(11) I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or phase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it, and serving like a mirror to catch an image of it.

It belongs to the nature of the All to make its entire content reproduce, most felicitously, the Reason-Principles in which it participates; every particular thing is the image within matter of a Reason-Principle which itself images a pre-material Reason-Principle: thus every particular entity is linked to that Divine Being in whose likeness it is made, the divine principle which the soul contemplated and contained in the act of each creation. Such mediation and representation there must have been since it was equally impossible for the created to be without share in the Supreme, and for the Supreme to descend into the created.

The Intellectual-Principle in the Supreme has ever been the sun of that sphere- let us accept that as the type of the creative Logos- and immediately upon it follows the Soul depending from it, stationary Soul from stationary Intelligence. But the Soul borders also upon the sun of this sphere, and it becomes the medium by which all is linked to the overworld; it plays the part of an interpreter between what emanates from that sphere down to this lower universe, and what rises- as far as, through soul, anything can- from the lower to the highest.

Nothing, in fact, is far away from anything; things are not remote: there is, no doubt, the aloofness of difference and of mingled natures as against the unmingled; but selfhood has nothing to do with spatial position, and in unity itself there may still be distinction.

These Beings are divine in virtue of cleaving to the Supreme, because, by the medium of the Soul thought of as descending they remain linked with the Primal Soul, and through it are veritably what they are called and possess the vision of the Intellectual Principle, the single object of contemplation to that soul in which they have their being.

(17) But we should not here again wholly set down the Ground of the Deity, so far as it is otherwise meet and known by us, we account that needless [here,] for you may find it before the Incarnation of a Child in the Mother's [Womb or] Body. 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 the Region of Good and Evil are in one another, and how it is an imperishable Thing [or Substance,] so that one is generated out of the other, and that also the one goes forth out of the other into another Substance [or Being,] which it was not in the Beginning; as you may learn to understand this in Man, who in his Beginning, in the Will of Man and Woman, viz. in the Limbus, and in the Matrix, is conceived in the Tincture, and sown in an earthly Soil; where then the first Tincture A Desiring or Attracting. Dispels. (in the Will) breaks, and his own Tincture springs forth out of the anxious [or aching] Chamber of Darkness, and of Death, out of the anxious Source [or Property,] and blossoms out of the Darkness, in the broken Gate of the Darkness in it, as a pleasant Habitation, and so generates its Light out of the anxious Fierceness out of itself; where then (in the Light) there goes forth again the endless Source of the [Thoughts or] Senses, which make a Throne and Region of Reason, which governs the whole House, and desires to enter into the Region of Heaven, out of which it proceeded not. And therefore now this is not the original Will, which there desires to enter into the Region of the Heaven; but it is the preconceived Will out of the Source of the Anxiety, [which Will is a Desire to] enter through the deep Gate of God.

(1) Omitting, therefore, these things, we may reasonably adduce a second cause, assigned by you, of the above mentioned particulars: viz. “ that the soul says and imagines these things, and that they are the passions of it, excited from small incentives .” Neither, however, does nature possess these passions, nor does reason admit them. For every thing which is generated is generated from a certain cause, and that which is of a kindred nature derives its completion from a kindred nature. But a divine work is neither casual, for a thing of this kind is without a cause, and is not entirely arranged, nor is it produced by a human cause. For this is a thing foreign and subordinate; but that which is more perfect cannot be produced from the imperfect. All works, therefore, which have a similitude to divinity germinate from a divine cause. For the human soul is contained by one form, and is on all sides darkened by body, which he who denominates the river of Negligence, or the water of Oblivion, or ignorance and delirium, or a bond through passions, or the privation of life, or some other evil, will not by such appellations sufficiently express its turpitude.

(69) Therefore we must consider, that the Noise in the Tincture of Man is [of a] higher [Nature] than [that] in the Beasts; for Man searches and distinguishes all Things which give a Sound, and knows from whence it comes, and how it exists, which the Beasts cannot do, but stare at it, and knows not what it is; whereby it may be understood, that the Original of Man, is out of the Eternal, because he can distinguish all Things that in the Out-Birth came out of the Eternal. And hence it is, that the Body (seeing all Things out of the eternal Nothing are caused to be Something which is comprehensible [or palpable,] and yet there, that Nothing is not a mere Nothing, but is a Source) after the Corrupting shall stand in the eternal Figure, and not in the Spirit, because it is not out of the eternal Spirit; for otherwise, if it were out of the [eternal] Spirit, then it should also search out the Beginning of every Thing, as [well as] Man, who in his Sound receives and distinguishes all Things.

