14. But if one and the single Soul be in each person, how does each
have his own soul? How then can one soul be good, while the other
is evil? The universal Soul communicates her life to each, for she
contains all the souls and all the intelligences. She possesses
simultaneously unity and infinity; in her breast she contains all
the souls, each distinct from her, but not separated; otherwise how
could the Soul possess the infinite? It might still be objected that
the universal Soul simultaneously contains all things, all lives, all
souls, all the intelligences; that these are not each circumscribed by
limits, and that that is the reason they form a unity. Indeed, there
had to be in the universal Soul a life not only one, but infinite, and
yet single; this one life had to be one so far as it was all lives,
as these did not get confused in this unity, but that they should
originate there, while at the same time they should remain located in
the place from where they had started; or rather, they never left the
womb of the universal Soul, for they have always subsisted in the same
state. Indeed, nothing was begotten in the universal Soul; she did
not really divide herself, she only seems divided in respect to what
receives her; everything within her remains what it has always been.
But that which was begotten (namely, the body) approaches the Soul,
and seems to unite with her, and depends on her.