The Summary of Physics Restored

165The nature of the soul, or form, is wholly luminous, especially in animals. It therefore differs so greatly from the opaque, earthly matter of bodies that it has no common measure with that matter and is nobler beyond all proportion. Because of this disparity and distance, it could never be bound to the body by the closest bond, such as Nature uses in her works, unless their union, and as it were their soldering together, were achieved through the power and attraction of an appropriate and potent intermediary. The provident Creator of things therefore placed a subtle intermediary between them: the ethereal spirit, which receives and retains the form as it comes into being and binds it to its body, sharing in the nature of both. Understand these words as referring to the heavenly soul of natural things, rather than to the superheavenly and divine human soul. Nevertheless, it pleased its Creator that even this soul should enter into fellowship with the human body through natural intermediaries.