36.2 · Activity as an abiding cause

But if, as some say, activity is the end, cohesion, unification, and abiding cause of motions, and if the unmoved actuality of soul according to Aristotle comprehends this activity within itself, then the accomplishment of living beings’ individual functions will proceed from the most complete activity [from soul].¹⁴⁴⁹

36.3 · Activity in the living composite

This accomplishment, at least according to Plato, is far from being identical with soul’s inherent substance and life. Clearly it is imparted to the composite. But change, division, extension about the body, and separation in time and place accompany it; none of these belongs to life that is incorporeal in itself. Thus this too becomes clear: according to Plato, none of the motions of the composite living being belongs exclusively to soul itself.¹⁴⁵⁰

36.4 · Two lives and their operations

Accordingly, just as life for him was twofold, one life separate from the body and the other shared with it, so too, among operations, ⟨some⟩ will belong to soul alone, while others will be shared also by that which possesses it. Of these, some originate first from soul; others are awakened by the body’s affections; and others are stirred equally by both. Yet all have their impulse from soul as their cause.¹⁴⁵¹

36.5 · The helmsman, the wind, and the ship

When the movement of a ship depends jointly on the helmsman and the wind, the other factors are such that motion cannot occur without them; but the helmsman and the wind contain within themselves its principal cause. So too soul itself both uses the entire body and carries out its functions, encompassing the body as an instrument or vehicle;¹⁴⁵²

36.6 · Motions proper to soul itself

but it also possesses motions proper to itself: those which, released from the composite living being, by themselves [unbound] put into activity the lives belonging to soul’s substance. Such are the motions of divine inspiration and of immaterial acts of understanding, and, in general, those through which we are joined to the gods.¹⁴⁵³

36.7 · Accounts that make soul bodily

Those who suppose soul to be a body, such as the Stoics and many others, no longer agree with these claims. Nor do those who think it blended into the realm of becoming, as most natural philosophers do; nor those who make it an outgrowth of bodies, existing in the form of a harmony. All these thinkers attribute motions of a bodily character to it.¹⁴⁵⁴

37.1 · Soul’s works: equality or difference

In the same work: on the works of soul.

Are the same works accomplished by all souls, or are those of universal souls more complete, while those of other souls correspond to the rank each has received as its own? According to the Stoics, reason is one, thought is entirely the same, right actions are equal, and the virtues are the same in particular and universal souls alike;¹⁴⁵⁵

37.2 · Divergent Platonic accounts

and Plotinus and Amelius too seem to hold this opinion. At times they determine that the particular soul is ⟨not⟩ different from the universal soul, but one with it. As Porphyry would put it, however, the operations of the universal soul are entirely distinct from those of the particular soul.¹⁴⁵⁶

37.3 · Works distinguished by orders of soul

There could also be another opinion that should not be rejected: it would distinguish works according to the genera and species of souls. Those of universal souls would be complete in every respect; those of divine souls, undefiled and immaterial; those of divine spirits, active and effective; those of heroic souls, great; and those of souls in animals and human beings, of a mortal character. It would distinguish the remaining works in the same way. Once these distinctions are made, the matters that follow will receive a corresponding distinction.¹⁴⁵⁷

37.4 · Identity of being and operation

Those who insist that soul is everywhere one and the same, whether in genus or species, as Plotinus thinks, or even in number, as Amelius not infrequently ventures to assert, will say that soul is precisely what it does.¹⁴⁵⁸

37.5 · Successive processions of substance

Others order matters more securely than these thinkers and maintain that first, second, and third processions of the substances of soul advance successively. Among them one might place those who grasp these accounts in a new yet unfailing way. They will certainly say that the operations of universal, divine, and immaterial souls reach their completion also in substance. But for particular souls, ⟨and⟩ those confined within a single form and divided in association with bodies, they will by no means concede that these are immediately what they do.¹⁴⁵⁹

37.6 · Inherent works and the bearing of fruit

Let the related distinction proceed by the same method. I mean that, as this newly devised position would say, the works of souls that are complete in themselves, uniform, and separate from matter are naturally attached to their powers. In the case of less complete souls, divided about the earth, their works resemble the production of fruits.¹⁴⁶⁰

37.7 · Powers that engage with body

Next we must understand that the Stoics mingle all the activities of any soul whatever with the things it governs and which are in themselves soulless; Plato’s followers do not mingle all of them. For some powers of soul engage with body as their matter, such as the powers of perception and impulse. Purer than these are those that make no use of body at all, such as the intellectual power.¹⁴⁶¹

37.8 · Association through a turning toward

Plato, then, does not connect the works of powers having a bodily character with bodies in respect of substance; he says that they share in them through a turning toward them. But he frees the works of separate powers entirely from being directed into bodies.¹⁴⁶²