It may set up some weakness restricted to the material frame. Or it may carry the weakness through to the sympathetic Soul which by the medium of the material frame, become a power to debasement, has been delivered over, though never in its essence, to the inferior order of being. Or, in the case of a material frame ill-organised, it may check all such action (of the Soul) upon the material frame as demands a certain collaboration in the part acted upon : thus a lyre may be so ill-strung as to be incapable of the melodic exactitude necessary to musical effect.
What of poverty and riches, glory and power ?
In the case of inherited fortune, the stars merely announce a rich
man, exactly as they announce the high social standing of the child born to a distinguished house.
Wealth may be due to personal activity ; in this case if the body has contributed, part of the effect is due to whatever has contributed towards the physical powers, first the parents and then, if place has had its influence, sky and earth ; if the body has borne no part of the burden, then the success, and all the splendid accompaniments added by the Recompensers, must be attributed to virtue exclusively. If fortune has come by gift from the good then the source of the wealth is, again, virtue ; if by gift from the evil, but to a meritorious recipient, then the credit must be given to the action of the best in them ; if the recipient is himself unprincipled, the wealth must be attributed primarily to the very wickedness and to whatsoever is responsible for the wickedness, while the givers bear an equal share in the wrong.
When the success is due to labour, tillage for example, it must be put down to the tiller, with all his environment as contributory. In the case of treasure trove, something from the All has entered into action ; and if this be so, it will be foreshown — since all things make a chain, so that we can speak of things universally. Money is lost : if by robbery, the blame lies with the robber and the native principle guiding him : if by shipwreck, the cause is the chain of events. As for good fame, it is either deserved and then is due to the services done and to the merit of those appraising them, or it is undeserved, and then must be attributed to the injustice of those making the award. And the same principle holds as regards power — for this also may be rightly or un- rightly placed — it depends either upon the merit of the dispensers of place or upon the man himself who has effected his purpose by the organisation of supporters or in many other possible ways. Marriages, similarly, are brought about either by choice or by chance interplay of circumstance. And births are determined by marriages : the child is moulded true to type when all goes well ; otherwise it is marred by some inner detriment, something due to the mother personally or to an environment unfavourable to that particular conception.
Ii. 3-15]
According to Plato lots and choice play a part (in the determination of human conditions) before the Spindle of Necessity is turned ; that once done, only the Spindle-destiny is valid ; it fixes the chosen con- ditions irretrievably since the elected guardian-spirit becomes accessory to their accomplishment.
But what is the significance of the Lots ?
By the Lots (implying the unchosen element) we are to understand birth into the conditions actually existent in the All at the particular moment of each entry into body, birth into such and such a physical frame, from such and such parents, in this or that place, and generally all that in our phraseology is the External.
For Particulars and Universals alike it is established that to the first of those known as the Fates, to Clotho the Spinner, must be due the unity and as it were interweaving of ' all that exists : Lachesis (the Apportioner) presides over the Lots : to Atropos (the Inflexible) must necessarily belong the conduct of mundane events.
Of men, some enter into life as fragments of the All, bound to that which is external to themselves : they are victims of a sort of fascination, and are hardly, or not at all, themselves : but others mastering all this — straining, so to speak, by the head towards the Higher, to what is outside even the Soul— preserve still the nobility and the ancient privilege of the Soul’s essential being.
For certainly we cannot think of the Soul as a thing whose nature is just a sum of impressions from outside — as if it, alone, of all that exists, had no native character.
No : much more than all else, the Soul, possessing the Idea which belongs to a Principle, must have as its native wealth many powers serving to the activities of its Kind. It is an Essential-Existent and with this Existence must go desire and act and the tendency towards some good.
While body and soul stand one combined thing, there is a joint nature, a definite entity having definite functions and employments ; but as soon as any Soul is detached, its employments are kept apart, its very
own : it ceases to take the body’s concerns to itself : it has vision now : body and soul stand widely apart.
The question arises what phase of the Soul enters into the union for the period of embodiment and what phase remains distinct, what is separable and what necessarily interlinked, and in general what the Living-Being is.
On all this there has been a conflict of teaching : the matter must be examined later on from quite other considerations than occupy us here. For the present let us explain in what sense we have described the All as the expressed idea of the Governing Soul.
One theory might be that the Soul creates the particular entities in succession — man followed by horse and other animals domestic or wild : fire and earth, though, first of all — that it watches these creations acting upon each other whether to help or to harm, observes, and no more, the tangled web formed of all these strands, and their unfailing sequences ; and that it makes no concern of the result beyond securing the repro- duction of the primal living-beings, leaving them for the rest to act upon each other according to their definite natures.
Another view makes the soul answerable for all that thus comes about, since its first creations have set up the entire enchainment.
