(e.) (No body could subsist without the power of the universal soul.)
Besides no body could subsist without the power of the universal Soul
(from Numenius[46]). Every body, indeed, is in a perpetual flow and
movement (as thought Heraclitus, in Plato, Cratylus[47]), and the world
would soon perish if it contained nothing but bodies, even if some one
of them were to be called soul; for such a soul, being composed of
the same matter as the other bodies, would undergo the same fate that
they do; or rather, there would not even be any body, everything would
remain in the condition of shapeless matter, since there would exist
no principle to fashion it. Why, there would not even be any matter,
and the universe would be annihilated to nothingness, if the care of
keeping its parts united were entrusted to some body which would have
nothing but the name of soul, as for instance, to air, or a breath
without cohesion,[48] which could not be one, by itself. As all bodies
are divisible, if the universe depended on a body, it would be deprived
of intelligence and given up to chance. How, indeed, could there be
any order in a spirit which itself would need to receive order from a
soul? How could this spirit contain reason and intelligence? On the
hypothesis of the existence of the soul, all these elements serve to
constitute the body of the world, and of every animal, because all
different bodies together work for the end of all; but without the
soul, there is no order, and even nothing exists any more.