How do Guardians participate in matter, and of what matter are they formed? This their matter is not corporeal, otherwise they would be animals with sensation. In fact, whether they have aerial or fire-like bodies,[137] they must have had a nature primitively different (from pure Intelligence) to have ultimately united each with his own body, for that which is entirely pure could not have immediately united with a body, although many philosophers think that the being of every Guardian, as guardian, is united to an air-like or fire-like body. But why is the being of every Guardian mingled with a body, while the being of every deity is pure, unless in the first case there be a cause which produces the mingling (with matter)? This cause must be the existence of an intelligible matter,[138] so that whatever participates in it might, by its means, come to unite with sense-matter.
SOUL IS A MIXTURE OF REASON AND INDETERMINATION.
7. Plato's account of the birth of Love[132] is that Abundance intoxicated himself with nectar, this happening before the day of wine, which implies that Love was born before the sense-world's existence. Then Need, the mother of Love, must have participated in the intelligible nature itself, and not in a simple image of the intelligible nature; she, therefore, approached (the intelligible nature) and found herself to be a mixture of form and indeterminateness (or, intelligible matter).[139] The soul, in fact, containing a certain indeterminateness before she had reached the Good, but feeling a premonition of her existence, formed for herself a confused and indeterminate image, which became the very hypostasis (or, form of existence) of Love. Thus, as here, reason mingles with the unreasonable, with an indeterminate desire, with an indistinct (faint or obscure) hypostatic (form of existence). What was born was neither perfect nor complete; it was something needy, because it was born from an indeterminate desire, and a complete reason. As to (Love, which is) the thus begotten reason, it is not pure, since it contains a desire that is indeterminate, unreasonable, indefinite; nor will it ever be satisfied so long as it contains the nature of indetermination. It depends on the soul, which is its generating principle; it is a mixture effected by a reason which, instead of remaining within itself, is mingled with indetermination. Besides, it is not Reason itself, but its emanation which mingles with indetermination.
LOVE IS A GADFLY.
Love, therefore, is similar to a gad-fly;[140] needy by nature, it still remains needy, whatever it may obtain; it could never be satisfied, for this would be impossible for a being that is a mixture; no being could ever be fully satisfied if by its nature it be incapable of attaining fulness; even were it satisfied for a moment, it could not retain anything if its nature made it continue to desire. Consequently, on one side, Love is deprived of all resources[141] because of its neediness; and on the other, it possesses the faculty of acquisition, because of the reason that enters into its constitution.
GUARDIANS, AS WELL AS MEN, ARE URGED BY DIVINE DISCONTENT.
All other Guardians have a similar constitution. Each of them desires, and causes the acquisition of the good he is destined to procure; that is the characteristic they have in common with Love. Neither could they ever attain satisfaction; they still desire some particular good. The result of this is that the men who here below are good are inspired by the love of the true, absolute Good, and not by the love of such and such a particular good.[142] Those who are subordinated to divers Guardians are successively subordinated to such or such a Guardian; they let the simple and pure love of the absolute Good rest within themselves, while they see to it that their actions are presided over by another Guardian, that is, another power of their soul, which is immediately superior to that which directs them, or is active within them.[143] As to the men who, driven by evil impulses, desire evil things, they seem to have chained down all the loves in their souls, just as, by false opinions, they darken the right reason which is innate within them. Thus all the loves implanted in us by nature, and which conform to nature, are all good; those that belong to the inferior part of the soul are inferior in rank and power; those that belong to the superior part are superior; all belong to the being of the soul. As to the loves which are contrary to nature, they are the passions of strayed souls, having nothing essential or substantial; for they are not engendered by the pure Soul; they are the fruits of the faults of the soul which produces them according to her vicious habits and dispositions.
RIGHT THOUGHTS POSSESS REAL EXISTENCE.
In general, we might admit that the true goods which are possessed by the soul when she acts conformably to her nature, by applying herself to things determined (by reason), constitute real being; that the others, on the contrary, are not engendered by the very action of the soul, and are only passions.[144] Likewise, false intellections lack real being, such as belongs to true intellections, which are eternal and determinate, possessing simultaneously the intellectual act, the intelligible existence and essence; and this latter not only in general, but in each real intelligible being (manifesting?) Intelligence in each idea. As to us, we must acknowledge that we possess only intellection and the intelligible; we do not possess them together (or completely), but only in general; and hence comes our love for generalities. Our conceptions, indeed, usually trend towards the general. It is only by accident that we conceive something particular; when, for instance, we conceive that some particular triangle's angles amount to two right angles, it is only as a result of first having conceived that the triangle in general possesses this property.