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  "work": {
    "slug": "ennead-4",
    "name": "Ennead IV — On the Soul"
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      "slug": "plotinus-enneads",
      "name": "Enneads",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 3,
    "slug": "3-problems-of-the-soul-1",
    "title": "IV.3 — Problems of the Soul (1)",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 15112,
    "text": "## THIRD TRACTATE\n\n\n#### THIRD TRACTATE.\n\nPROBLEMS OF THE SOUL (1).\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. The soul: what dubious questions concerning it admit of\nsolution, or where we must abide our doubt- with, at least, the gain\nof recognizing the problem that confronts us- this is matter well\nworth attention. On what subject can we more reasonably expend the\ntime required by minute discussion and investigation? Apart from\nmuch else, it is enough that such an enquiry illuminates two grave\nquestions: of what sphere the soul is the principle, and whence the\nsoul itself springs. Moreover, we will be only obeying the ordinance\nof the God who bade us know ourselves.\n\nOur general instinct to seek and learn, our longing to possess\nourselves of whatsoever is lovely in the vision will, in all reason,\nset us enquiring into the nature of the instrument with which we\nsearch.\n\nNow even in the universal Intellect [Divine Mind] there was\nduality, so that we would expect differences of condition in\nthings of\npart: how some things rather than others come to be\nreceptacles of the\ndivine beings will need to be examined; but all this we may leave\naside until we are considering the mode in which soul comes to\noccupy body. For the moment we return to our argument against those\nwho maintain our souls to be offshoots from the soul of the universe\n[parts and an identity modally parted].\n\nOur opponents will probably deny the validity of our arguments\nagainst the theory that the human soul is a mere segment of the\nAll-Soul- the considerations, namely, that it is of identical scope,\nand that it is intellective in the same degree, supposing them,\neven, to admit that equality of intellection.\n\nThey will object that parts must necessarily fall under one\nideal-form with their wholes. And they will adduce Plato as\nexpressing\ntheir view where, in demonstrating that the All is ensouled, he says\n\"As our body is a portion of the body of the All, so our soul is a\nportion of the soul of the All.\" It is admitted on clear\nevidence that\nwe are borne along by the Circuit of the All; we will be told that-\ntaking character and destiny from it, strictly inbound with it- we\nmust derive our souls, also, from what thus bears us up, and that as\nwithin ourselves every part absorbs from our soul so, analogically,\nwe, standing as parts to the universe, absorb from the Soul\nof the All\nas parts of it. They will urge also that the dictum \"The collective\nsoul cares for all the unensouled,\" carries the same implication and\ncould be uttered only in the belief that nothing whatever of later\norigin stands outside the soul of the universe, the only soul there\ncan be there to concern itself with the unensouled.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. To this our first answer is that to place certain things\nunder one identical class- by admitting an identical range of\noperation- is to make them of one common species, and puts an end to\nall mention of part; the reasonable conclusion would be, on the\ncontrary, that there is one identical soul, every separate\nmanifestation being that soul complete.\n\nOur opponents after first admitting the unity go on to make our\nsoul dependent on something else, something in which we have\nno longer\nthe soul of this or that, even of the universe, but a soul\nof nowhere,\na soul belonging neither to the kosmos, nor to anything else, and\nyet vested with all the function inherent to the kosmic soul and to\nthat of every ensouled thing.\n\nThe soul considered as an entirety cannot be a soul of any one\ngiven thing- since it is an Essence [a divine Real-Being]- or, at\nleast, there must be a soul which is not exclusively the soul of any\nparticular thing, and those attached to particulars must so belong\nmerely in some mode of accident.\n\nIn such questions as this it is important to clarify the\nsignificance of \"part.\"\n\nPart, as understood of body- uniform or varied- need not detain\nus; it is enough to indicate that, when part is mentioned in respect\nof things whose members are alike, it refers to mass and not to\nideal-form [specific idea]: take for example, whiteness: the\nwhiteness\nin a portion of milk is not a part of the whiteness of milk in\ngeneral: we have the whiteness of a portion not a portion of\nwhiteness; for whiteness is utterly without magnitude; has nothing\nwhatever to do with quantity.\n\nThat is all we need say with regard to part in material things;\nbut part in the unembodied may be taken in various ways. We may\nthink of it in the sense familiar in numbers, \"two\" a part of the\nstandard \"ten\"- in abstract numbers of course- or as we think of a\nsegment of a circle, or line [abstractly considered], or, again, of\na section or branch of knowledge.\n\nIn the case of the units of reckoning and of geometrical figure,\nexactly as in that of corporeal masses, partition must diminish the\ntotal; the part must be less than the whole; for these are things of\nquantity, and have their being as things of quantity; and- since\nthey are not the ideal-form Quantity- they are subject to\nincrease and\ndecrease.\n\nNow in such a sense as this, part cannot be affirmed of the soul.\n\nThe soul is not a thing of quantity; we are not to\nconceive of the\nAll-Soul as some standard ten with particular souls as its\nconstituent\nunits.\n\nSuch a conception would entail many absurdities:\n\nThe Ten could not be [essentially] a unity [the Soul would be an\naggregation, not a self-standing Real-Being] and, further- unless\nevery one of the single constituents were itself an All-Soul- the\nAll-Soul would be formed of non-souls.\n\nAgain, it is admitted that the particular soul- this \"part of\nthe All-Soul- is of one ideal-form with it, but this does not entail\nthe relation of part to whole, since in objects formed of continuous\nparts there is nothing inevitably making any portion uniform with\nthe total: take, for example, the parts of a circle or square; we\nmay divide it in different ways so as to get our part; a\ntriangle need\nnot be divided into triangles; all sorts of different figures are\npossible: yet an absolute uniformity is admitted to reign throughout\nsoul.\n\nIn a line, no doubt, the part is inevitably a line; but even\nhere there is a necessary difference in size; and if, in the case of\nthe soul we similarly called upon magnitude as the\ndistinction between\nconstituents and collective soul, then soul, thus classed by\nmagnitude\nbecomes quantitative, and is simply body.\n\nBut it is admitted that all souls are alike and are entireties;\nclearly, soul is not subject to part in the sense in which\nmagnitudes are: our opponents themselves would not consent to the\nnotion of the All-Soul being whittled down into fragments,\nyet this is\nwhat they would be doing, annulling the All-Soul- if any collective\nsoul existed at all- making it a mere piece of terminology, thinking\nof it like wine separated into many portions, each portion, in its\njar, being described as a portion of the total thing, wine.\n\nNext there is the conception of the individual soul as a part in\nthe sense in which we speak of some single proposition as a part of\nthe science entire.\n\nThe theorem is separate, but the science stands as one undivided\nthing, the expression and summed efficiency [energy] of each\nconstituent notion: this is partition without severance; each item\npotentially includes the whole science, which itself remains an\nunbroken total.\n\nIs this the appropriate parallel?\n\nNo; in such a relationship the All-Soul, of which the particular\nsouls are to be a part, would not be the soul of any definite thing,\nbut an entity standing aloof; that means that it would not\neven be the\nsoul of the Kosmos; it would, in fact, be, itself, one of those\npartial souls; thus all alike would be partial and of one\nnature; and,\nat that, there would be no reason for making any such distinction.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. Is it a question of part in the sense that, taking one living\nbeing, the soul in a finger might be called a part of the\nsoul entire?\n\nThis would carry the alternative that either there is no soul\noutside of body, or that- no soul being within body- the thing\ndescribed as the soul of the universe is, none the less, outside the\nbody of the universe. That is a point to be investigated, but for\nthe present we must consider what kind of soul this parallel would\ngive us.\n\nIf the particular soul is a part of the All-Soul only in\nthe sense\nthat this bestows itself upon all living things of the\npartial sphere,\nsuch a self-bestowal does not imply division; on the contrary, it is\nthe identical soul that is present everywhere, the one\ncomplete thing,\nmulti-present at the one moment: there is no longer question\nof a soul\nthat is a part against a soul that is an all- especially where an\nidentical power is present. Even difference of function, as in eyes\nand ears, cannot warrant the assertion of distinct parts concerned\nin each separate act- with other parts again making allotment of\nfaculty- all is met by the notion of one identical thing, but a\nthing in which a distinct power operates in each separate function.\nAll the powers are present either in seeing or in hearing; the\ndifference in impression received is due to the difference in the\norgans concerned; all the varying impressions are our various\nresponses to Ideal-forms that can be taken in a variety of modes.\n\nA further proof [of the unity of Soul] is that perception\ndemands a common gathering place; every organ has its distinct\nfunction, and is competent only upon its own material, and must\ninterpret each several experience in its own fashion; the judgement\nupon these impressions must, then, be vested in some one principle,\na judge informed upon all that is said and done.\n\nBut again: \"Everywhere, Unity\": in the variety of functions if\neach \"part of the soul\" were as distinct as are the entrant\nsensations, none of those parts could have knowledge; awareness\nwould belong only to that judging faculty- or, if local, every such\nact of awareness would stand quite unrelated to any other. But since\nthe soul is a rational soul, by the very same title by which it is\nan All-Soul, and is called the rational soul, in the sense of being\na whole [and so not merely \"reasoning locally\"], then what is\nthought of as a part must in reality be no part but the\nidentity of an\nunparted thing.