Let us proceed to the objection drawn from the heat that remains
after the withdrawal of the fire. The heat is not the image of the
fire, or at least, we may deny that there is always fire in heat;
but even so heat would not be independent of fire. Besides, when you
withdraw from a body the fire that heats it, this body grows cold,
if not instantaneously, at least gradually. It would, however, be
wrong to say that the powers that descend here below also gradually
grow extinct; for this would amount to stating that only the One is
immortal, while the souls and intelligences are mortal. Besides, it is
not reasonable to admit that even the things that derive from a "being"
that wastes away also gradually exhaust themselves; for even if you
should immobilize the sun, it would still shed the same light in the
same places. If it were objected that it would not be the same light,
the conclusion would be (the absurdity) that the body of the sun is in
a perpetual wastage. Last we have elsewhere demonstrated at length
that what proceeds from the One does not perish, but that all souls and
intelligences are immortal.