THE WORLD-SOUL ALSO IS A COMPOUND OF FORM AND MATTER.
Applying this conception to the universe, we rise to Intelligence, recognizing therein the demiurgic creator of the world. It was in receiving from it its shapes by the intermediation of another principle, the universal Soul, that the (material) substances became water, air, earth and fire. On the one hand, the Soul shapes the four elements of the world;[116] on the other, she receives from Intelligence the (seminal) reasons,[117] as the souls of the artists themselves receive from the arts the reasons which they work out.[118] In Intelligence, therefore, there is a part which is the form of the soul; it is intelligence considered, as shape. There is another which imparts shape, like the sculptor who gives the metal the shape of the statue, and which in itself possesses all it gives.[119] Now the (shapes) which the Intelligence imparts to the soul connect with the truth as closely as possible, while those which the soul imparts to the body are only images and appearances.[120]