5. (4). After having spoken of nature, and having explained how
generation is a sort of contemplation, let us pass to the Soul that
occupies a rank superior to nature. This is what we have to say about
her. By her contemplative action, by her ardent desire to learn and
to discover, by the fruitfulness of her knowledge, and her resulting
need to produce, the Soul, her totality having become an object of
contemplation, gave birth to some other object; just as science, on
fructifying, by instruction begets a lesser science in the soul of
the young disciple who possesses the images of all things, but only
in the state of obscure theories, of feeble speculations, which are
incapable of self-sufficiency. The higher and rational part of the
Soul ever dwells in the higher region of the intelligible world, and
is, by this intelligible world, ever illuminated and fructified[184];
while the lower ("natural and generative power") participates in what
the superior part has received, by immediately participating in the
intelligible; for life ever proceeds from life, and its actualization
extends to everything, and is present everywhere. In her procession,
the universal Soul allows her superior part to remain in the
intelligible world; for, if she detached herself from this superior
part, she would no longer be present everywhere; she would subsist
only in her lower extremities. Besides, the part of the Soul that thus
proceeds out of the intelligible world is inferior to what remains
within it. Therefore, if the Soul must be present and must assert her
sphere of activity everywhere, and if that which occupies the superior
rank differs from that which occupies the inferior; if, besides, her
activity proceeds either from contemplation or action---though indeed
originally from contemplation--because contemplation precedes the
action which could not exist without contemplation; in this state
of affairs, though one actualization would be weaker than another,
yet it would ever remain a contemplation, so that the action derived
from contemplation seems to be no more than a weakened contemplation;
for that which is begotten must always remain consubstantial with
its generating principle, though weaker, since of lower rank. All
things therefore silently proceed from the Soul, because they stand
in no need of either contemplation or exterior visible action. Thus
the Soul contemplates, and the contemplating part of the Soul, being
somehow located outside of the superior part, and being different
therefrom, produces what is below it; thus it is that contemplation
begets contemplation.[185] No more than its object is contemplation
limited below; that is why it extends to everything. Where is it not?
Every soul contains the same object of contemplation. This object,
without being circumscribed as a magnitude, does not equally inhere
in all beings; consequently, it is not present in the same way to all
parts of the Soul. That is why Plato[186] says that the charioteer
of the soul communicates to his horses what he has seen. The latter
receive something from him only because they desire to possess what he
has seen; for they have not received the entire intelligible (world).
Though they act because of a desire, they act only in view of what they
desire; that is, in view of contemplation, and of its object.