(1) But neither does the cause [of the energies] of more excellent natures subsist as a certain middle instrument, nor does he who invokes operate through him who prophesies; for to assert these things is impious. And it is much more true to say, that God is all things, is able to effect all things, and that he fills all things with himself, and is alone worthy of sedulous attention, esteem, the energy of reason, and felicitous honour; that which is human being vile, of no account, and ludicrous, when compared with that which is divine. Hence I laugh, when I hear it said, that divinity is spontaneously present with certain persons or things, either through the period of generation, or through other causes. For thus that which is unbegotten will no longer be more excellent, if it is led by the period of generation; nor will it be primarily the cause of all things, if it is coarranged with certain things, according to other causes.

(38) Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency- for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations- this entire range of production is to be referred, not to each such single cause, but to the nature of the thing produced .

All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor. Where we think we see the transmission of some force unfavourable to the production of living beings, the flaw must be found in the inability of the subject to take in what would serve it: for what happens does not happen upon a void; there is always specific form and quality; anything that could be affected must have an underlying nature definite and characterized. The inevitable blendings, further, have their constructive effect, every element adding something contributory to the life. Then again some influence may come into play at the time when the forces of a beneficent nature are not acting: the co-ordination of the entire system of things does not always allow to each several entity everything that it needs: and further we ourselves add a great deal to what is transmitted to us.

None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better kind among things of process anything falls short- the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping under idea- it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying nature, something added by the self.

Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally inwoven into the ordered system by the general law that the things of this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the content of our universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings in whom our world is participant.

(12) The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens.

Their initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of theirs is compelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt.

For the container of the total of things must be a self-sufficing entity and remain so: in its periods it is wrought out to purpose under its Reason-Principles which are perdurably valid; by these periods it reverts unfailingly, in the measured stages of defined life-duration, to its established character; it is leading the things of this realm to be of one voice and plan with the Supreme. And thus the kosmic content is carried forward to its purpose, everything in its co-ordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle operating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every purpose of the system.

We may know this also by the concordance of the Souls with the ordered scheme of the kosmos; they are not independent, but, by their descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand henceforth in harmonious association with kosmic circuit- to the extent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars- and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described is the best witness to this truth.

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way:

The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and could never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high place, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul. Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase maintaining the unvarying march the other adopting itself to times and season.

The depth of the descent, also, will differ- sometimes lower, sometimes less low- and this even in its entry into any given Kind: all that is fixed is that each several soul descends to a recipient indicated by affinity of condition; it moves towards the thing which it There resembled, and enters, accordingly, into the body of man or animal.

(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.

(1) But neither must we admit that cause of the distinction of these genera which you subjoin, viz. “ that it is an arrangement with reference to different bodies; as, for instance, of Gods to etherial bodies, but of dæmons to aerial bodies, and of souls to such as are terrene .” For such an arrangement as this, which resembles that of Socrates to a tribe, when he is a senator, is unworthy of the divine genera, because all of them are essentially unrestrained and free. To which may be added, that it is dreadfully absurd to ascribe to bodies a principal power of giving a specific distinction to the first causes of themselves. For bodies are in servile subjection to these causes, and are ministrant to generation. And farther still, the genera of the more excellent natures are not in bodies, but the former externally rule over the latter. Hence they are not changed in conjunction with bodies. Again, they impart from themselves to bodies every such good as they are able to receive, but they themselves receive nothing from bodies; so that neither will they derive from them certain peculiarities.

(14) The Reason, then, is the Mind's image, and Mind God's [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul. The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air ; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God. And God surroundeth all and permeateth all; while Mind Surroundeth Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter. Necessity and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter's ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence. But of the bodies of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessiong Sameness, [these] composed bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do natheless keep the incorruption of their Sameness.

(7) That this world has neither beginning nor end but exists for ever as long as the Supreme stands is certainly no novel teaching. And before this school rose it had been urged that commerce with the body is no gain to a Soul.

But to treat the human Soul as a fair presentment of the Soul of the Universe is like picking out potters and blacksmiths and making them warrant for discrediting an entire well-ordered city.

