Plotinos · Plotinus
HOW THE TWO-FOLD SOUL EXERTS A TWO-FOLD PROVIDENCE.
In the universe there are, indeed, two kinds of providences.[163] The first Providence regulates everything in a royal manner, without performing any actions, or observing the details. The second, operating somewhat like an artisan, adjusts its creative power to the inferior nature of creatures by getting in contact with them.[164] Now as the divine Soul (or, the principal power,[165] always administers the whole world in the first or regal way, dominating the world by her superiority, and by injecting into the world her lowest power (nature), we could not accuse the divinity of having given a bad place to the universal Soul. Indeed, this universal Soul was never deprived of her natural power, possessing it always, because this power is not contrary to her being, possessing it uninterruptedly from all eternity. STAR-SOULS, LIKE UNINCARNATE SOULS, GOVERN THE WORLD UNTROUBLEDLY.
(Plato) further states that the relation of the souls of the stars to their bodies is the same as that of the universal Soul to the universe,[166] where he makes the stars participate in the movements of the universal Soul. He thus grants to those souls the blessedness which is suitable to them. The intercourse of the soul with the body is usually blamed for two things: because it hinders the soul from busying herself with the conceptions of intelligence, and then because it exposes her to agreeable or painful sensations which fill her with desires. Now neither of these two results affect the soul that has not entered into a body, and which does not depend thereon by belonging to some particular individual. Then, on the contrary, she possesses the body of the universe, which has no fault, no need, which can cause her neither fears nor desires, because she has nothing to fear. Thus no anxiety ever forces her to descend to terrestrial objects, or to distract herself from her happy and sublime contemplation. Entirely devoted to divine things, she governs the world by a single power, whose exercise involves no anxiety.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.