Must gain: for when it hath departed hence
(As all things else) should it not backward hie
From whence it came? but such divinitie
Is in our souls that nothing lesse than God
Could send them forth (as Plato’s schools descrie)
Wherefore when they retreat a free abode
They’ll find, unlesse kept off by Nemesis just rod.”
(II. 14.)
In this life of union the soul will realize the deep fecundity of her own nature; for in her are innate ideas. To establish this theory of innate ideas into which Plato’s theory of reminiscence has been transformed in Plotinus (cf. “Enneads,” IV. iii. 25), More educes four considerations. They must exist because (1) like is known only by like (II. 31); (2) no object or number of objects can give the soul a universal concept (II. 36); (3) the apprehension of incorporeal things cannot be made by sense, therefore the soul must have the measure of such within her own nature (II. 38, 39); and (4) the process of learning shows that it is education, or the drawing out of the mind what was in it potentially (II. 42). Inasmuch, then, as innate ideas exist within the mind, called out by experience in life, how much more will they be evoked in that high union with God!
“But sith our soul with God himself may meet,