The last we may figure to ourselves as a revolving circle, or rather a sphere, of a nature to receive light from that third realm, its next higher, in proportion to the light which that itself receives.Thus all begins with the great light, shining self-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan [that of emanation]
this gives forth its brilliance; the later [divine] existents [souls] add their radiation- some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate.These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature.
If every living being were of the character of the All-perfect, self-sufficing, in peril from no outside influence the soul now spoken of as indwelling would not occupy the body; it would infuse life while clinging, entire, within the Supreme.
18.There remains still something to be said on the question whether the soul uses deliberate reason before its descent and again when it has left the body.
Reasoning is for this sphere; it is the act of the soul fallen into perplexity, distracted with cares, diminished in strength: the need of deliberation goes with the less self-sufficing intelligence;craftsmen faced by a difficulty stop to consider; where there is no problem their art works on by its own forthright power.
But if souls in the Supreme operate without reasoning, how can they be called reasoning souls?
One answer might be that they have the power of deliberating to happy issue, should occasion arise: but all is met by repudiating the particular kind of reasoning intended [the earthly and discursive type]; we may represent to ourselves a reasoning that flows uninterruptedly from the Intellectual-Principle in them, an inherent state, an enduring activity, an assertion that is real; in this way they would be users of reason even when in that overworld.We certainly cannot think of them, it seems to me, as employing words when, though they may occupy bodies in the heavenly region, they are essentially in the Intellectual: and very surely the deliberation of doubt and difficulty which they practise here must be unknown to them There; all their act must fall into place by sheer force of their nature; there can be no question of commanding or of taking counsel;they will know, each, what is to be communicated from another, by present consciousness.Even in our own case here, eyes often know what is not spoken; and There all is pure, every being is, as it were, an eye, nothing is concealed or sophisticated, there is no need of speech, everything is seen and known.As for the Celestials [the Daimones] and souls in the air, they may well use speech; for all such are simply Animate [= Beings].
19.Are we to think of the indivisible phase of the soul and the divided as making one thing in a coalescence; or is the indivisible in a place of its own and under conditions of its own, the divisible being a sequent upon it, a separate part of it, as distinct as the reasoning phase is from the unreasoning?
The answer to this question will emerge when we make plain the nature and function to be attributed to each.
The indivisible phase is mentioned [in the passage of Plato]
without further qualification; but not so the divisible; "that soul"we read "which becomes divisible in bodies"- and even this last is presented as becoming partible, not as being so once for all.
"In bodies": we must then, satisfy ourselves as to what form of soul is required to produce life in the corporeal, and what there must be of soul present throughout such a body, such a completed organism.
Now, every sensitive power- by the fact of being sensitive throughout- tends to become a thing of parts: present at every distinct point of sensitiveness, it may be thought of as divided.In the sense, however, that it is present as a whole at every such point, it cannot be said to be wholly divided; it "becomes divisible in body." We may be told that no such partition is implied in any sensations but those of touch; but this is not so; where the participant is body [of itself insensitive and non-transmitting]
that divisibility in the sensitive agent will be a condition of all other sensations, though in less degree than in the case of touch.
Similarly the vegetative function in the soul, with that of growth, indicates divisibility; and, admitting such locations as that of desire at the liver and emotional activity at the heart, we have the same result.It is to be noted, however, as regards these [the less corporeal] sensations, that the body may possibly not experience them as a fact of the conjoint thing but in another mode, as rising within some one of the elements of which it has been participant [as inherent, purely, in some phase of the associated soul]:
reasoning and the act of the intellect, for instance, are not vested in the body; their task is not accomplished by means of the body which in fact is detrimental to any thinking on which it is allowed to intrude.
Thus the indivisible phase of the soul stands distinct from the divisible; they do not form a unity, but, on the contrary, a whole consisting of parts, each part a self-standing thing having its own peculiar virtue.None the less, if that phase which becomes divisible in body holds indivisibility by communication from the superior power, then this one same thing [the soul in body] may be at once indivisible and divisible; it will be, as it were, a blend, a thing made up of its own divisible self with, in addition, the quality that it derives from above itself.