Cause Principle Unity

A general account of bonding
preface to this part of this treatise, these other descriptions of feelings and
other types of bonds have an analogy to our notion of feelings and bonds.
10. The distribution of bonds. Perfect things are bonded to perfect things;
noble things and nobility are bonded to noble things; and things which are
imperfect and defective are bonded to things which are imperfect and
defective. As a result, it was said above that part of what is in that which is
to be bound must be present in the bonding agent. A completely chaste girl,
in whom there are no seeds of excitement, is not bound to sensory pleasure
by any star or by any artifice if she has not been touched or embraced, that
is, (I say) she has not submitted herself to the hand of a bonding agent, and
his hand has not reached out to her. I will say nothing about an immature
girl, for in all actions there must be some seed, but not all seeds are fruitful
everywhere. And whose attempt to entice someone who is ill, or old, or frigid
or castrated would not be frustrated (the opposite would apply to those
who would not make the attempt)? In regard to social bonds, a proportional
judgement is quite easy to make.
11. The degrees of bonds. Things in the universe are so ordered that they
constitute one definite co-ordination in which there can occur a transition
from all things to all things in one continuous flow. Some of these things
are immediately related to others, for example, the natural propagation of
individuals of the same species, and in these cases the bonds are blood
related, familiar and easy. Other things are interrelated through various
intermediaries, and all of these intermediaries must be crossed over and
penetrated so that bonds are stretched across from the bonding agent to
that which is bound. Thus, by their generosity to things and by their goodwill
in sharing with these intermediaries, spirits influence inferior, and even
the lowest, things and bind them to themselves. On the other hand, lower
things are raised up with a certain reverence through a natural or rational
sequence so that, through the free consent of higher things, they can bind
to themselves superior things located far above them. And just as there are
various species of things and differences between them, they also have various
times, places, intermediaries, pathways, instruments and functions. It
is very easy to see this and to understand it for all types of bonds and things
that can be bound.
12. The size of a bond. In all things there is a divine force, that is, love, the
father himself, the source, the Amphitrite of bonds. Thus, Orpheus and
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