Cause Principle Unity

On magic
spiritual body is the same thing as the soul, and the poet has said that this
air ‘has the power of fire and the soul’. 9
Furthermore, fire, which does not consist of dense matter like coal,
which is rather an ignited body, is to be understood as different from air
only accidentally. For true fire is, indeed, a spirit, which is sluggish when
it is located in an ignited body, but it is lively when it is outside of an ignited
body, and it is a form of motion in a flame or in some intermediate state.
This spirit, acting in different ways, forms different bodies and animals.
And although not all composite bodies are animals, it must be noted that
all animals have a soul which is of the same type in all the members of one
genus. However, that soul is not actuated in one and the same way because
of differences in the dispositions of matter and in objective ideals. From
this, it follows that, since there are different and contrary forms, there are
also differences and reasons why some animals congregate with each other,
being attracted and impelled to various places, while others flee from or
pursue each other. All of this is due to the way they are structured.
All things desire to preserve their own existence, and thus they forcibly
and unwillingly resist separation from the place where they exist and persevere.
This force is so strong that the sun or fire attracts water to itself
through airy space only after it has first made the water like air, that is, by
converting it into a vapour. After that has happened, then the substance
which was water is attracted willingly, and by means of the same impulse
of attraction, it tries to adapt itself so that it slowly becomes more and more
like fire, and finally, it becomes fire itself. On the other hand, that most subtle
body which is contained in the spirit in the form of fire changes back
into water by the opposite sequence as it congeals and thickens.
Therefore, the same substance and matter changes from water to vapour,
from vapour to air, and from air to the thinnest and most penetrating ethereal
body. The latter has been called a ‘spirit’ by the Egyptians, Moses and
Dionysius of Apollonia, although they differ because Moses did not
distinguish spirit from soul (according to his words; I do not judge his
meaning), which the others did. The other substance [earth] is dry and
composed of atoms, which are very solid and indissoluble bodies. In themselves,
they are neither continuous nor divisible and, thus, cannot be
changed into any other body. And the substance of water or spirit or air,
which is the same, never changes into the substance of atoms or dry earth,
nor vice versa.
9 Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 403.
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