We must recognize how different is the governance exercised by the All-Soul; the relation is not the same: it is not in fetters. Among the very great number of differences it should not have been overlooked that the We lies under fetter; and this in a second limitation, for the Body-Kind, already fettered within the All-Soul, imprisons all that it grasps.

But the Soul of the Universe cannot be in bond to what itself has bound: it is sovereign and therefore immune of the lower things, over which we on the contrary are not masters. That in it which is directed to the Divine and Transcendent is ever unmingled, knows no encumbering; that in it which imparts life to the body admits nothing bodily to itself. It is the general fact that an inset , necessarily shares the conditions of its containing principle , and does not communicate its own conditions where that principle has an independent life: thus a graft will die if the stock dies, but the stock will live on by its proper life though the graft wither. The fire within your own self may be quenched, but the thing, fire, will exist still; and if fire itself were annihilated that would make no difference to the Soul, the Soul in the Supreme, but only to the plan of the material world; and if the other elements sufficed to maintain a Kosmos, the Soul in the Supreme would be unconcerned.

The constitution of the All is very different from that of the single, separate forms of life: there, the established rule commanding to permanence is sovereign; here things are like deserters kept to their own place and duty by a double bond; there is no outlet from the All, and therefore no need of restraining or of driving errants back to bounds: all remains where from the beginning the Soul's nature appointed.

The natural movement within the plan will be injurious to anything whose natural tendency it opposes: one group will sweep bravely onward with the great total to which it is adapted; the others, not able to comply with the larger order, are destroyed. A great choral is moving to its concerted plan; midway in the march, a tortoise is intercepted; unable to get away from the choral line it is trampled under foot; but if it could only range itself within the greater movement it too would suffer nothing.

(34) For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent servitors yield a part of themselves to their masters but in part retain their personality, and are thus less absolutely at beck and call, as not being slaves, not utterly chattels.

The changing configurations within the All could not fail to be produced as they are, since the moving bodies are not of equal speed.

Now the movement is guided by a Reason-Principle; the relations of the living whole are altered in consequence; here in our own realm all that happens reacts in sympathy to the events of that higher sphere: it becomes, therefore, advisable to ask whether we are to think of this realm as following upon the higher by agreement, or to attribute to the configurations the powers underlying the events, and whether such powers would be vested in the configurations simply or in the relations of the particular items.

It will be said that one position of one given thing has by no means an identical effect- whether of indication or of causation- in its relation to another and still less to any group of others, since each several being seems to have a natural tendency of its own.

The truth is that the configuration of any given group means merely the relationship of the several parts, and, changing the members, the relationship remains the same.

But, this being so, the power will belong, not to the positions but to the beings holding those positions?

To both taken together. For as things change their relations, and as any one thing changes place, there is a change of power.

But what power? That of causation or of indication?

To this double thing- the particular configuration of particular beings- there accrues often the twofold power, that of causation and that of indication, but sometimes only that of indication. Thus we are obliged to attribute powers both to the configuration and to the beings entering into them. In mime dancers each of the hands has its own power, and so with all the limbs; the relative positions have much power; and, for a third power, there is that of the accessories and concomitants; underlying the action of the performers' limbs, there are such items as the clutched fingers and the muscles and veins following suit.

(4) The truth of this also may be seen in the nature itself of animals. For if animal had no existence, there would neither be eye, nor mouth, nor ear. But animal existing, each of these likewise exists. As the whole, however, is to the part, so is the virtue of the whole to the virtue of the part. For harmony not existing, and a divine inspection of mundane affairs, things which are adorned would no longer be able to remain in an excellent condition. And equitable legislation not existing in a city, it is not possible for a citizen to be good or happy. Health, likewise, not existing in the animal, it is not possible for the foot or the hand to be strong and healthy. For harmony indeed is the virtue of the world; equitable legislation is the virtue of a city; and health and strength are the virtue of the body. Each of the parts likewise in these things is co-arranged on account of the whole and the universe. For the eyes see on account of the whole body. And the other parts and members are co-arranged for the sake of the whole [body] and the universe.

(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.