\n\n\n## Section 4\n\n\n##### Section 4\n\n4. But if this is the true account of the unity of soul, we must\nbe able to meet the problems that ensue: firstly, the difficulty of\none thing being present at the same moment in all things; and,\nsecondly, the difficulty of soul in body as against soul not\nembodied.\n\nWe might be led to think that all soul must always inhabit body;\nthis would seem especially plausible in the case of the soul of the\nuniverse, not thought of as ever leaving its body as the human soul\ndoes: there exists, no doubt, an opinion that even the human soul,\nwhile it must leave the body, cannot become an utterly disembodied\nthing; but assuming its complete disembodiment, how comes it that\nthe human soul can go free of the body but the All-Soul not, though\nthey are one and the same?\n\nThere is no such difficulty in the case of the\nIntellectual-Principle; by the primal differentiation, this\nseparates,\nno doubt, into partial things of widely varying nature, but eternal\nunity is secured by virtue of the eternal identity of that\nEssence: it\nis not so easy to explain how, in the case of the soul described as\nseparate among bodies, such differentiated souls can remain\none thing.\n\nA possible solution may be offered:\n\nThe unit soul holds aloof, not actually falling into body; the\ndifferentiated souls- the All-Soul, with the others- issue from the\nunity while still constituting, within certain limits, an\nassociation.\nThey are one soul by the fact that they do not belong unreservedly\nto any particular being; they meet, so to speak, fringe to fringe;\nthey strike out here and there, but are held together at the source\nmuch as light is a divided thing upon earth, shining in this house,\nand that, and yet remains uninterruptedly one identical substance.\n\nThe All-Soul would always remain above, since essentially it has\nnothing to do with descent or with the lower, or with any tendency\ntowards this sphere: the other souls would become ours [become\n\"partial,\" individual in us] because their lot is cast for this\nsphere, and because they are solicited by a thing [the body] which\ninvites their care.\n\nThe one- the lowest soul in the to the All-Soul- would correspond\nto that in some great growth, silently, unlaboriously conducting the\nwhole; our own lowest soul might be compared to the insect life in\nsome rotted part of the growth- for this is the ratio of the animated\nbody to the universe- while the other soul in us, of one ideal nature\nwith the higher parts of the All-Soul, may be imaged as the gardener\nconcerned about the insects lodged in the tree and anxiously working\nto amend what is wrong; or we may contrast a healthy man living with\nthe healthy and, by his thought or by his act, lending himself to the\nservice of those about him, with, on the other side, a sick\nman intent\nupon his own care and cure, and so living for the body, body-bound.\n\n\n## Section 5\n\n\n##### Section 5\n\n5. But what place is left for the particular souls,\nyours and mine\nand another's?\n\nMay we suppose the Soul to be appropriated on the lower ranges\nto some individual, but to belong on the higher to that other sphere?\n\nAt this there would be a Socrates as long as Socrates' soul\nremained in body; but Socrates ceases to exist, precisely on\nattainment of the highest.\n\nNow nothing of Real Being is ever annulled.\n\nIn the Supreme, the Intellectual-Principles are not annulled,\nfor in their differentiation there is no bodily partition, no\npassing of each separate phase into a distinct unity; every\nsuch phase\nremains in full possession of that identical being. It is exactly so\nwith the souls.\n\nBy their succession they are linked to the several\nIntellectual-Principles, for they are the expression, the Logos, of\nthe Intellectual-Principles, of which they are the unfolding;\nbrevity has opened out to multiplicity; by that point of their being\nwhich least belongs to the partial order, they are attached each to\nits own Intellectual original: they have already chosen the way of\ndivision; but to the extreme they cannot go; thus they keep, at\nonce, identification and difference; each soul is permanently a\nunity [a self] and yet all are, in their total, one being.\n\nThus the gist of the matter is established: one soul the\nsource of\nall; those others, as a many founded in that one, are, on the\nanalogy of the Intellectual-Principle, at once divided and\nundivided; that Soul which abides in the Supreme is the one\nexpression\nor Logos of the Intellectual-Principle, and from it spring other\nReason-Principles, partial but immaterial, exactly as in the\ndifferentiation of the Supreme.\n\n\n## Section 6\n\n\n##### Section 6\n\n6. But how comes it that while the All-Soul has produced\na kosmos,\nthe soul of the particular has not, though it is of the one\nideal Kind\nand contains, it too, all things in itself?\n\nWe have indicated that a thing may enter and dwell at the same\ntime in various places; this ought to be explained, and the enquiry\nwould show how an identity resident simultaneously here and\nthere may,\nin its separate appearances, act or react- or both- after distinct\nmodes; but the matter deserves to be examined in a special\ndiscussion.\n\nTo return, then: how and why has the All-Soul produced a kosmos,\nwhile the particular souls simply administer some one part of it?\n\nIn the first place, we are not surprised when men of identical\nknowledge differ greatly in effective power.\n\nBut the reason, we will be asked.\n\nThe answer might be that there is an even greater\ndifference among\nthese souls, the one never having fallen away from the All-Soul, but\ndwelling within it and assuming body therein, while the others\nreceived their allotted spheres when the body was already in\nexistence, when their sister soul was already in rule and,\nas it were,\nhad already prepared habitations for them. Again, the reason may be\nthat the one [the creative All-Soul] looks towards the universal\nIntellectual-Principle [the exemplar of all that can be], while the\nothers are more occupied with the Intellectual within\nthemselves, that\nwhich is already of the sphere of part; perhaps, too, these\nalso could\nhave created, but that they were anticipated by that originator- the\nwork accomplished before them- an impediment inevitable\nwhichsoever of\nthe souls were first to operate.\n\nBut it is safer to account for the creative act by nearer\nconnection with the over-world; the souls whose tendency is\nexercised within the Supreme have the greater power; immune in that\npure seat they create securely; for the greater power takes the\nleast hurt from the material within which it operates; and this\npower remains enduringly attached to the over-world: it creates,\ntherefore, self gathered and the created things gather round it; the\nother souls, on the contrary, themselves go forth; that can mean\nonly that they have deserted towards the abyss; a main phase in them\nis drawn downward and pulls them with it in the desire towards the\nlower.\n\nThe \"secondary and tertiary souls,\" of which we hear, must be\nunderstood in the sense of closer or remoter position: it is much as\nin ourselves the relation to the Supreme is not identical\nfrom soul to\nsoul; some of us are capable of becoming Uniate, others of striving\nand almost attaining, while a third rank is much less apt; it is a\nmatter of the degree or powers of the soul by which our expression\nis determined- the first degree dominant in the one person, the\nsecond, the third [the merely animal life] in others while,\nstill, all\nof us contain all the powers.\n\n\n## Section 7\n\n\n##### Section 7\n\n7. So far, so good: but what of the passage in the Philebus\ntaken to imply that the other souls are parts of the All-Soul?\n\nThe statement there made does not bear the meaning read into it;\nit expresses only, what the author was then concerned with, that the\nheavens are ensouled- a teaching which he maintains in the\nobservation\nthat it is preposterous to make the heavens soulless when we, who\ncontain a part of the body of the All, have a soul; how, he asks,\ncould there be soul in the part and none in the total.\n\nHe makes his teaching quite clear in the Timaeus, where he shows\nus the other souls brought into existence after the All-Soul, but\ncompounded from the same mixing bowl\"; secondary and\ntertiary are duly\nmarked off from the primal but every form of soul is presented as\nbeing of identical ideal-nature with the All-Soul.\n\nAs for saying of the Phaedrus. \"All that is soul cares for all\nthat is soulless,\" this simply tells us that the corporeal\nkind cannot\nbe controlled- fashioned, set in place or brought into being- by\nanything but the Soul. And we cannot think that there is one soul\nwhose nature includes this power and another without it. \"The\nperfect soul, that of the All,\" we read, \"going its lofty journey,\noperates upon the kosmos not by sinking into it, but, as it were, by\nbrooding over it\"; and \"every perfect soul exercises this\ngovernance\";\nhe distinguishes the other, the soul in this sphere as \"the soul\nwhen its wing is broken.\"\n\nAs for our souls being entrained in the kosmic circuit,\nand taking\ncharacter and condition thence; this is no indication that they are\nparts: soul-nature may very well take some tincture from even the\nqualities of place, from water and from air; residence in\nthis city or\nin that, and the varying make-up of the body may have their\ninfluence [upon our human souls which, yet, are no parts of place or\nof body].\n\nWe have always admitted that as members of the universe we take\nover something from the All-Soul; we do not deny the influence of\nthe Kosmic Circuit; but against all this we oppose another soul in\nus [the Intellectual as distinguished from the merely vitalizing]\nproven to be distinct by that power of opposition.\n\nAs for our being begotten children of the kosmos, we answer that\nin motherhood the entrant soul is distinct, is not the mother's.\n\n\n## Section 8\n\n\n##### Section 8\n\n8. These considerations, amounting to the settlement of the\nquestion, are not countered by the phenomenon of sympathy; the\nresponse between soul and soul is due to the mere fact that\nall spring\nfrom that self-same soul [the next to Divine Mind] from which\nsprings the Soul of the All.\n\nWe have already stated that the one soul is also multiple; and\nwe have dealt with the different forms of relationship between part\nand whole: we have investigated the different degrees existing\nwithin soul; we may now add, briefly, that differences might be\ninduced, also, by the bodies with which the soul has to do, and,\neven more, by the character and mental operations carried over from\nthe conduct of the previous lives. \"The life-choice made by\na soul has\na correspondence\"- we read- \"with its former lives.