Therefore, when in a condition of superior purity, she unites with a body that is close to immaterial nature, that is, an ethereal body. When she descends from the development of reason to that of the imagination, she receives a solar body. If she becomes effeminate, and falls in love with forms, she puts on a lunar body. Finally, when she falls into the terrestrial bodies, which, resembling her shapeless character, are composed of moist vapors, there results for her a complete ignorance of existence, a sort of eclipse, and a veritable childhood. When the soul leaves an earthly body, having her spirit still troubled by these moist vapors, she develops a shadow that weights her down; for a spirit of this kind naturally tends to descend into the depths of the earth, unless it be held up and raised by a higher cause. Just as the soul is attached to the earth by her earthly vesture, so the moist spirit(ual body) to which the soul is united makes her drag after her an image which weights down the soul. The soul surrounds herself with moist vapors when she mingles with a nature that in its operations is moist or subterranean. But if the soul separate from this nature, immediately around her shines a dry light, without shade or shadow. In fact it is humidity which forms clouds in the air; the dryness of the atmosphere produces a dry and serene clearness.
FOURTH ENNEAD, BOOK SIX.
Of Sensation and Memory.
OF SENSATION.
24. (3) The soul contains the reasons of all things. The soul operates according to these reasons, whether incited to activity by some exterior object, or whether the soul be turned towards these reasons by folding back on herself. When the soul is incited to this activity by some exterior object, she applies her senses thereto; when she folds back on herself, she applies herself to thoughts. It might be objected that the result is that there is neither sensation nor thought without imagination; for just as in the animal part, no sensation occurs without an impression produced on the organs of sense; likewise there is no thought without imagination. Certainly, an analogy obtains between both cases. Just as the sense-image (type) results from the impression experienced by sensation, likewise the intellectual image (phantasm) results from thought.
OF MEMORY.
25. (2) Memory does not consist in preserving images. It is the faculty of reproducing the conceptions with which our soul has been occupied.
FIFTH ENNEAD, BOOK TWO.
Of Generation and of the Order of Things that Follow the First.
OF THE PROCESSION OF BEINGS.
26. When incorporeal hypostatic substances descend, they split up and multiply, their power weakening as they apply themselves to the individual. When, on the contrary, they rise, they simplify, unite, and their power intensifies.