No doubt the Reason-Principle (conveyed by the Soul) covers all the action and experience of this realm : nothing happens, even here, by any form of haphazard ; all follows a necessary order.
Is everything, then, to be attributed to the act of the Reason- Principles ?
To their existence, no doubt, but not to their effective action ; they exist and they know ; or better, the Soul, which contains the engendering Reason-Principle, knows the results of all it has brought to pass. For whensoever similar factors meet and act in relation to each other, similar consequences must inevitably ensue : the Soul adopting or fore- planning the given conditions accomplishes the due outcome and links all into a total.
Ii. 3. 1 6]
Are the Stars Causes?
All, then, is antecedent and resultant, each sequent becoming in turn an antecedent once it has taken its place among things. And perhaps this is a cause of progressive deterioration : men, for instance, are not as they were of old ; by dint of interval and of the inevitable law, the Reason-Principles (constituting man) have ceded something to the characteristics of the Matter.
But : —
The Soul watches the ceaselessly changing universe and follows all the fate of all its works : this is its life, and it knows no respite from this care, but is ever labouring to bring about perfection, planning to lead all to an unending state of excellence — like a farmer, first sowing and planting and then constantly setting to rights where rainstorms and long frosts and high gales have played havoc.
If such a conception of Soul be rejected as untenable we are obliged to think that the Reason-Principles themselves foreknew or even con- tained the ruin and all the consequences of flaw.
But then we would be imputing the creation of evil to the Reason- Principles, though (we ought to be saved from this by reflecting that) the arts and their guiding principle do not include blundering, do not cover the inartistic, the destruction of the work of art.
And here it will be objected that in All there is nothing contrary to nature, nothing evil.
Still, by the side of the better there exists also what is less good.
Well, perhaps even the less good has its contributory value in the All. Perhaps there is no need that everything be good. Contraries may co-operate ; and without opposites there could be no ordered Universe : all living-beings of the partial realm include contraries. The better elements are compelled into existence and moulded to their function by the Reason-Principle directly ; the less good are potentially present in the Reason-Principles, actually present in the phenomena themselves ; the Soul’s power had reached its limit, and failed to bring the Reason- Principles into complete actuality since, amid the clash of these ante- cedent Principles, Matter had already from its own stock produced the less good.
Yet, with all this, Matter is continuously overruled towards the better ; so that out of the total of things — modified by Soul on the one hand and by Matter on the other hand, and on neither hand as sound as in the Reason- Principles — there is, in the end, a Unity.
But these Reason-Principles, contained in the Soul, are they Thoughts ?
And if so, by what process does the Soul create in accordance with these Thoughts ?
It is upon Matter that this act of the Reason is exercised ; and what acts physically is not an intellectual operation or a vision, but a power modifying matter, not conscious of it but merely acting upon it : the Reason-Principle, in other words, acts much like a force producing a figure or pattern upon water — that of a circle, suppose, where the forma- tion of the ring is conditioned by something distinct from that force itself (i.e. by the existence and nature of the water).
If this is so, the prior puissance of the Soul (that which conveys the Reason- Principles) must act (not directly but) by manipulating the other Soul, that which is united with Matter and has the generative function.
But is this handling the result of calculation ?
Calculation implies reference. Reference, then, to something outside or to something contained within itself ? If to its own content, there is no need of reasoning, which could not itself perform the act of creation ; creation is the operation of that phase of the Soul which contains Ideal- Principles ; for that is its stronger puissance, its creative part.
It creates, then, on the model of the Ideas ; for, what it has received from the Intellectual-Principle it must pass on in turn.
In sum, then, the Intellectual-Principle gives from itself to the Soul of the All which follows immediately upon it : this again gives forth from itself to its next, illuminated and imprinted by it ; and that secondary Soul at once begins to create, as under order, unhindered in some of its creations, striving in others against the repugnance of Matter.
Ii. 3- «8]
It has a creative power, derived ; it is stored with Reason-Principles not the very originals : therefore it creates, but not in full accordance with the Principles from which it has been endowed ; something enters from itself ; and, plainly, this is inferior. The issue then is something living, yes ; but imperfect, hindering its own life, something very poor and reluctant and crude, formed in a Matter that is the fallen sediment of the Higher Order, bitter and embittering. This is the Soul’s contri- bution to the All.
Are the evils in the Universe necessary because it is of later origin than the Higher Sphere ?
Perhaps rather because without evil the All would be incomplete. For most or even all forms of evil serve the Universe — much as the poisonous snake has its use — though in most cases their function is un- known. Vice itself has many useful sides : it brings about much that is beautiful, in artistic creations for example, and it stirs us to thoughtful living, not allowing us to drowse in security.