carries the same name, we pronounce incorporeal, given forth from the first as its

flower and radiance, the

veritable "incandescent body." Plato's word earthy is commonly taken in too
depreciatory a sense: he is thinking
of earth as the principle of solidity; we are apt to ignore his distinctions and
think of the concrete clay. Fire
of this order, giving forth this purest light, belongs to the upper realm, and
there its seat is fixed by nature:
but we must not, on that account, suppose the flame of earth to be associated with
the beings of that higher sphere.
No; the flame of this world, once it has attained a certain height, is extinguished
by the currents of air opposed
to it. Moreover, as it carries an earthy element on its upward path, it is weighed
downwards and cannot reach
those loftier regions. It comes to a stand somewhere below the moon- making the air
at that point subtler- and
its flame, if any flame can persist, is subdued and softened, and no longer retains
its first intensity, but
gives out only what radiance it reflects from the light above. And it is that
loftier light- falling variously
upon the stars: to each in a certain proportion- that gives them their
characteristic differences, as well
in magnitude as in colour: just such light constitutes also the still higher
heavenly bodies which, however,
like clear air, are invisible because of the subtle texture and unresisting
transparency of their material
substance and also by their very distance. 2. Now: given a light of this degree,
remaining in the Upper sphere
at its appointed station, pure light in purest place, what mode of outflow from it
can be conceived possible?
Such a Kind is not so constituted as to flow downwards of its own accord: and there
exists in those regions no power
to force it down. Again, body in contact with soul must always be very different
from body left to itself: the
bodily substance of the heavens has that contact and will show that difference.
eesides, the corporeal substance
nearest to the heavens would be air or fire: air has no destructive quality: fire
would be powerless there since
it could not enter into effective contact: in its very rush it would change before
its attack could be felt; and,
apart from that, it is of the lesser order, no match for what it would be opposing
in those higher regions. Again,
fire acts by imparting heat: now it cannot be the source of heat to what is already
hot by nature: and anything
it is to destroy must as a first condition be heated by it, must be brought to a
pitch of heat fatal to the nature
concerned. In sum, then, no outside body is necessary to the heavens to ensure
their permanence- or to produce
their circular movement, for it has never been shown that their natural path would
be the straight line; on the
contrary the heavens, by their nature, will either be motionless or move by circle:
all other movement indicates
outside compulsion. `Me cannot think, therefore, that the heavenly bodies stand in
need of replenishment:
we must not argue from earthly frames to those of the celestial system whose
sustaining soul is not the same,
whose space is not the same, whose conditions are not those which make restoration
necessary in this realm of
composite bodies always in flux: we must recognise that the changes that take place
in bodies here represent
a slipping-away from the being [a phenomenon not incident to the celestial sphere]
and take place at the dictate
of a Principle not dwelling in the higher regions, one not powerful enough to
ensure the permanence of the existences
in which it is exhibited, one which in its coming into being and in its generative
act is but an imitation of an
antecedent Kind, and, as we have shown, cannot at every point possess the
unchangeable identity of the Intellectual
Realm. SECOND TRACTATE. THE HEAVENLY CIRCUIT. 1. But whence that circular movement?
In imitation of the IntellectUal-Principle.
And does this movement belong to the material part or to the Soul? Can we account
for it on the ground that the Soul
has itself at once for centre and for the goal to which it must be ceaselessly
moving: Or that, being self-centred
it is not of unlimited extension and consequently must move ceaselessly to be
omnipresent], and that its revolution
carries the material mass with it? If the Soul had been the moving power (by any
such semi-physical action] it
would be so no longer; it would have accomplished the act of moving and have
brought the universe to rest; there
would be an end of this endless revolution. In fact the Soul must be in repose or
at least cannot have spatial movement:
how then, having itself a movement of quite another order, could it communicate
spatial movement? But perhaps
the circular movement (of the Kosmos as soul and body] is not spatial or is spatial
not primarily OLI-1 only incidentally.
What, by this explanation, would be the essential movement of the kosmic soul? A
movement towards itself, the
movement of self-awareness, of self-intellection, of the living of its life, the
movement of its reaching
to all things so that nothing shall lie outside of it, nothing anywhere but within
its scope. The dominant in
a living thing is what compasses it entirely and makes it a unity. If the Soul has
no motion of any kind, it would
not vitally compass the Kovnos nor would the Kosmos, a thing of body, keep its
content alive, for the life of body
is movement. Any spatial motion there is will be limited; it will be not that of
Soul untrammelled but that of
a material frame ensouleel, an animated organism; the movement will be partly of
body, partly of Soul, the body
tending to the straight line which its nature im POSes, the Soul restraining it;
the resultant will be the compromise