9. In this choric ballet, the soul sees the source of life, the source
of intelligence, the principle of being, the cause of the good, and
the root of love. All these entities are derived from the One without
diminishing Him. He is indeed no corporeal mass; otherwise the things
that are born of Him would be perishable. However, they are eternal,
because their principle ever remains the same, because[205] He does
not divide Himself to produce them, but remains entire. They persist,
just as the light persists so long as the sun remains.[206] Nor are we
separated from the One; we are not distant from Him, though corporeal
nature, by approaching us, has attracted us to it (thus drawing us
away from the One).[207] But it is in the One that we breathe and have
our being.[208] He gave us life not merely at a given moment, only to
leave us later; but His giving is perpetual, so long as He remains what
He is, or rather, so long as we turn towards Him. There it is that
we find happiness, while to withdraw from Him is to fall. It is in
Him that our soul rests; it is by rising to that place free from all
evil that she is delivered from evils; there she really thinks, there
she is impassible, there she really lives. Our present life, in which
we are not united with the divinity, is only a trace or adumbration
of real life. Real life (which is presence with the divinity) is the
actualization of intelligence. It is this actualization of intelligence
which begets the divinities by a sort of silent intercourse with the
One; thereby begetting beauty, justice and virtue. These are begotten
by the soul that is filled with divinity. In Him is her principle
and goal; her principle, because it is from there that she proceeds;
her goal, because there is the good to which she aspires, so that by
returning thither she again becomes what she was. Life here below, in
the midst of sense-objects, is for the soul a degradation, an exile, a
loss of her wings.[209]