imparticipable natures. From all these elevating modes of intelligence,
it must be obvious to such as are not perfectly blind, how the soul,
leaving sense and body behind, surveys through the projecting energies of
intellect those beings that are entirely exempt from all connection with
a corporeal nature.

The rational and intellectual soul therefore, in whatever manner it may
be moved according to nature, is beyond body and sense. And hence it must
necessarily have an essence separate from both. But from this again, it
becomes manifest, that when it energizes according to its nature, it is
superior to Fate, and beyond the reach of its attractive power; but that,
when falling into sense and things irrational and corporalized, it
follows downward natures and lives, with them as with inebriated
neighbors, then together with them it becomes subject to the dominion of
Fate. For again, it is necessary that there should be an order of beings
of such a kind, as to subsist according to essence above Fate, but to be
sometimes ranked under it according to habitude. For if there are beings,
and such are all intellectual natures which are eternally established
above the laws of Fate, and also which, according to the whole of their
life, are distributed under the periods of Fate, it is necessary that the
medium between these should be that nature which is sometimes above, and
sometimes under the dominion of Fate. For the procession of incorporeal
natures is much more without a vacuum than that of bodies.

The free will therefore of man, according to Plato, is a rational
elective, power, desiderative of true and apparent good, and leading the
soul to both, through which it ascends and descends, errs and acts with
rectitude. And hence the elective will be the same with that which
characterizes our essence. According to this power, we differ from divine
and mortal natures: for each of these is void of that two-fold inclination;