But what precisely is this soul that passes from one body to another, perhaps from one star to another? In one passage we read that as in corporeal matter the body of the ass does not differ from that of the man, so in spiritual matter the soul of the ass remains the same as that of the man; the soul of either is not different from that which is in all things, _i.e._ the soul of the universe.[567] We should then have to assume that it is _matter_, not the form or soul, that differentiates individuals. According to the differences of the organised bodies are the souls that are in them; or, it is one and the same soul which constitutes the vital and cognitive principle in different animal bodies, and in different "worlds" or stars. The individual human and animal souls would be merely modes of the one earth-soul, just as the different star-souls would be merely modes of the one soul of the universe, the first and highest emanation of divinity. The immortality of the individual soul would mean accordingly its reabsorption, at the close of its bodily life, into the eternal; but it would be impossible then to ascribe any continuity or identity to the souls of two beings which succeed each other in nature. This impersonal immortality is that which is most prominent in the Italian dialogues; it gives place, so far as prominence is concerned, to quite another standpoint in the later Latin works. Thus we find in the _Causa_ the comparison of the presence of the spiritual in matter to that of a voice in a room: it is wholly in the room and in every part of the room, yet it is only one utterance that is so heard in the different parts.[568] It might be added that the different degrees of perfection or of divinity in different things would correspond exactly with the differences in the intensity, vividness, of the sound in nearer and more distant parts of the room. As matter itself is ultimately one with spirit,[569] the outcome of this theory is an extreme Pantheism; especially as in the _Causa_ the transcendent Unity, elsewhere distinguished from the soul of the universe, is disregarded. Divinity constitutes both existence and essence of all things, and all things are ultimately one--God, in whom individual beings have their reality, and in whom each is one with all other beings. "We have not to look for divinity at a distance from us, for we have it with us, more truly intimate to us than we are to ourselves"; and so with all other finite things.[570] It has been shown also that death from this standpoint is merely the dissolution of a composite thing into its immortal elements, spirit and matter;[571] death is a change of "accidents" to the substance (_i.e._ of qualities, conditions), never a change of substance itself.[572] Not only we, but all other substances, spiritual and corporeal alike, are beyond reach of death; but as all substances are ultimately one, this does not mean a peculiar, personal immortality for each of us as separate beings.