Further, the cause of the revolution of the heavens is left obscure.
It is not the essence of soul which is the cause of this circular
movement-that movement is only incidental to soul-nor is, a
fortiori, the body its cause. Again, it is not even asserted that it
is better that soul should be so moved; and yet the reason for which
God caused the soul to move in a circle can only have been that
movement was better for it than rest, and movement of this kind better
than any other. But since this sort of consideration is more
appropriate to another field of speculation, let us dismiss it for the
present.
The view we have just been examining, in company with most
theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all
join the soul to a body, or place it in a body, without adding any
specification of the reason of their union, or of the bodily
conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be
omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact
that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the
other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two
interagents. All, however, that these thinkers do is to describe the
specific characteristics of the soul; they do not try to determine
anything about the body which is to contain it, as if it were
possible, as in the Pythagorean myths, that any soul could be
clothed upon with any body-an absurd view, for each body seems to have
a form and shape of its own.
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