The same may be said against the followers of Posidonius. For they seem not altogether to separate the soul
from matter; but imagining the essence of limitations to
be divisible in reference to bodies, and intermixing it with
the intelligible essence, they defined the soul to be an idea
[p. 351]
(or essential form) of that which has extension in every
direction, subsisting in an harmonical proportion of numbers. For (they say) all mathematical objects are disposed between the first intelligible and sensible beings;
and since the soul contains the sempiternal nature of
things intelligible and the pathetic nature of things subjected to sense, it seems but rational that it should consist
of a substance between both. But they were ignorant
that God, when the soul was already brought to perfection,
afterwards making use of the limitations of bodies to form
and shape the matter, confined and environed the dissipated and fleeting substance within the compass of certain
surfaces composed of triangles adapted together. And it
is even more absurd to make the soul an idea. For the
soul is always in motion; the idea is incapable of motion;
the one never to be mixed with that which is subjected to
sense, the other wrought into the substance of the body.
Moreover, God could be said only to imitate an idea, as his
pattern; but he was the artificer of the soul, as of a work of
perfection. Now enough has been already said to show that
Plato does not assert number to be the substance of the
soul, only that it is ordered and proportioned by number.
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