Multiplicity.This is not due to the need of flooding the universe with life; nor is the extension of the corporeal the cause of the multiplicity of souls; before body existed, soul was one and many; the many souls fore-existed in the All not potentially but each effectively; that one collective soul is no bar to the variety; the variety does not abrogate the unity; the souls are apart without partition, present each to all as never having been set in opposition;they are no more hedged off by boundaries than are the multiple items of knowledge in one mind; the one soul so exists as to include all souls; the nature of such a principle must be utterly free of boundary.
5.Herein lies its greatness, not in mass; mass is limited and may be whittled down to nothingness; in that order no such paring off is possible- nor, if it were, could there be any falling short.Where limitation is unthinkable, what fear can there be of absence at any point? Nowhere can that principle fail which is the unfailing, the everlasting, the undwindling; suppose it in flux and it must at some time flow to its end; since it is not in flux- and, besides [as the All], it has nowhere to flow to- it lies spread over the universe; in fact it is the universe, too great to be held by body, giving, therefore, to the material universe but little of itself, the little which that participant can take.
We may not make this principle the lesser, or if in the sense of mass we do, we must not begin to mistrust the power of that less to stretch to the greater.Of course, we have in fact no right to affirm it less or to measure the thing of magnitude against that which has none; as well talk of a doctor's skill being smaller than his body.This greatness is not to be thought of in terms of quantity; the greater and less of body have nothing to do with soul.
The nature of the greatness of soul is indicated by the fact that as the body grows, the larger mass is held by the same soul that sufficed to the smaller; it would be in many ways absurd to suppose a corresponding enlargement in the soul.
6.But why does not one same soul enter more than one body?
Because any second body must approach, if it might; but the first has approached and received and keeps.
Are we to think that this second body, in keeping its soul with a like care, is keeping the same soul as the first?
Why not: what difference is there? Merely some additions [from the experiences of life, none in the soul itself].
We ask further why one soul in foot and hand and not one soul in the distinct members of the universe.
Sensations no doubt differ from soul to soul but only as do the conditions and experiences; this is difference not in the judging principle but in the matters coming to judgement; the judge is one and the same soul pronouncing upon various events, and these not its own but belonging to a particular body; it is only as a man pronounces simultaneously upon a pleasant sensation in his finger and a pain in his head.
But why is not the soul in one man aware, then, of the judgement passed by another?
Because it is a judgement made, not a state set up; besides, the soul that has passed the judgement does not pronounce but simply judges: similarly a man's sight does not report to his hearing, though both have passed judgement; it is the reason above both that reports, and this is a principle distinct from either.Often, as it happens, reason does become aware of a verdict formed in another reason and takes to itself an alien experience: but this has been dealt with elsewhere.
7.Let us consider once more how it is possible for an identity to extend over a universe.This comes to the question how each variously placed entity in the multiplicity of the sense order can have its share in one identical Principle.
The solution is in the reasons given for refusing to distribute that principle; we are not to parcel it out among the entities of the multiple; on the contrary, we bring the distributed multiples to the unity.The unity has not gone forth to them: from their dispersion we are led to think of it as broken up to meet them, but this is to distribute the controller and container equally over the material handled.
A hand may very well control an entire mass, a long plank, or anything of that sort; the control is effective throughout and yet is not distributed, unit for unit, over the object of control: the power is felt to reach over the whole area, though the hand is only hand-long, not taking the extension of the mass it wields; lengthen the object and, provided that the total is within the strength, the power handles the new load with no need of distributing itself over the increased area.Now let us eliminate the corporeal mass of the hand, retaining the power it exerted: is not that power, the impartible, present integrally over the entire area of control?