\"\n\nAs regards the nature of soul in general, the differences have\nbeen defined in the passage in which we mentioned the secondary and\ntertiary orders and laid down that, while all souls are\nall-comprehensive, each ranks according to its operative phase- one\nbecoming Uniate in the achieved fact, another in knowledge,\nanother in\ndesire, according to the distinct orientation by which each is, or\ntends to become, what it looks upon. The very fulfillment and\nperfectionment attainable by souls cannot but be different.\n\nBut, if in the total the organization in which they have their\nbeing is compact of variety- as it must be since every\nReason-Principle is a unity of multiplicity and variety, and may be\nthought of as a psychic animated organism having many shapes at its\ncommand- if this is so and all constitutes a system in which being\nis not cut adrift from being, if there is nothing chance- borne\namong beings as there is none even in bodily organisms, then it\nfollows that Number must enter into the scheme; for, once\nagain, Being\nmust be stable; the members of the Intellectual must possess\nidentity,\neach numerically one; this is the condition of individuality. Where,\nas in bodily masses, the Idea is not essentially native, and the\nindividuality is therefore in flux, existence under ideal form can\nrise only out of imitation of the Authentic Existences;\nthese last, on\nthe contrary, not rising out of any such conjunction [as the duality\nof Idea and dead Matter] have their being in that which is\nnumerically\none, that which was from the beginning, and neither becomes what it\nhas not been nor can cease to be what it is.\n\nEven supposing Real-Beings [such as soul] to be produced by some\nother principle, they are certainly not made from Matter; or, if\nthey were, the creating principle must infuse into them, from within\nitself, something of the nature of Real-Being; but, at this, it\nwould itself suffer change, as it created more or less. And, after\nall, why should it thus produce at any given moment rather\nthan remain\nfor ever stationary?\n\nMoreover the produced total, variable from more to less,\ncould not\nbe an eternal: yet the soul, it stands agreed, is eternal.\n\nBut what becomes of the soul's infinity if it is thus fixed?\n\nThe infinity is a matter of power: there is question, not of the\nsoul's being divisible into an infinite number of parts, but of an\ninfinite possible effectiveness: it is infinity in the sense in\nwhich the Supreme God, also, is free of all bound.\n\nThis means that it is no external limit that defines the\nindividual being or the extension of souls any more than of God; on\nthe contrary each in right of its own power is all that it chooses\nto be: and we are not to think of it as going forth from itself\n[losing its unity by any partition]: the fact is simply that the\nelement within it, which is apt to entrance into body, has the power\nof immediate projection any whither: the soul is certainly not\nwrenched asunder by its presence at once in foot and in finger. Its\npresence in the All is similarly unbroken; over its entire range it\nexists in every several part of everything having even vegetal life,\neven in a part cut off from the main; in any possible\nsegment it is as\nit is at its source. For the body of the All is a unit, and soul is\neverywhere present to it as to one thing.\n\nWhen some animal rots and a multitude of others spring from it,\nthe Life-Principle now present is not the particular soul that was\nin the larger body; that body has ceased to be receptive of soul, or\nthere would have been no death; what happens is that\nwhatsoever in the\nproduct of the decay is apt material for animal existence of one\nkind or another becomes ensouled by the fact that soul is nowhere\nlacking, though a recipient of soul may be. This new ensouling does\nnot mean, however, an increase in the number of souls: all\ndepend from\nthe one or, rather, all remains one: it is as with ourselves; some\nelements are shed, others grow in their place; the soul abandons the\ndiscarded and flows into the newcoming as long as the one soul of\nthe man holds its ground; in the All the one soul holds its\nground for\never; its distinct contents now retain soul and now reject\nit, but the\ntotal of spiritual beings is unaffected.\n\n\n## Section 9\n\n\n##### Section 9\n\n9. But we must examine how soul comes to inhabit the body- the\nmanner and the process- a question certainly of no minor interest.\n\nThe entry of soul into body takes place under two forms.\n\nFirstly, there is the entry- metensomatosis- of a soul present\nin body by change from one [wholly material] frame to another or the\nentry- not known as metensomatosis, since the nature of the earlier\nhabitacle is not certainly definable- of a soul leaving an aerial\nor fiery body for one of earth.\n\nSecondly, there is the entry from the wholly bodiless into any\nkind of body; this is the earliest form of any dealing between body\nand soul, and this entry especially demands investigation.\n\nWhat then can be thought to have happened when soul,\nutterly clean\nfrom body, first comes into commerce with the bodily nature?\n\nIt is reasonable, necessary even, to begin with the Soul of the\nAll. Notice that if we are to explain and to be clear, we are\nobliged to use such words as \"entry\" and \"ensoulment,\" though never\nwas this All unensouled, never did body subsist with soul away,\nnever was there Matter unelaborate; we separate, the better to\nunderstand; there is nothing illegitimate in the verbal and mental\nsundering of things which must in fact be co-existent.\n\nThe true doctrine may be stated as follows:\n\nIn the absence of body, soul could not have gone forth, since\nthere is no other place to which its nature would allow it\nto descend.\nSince go forth it must, it will generate a place for itself; at once\nbody, also, exists.\n\nWhile the Soul [as an eternal, a Divine Being] is at\nrest- in rest\nfirmly based on Repose, the Absolute- yet, as we may put it,\nthat huge\nillumination of the Supreme pouring outwards comes at last to the\nextreme bourne of its light and dwindles to darkness; this darkness,\nnow lying there beneath, the soul sees and by seeing brings to\nshape; for in the law of things this ultimate depth,\nneighbouring with\nsoul, may not go void of whatsoever degree of that\nReason-Principle it\ncan absorb, the dimmed reason of reality at its faintest.\n\nImagine that a stately and varied mansion has been built; it has\nnever been abandoned by its Architect, who, yet, is not tied down to\nit; he has judged it worthy in all its length and breadth of all the\ncare that can serve to its Being- as far as it can share in Being-\nor to its beauty, but a care without burden to its director,\nwho never\ndescends, but presides over it from above: this gives the degree in\nwhich the kosmos is ensouled, not by a soul belonging to it, but by\none present to it; it is mastered not master; not possessor but\npossessed. The soul bears it up, and it lies within, no\nfragment of it\nunsharing.\n\nThe kosmos is like a net which takes all its life, as far as\never it stretches, from being wet in the water, and has no act of\nits own; the sea rolls away and the net with it, precisely\nto the full\nof its scope, for no mesh of it can strain beyond its set place: the\nsoul is of so far-reaching a nature- a thing unbounded- as to\nembrace the entire body of the All in the one extension; so\nfar as the\nuniverse extends, there soul is; and if the universe had no\nexistence,\nthe extent of soul would be the same; it is eternally what it is.\nThe universe spreads as broad as the presence of soul; the bound of\nits expansion is the point at which, in its downward egression from\nthe Supreme, it still has soul to bind it in one: it is a shadow as\nbroad as the Reason-Principle proceeding from soul; and that\nReason-Principle is of scope to generate a kosmic bulk as vast as\nlay in the purposes of the Idea [the Divine forming power] which it\nconveys.\n\n\n## Section 10\n\n\n##### Section 10\n\n10. In view of all this we must now work back from the items to\nthe unit, and consider the entire scheme as one enduring thing.\n\nWe ascend from air, light, sun- or, moon and light and sun- in\ndetail, to these things as constituting a total- though a total of\ndegrees, primary, secondary, tertiary. Thence we come to the\n[kosmic] Soul, always the one undiscriminated entity. At\nthis point in\nour survey we have before us the over-world and all that follows\nupon it. That suite [the lower and material world] we take to be the\nvery last effect that has penetrated to its furthest reach.\n\nOur knowledge of the first is gained from the ultimate of all,\nfrom the very shadow cast by the fire, because this ultimate [the\nmaterial world] itself receives its share of the general light,\nsomething of the nature of the Forming-Idea hovering over the\noutcast that at first lay in blank obscurity. It is brought under\nthe scheme of reason by the efficacy of soul whose entire extension\nlatently holds this rationalizing power. As we know, the\nReason-Principles carried in animal seed fashion and shape living\nbeings into so many universes in the small. For whatsoever touches\nsoul is moulded to the nature of soul's own Real-Being.\n\nWe are not to think that the Soul acts upon the object by\nconformity to any external judgement; there is no pause for\nwilling or\nplanning: any such procedure would not be an act of sheer nature,\nbut one of applied art: but art is of later origin than\nsoul; it is an\nimitator, producing dim and feeble copies- toys, things of no great\nworth- and it is dependent upon all sorts of mechanism by which\nalone its images can be produced. The soul, on the contrary, is\nsovereign over material things by might of Real-Being; their quality\nis determined by its lead, and those elementary things cannot stand\nagainst its will. On the later level, things are hindered one by the\nother, and thus often fall short of the characteristic shape at\nwhich their unextended Reason-Principle must be aiming; in that\nother world [under the soul but above the material] the entire shape\n[as well as the idea] comes from soul, and all that is produced\ntakes and keeps its appointed place in a unity, so that the\nengendered\nthing, without labour as without clash, becomes all that it\nshould be.\nIn that world the soul has elaborated its creation, the images of\nthe gods, dwellings for men, each existing to some peculiar purpose.\n\nSoul could produce none but the things which truly represent its\npowers: fire produces warmth; another source produces cold;\nsoul has a\ndouble efficacy, its act within itself, and its act from within\noutwards towards the new production.