5. Without any inherent contradiction it may therefore be asserted
either,[174] that the souls are sowed into generation, that they descend
here below for the perfection of the universe, or that they are shut up
in a cavern as the result of a divine punishment, that their fall is
simultaneously an effect of their will and of necessity--as necessity
does not exclude voluntariness--and that they are in evil so long as
they are incarnate in bodies. Again, as Empedocles says, they may
have withdrawn from the divinity, and have lost their way, and have
committed some fault that they are expiating; or, as says Heraclitus,
that rest consists in flight (from heaven, and descent here below),
and that the descent of souls is neither entirely voluntary, nor
involuntary. Indeed, no being ever falls voluntarily; but as it is by
his own motion that he descends to lower things, and reaches a less
happy condition, it may be said that he bears the punishment of his
conduct. Besides, as it is by an eternal law of nature that this being
acts and suffers in that manner, we may, without contradiction or
violence to the truth, assert that the being who descends from his rank
to assist some lower thing is sent by the divinity.[175] In spite of
any number of intermediate parts (which separate) a principle from its
lower part, the latter may still be ascribed to the former.[176]