THIS PROCESS EXPLAINS THE CLASSIC EXPRESSIONS ABOUT HER CONDITION.
Thus, in the common expression, she has lost her wings, and is chained by the bonds of the body, because she gave up the calm existence she enjoyed when with the universal Soul she shared the administration of the world; for when she was above she spent a much happier life. The fallen soul is therefore chained or imprisoned, obliged to have recourse to the senses because she cannot first make use of intelligence. She is, as it is said, buried in a tomb, or cavern. But by her conversion towards thought, she breaks her bonds, she returns upwards towards higher regions, when, starting from the indications of reminiscence she rises to the contemplation of the essences;[170] for even after her fall she always preserves something superior to the body.
Souls therefore are necessarily amphibians;[171] since they alternately live in the intelligible world, and in the sense-world; staying longer in the intelligible world when they can remain united to supreme Intelligence more permanently, or staying longer or preponderatingly here below when nature or destiny imposes on them a contrary fate. That is the secret meaning of Plato's words[172] to the effect that the divinity divides the seeds of the souls formed by a second mixture in the cup, and that He separates them into (two) parts. He also adds that they must necessarily fall into generation after having been divided into a definite number. Plato's statement that the divinity sowed the souls,[173] as well as the divinity's address to the other deities, must be taken figuratively. For, in reference to the things contained in the universe, this implies that they are begotten or produced; for successive enumeration and description implies an eternal begetting, and that those objects exist eternally in their present state.
SOULS DESCENDING TO HELP ARE SENT BY GOD.
5. Without any inherent contradiction it may therefore be asserted either,[174] that the souls are sowed into generation, that they descend here below for the perfection of the universe, or that they are shut up in a cavern as the result of a divine punishment, that their fall is simultaneously an effect of their will and of necessity--as necessity does not exclude voluntariness--and that they are in evil so long as they are incarnate in bodies. Again, as Empedocles says, they may have withdrawn from the divinity, and have lost their way, and have committed some fault that they are expiating; or, as says Heraclitus, that rest consists in flight (from heaven, and descent here below), and that the descent of souls is neither entirely voluntary, nor involuntary. Indeed, no being ever falls voluntarily; but as it is by his own motion that he descends to lower things, and reaches a less happy condition, it may be said that he bears the punishment of his conduct. Besides, as it is by an eternal law of nature that this being acts and suffers in that manner, we may, without contradiction or violence to the truth, assert that the being who descends from his rank to assist some lower thing is sent by the divinity.[175] In spite of any number of intermediate parts (which separate) a principle from its lower part, the latter may still be ascribed to the former.[176]