And what are we? Are we the universal Soul, or are we what approaches
her, and what is begotten in time (that is, the body)? No: (we are not
bodies). Before the generation of the bodies had been accomplished, we
existed already on high; some of us were men, others of us were even
divinities----that is, we were pure souls, intelligences connected with
universal Being; we formed parts of the intelligible world, parts that
were neither circumscribed nor separated, but which belonged to the
entire intelligible world. Even now, indeed, we are not separated from
the intelligible world; but the intelligible Man in us has received,
and is joined by a man who desired to be different from the former
(that is, the sense-man desired to be independent), and finding us,
for we were not outside of the universe, he surrounded us, and added
himself to the intelligible man who then was each one of us.