PROCEDURE OF THE DESCENT OF THE SOUL.
This is how this participation takes place for the parts of this universe (that is, the bodies). Being situated as it were on the confines of the intelligible world, the soul often gives the body something of herself; for, by her power (or potentiality), she is the neighbor of the body; and finding herself close to it, she enters into dealings therewith by virtue of a law of her nature; but this intercourse is of evil, and to enfranchise herself from the body is good. Why? Because if the soul be not the (property or slave) of the body in this intercourse, she, nevertheless, unites herself to it, and though she were universal, she becomes individual; for her activity no longer is exclusively confined to the intelligible world, although (she still, by nature) belong thereto. It is as if someone, who was an expert in a whole science, confined himself to a single proposition thereof; whereas a person who possesses a whole science should naturally consider its entirety, and not a mere part of it. Likewise the soul, which belonged entirely to the intelligible world, and which partially blended her particular essence with the total Essence, withdrew out of the universal Essence, and became individual essence, because the body to which she confines her activities is only a part of this universe. It is as if the fire, endowed with the ability of burning everything, was reduced to burn out some small object, although it possessed power of universal scope. Indeed, when the particular soul is separated from the body, she is no longer particular (in actualization); on the contrary, when she has separated herself from the universal Soul, not by passing from one locality to another, but by applying her activity (to a part of this universe, to a body), she becomes particular (in actualization), though she remain universal in another manner (in potentiality); for when the soul presides over no body she is truly universal, and is particular only in potentiality.