Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

THE ANIMATING PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS.

We might define the animating principle of animals. If it be true, according to common opinion, that animal bodies contain human souls that have sinned, the separable part of these souls does not properly belong to these bodies; although these souls assist these bodies, the souls are not actually present to them.[312] In them the sensation is common to the image of the soul and to the body;—but to the latter only in so far as it is organized and fashioned by the image of the soul. As to the animals into whose bodies no human soul entered, they are produced by an illumination of the universal Soul.