3. Since the nature of the Soul is so divine and precious, you may
be assured of being able to reach the divinity through her; with her
you can ascend to Him. You will not need to search for Him far from
yourself; nor will there be several intermediaries between yourself and
Him. To reach Him, take as guide the divinest and highest part of the
Soul, the power from which she proceeds, and by which she impinges on
the intelligible world. Indeed, in spite of the divinity which we have
attributed to her, the Soul is no more than an image of Intelligence.
As the exterior word (speech) is the image of the (interior) word (of
thought?) of the soul, the Soul herself is the word and actualization
of Intelligence.[224] She is the life which escapes from Intelligence
to form another hypostatic form of existence, just as the fire contains
the latent heat which constitutes its essence ("being"), and also
the heat that radiates from it outside. Nevertheless, the Soul does
not entirely issue from within Intelligence; she does partly reside
therein, but also forms (a nature) distinct therefrom. As the Soul
proceeds from Intelligence, she is intelligible; and the manifestation
of her intellectual power is discursive reason. From Intelligence
the Soul derives her perfection, as well as her existence; only in
comparison with Intelligence does the Soul seem imperfect. The Soul,
therefore, is the hypostatic substance that proceeds from Intelligence,
and when the Soul contemplates Intelligence the soul is reason
actualized. Indeed, while the soul contemplates Intelligence, the Soul
intimately possesses the things she thinks; from her own resources she
draws the actualizations she produces; these intellectual and pure
actualizations are indeed the Soul's only characteristic activities.
Those of an inferior nature really proceed from a foreign principle;
they are passions.