3. What then is our guardian? It is one of the powers of our soul.
What is our divinity? It is also one of the powers of our soul. (Is it
the power which acts principally in us as some people think?) For the
power which acts in us seems to be that which leads us, since it is
the principle which dominates in us. Is that the guardian to which we
have been allotted during the course of our life?[323] No: our guardian
is the power immediately superior to the one that we exercise, for it
presides over our life without itself being active. The power which
is active in us is inferior to the one that presides over our life,
and it is the one which essentially constitutes us. If then we live
on the plane of the sense-life, our guardian is reason; if we live on
the rational plane, our guardian will be the principal superior to
reason (namely, intelligence); it will preside over our life, but it
itself does not act, leaving that to the inferior power. Plato truly
said that "we choose our guardian"; for, by the kind of life that we
prefer, we choose the guardian that presides over our life. Why then
does He direct us? He directs us during the course of our mortal life
(because he is given to us to help us to accomplish our (destiny); but
he can no longer direct us when our destiny is accomplished, because
the power over the exercise of which he presided allows another power
to act in his place (which however is dead, since the life in which it
acted is terminated). This other power wishes to act in its turn, and,
after having established its preponderance, it exercises itself during
the course of a new life, itself having another guardian. If then we
should chance to degrade ourselves by letting an inferior power prevail
in us, we are punished for it. Indeed, the evil man degenerates because
the power which he has developed in his life makes him descend to the
existence of the brute, by assimilating him to it by his morals. If
we could follow the guardian who is superior to him, he himself would
become superior by sharing his life. He would then take as guide a
part of himself superior to the one that governs him, then another
part, still more elevated until he had arrived at the highest. Indeed,
the soul is several things, or rather, the soul is all things; she
is things both inferior and superior; she contains all the degrees
of life. Each of us, in a certain degree, is the intelligible world;
by our inferior part we are related to the sense-world, and by our
superior part, to the intelligible world; we remain there on high by
what constitutes our intelligible essence; we are attached here below
by the powers which occupy the lowest rank in the soul. Thus we cause
an emanation, or rather an actualization which implies no loss to the
intelligible, to pass from the intelligible into the sense-world.