\n\nIn soulless entities, the outgo [natural to everything] remains\ndormant, and any efficiency they have is to bring to their own\nlikeness whatever is amenable to their act. All existence has this\ntendency to bring other things to likeness; but the soul has the\ndistinction of possessing at once an action of conscious attention\nwithin itself, and an action towards the outer. It has thus the\nfunction of giving life to all that does not live by prior right,\nand the life it gives is commensurate with its own; that is to say,\nliving in reason, it communicates reason to the body- an image of\nthe reason within itself, just as the life given to the body is an\nimage of Real-Being- and it bestows, also, upon that material the\nappropriate shapes of which it contains the Reason-Forms.\n\nThe content of the creative soul includes the Ideal\nshapes of gods\nand of all else: and hence it is that the kosmos contains all.\n\n\n## Section 11\n\n\n##### Section 11\n\n11. I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to\nsecure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and\nstatues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived\nthat, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be\nsecured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is\nelaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or\nphase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it,\nand serving\nlike a mirror to catch an image of it.\n\nIt belongs to the nature of the All to make its entire content\nreproduce, most felicitously, the Reason-Principles in which it\nparticipates; every particular thing is the image within matter of a\nReason-Principle which itself images a pre-material\nReason-Principle: thus every particular entity is linked to that\nDivine Being in whose likeness it is made, the divine principle\nwhich the soul contemplated and contained in the act of each\ncreation.\nSuch mediation and representation there must have been since it was\nequally impossible for the created to be without share in\nthe Supreme,\nand for the Supreme to descend into the created.\n\nThe Intellectual-Principle in the Supreme has ever been\nthe sun of\nthat sphere- let us accept that as the type of the creative\nLogos- and\nimmediately upon it follows the Soul depending from it, stationary\nSoul from stationary Intelligence. But the Soul borders also upon\nthe sun of this sphere, and it becomes the medium by which all is\nlinked to the overworld; it plays the part of an interpreter\nbetween what emanates from that sphere down to this lower universe,\nand what rises- as far as, through soul, anything can- from the\nlower to the highest.\n\nNothing, in fact, is far away from anything; things are not\nremote: there is, no doubt, the aloofness of difference and\nof mingled\nnatures as against the unmingled; but selfhood has nothing to do\nwith spatial position, and in unity itself there may still be\ndistinction.\n\nThese Beings [the Reason-Principles of this sphere] are divine\nin virtue of cleaving to the Supreme, because, by the medium of the\nSoul thought of as descending they remain linked with the\nPrimal Soul,\nand through it are veritably what they are called and possess the\nvision of the Intellectual Principle, the single object of\ncontemplation to that soul in which they have their being.\n\n\n## Section 12\n\n\n##### Section 12\n\n12. The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of\nDionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward\nfrom the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin,\nfrom the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing\nthe Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though\nthey have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for\never above the heavens.\n\nTheir initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of\ntheirs is\ncompelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which\nthey have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their\ntoils and\nmakes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives\nrespite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may\ncome to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned\nwith earthly\nneeds, has ever dwelt.\n\nFor the container of the total of things must be a\nself-sufficing entity and remain so: in its periods it is wrought\nout to purpose under its Reason-Principles which are\nperdurably valid;\nby these periods it reverts unfailingly, in the measured stages of\ndefined life-duration, to its established character; it is\nleading the\nthings of this realm to be of one voice and plan with the\nSupreme. And\nthus the kosmic content is carried forward to its purpose,\neverything in its co-ordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle\noperating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every\npurpose of the system.\n\nWe may know this also by the concordance of the Souls with the\nordered scheme of the kosmos; they are not independent, but, by\ntheir descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand\nhenceforth in harmonious association with kosmic circuit- to the\nextent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their\nchoosing and\nrefusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars- and out of\nthis concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music,\nthe harmony, by which all is described is the best witness to this\ntruth.\n\nSuch a consonance can have been procured in one only way:\n\nThe All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an\nexpression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and\nits stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement\nof the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest,\nsometimes\nin the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our\nearth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and\ncould never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high\nplace, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul.\nSoul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled\nupon the Idea\nuttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order\nin the movement of the lower realm, one phase [the World-Soul]\nmaintaining the unvarying march [of the kosmic circuit] the\nother [the\nsoul of the Individual] adopting itself to times and season.\n\nThe depth of the descent, also, will differ- sometimes lower,\nsometimes less low- and this even in its entry into any given Kind:\nall that is fixed is that each several soul descends to a recipient\nindicated by affinity of condition; it moves towards the thing which\nit There resembled, and enters, accordingly, into the body of man or\nanimal.\n\n\n## Section 13\n\n\n##### Section 13\n\n13. The Ineluctable, the Kosmic Law is, thus, rooted in a\nnatural principle under which each several entity is overruled to\ngo, duly and in order, towards that place and Kind to which it\ncharacteristically tends, that is towards the image of its primal\nchoice and constitution.\n\nIn that archetypal world every form of soul is near to the image\n[the thing in the world of copy] to which its individual\nconstitution inclines it; there is therefore no need of a sender or\nleader acting at the right moment to bring it at the right moment\nwhether into body or into a definitely appropriate body: of its own\nmotion it descends at the precisely true time and enters where it\nmust. To every Soul its own hour; when that strikes it descends and\nenters the body suitable to it as at the cry of a herald; thus all\nis set stirring and advancing as by a magician's power or by some\nmighty traction; it is much as, in any living thing, the soul itself\neffects the fulfillment of the natural career, stirring and bringing\nforth, in due season, every element- beard, horn, and all the\nsuccessive stages of tendency and of output- or, as it leads a tree\nthrough its normal course within set periods.\n\nThe Souls go forth neither under compulsion nor of freewill; or,\nat least, freedom, here, is not to be regarded as action upon\npreference; it is more like such a leap of the nature as moves men\nto the instinctive desire of sexual union, or, in the case\nof some, to\nfine conduct; the motive lies elsewhere than in the reason: like is\ndestined unfailingly to like, and each moves hither or thither at\nits fixed moment.\n\nEven the Intellectual-Principle, which is before all the kosmos,\nhas, it also, its destiny, that of abiding intact above, and\nof giving\ndownwards: what it sends down is the particular whose existence is\nimplied in the law of the universal; for the universal broods\nclosely over the particular; it is not from without that the law\nderives the power by which it is executed; on the contrary the law\nis given in the entities upon whom it falls; these bear it about\nwith them. Let but the moment arrive, and what it decrees will be\nbrought to act by those beings in whom it resides; they fulfil it\nbecause they contain it; it prevails because it is within them; it\nbecomes like a heavy burden, and sets up in them a painful longing\nto enter the realm to which they are bidden from within.\n\n\n## Section 14\n\n\n##### Section 14\n\n14. Thus it comes about that this kosmos, lit with many lights,\ngleaming in its souls, receives still further graces, gifts from\nhere and from there, from the gods of the Supreme, and from those\nother Intellectual-Principles whose nature it is to ensoul. This is\nprobably the secret of the myth in which, after Prometheus\nhad moulded\nwoman, the other gods heaped gifts upon her, Hephaistos \"blending\nthe clay with moisture and bestowing the human voice and the\nform of a\ngoddess\"; Aphrodite bringing her gifts, and the Graces theirs, and\nother gods other gifts, and finally calling her by the name\n[Pandora] which tells of gift and of all giving- for all have added\nsomething to this formation brought to being by a Promethean, a\nfore-thinking power. As for the rejection of Prometheus' gift by\nafter-thought, Epimetheus, what can this signify but that the wiser\nchoice is to remain in the Intellectual realm? Pandora's creator is\nfettered, to signify that he is in some sense held by his own\ncreation; such a fettering is external and the release by Hercules\ntells that there is power in Prometheus, so that he need not\nremain in\nbonds.\n\nTake the myth as we may, it is certainly such an account of the\nbestowal of gifts upon the kosmos as harmonizes with our explanation\nof the universal system.\n\n\n## Section 15\n\n\n##### Section 15\n\n15. The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend\nfirst to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes\nat once the\nmedium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude\n[physical extension] they proceed to bodies progressively\nmore earthy.\nSome even plunge from heaven to the very lowest of corporeal forms;\nothers pass, stage by stage, too feeble to lift towards the\nhigher the\nburden they carry, weighed downwards by their heaviness and\nforgetfulness.