' The Soul '...

Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle:

reason uttered is an image of the reason stored within the Soul, and in the same way soul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle:

it is even the total of its activity, the entire stream of life sent forth by that Principle to the production of further being;

it is the forthgoing heat of a fire which has also heat essentially inherent.

But within the Supreme we must see energy not as an overflow but in the double aspect of integral inherence with the establishment of a new being.

Sprung, in other words, from the Intellectual-Principle, soul is intellective, but with an intellection operating by the method of reasonings:

for its perfecting it must look to that Divine Mind, which may be thought of as a father watching over the development of his child born imperfect in comparison with himself.



-- Ennead V.1.3.
Plotinus