How do Guardians participate in matter, and of what matter are they
formed? This their matter is not corporeal, otherwise they would be
animals with sensation. In fact, whether they have aerial or fire-like
bodies,[137] they must have had a nature primitively different (from
pure Intelligence) to have ultimately united each with his own body,
for that which is entirely pure could not have immediately united
with a body, although many philosophers think that the being of every
Guardian, as guardian, is united to an air-like or fire-like body. But
why is the being of every Guardian mingled with a body, while the being
of every deity is pure, unless in the first case there be a cause which
produces the mingling (with matter)? This cause must be the existence
of an intelligible matter,[138] so that whatever participates in it
might, by its means, come to unite with sense-matter.