So it is with the soul considered as the activity of another and prior soul: as long as that prior retains its place, its next, which is its activity, abides.
But what of a soul which is not an activity but the derivative of an activity — as we maintained the life-principle domiciled in the body to be — is its presence similar to that of the light caught and held in material things?
No; for in those things the colour is due to an actual intermixture of the active element [the light being alloyed with Matter]; whereas the life-principle of the body is something that holds from another soul closely present to it.
But when the body perishes — by the fact that nothing without part in soul can continue in being — when the body is perishing, no longer supported by that primal life-giving soul, or by the presence of any secondary phase of it, it is clear that the life-principle can no longer remain; but does this mean that the life perishes?
No; not even it; for it, too, is an image of that first out-shining; it is merely no longer where it was.
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