\n\nAs for the differences among them, these are due to variation in\nthe bodies entered, or to the accidents of life, or to upbringing,\nor to inherent peculiarities of temperament, or to all these\ninfluences together, or to specific combinations of them.\n\nThen again some have fallen unreservedly into the power of the\ndestiny ruling here: some yielding betimes are betimes too their\nown: there are those who, while they accept what must be borne, have\nthe strength of self-mastery in all that is left to their own act;\nthey have given themselves to another dispensation: they live by the\ncode of the aggregate of beings, the code which is woven out of the\nReason-Principles and all the other causes ruling in the kosmos, out\nof soul-movements and out of laws springing in the Supreme; a code,\ntherefore, consonant with those higher existences, founded upon\nthem, linking their sequents back to them, keeping unshakeably true\nall that is capable of holding itself set towards the divine nature,\nand leading round by all appropriate means whatsoever is less\nnatively apt.\n\nIn fine all diversity of condition in the lower spheres is\ndetermined by the descendent beings themselves.\n\n\n## Section 16\n\n\n##### Section 16\n\n16. The punishment justly overtaking the wicked must therefore\nbe ascribed to the kosmic order which leads all in\naccordance with the\nright.\n\nBut what of chastisements, poverty, illness, falling\nupon the good\noutside of all justice? These events, we will be told, are equally\ninterwoven into the world order and fall under prediction, and must\nconsequently have a cause in the general reason: are they\ntherefore to\nbe charged to past misdoing?\n\nNo: such misfortunes do not answer to reasons established in the\nnature of things; they are not laid up in the master-facts of the\nuniverse, but were merely accidental sequents: a house falls, and\nanyone that chances to be underneath is killed, no matter\nwhat sort of\nman he be: two objects are moving in perfect order- or one if you\nlike- but anything getting in the way is wounded or trampled down.\nOr we may reason that the undeserved stroke can be no evil to the\nsufferer in view of the beneficent interweaving of the All or again,\nno doubt, that nothing is unjust that finds justification in a past\nhistory.\n\nWe may not think of some things being fitted into a system with\nothers abandoned to the capricious; if things must happen by\ncause, by\nnatural sequences, under one Reason-Principle and a single\nset scheme,\nwe must admit that the minor equally with the major is fitted into\nthat order and pattern.\n\nWrong-doing from man to man is wrong in the doer and must be\nimputed, but, as belonging to the established order of the\nuniverse is\nnot a wrong even as regards the innocent sufferer; it is a thing\nthat had to be, and, if the sufferer is good, the issue is to his\ngain. For we cannot think that this ordered combination proceeds\nwithout God and justice; we must take it to be precise in the\ndistribution of due, while, yet, the reasons of things elude us, and\nto our ignorance the scheme presents matter of censure.\n\n\n## Section 17\n\n\n##### Section 17\n\n17. Various considerations explain why the Souls going forth\nfrom the Intellectual proceed first to the heavenly regions. The\nheavens, as the noblest portion of sensible space, would border with\nthe least exalted of the Intellectual, and will, therefore, be first\nensouled first to participate as most apt; while what is of earth is\nat the very extremity of progression, least endowed towards\nparticipation, remotest from the unembodied.\n\nAll the souls, then, shine down upon the heavens and spend there\nthe main of themselves and the best; only their lower phases\nilluminate the lower realms; and those souls which descend deepest\nshow their light furthest down- not themselves the better for the\ndepth to which they have penetrated.\n\nThere is, we may put it, something that is centre; about it, a\ncircle of light shed from it; round centre and first circle alike,\nanother circle, light from light; outside that again, not another\ncircle of light but one which, lacking light of its own, must borrow.\n\nThe last we may figure to ourselves as a revolving circle, or\nrather a sphere, of a nature to receive light from that third realm,\nits next higher, in proportion to the light which that itself\nreceives. Thus all begins with the great light, shining\nself-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan [that of\nemanation]\nthis gives forth its brilliance; the later [divine] existents\n[souls] add their radiation- some of them remaining above,\nwhile there\nare some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour\nof the object they illuminate. These last find that their\ncharges need\nmore and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so\nintent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never\nthinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with\nthe vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their\ncharges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are\nfettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for\nthe realm of Nature.\n\nIf every living being were of the character of the All-perfect,\nself-sufficing, in peril from no outside influence the soul\nnow spoken\nof as indwelling would not occupy the body; it would infuse\nlife while\nclinging, entire, within the Supreme.\n\n\n## Section 18\n\n\n##### Section 18\n\n18. There remains still something to be said on the question\nwhether the soul uses deliberate reason before its descent and again\nwhen it has left the body.\n\nReasoning is for this sphere; it is the act of the soul fallen\ninto perplexity, distracted with cares, diminished in strength: the\nneed of deliberation goes with the less self-sufficing intelligence;\ncraftsmen faced by a difficulty stop to consider; where there is no\nproblem their art works on by its own forthright power.\n\nBut if souls in the Supreme operate without reasoning, how can\nthey be called reasoning souls?\n\nOne answer might be that they have the power of deliberating to\nhappy issue, should occasion arise: but all is met by repudiating\nthe particular kind of reasoning intended [the earthly and\ndiscursive type]; we may represent to ourselves a reasoning\nthat flows\nuninterruptedly from the Intellectual-Principle in them, an inherent\nstate, an enduring activity, an assertion that is real; in this way\nthey would be users of reason even when in that overworld. We\ncertainly cannot think of them, it seems to me, as employing words\nwhen, though they may occupy bodies in the heavenly region, they are\nessentially in the Intellectual: and very surely the deliberation of\ndoubt and difficulty which they practise here must be unknown to\nthem There; all their act must fall into place by sheer\nforce of their\nnature; there can be no question of commanding or of taking counsel;\nthey will know, each, what is to be communicated from another, by\npresent consciousness. Even in our own case here, eyes often\nknow what\nis not spoken; and There all is pure, every being is, as it were, an\neye, nothing is concealed or sophisticated, there is no need of\nspeech, everything is seen and known. As for the Celestials [the\nDaimones] and souls in the air, they may well use speech; for all\nsuch are simply Animate [= Beings].\n\n\n## Section 19\n\n\n##### Section 19\n\n19. Are we to think of the indivisible phase of the soul and the\ndivided as making one thing in a coalescence; or is the\nindivisible in\na place of its own and under conditions of its own, the divisible\nbeing a sequent upon it, a separate part of it, as distinct as the\nreasoning phase is from the unreasoning?\n\nThe answer to this question will emerge when we make plain the\nnature and function to be attributed to each.\n\nThe indivisible phase is mentioned [in the passage of Plato]\nwithout further qualification; but not so the divisible; \"that soul\"\nwe read \"which becomes divisible in bodies\"- and even this last is\npresented as becoming partible, not as being so once for all.\n\n\"In bodies\": we must then, satisfy ourselves as to what form of\nsoul is required to produce life in the corporeal, and what\nthere must\nbe of soul present throughout such a body, such a completed organism.\n\nNow, every sensitive power- by the fact of being sensitive\nthroughout- tends to become a thing of parts: present at every\ndistinct point of sensitiveness, it may be thought of as divided. In\nthe sense, however, that it is present as a whole at every\nsuch point,\nit cannot be said to be wholly divided; it \"becomes divisible in\nbody.\" We may be told that no such partition is implied in any\nsensations but those of touch; but this is not so; where the\nparticipant is body [of itself insensitive and non-transmitting]\nthat divisibility in the sensitive agent will be a condition of all\nother sensations, though in less degree than in the case of touch.\nSimilarly the vegetative function in the soul, with that of growth,\nindicates divisibility; and, admitting such locations as that of\ndesire at the liver and emotional activity at the heart, we have the\nsame result. It is to be noted, however, as regards these [the less\ncorporeal] sensations, that the body may possibly not experience\nthem as a fact of the conjoint thing but in another mode, as rising\nwithin some one of the elements of which it has been participant\n[as inherent, purely, in some phase of the associated soul]:\nreasoning and the act of the intellect, for instance, are not vested\nin the body; their task is not accomplished by means of the\nbody which\nin fact is detrimental to any thinking on which it is allowed to\nintrude.\n\nThus the indivisible phase of the soul stands distinct from the\ndivisible; they do not form a unity, but, on the contrary, a whole\nconsisting of parts, each part a self-standing thing having its own\npeculiar virtue. None the less, if that phase which becomes\ndivisible in body holds indivisibility by communication from the\nsuperior power, then this one same thing [the soul in body] may be\nat once indivisible and divisible; it will be, as it were, a blend,\na thing made up of its own divisible self with, in addition, the\nquality that it derives from above itself.\n\n\n## Section 20\n\n\n##### Section 20\n\n20. Here a question rises to which we must find an\nanswer: whether\nthese and the other powers which we call \"parts\" of the Soul are\nsituated, all, in place; or whether some have place and standpoint,\nothers not; or whether again none are situated in place.\n\nThe matter is difficult: if we do not allot to each of the parts\nof the Soul some form of Place, but leave all unallocated- no more\nwithin the body than outside it- we leave the body soulless, and are\nat a loss to explain plausibly the origin of acts performed by means\nof the bodily organs: if, on the other hand, we suppose some of\nthose phases to be [capable of situation] in place but others not\nso, we will be supposing that those parts to which we deny place are\nineffective in us, or, in other words, that we do not possess our\nentire soul.