Sense-Perception since its use of its instrument must acquaint it with
the external conditions, and such knowledge comes by way of sense.
Thus, it will be argued, the eyes are the instrument of seeing, and
seeing may bring distress to the soul: hence the Soul may feel
sorrow and pain and every other affection that belongs to the body;
and from this again will spring desire, the Soul seeking the mending
of its instrument.

    But, we ask, how, possibly, can these affections pass from body to
Soul? Body may communicate qualities or conditions to another body:
but- body to Soul? Something happens to A; does that make it happen to
B? As long as we have agent and instrument, there are two distinct
entities; if the Soul uses the body it is separate from it.

    But apart from the philosophical separation how does Soul stand to
body?

    Clearly there is a combination. And for this several modes are
possible. There might be a complete coalescence: Soul might be
interwoven through the body: or it might be an Ideal-Form detached
or an Ideal-Form in governing contact like a pilot: or there might
be part of the Soul detached and another part in contact, the
disjoined part being the agent or user, the conjoined part ranking
with the instrument or thing used.

    In this last case it will be the double task of philosophy to
direct this lower Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so
far as the conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent
from the instrument, the body, so that it need not forever have its
Act upon or through this inferior.

    4. Let us consider, then, the hypothesis of a coalescence.

    Now if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler
degraded; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participant
in life; the Soul, as associated with death and unreason, is brought
lower. How can a lessening of the life-quality produce an increase
such as Sense-Perception?

    No: the body has acquired life, it is the body that will
acquire, with life, sensation and the affections coming by
sensation. Desire, then, will belong to the body, as the objects of
desire are to be enjoyed by the body. And fear, too, will belong to
the body alone; for it is the body's doom to fail of its joys and to
perish.

    Then again we should have to examine how such a coalescence
could be conceived: we might find it impossible: perhaps all this is
like announcing the coalescence of things utterly incongruous in kind,
let us say of a line and whiteness.

    Next for the suggestion that the Soul is interwoven through the
body: such a relation would not give woof and warp community of
sensation: the interwoven element might very well suffer no change:
the permeating soul might remain entirely untouched by what affects
the body- as light goes always free of all it floods- and all the more
so, since, precisely, we are asked to consider it as diffused
throughout the entire frame.

    Under such an interweaving, then, the Soul would not be
subjected to the body's affections and experiences: it would be
present rather as Ideal-Form in Matter.

    Let us then suppose Soul to be in body as Ideal-Form in Matter.
Now if- the first possibility- the Soul is an essence, a
self-existent, it can be present only as separable form and will
therefore all the more decidedly be the Using-Principle [and therefore
unaffected].

    Suppose, next, the Soul to be present like axe-form on iron: here,
no doubt, the form is all important but it is still the axe, the
complement of iron and form, that effects whatever is effected by
the iron thus modified: on this analogy, therefore, we are even more
strictly compelled to assign all the experiences of the combination to
the body: their natural seat is the material member, the instrument,
the potential recipient of life.

    Compare the passage where we read* that "it is absurd to suppose
that the Soul weaves"; equally absurd to think of it as desiring,
grieving. All this is rather in the province of something which we may
call the Animate.

    * "We read" translates "he says" of the text, and always indicates
a reference to Plato, whose name does not appear in the translation
except where it was written by Plotinus. S.M.

    5. Now this Animate might be merely the body as having life: it
might be the Couplement of Soul and body: it might be a third and
different entity formed from both.

    The Soul in turn- apart from the nature of the Animate- must be
either impassive, merely causing Sense-Perception in its
yoke-fellow, or sympathetic; and, if sympathetic, it may have
identical experiences with its fellow or merely correspondent
experiences: desire for example in the Animate may be something
quite distinct from the accompanying movement or state in the desiring
faculty.

    The body, the live-body as we know it, we will consider later.