On the other hand, if the soul were absolutely one, essentially
indivisible and one within herself, if her nature were incompatible
with manifoldness and division, she could not, when penetrating into
the body, animate it in its entirety; she would place herself in its
centre, leaving the rest of the mass of the animal lifeless. The
soul, therefore, must be simultaneously one and manifold, divided and
undivided, and we must not deny, as something impossible, that the
soul, though one and identical, can be in several parts of the body
simultaneously. If this truth be denied, this will destroy the "nature
that contains and administers the universe" (as said the Stoics); which
embraces everything at once, and directs everything with wisdom; a
nature that is both manifold, because all beings are manifold; and
single, because the principle that contains everything must be one. It
is by her manifold unity that she vivifies all parts of the universe,
while it is her indivisible unity that directs everything with wisdom.
In the very things that have no wisdom, the unity that in it plays the
predominating "part," imitates the unity of the universal Soul. That is
what Plato wished to indicate allegorically by these divine words[361]:
"From the "Being" that is indivisible and ever unchanging; and from
the "being" which becomes divisible in the bodies, the divinity formed
a mixture, a third kind of "being." The (universal) Soul, therefore,
is (as we have just said) simultaneously one and manifold; the forms
of the bodies are both manifold and one; the bodies are only manifold;
while the supreme Principle (the One), is exclusively an unity.
Paragraph 3 of this book (iv. 2,--21) will be found in its logical
position--judging by the subject matter,--on pages 75 to 78, in the
middle of iv. 7,--2.