\n\nThis simply shows that neither the soul entire nor any part of\nit may be considered to be within the body as in a space: space is a\ncontainer, a container of body; it is the home of such things as\nconsist of isolated parts, things, therefore, in which at no point\nis there an entirety; now, the soul is not a body and is no more\ncontained than containing.\n\nNeither is it in body as in some vessel: whether as vessel or as\nplace of location, the body would remain, in itself,\nunensouled. If we\nare to think of some passing-over from the soul- that self-gathered\nthing- to the containing vessel, then soul is diminished by just as\nmuch as the vessel takes.\n\nSpace, again, in the strict sense is unembodied, and is not,\nitself, body; why, then, should it need soul?\n\nBesides [if the soul were contained as in space] contact would\nbe only at the surface of the body, not throughout the entire mass.\n\nMany other considerations equally refute the notion that the\nsoul is in body as [an object] in space; for example, this\nspace would\nbe shifted with every movement, and a thing itself would\ncarry its own\nspace about.\n\nOf course if by space we understand the interval separating\nobjects, it is still less possible that the soul be in body as in\nspace: such a separating interval must be a void; but body is not a\nvoid; the void must be that in which body is placed; body [not soul]\nwill be in the void.\n\nNor can it be in the body as in some substratum: anything in a\nsubstratum is a condition affecting that- a colour, a form- but the\nsoul is a separate existence.\n\nNor is it present as a part in the whole; soul is no\npart of body.\nIf we are asked to think of soul as a part in the living total we\nare faced with the old difficulty: How it is in that whole. It is\ncertainly not there as the wine is in the wine jar, or as the jar in\nthe jar, or as some absolute is self-present.\n\nNor can the presence be that of a whole in its part: It would be\nabsurd to think of the soul as a total of which the body should\nrepresent the parts.\n\nIt is not present as Form is in Matter; for the Form as in\nMatter is inseparable and, further, is something superimposed upon\nan already existent thing; soul, on the contrary, is that which\nengenders the Form residing within the Matter and therefore\nis not the\nForm. If the reference is not to the Form actually present, but to\nForm as a thing existing apart from all formed objects, it is hard\nto see how such an entity has found its way into body, and\nat any rate\nthis makes the soul separable.\n\nHow comes it then that everyone speaks of soul as being in body?\n\nBecause the soul is not seen and the body is: we perceive the\nbody, and by its movement and sensation we understand that it is\nensouled, and we say that it possesses a soul; to speak of residence\nis a natural sequence. If the soul were visible, an object of the\nsenses, radiating throughout the entire life, if it were manifest in\nfull force to the very outermost surface, we would no longer speak\nof soul as in body; we would say the minor was within the major, the\ncontained within the container, the fleeting within the perdurable.\n\n\n## Section 21\n\n\n##### Section 21\n\n21. What does all this come to? What answer do we give\nto him who,\nwith no opinion of his own to assert, asks us to explain this\npresence? And what do we say to the question whether there\nis one only\nmode of presence of the entire soul or different modes, phase and\nphase?\n\nOf the modes currently accepted for the presence of one thing in\nanother, none really meets the case of the soul's relation to the\nbody. Thus we are given as a parallel the steersman in the ship;\nthis serves adequately to indicate that the soul is potentially\nseparable, but the mode of presence, which is what we are seeking,\nit does not exhibit.\n\nWe can imagine it within the body in some incidental way- for\nexample, as a voyager in a ship- but scarcely as the steersman: and,\nof course, too, the steersman is not omnipresent to the ship as the\nsoul is to the body.\n\nMay we, perhaps, compare it to the science or skill that acts\nthrough its appropriate instruments- through a helm, let us\nsay, which\nshould happen to be a live thing- so that the soul effecting the\nmovements dictated by seamanship is an indwelling directive force?\n\nNo: the comparison breaks down, since the science is something\noutside of helm and ship.\n\nIs it any help to adopt the illustration of the steersman taking\nthe helm, and to station the soul within the body as the\nsteersman may\nbe thought to be within the material instrument through which he\nworks? Soul, whenever and wherever it chooses to operate,\ndoes in much\nthat way move the body.\n\nNo; even in this parallel we have no explanation of the mode of\npresence within the instrument; we cannot be satisfied\nwithout further\nsearch, a closer approach.\n\n\n## Section 22\n\n\n##### Section 22\n\n22. May we think that the mode of the soul's presence to body is\nthat of the presence of light to the air?\n\nThis certainly is presence with distinction: the light\npenetrates through and through, but nowhere coalesces; the light is\nthe stable thing, the air flows in and out; when the air\npasses beyond\nthe lit area it is dark; under the light it is lit: we have a true\nparallel to what we have been saying of body and soul, for the air\nis in the light quite as much as the light in the air.\n\nPlato therefore is wise when, in treating of the All, he puts\nthe body in its soul, and not its soul in the body, and says that,\nwhile there is a region of that soul which contains body, there is\nanother region to which body does not enter- certain powers, that\nis, with which body has no concern. And what is true of the All-Soul\nis true of the others.\n\nThere are, therefore, certain soul-powers whose presence to body\nmust be denied.\n\nThe phases present are those which the nature of body demands:\nthey are present without being resident- either in any parts of the\nbody or in the body as a whole.\n\nFor the purposes of sensation the sensitive phase of the soul is\npresent to the entire sensitive being: for the purposes of act,\ndifferentiation begins; every soul phase operates at a point\npeculiar to itself.\n\n\n## Section 23\n\n\n##### Section 23\n\n23. I explain: A living body is illuminated by soul: each organ\nand member participates in soul after some manner peculiar to\nitself; the organ is adapted to a certain function, and this fitness\nis the vehicle of the soul-faculty under which the function is\nperformed; thus the seeing faculty acts through the eyes, the\nhearing faculty through the ears, the tasting faculty through the\ntongue, the faculty of smelling through the nostrils, and the\nfaculty of sentient touch is present throughout, since in this\nparticular form of perception the entire body is an instrument in\nthe soul's service.\n\nThe vehicles of touch are mainly centred in the nerves- which\nmoreover are vehicles of the faculty by which the movements of the\nliving being are affected- in them the soul-faculty concerned makes\nitself present; the nerves start from the brain. The brain therefore\nhas been considered as the centre and seat of the principle which\ndetermines feeling and impulse and the entire act of the\norganism as a\nliving thing; where the instruments are found to be linked, there\nthe operating faculty is assumed to be situated. But it\nwould be wiser\nto say only that there is situated the first activity of the\noperating\nfaculty: the power to be exercised by the operator- in keeping with\nthe particular instrument- must be considered as concentrated at the\npoint at which the instrument is to be first applied; or, since the\nsoul's faculty is of universal scope the sounder statement\nis that the\npoint of origin of the instrument is the point of origin of the act.\n\nNow, the faculty presiding over sensation and impulse is\nvested in\nthe sensitive and representative soul; it draws upon the\nReason-Principle immediately above itself; downward, it is in\ncontact with an inferior of its own: on this analogy the uppermost\nmember of the living being was taken by the ancients to be obviously\nits seat; they lodged it in the brain, or not exactly in the\nbrain but\nin that sensitive part which is the medium through which the\nReason-Principle impinges upon the brain. They saw that\nsomething must\nbe definitely allocated to body- at the point most receptive of the\nact of reason- while something, utterly isolated from body must be\nin contact with that superior thing which is a form of soul [and not\nmerely of the vegetative or other quasi-corporeal forms but] of that\nsoul apt to the appropriation of the perceptions originating in the\nReason-Principle.\n\nSuch a linking there must be, since in perception there is some\nelement of judging, in representation something intuitional,\nand since\nimpulse and appetite derive from representation and reason. The\nreasoning faculty, therefore, is present where these experiences\noccur, present not as in a place but in the fact that what is there\ndraws upon it. As regards perception we have already\nexplained in what\nsense it is local.\n\nBut every living being includes the vegetal principle, that\nprinciple of growth and nourishment which maintains the organism by\nmeans of the blood; this nourishing medium is contained in the\nveins; the veins and blood have their origin in the liver: from\nobservation of these facts the power concerned was assigned a place;\nthe phase of the soul which has to do with desire was\nallocated to the\nliver. Certainly what brings to birth and nourishes and gives growth\nmust have the desire of these functions. Blood- subtle, light,\nswift, pure- is the vehicle most apt to animal spirit: the heart,\nthen, its well-spring, the place where such blood is sifted into\nbeing, is taken as the fixed centre of the ebullition of the\npassionate nature.\n\n\n## Section 24\n\n\n##### Section 24\n\n24. Now comes the question of the soul leaving the body; where\ndoes it go?\n\nIt cannot remain in this world where there is no natural\nrecipient\nfor it; and it cannot remain attached to anything not of a character\nto hold it: it can be held here when only it is less than wise,\ncontaining within itself something of that which lures it.\n\nIf it does contain any such alien element it gives itself, with\nincreasing attachment, to the sphere to which that element naturally\nbelongs and tends.