29. If the body resemble an object warmed rather than illuminated, why
does nothing vital remain after the reasonable soul has abandoned it?
It does preserve some vital element, but only for a short time; this
trace soon disappears, as vanishes the heat of an object when it is
removed from the fire. After death, some trace of life still remains.
This is proved by the growth of hair and nails on corpses; and it is
well known that animals, even after being cut in pieces, still move
for some time. Besides, the disappearance of the (vegetative) life
simultaneously with the reasonable soul, does not prove their identity,
and that they (the reasonable soul, and the vegetative soul) are not
different. When the sun disappears, it causes the disappearance not
only of the light that surrounds it immediately, and as it were depends
from it, but also of the brilliance which these objects receive from
this light, and which completely differs from it.
DOES THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THESE THINGS NECESSARILY IMPLY THEIR
DESTRUCTION?
But does that which disappears merely depart, or does it perish? Such
is the question which applies both to the light which inheres in the
illuminated objects (and colors them), as well as to the life inherent
in the body, and which we call the characteristically bodily life.
Evidently, there remains no light left in the objects which were
illuminated. But the question is to decide whether the light that
inhered in them returns to its source, or is annihilated. Annihilation
is impossible if anteriorly it was something real. What was it really?
So-called color must depend on the very bodies from which light also
emanates; and when these bodies perish, their coloring perishes with
them; nobody indeed asks after the fate of the color of the fire that
has gone out any more than one troubles oneself about what has become
of its appearance. It may be objected that the appearance is only a
condition,[156] such as holding the hand open or closed, while the
color, on the contrary, is the same sort of a quality as sweetness.
Now, is there nothing to hinder the sweet or the fragrant body from
perishing, without affecting the existence of the sweetness and
fragrance? Could they subsist in other bodies without being felt,
because the bodies which participate in the qualities, are such as not
to allow the qualities they possess to be felt? What would hinder the
unaffected existence of the light after the destruction of the body
it colored, if it merely ceased to be reflected, unless one's mind
should see that those qualities subsist in no subject? If we were to
admit this opinion, we would also be obliged to admit that qualities
are indestructible, that they are not produced in the constitution
of the bodies, that their colors are not produced by the reasons in
seed; that, as happens with the changing plumage of certain birds,
the ("seminal) reasons" not only gather or produce the colors of the
objects, but they besides make use of those that still fill the air,
and that they remain in the air without being such as they appear to us
when in bodies. Enough of this.
THREE POSSIBLE INTERRELATIONS OF THE SOUL'S SUPERIOR AND INFERIOR
BODIES.
It may still be asked whether, if while the bodies subsist, the
light that colors them remains united to them, and does not separate
from them, why then would not both it, together with its immediate
emanations, move along with the body in which it inheres, although it
cannot be seen going away any more than it is seen approaching? We
shall therefore have to examine elsewhere if the second-rank powers
of the soul always remain attached to the higher ones, and so on; or
if each of them subsist by itself, and can continue to subsist in
itself when it is separated from the higher ones; or if, inasmuch as no
part of the soul can be separated from the others, all together form
a soul which is simultaneously one and manifold, but in some still
undetermined manner.