First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

These words imply that PLATO intended for this soul to be mixed from material Being and immaterial Being. Compare further what he discusses at length concerning the Construction and Constitution of the soul on the cited page and following, as well as FICINO's Compendium on the Timaeus, Chapter XXVI, page 819, b, D, E.

Following this is PYTHAGORAS, who says that the spirit of the World is so constituted that our souls are plucked from it, according to CICERO, l. c. Whence, since heterogeneous things, such as body and spirit, cannot naturally depend on one another for their Being, I conclude that he intended the world soul to be incorporeal: (*) This is what HERACLITUS, according to THEODORETUS in On the Nature of Man, Discourse V, Vol. IV, Works, page 546, C. (Paris Edition, JAC. SIRMOND, 1642.), expresses more clearly when he attributes to the World soul that it receives the souls of humans migrating from the body, since it is homogenes and homoousios of the same genus and essence, or substance; compare here GASSENDI, Animadversions on the Xth Book of Diogenes Laertius, on the Life, Morals, and Dogmas of Epicurus, and indeed Vol. I, in the Physiology of Epicurus, page 550. I note that REDENTO BARANZANO dissents from these, who in Part I, Uranoscopica, Question 2, Doubt 4, Member 1, page 60, contends that the world soul is of a different nature from other souls.

(*) For he said the soul is an apospasma aitheros avulsion of the aether, and that it is immortal, since that from which it is torn away is also immortal. If, however, both souls were immortal and thus incorruptible to him, he certainly could not have asserted that they were corporeal and material. Whence he also posited that the human soul, ejected from the body into the earth, wanders in the air, not itself a body, but only similar to a body; see LAERTIUS, Book VIII, on Pythagoras, 28, 31, page 509, sq. 513.