\n\nThe space open to the soul's resort is vast and diverse; the\ndifference will come by the double force of the individual condition\nand of the justice reigning in things. No one can ever escape the\nsuffering entailed by ill deeds done: the divine law is ineluctable,\ncarrying bound up, as one with it, the fore-ordained execution of\nits doom. The sufferer, all unaware, is swept onward towards his\ndue, hurried always by the restless driving of his errors, until at\nlast wearied out by that against which he struggled, he\nfalls into his\nfit place and, by self-chosen movement, is brought to the\nlot he never\nchose. And the law decrees, also, the intensity and the duration of\nthe suffering while it carries with it, too, the lifting of\nchastisement and the faculty of rising from those places of pain-\nall by power of the harmony that maintains the universal scheme.\n\nSouls, body-bound, are apt to body-punishment; clean souls no\nlonger drawing to themselves at any point any vestige of body are,\nby their very being, outside the bodily sphere; body-free,\ncontaining nothing of body- there where Essence is, and\nBeing, and the\nDivine within the Divinity, among Those, within That, such a\nsoul must\nbe.\n\nIf you still ask Where, you must ask where those Beings are- and\nin your seeking, seek otherwise than with the sight, and not as one\nseeking for body.\n\n\n## Section 25\n\n\n##### Section 25\n\n25. Now comes the question, equally calling for an\nanswer, whether\nthose souls that have quitted the places of earth retain memory of\ntheir lives- all souls or some, of all things, or of some\nthings, and,\nagain, for ever or merely for some period not very long after their\nwithdrawal.\n\nA true investigation of this matter requires us to\nestablish first\nwhat a remembering principle must be- I do not mean what memory is,\nbut in what order of beings it can occur. The nature of memory has\nbeen indicated, laboured even, elsewhere; we still must try to\nunderstand more clearly what characteristics are present where\nmemory exists.\n\nNow a memory has to do with something brought into ken from\nwithout, something learned or something experienced; the\nMemory-Principle, therefore, cannot belong to such beings as are\nimmune from experience and from time.\n\nNo memory, therefore, can be ascribed to any divine being, or to\nthe Authentic-Existent or the Intellectual-Principle: these are\nintangibly immune; time does not approach them; they possess\neternity centred around Being; they know nothing of past and\nsequent; all is an unbroken state of identity, not receptive of\nchange. Now a being rooted in unchanging identity cannot entertain\nmemory, since it has not and never had a state differing from any\nprevious state, or any new intellection following upon a former one,\nso as to be aware of contrast between a present perception and one\nremembered from before.\n\nBut what prevents such a being [from possessing memory in the\nsense of] perceiving, without variation in itself, such outside\nchanges as, for example, the kosmic periods?\n\nSimply the fact that following the changes of the\nrevolving kosmos\nit would have perception of earlier and later: intuition and memory\nare distinct.\n\nWe cannot hold its self-intellections to be acts of memory; this\nis no question of something entering from without, to be grasped and\nheld in fear of an escape; if its intellections could slip away from\nit [as a memory might] its very Essence [as the Hypostasis\nof inherent\nIntellection] would be in peril.\n\nFor the same reason memory, in the current sense, cannot be\nattributed to the soul in connection with the ideas inherent in its\nessence: these it holds not as a memory but as a possession, though,\nby its very entrance into this sphere, they are no longer\nthe mainstay\nof its Act.\n\nThe Soul-action which is to be observed seems to have induced\nthe Ancients to ascribe memory, and \"Recollection,\" [the Platonic\nAnamnesis] to souls bringing into outward manifestation the\nideas they\ncontain: we see at once that the memory here indicated is another\nkind; it is a memory outside of time.\n\nBut, perhaps, this is treating too summarily a matter which\ndemands minute investigation. It might be doubted whether that\nrecollection, that memory, really belongs to the highest soul and\nnot rather to another, a dimmer, or even to the Couplement, the\nLiving-Being. And if to that dimmer soul, when and how has it come\nto be present; if to the Couplement, again when and how?\n\nWe are driven thus to enquire into these several points: in\nwhich of the constituents of our nature is memory vested-\nthe question\nwith which we started- if in the soul, then in what power or part;\nif in the Animate or Couplement- which has been supposed,\nsimilarly to\nbe the seat of sensation- then by what mode it is present, and how\nwe are to define the Couplement; finally whether sensation and\nintellectual acts may be ascribed to one and the same agent, or\nimply two distinct principles.\n\n\n## Section 26\n\n\n##### Section 26\n\n26. Now if sensations of the active order depend upon the\nCouplement of soul and body, sensation must be of that double\nnature. Hence it is classed as one of the shared acts: the soul, in\nthe feeling, may be compared to the workman in such operations as\nboring or weaving, the body to the tool employed: the body is\npassive and menial; the soul is active, reading such impressions as\nare made upon the body or discerned by means of the body, perhaps\nentertaining only a judgement formed as the result of the bodily\nexperiences.\n\nIn such a process it is at once clear that the sensation is a\nshared task; but the memory is not thus made over to the Couplement,\nsince the soul has from the first taken over the impression,\neither to\nretain or to reject.\n\nIt might be ventured that memory, no less than sensation, is a\nfunction of the Couplement, on the ground that bodily constitution\ndetermines our memories good or bad; but the answer would come that,\nwhether the body happens or not to be a hindrance, the act of\nremembering would still be an act of the soul. And in the case of\nmatters learned [and not merely felt, as corporeal experiences], how\ncan we think of the Couplement of soul and body as the remembering\nprinciple? Here, surely, it must be soul alone?\n\nWe may be told that the living-being is a Couplement in the\nsense of something entirely distinct formed from the two elements\n[so that it might have memory though neither soul nor body had it].\nBut, to begin with, it is absurd to class the living-being as\nneither body nor soul; these two things cannot so change as to make\na distinct third, nor can they blend so utterly that the soul shall\nbecome a mere faculty of the animate whole. And, further, supposing\nthey could so blend, memory would still be due to the soul just as\nin honey-wine all the sweetness will be due to the honey.\n\nIt may be suggested the while the soul is perhaps not in itself\na remembering principle, yet that, having lost its purity\nand acquired\nsome degree of modification by its presence in body, it becomes\ncapable of reproducing the imprints of sensible objects and\nexperiences, and that, seated, as roughly speaking it is, within the\nbody, it may reasonably be thought capable of accepting such\nimpressions, and in such a manner as to retain them [thus in some\nsense possessing memory].\n\nBut, to begin with, these imprints are not magnitudes [are not\nof corporeal nature at all]; there is no resemblance to seal\nimpressions, no stamping of a resistant matter, for there is neither\nthe down-thrust [as of the seal] nor [the acceptance] as in the wax:\nthe process is entirely of the intellect, though exercised\nupon things\nof sense; and what kind of resistance [or other physical action] can\nbe affirmed in matters of the intellectual order, or what need can\nthere be of body or bodily quality as a means?\n\nFurther there is one order of which the memory must obviously\nbelong to the soul; it alone can remember its own movements, for\nexample its desires and those frustrations of desire in which the\ncoveted thing never came to the body: the body can have nothing to\ntell about things which never approached it, and the soul cannot use\nthe body as a means to the remembrance of what the body by its\nnature cannot know.\n\nIf the soul is to have any significance- to be a definite\nprinciple with a function of its own- we are forced to recognize two\norders of fact, an order in which the body is a means but all\nculminates in soul, and an order which is of the soul alone. This\nbeing admitted, aspiration will belong to soul, and so, as a\nconsequence, will that memory of the aspiration and of its\nattainment or frustration, without which the soul's nature would\nfall into the category of the unstable [that is to say of the\nundivine, unreal]. Deny this character of the soul and at once we\nrefuse it perception, consciousness, any power of comparison, almost\nany understanding. Yet these powers of which, embodied it becomes\nthe source cannot be absent from its own nature. On the contrary; it\npossesses certain activities to be expressed in various functions\nwhose accomplishment demands bodily organs; at its entry it brings\nwith it [as vested in itself alone] the powers necessary for some of\nthese functions, while in the case of others it brings the very\nactivities themselves.\n\nMemory, in point of fact, is impeded by the body: even as things\nare, addition often brings forgetfulness; with thinning and dearing\naway, memory will often revive. The soul is a stability; the\nshifting and fleeting thing which body is can be a cause only of its\nforgetting not of its remembering- Lethe stream may be understood\nin this sense- and memory is a fact of the soul.\n\n\n## Section 27\n\n\n##### Section 27\n\n27. But of what soul; of that which we envisage as the more\ndivine, by which we are human beings, or that other which\nsprings from\nthe All?\n\nMemory must be admitted in both of these, personal memories and\nshared memories; and when the two souls are together, the memories\nalso are as one; when they stand apart, assuming that both exist and\nendure, each soon for gets the other's affairs, retaining\nfor a longer\ntime its own. Thus it is that the Shade of Hercules in the lower\nregions- this \"Shade,\" as I take it, being the characteristically\nhuman part- remembers all the action and experience of the\nlife, since\nthat career was mainly of the hero's personal shaping; the\nother souls\n[soulphases] going to constitute the joint-being could, for all\ntheir different standing, have nothing to recount but the events of\nthat same life, doings which they knew from the time of their\nassociation: perhaps they would add also some moral judgement.\n\nWhat the Hercules standing outside the Shade spoke of we are not\ntold: what can we think that other, the freed and isolated,\nsoul would\nrecount?\n\nThe soul, still a dragged captive, will tell of all the man did\nand felt; but upon death there will appear, as time passes, memories\nof the lives lived before, some of the events of the most recent\nlife being dismissed as trivial. As it grows away from the body, it\nwill revive things forgotten in the corporeal state, and if it\npasses in and out of one body after another, it will tell over the\nevents of the discarded life, it will treat as present that which it\nhas just left, and it will remember much from the former existence.