(5) But I return once more to the Discourse (Logos) on Sense. That sense doth share with thought in man, doth constitute him man. But 'tis not [every] man, as I have said, who benefits by thought; for this man is material, that other one substantial. For the material man, as I have said, [consorting] with the bad, doth have his seed of thought from daimons; while the substantial men [consorting] with the Good, are saved by God. Now God is Maker of all things, and in His making, He maketh all [at last] like to Himself; but they, while they're becoming good by exercise of their activity, are unproductive things. It is the working of the Cosmic Course that maketh their becomings what they are, befouling some of them with bad and others of them making clean with good. For Cosmos, too, Asclepius, possesseth sense-and-thought peculiar to itself, not like that of man; 'tis not so manifold, but as it were a better and a simpler one.

(33) For all Things are come to be Something out of Nothing: And every Creature has the Center, or the Circle of the Birth of Life in itself; and as the Elements lie hid in one another in one only Mother, and none of them comprehends the other, though they are Members one of another, so the created Creatures are hidden and invisible to one another. For every Creature looks but into its Mother that is fixed [or predominant] in it. The material Creature sees a material Substance, but an immaterial Substance (as the Spirits in the Fire and in the Air) it sees not; as the Body sees not the Soul, which yet dwells in it; or as the third Principle does not comprehend, nor apprehend the second Principle wherein God is; though indeed itself is in God, yet there is a Birth between: As it is with the Spirit of the Soul of Man, and the elementary Spirit in Man, the one being the Case, [Chest,] or Receptacle of the other; as you shall find, about the Creation 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.

(2) With respect to the powers, therefore, which remain in the heavens in the divine bodies themselves, there can be no doubt that all of them are similar. Hence, it remains that we should discuss those powers which are thence transmitted to us, and are mingled with generation. These, therefore, descend with invariable sameness for the salvation of the universe, and connectedly contain the whole of generation after the same manner. They are likewise impassive and immutable, though they proceed into that which is mutable and passive. For generation being multiform, and consisting of different things, receives the one of the Gods, and that in them which is without difference, with hostility and partibility, conformably to its own contrariety and division. It also receives that which is impassive, passively; and, in short, participates of them according to its own proper nature, and not according to their power. As, therefore, that which is generated [or has a subsistence in becoming to be,] participates of being generatively, and body participates of the incorporeal, corporeally; thus, also, the physical and material substances which are in generation, participate of the immaterial and etherial bodies, which are above nature and generation, in a confused and disorderly manner. Hence they are absurd who attribute colour, figure, and contact to intelligible forms, because the participants of them are things of this kind; as likewise are those who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies, because their participants sometimes produce evils.

(3) Yet, looking at another set of facts, reflection tells us that we are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering, overcome, at the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming attachments; and all this can be due only to some unity among us.

Again, if spells and other forms of magic are efficient even at a distance to attract us into sympathetic relations, the agency can be no other than the one soul.

A quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself heard at vast distances- proof of the oneness of all things within the one soul.

But how reconcile this unity with the existence of a reasoning soul, an unreasoning, even a vegetal soul?

: the indivisible phase is classed as reasoning because it is not in division among bodies, but there is the later phase, divided among bodies, but still one thing and distinct only so as to secure sense-perception throughout; this is to be classed as yet another power; and there is the forming and making phase which again is a power. But a variety of powers does not conflict with unity; seed contains many powers and yet it is one thing, and from that unity rises, again, a variety which is also a unity.

But why are not all the powers of this unity present everywhere?

The answer is that even in the case of the individual soul described, similarly, as permeating its body, sensation is not equally present in all the parts, reason does not operate at every point, the principle of growth is at work where there is no sensation- and yet all these powers join in the one soul when the body is laid aside.

The nourishing faculty as dependent from the All belongs also to the All-Soul: why then does it not come equally from ours?

Because what is nourished by the action of this power is a member of the All, which itself has sensation passively; but the perception, which is an intellectual judgement, is individual and has no need to create what already exists, though it would have done so had the power not been previously included, of necessity, in the nature of the All.

(43) For the Will in the Center climbs aloft till it generates the Fire, and in the Fire is the Substance and Essentiality generated. For it is the Spirit thereof, and the End of the Will in the dark Mind, and there can be nothing higher generated in the Anguish than the Fire, for it is the End of Nature, and it generates again the Anguish and the Source, as may be perceived. Now therefore the dark anguishing [aching, or anxious] Mind has not only one Substance, viz. one Being [or Essence] in itself, but many, or else no Quality could be generated; and yet it is truly but one [Being, Essence, or] Substance, and not many.