consists, we have already shown that it is of a self-motive nature, and
that it subsists between intellect, which is immovable both in essence
and energy, and nature, which both moves and is moved. In consequence of
this middle subsistence, the mundane soul, from which all partial souls
are derived, is said by Plato in the Timaeus, to be a medium between that
which is indivisible and that which is divisible about bodies, i.e. the
mundane soul is a medium between the mundane intellect, and the whole of
that corporeal life which the world participates. In like manner, the
human soul is a medium between a daemoniacal intellect proximately,
established above our essence, which it also elevates and perfects, and
that corporeal life which is distributed about our body, and which is
the cause of its generation, nutrition and increase. This daemoniacal
intellect is called by Plato, in the Phaedrus, theoretic and, the
governor of the soul. The highest part therefore of the human soul is the
summit of the dianoetic power ([Greek: to akrotaton tes dianoias]), or
that power which reasons scientifically; and this summit is our intellect.
As, however, our very essence is characterized by reason, this our summit
is rational, and though it subsists in energy, yet it has a remitted union
with things themselves. Though too it energizes from itself, and contains
intelligibles in its essence, yet from its alliance to the discursive
nature of soul, and its inclination to that which is divisible, it falls
short of the perfection of an intellectual essence and energy profoundly
indivisible and united, and the intelligibles which it contains degenerate
from the transcendently fulged and self-luminous nature of first
intelligibles. Hence, in obtaining a perfectly indivisible knowledge, it
requires to be perfected by an intellect whose energy is ever vigilant
and unremitted; and it's intelligibles, that they may become perfect,
are indigent of the light which proceeds from separate intelligibles.
Aristotle, therefore, very properly compares the intelligibles of our
intellect to colors, because these require the splendour of the sun, and