But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad? The one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct, though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its content as one-life entire, soul entire, all intelligence- it could not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and apparent merging with always dependence. But we ourselves, what are We? Are we that higher or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings in time? Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now, some of us gods: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut away, integral to that All. Even now, it is true, we are not put apart; but upon that primal Man there has intruded another, a man seeking to come into being and finding us there, for we were not outside of the universe. This other has wound himself about us, foisting himself upon the Man that each of us was at first. Then it was as if one voice sounded, one word was uttered, and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing, possessed through and through of what was present and active upon it: now we have lost that first simplicity; we are become the dual thing, sometimes indeed no more than that later foisting, with the primal nature dormant and in a sense no longer present.

For when we search [into] the Beginning and Kindling of Life, we find strongly with clear Evidences all Manner of [Faculties or] Members; so that when...

Farther still, to the former that which is highest and that which is incomprehensible pertain, and also that which is better than all measure, and is...

It is necessary, therefore, to admit a thing of this kind in partial souls. For such as is the life which the soul received, prior to its insertion...

Now therefore the Soul stands in two Gates, and touches the two Principles, viz. the eternal Darkness, and the eternal Light of the Son of God, as...

But because the Soul stood with its most inward Root in the Abyss of Hell, and according to the Kingdom of this World in the hard [frozen] Death, so t...

And so the Soul of Man is out of the same Balance in the Angle of the recomprehended Will, towards the Light, and also in the first Will in itself, in...

The Devils and the Angels, in the Time of their Corporization, continued therein; and the Soul of Man, in the Time of the creating of the Body, [is] b...

The Soul of Man is generated out of the Gates of the Breaking-through out of the Outward into the Inward, and is gone forth out of the Inward (in the...

And now if we will speak of the Soul, and of its Substance and Essences, we must say that it is the roughest [Thing] in Man; for it is the Originality...

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]...

It likewise possesses the eternity of a similar life and energy in a less degree than dæmons and heroes; yet, through the beneficent will of the...

But that the Soul of Christ could be generated both in the new, and also in the old earthly Creature, it is because the Gate of the Soul in the first ...

There is nothing out of place then, that, by ascending from obscure images to the Cause of all, we should contemplate, with supermundane eyes, all thi...

Further, there is a movement of soul, circular indeed,--the entrance into itself from things without, and the unified convolution of its intellectual...

For the Soul which is out of the first Principle (out of the Band of the Eternity) was breathed into the Element of the Body, to [be] the Image of God...

Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good Mind. It is, then, to a better state the soul doth...

For the holy soul is one spirit with God; though indeed it is a creature, yet it is like to the angels: Also the soul of man seeth much deeper than th...

But my meaning is, that it peculiarly connects the soul with the self begotten and self-moved God, and with the all-sustaining, intellectual, and all-...

We set down thus much here, to the End that the Region of his World may be understood. And thus we give the Reader exactly to understand and know how ...

This Soul (being cloathed with the pure elementary and paradisical Body) severed its Will, [which came] out of the Father's Will, which tends only to...