\nBut with lapse of time it will come to forgetfulness of many things\nthat were mere accretion.\n\nThen free and alone at last, what will it have to remember?\n\nThe answer to that question depends on our discovering in what\nfaculty of the soul memory resides.\n\n\n## Section 28\n\n\n##### Section 28\n\n28. Is memory vested in the faculty by which we perceive and\nlearn? Or does it reside in the faculty by which we set things\nbefore our minds as objects of desire or of anger, the passionate\nfaculty?\n\nThis will be maintained on the ground that there could\nscarcely be\nboth a first faculty in direct action and a second to remember what\nthat first experiences. It is certain that the desiring\nfaculty is apt\nto be stirred by what it has once enjoyed; the object presents\nitself again; evidently, memory is at work; why else, the same\nobject with the same attraction?\n\nBut, at that, we might reasonably ascribe to the desiring\nfaculty the very perception of the desired objects and then\nthe desire\nitself to the perceptive faculty, and so on all through, and in the\nend conclude that the distinctive names merely indicate the function\nwhich happens to be uppermost.\n\nYet the perception is very different from faculty to faculty;\ncertainly it is sight and not desire that sees the object; desire is\nstirred merely as a result of the seeing, by a transmission; its act\nis not in the nature of an identification of an object seen; all is\nsimply blind response [automatic reaction]. Similarly with\nrage; sight\nreveals the offender and the passion leaps; we may think of\na shepherd\nseeing a wolf at his flock, and a dog, seeing nothing, who springs to\nthe scent or the sound.\n\nIn other words the desiring faculty has had the emotion, but the\ntrace it keeps of the event is not a memory; it is a condition,\nsomething passively accepted: there is another faculty that was\naware of the enjoyment and retains the memory of what has happened.\nThis is confirmed by the fact that many satisfactions which the\ndesiring faculty has enjoyed are not retained in the memory:\nif memory\nresided in the desiring faculty, such forgetfulness could not be.\n\n\n## Section 29\n\n\n##### Section 29\n\n29. Are we, then, to refer memory to the perceptive\nfaculty and so\nmake one principle of our nature the seat of both awareness and\nremembrance?\n\nNow supposing the very Shade, as we were saying in the case of\nHercules, has memory, then the perceptive faculty is twofold.\n\n[(And if (on the same supposition) the faculty that remembers is\nnot the faculty that perceives, but some other thing, then the\nremembering faculty is twofold.]\n\nAnd further if the perceptive faculty [= the memory] deals with\nmatters learned [as well as with matters of observation and feeling]\nit will be the faculty for the processes of reason also: but\nthese two\norders certainly require two separate faculties.\n\nMust we then suppose a common faculty of apprehension [one\ncovering both sense perceptions and ideas] and assign memory in both\norders to this?\n\nThe solution might serve if there were one and the same\npercipient\nfor objects of sense and objects of the Intellectual-Kind; but if\nthese stand in definite duality, then, for all we can say or do, we\nare left with two separate principles of memory; and, supposing each\nof the two orders of soul to possess both principles, then we have\nfour.\n\nAnd, on general grounds, what compelling reason is there that\nthe principle by which we perceive should be the principle\nby which we\nremember, that these two acts should be vested in the one\nfaculty? Why\nmust the seat of our intellectual action be also the seat of our\nremembrance of that action? The most powerful thought does not\nalways go with the readiest memory; people of equal\nperception are not\nequally good at remembering; some are especially gifted in\nperception,\nothers, never swift to grasp, are strong to retain.\n\nBut, once more, admitting two distinct principles,\nsomething quite\nseparate remembering what sense-perception has first known-\nstill this\nsomething must have felt what it is required to remember?\n\nNo; we may well conceive that where there is to be memory of a\nsense-perception, this perception becomes a mere\npresentment, and that\nto this image-grasping power, a distinct thing, belongs the memory,\nthe retention of the object: for in this imaging faculty the\nperception culminates; the impression passes away but the vision\nremains present to the imagination.\n\nBy the fact of harbouring the presentment of an object that has\ndisappeared, the imagination is, at once, a seat of memory: where\nthe persistence of the image is brief, the memory is poor; people of\npowerful memory are those in whom the image-holding power is firmer,\nnot easily allowing the record to be jostled out of its grip.\n\nRemembrance, thus, is vested in the imaging faculty; and memory\ndeals with images. Its differing quality or degree from man\nto man, we\nwould explain by difference or similarity in the strength of the\nindividual powers, by conduct like or unlike, by bodily conditions\npresent or absent, producing change and disorder or not- a\npoint this,\nhowever, which need not detain us here.\n\n\n## Section 30\n\n\n##### Section 30\n\n30. But what of the memory of mental acts: do these also fall\nunder the imaging faculty?\n\nIf every mental act is accompanied by an image we may\nwell believe\nthat this image, fixed and like a picture of the thought, would\nexplain how we remember the object of knowledge once entertained.\nBut if there is no such necessary image, another solution must be\nsought. Perhaps memory would be the reception, into the image-taking\nfaculty, of the Reason-Principle which accompanies the mental\nconception: this mental conception- an indivisible thing,\nand one that\nnever rises to the exterior of the consciousness- lies unknown\nbelow; the Reason-Principle the revealer, the bridge between the\nconcept and the image-taking faculty exhibits the concept as in a\nmirror; the apprehension by the image-taking faculty would thus\nconstitute the enduring presence of the concept, would be our memory\nof it.\n\nThis explains, also, another fact: the soul is unfailingly\nintent upon intellection; only when it acts upon this image-taking\nfaculty does its intellection become a human perception:\nintellection is one thing, the perception of an intellection is\nanother: we are continuously intuitive but we are not unbrokenly\naware: the reason is that the recipient in us receives from both\nsides, absorbing not merely intellections but also sense-perceptions.\n\n\n## Section 31\n\n\n##### Section 31\n\n31. But if each of the two phases of the soul, as we have said,\npossesses memory, and memory is vested in the imaging faculty, there\nmust be two such faculties. Now that is all very well as long as the\ntwo souls stand apart; but, when they are at one in us, what becomes\nof the two faculties, and in which of them is the imaging faculty\nvested?\n\nIf each soul has its own imaging faculty the images must in all\ncases be duplicated, since we cannot think that one faculty\ndeals only\nwith intellectual objects, and the other with objects of sense, a\ndistinction which inevitably implies the co-existence in man of two\nlife-principles utterly unrelated.\n\nAnd if both orders of image act upon both orders of soul, what\ndifference is there in the souls; and how does the fact escape our\nknowledge?\n\nThe answer is that, when the two souls chime each with each, the\ntwo imaging faculties no longer stand apart; the union is\ndominated by\nthe more powerful of the faculties of the soul, and thus the image\nperceived is as one: the less powerful is like a shadow\nattending upon\nthe dominant, like a minor light merging into a greater:\nwhen they are\nin conflict, in discord, the minor is distinctly apart, a\nself-standing thing- though its isolation is not perceived, for the\nsimple reason that the separate being of the two souls escapes\nobservation.\n\nThe two have run into a unity in which, yet, one is the loftier:\nthis loftier knows all; when it breaks from the union, it\nretains some\nof the experiences of its companion, but dismisses others; thus we\naccept the talk of our less valued associates, but, on a change of\ncompany, we remember little from the first set and more from those\nin whom we recognize a higher quality.\n\n\n## Section 32\n\n\n##### Section 32\n\n32. But the memory of friends, children, wife? Country too, and\nall that the better sort of man may reasonably remember?\n\nAll these, the one [the lower man] retains with emotion, the\nauthentic man passively: for the experience, certainly, was\nfirst felt\nin that lower phase from which, however, the best of such\nimpressions pass over to the graver soul in the degree in which the\ntwo are in communication.\n\nThe lower soul must be always striving to attain to memory of\nthe activities of the higher: this will be especially so when it is\nitself of a fine quality, for there will always be some that are\nbetter from the beginning and bettered here by the guidance of the\nhigher.\n\nThe loftier, on the contrary, must desire to come to a happy\nforgetfulness of all that has reached it through the lower: for one\nreason, there is always the possibility that the very excellence of\nthe lower prove detrimental to the higher, tending to keep it down\nby sheer force of vitality. In any case the more urgent the\nintention towards the Supreme, the more extensive will be the soul's\nforgetfulness, unless indeed, when the entire living has, even here,\nbeen such that memory has nothing but the noblest to deal with: in\nthis world itself, all is best when human interests have been held\naloof; so, therefore, it must be with the memory of them. In this\nsense we may truly say that the good soul is the forgetful. It flees\nmultiplicity; it seeks to escape the unbounded by drawing all to\nunity, for only thus is it free from entanglement, light-footed,\nself-conducted. Thus it is that even in this world the soul which\nhas the desire of the other is putting away, amid its actual\nlife, all\nthat is foreign to that order. It brings there very little of what\nit has gathered here; as long as it is in the heavenly regions only,\nit will have more than it can retain.\n\nThe Hercules of the heavenly regions would still tell of his\nfeats: but there is the other man to whom all of that is trivial; he\nhas been translated to a holier place; he has won his way to the\nIntellectual Realm; he is more than Hercules, proven in the\ncombats in\nwhich the combatants are the wise.",
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