Participation, higher and lower

Meaning

I.1 describes particular lives as participating in the world's more comprehensive life. Higher bodies receive before they distribute, and higher things are called more living, more perfect and more participant in immortality than lower things. Higher and lower therefore indicate an order of reception and communication, not two unrelated stores of life. Circular movement also returns toward its origin, so the relation is not simply a one-way fall.

The whole is said not to be poorer than its parts. Yet this claim does not mean each part possesses the whole world's powers entirely or manifests them without limitation. Even the perfection attributed to minerals can be communicated within what is like them rather than reproduced as an identical offspring. Participation supports unity while leaving unequal capacities and particular determinations intact. Participation is a dependent and comparative relation, not identity with the creator’s eternity or a declaration that every individual body is deathless.