraws there is no further trace of the vital principle? For a brief space there is; and, precisely, it begins to fade away immediately upon the withdrawal of the other, as in the case of warmed objects when the fire is no longer near them: similarly hair and nails still grow on the dead; animals cut to pieces wriggle for a good time after; these are signs of a life force still indwelling. Besides, simultaneous withdrawal would not prove the identity of the higher and lower phases: when the sun withdraws there goes with it not merely the light emanating from it, guided by it, attached to it, but also at once that light seen upon obliquely situated objects, a light secondary to the sun's and cast upon things outside of its path ; the two are not identical and yet they disappear together. But is this simultaneous withdrawal or frank obliteration? The question applies equally to this secondary light and to the corporeal life, that life which we think of as being completely sunk into body. No light whatever remains in the objects once illuminated; that much is certain; but we have to ask whether it has sunk back into its source or is simply no longer in existence. How could it pass out of being, a thing that once has been? But what really was it? We must remember that what we know as colour belongs to bodies by the fact that they throw off light, yet when corruptible bodies are transformed the colour disappears and we no more ask where the colour of a burned-out fire is than where its shape is. Still: the shape is merely a configuration, like the lie of the hands clenched or spread; the colour is no such accidental but is more like, for example, sweetness: when a material substance breaks up, the sweetness of what was sweet in it, and the fragrance of what was fragrant, may very well not be annihilated, but enter into some other substance, passing unobserved there because the new habitat is not such that the entrant qualities now offer anything solid to perception. May we not think that, similarly, the light belonging to bodies that have been dissolved remains in being while the solid total, made up of all that is characteristic, disappears? It might be said that the seeing is merely the sequel to some law , so that what we call qualities do not actually exist in the substances. But this is to make the qualities indestructible and not dependent upon the composition of the body; it would no longer be the Reason-Principles within the sperm that produce, for instance, the colours of a bird's variegated plumage; these principles would merely blend and place them, or if they produced them would draw also on the full store of colours in the sky, producing in the sense, mainly, of showing in the formed bodies something very different from what appears in the heavens. But whatever we may think on this doubtful point, if, as long as the bodies remain unaltered, the light is constant and unsevered, then it would seem natural that, on the dissolution of the body, the light- both that in immediate contact and any other attached to that- should pass away at the same moment, unseen in the going as in the coming. But in the case of the soul it is a question whether the secondary phases follow their priors- the derivatives their sources- or whether every phase is self-governing, isolated from its predecessors and able to stand alone; in a word, whether no part of the soul is sundered from the total, but all the souls are simultaneously one soul and many, and, if so, by what mode; this question, however, is treated elsewhere. Here we have to enquire into the nature and being of that vestige of the soul actually present in the living body: if there is truly a soul, then, as a thing never cut off from its total, it will go with soul as soul must: if it is rather to be thought of as belonging to the body, as the life of the body, we have the same question that rose in the case of the vestige of light; we must examine whether life can exist without the presence of soul, except of course in the sense of soul living above and acting upon the remote object.

I. First, there arose the fire-crack, or the mobility in the heat; and that is the beginning of life in the chamber of death. II. After this,...

And if then the divine Light be not again generated in the Center, then the Soul remains in the eternal Darkness, in the eternal anguishing [Source or...

And the life of the light breaketh through the death, and generateth to it another body out of death, which is not conformable to, or of the condition...

For the light mitigated the heat, and so the body of the sun remained there in the midst or centre as a heart; for the light is the heart of nature, n...

But if in a creature, or in any place, the light be extinguished, then in that place is the austere birth or geniture, which lies hid in the light in ...

At first that light came out of the Son of God in the powers of the Father, into the angelical body creaturely, and is the body's proper own, which...

And thus the Stars and Elements rule in their Light and Virtue, which is the Sun's, and qualify with the Soul, and bring many Distempers, and also Dis...

The light went forth from the innermost birth or geniture, and kindled itself in the outermost. It gave again to the outermost a natural peculiar...

Now in the body or fountain is the heat, which generateth the fire, and which is a form or kind of thing that a man can search into; and out of the...

But the deep Abyss without End and Number is its eternal Dwelling-House, and its Works which it has here wrought, stand in the Figure, in its Tincture...

But the light made very great haste after it, and laid hold on the fire-crack; and there it remained as a captive, and became corporeal.

But if now the Essences of the first Principle of the Soul have been so very conversant about [or addicted to] the Kingdom of this World, so that the ...

The Depth in the Circle of the Birth or Geniture. Now one might ask, What manner of substance has it, or what is the condition thereof, that the astra...

Now that this is demonstratively and certainly thus, [appears] in that it is written; And God breathed into him the a living Breath, whereby Man...

No more does the sun go away or depart from its seat, but retains and keeps its own place to itself, as a heart; and shineth forth as a light, or as...

But now the Salitter of the earth and of the water is no more able to change or alter itself in its dead being, and shew forth itself infinitely, as i...

Now when the light shineth through the astringent, contracted body of nature, and mitigateth it, then the mild, beneficent welldoing generateth...

O no, beloved Reason, it is not so; the soul is not seen nor comprehended in the outward Elements; but that is the Brimstone- spirit, the Spirit of...

For the dead or mortal flesh belongeth not to the birth of life, and therefore cannot receive or conceive the life of the light as a propriety; but th...

The pupil has penetrated in his work into mysterious territory; but, if he does not know the method of melting, it is to be feared that the Elixir of...