(indivisible, therefore unchanging) substance--the soul--that we are what we are; about it as a centre there occur in each life continuous "massing and unmassing" of corporeal atoms, through which the changes of form are brought about. "By birth and growth the spirit-architect expands into this mass of which we consist, spreading outwards from the heart. Thither again it withdraws, winding up the threads of its web, retiring by the same path along which it advanced, passing out by the same gate through which it entered. Birth is expansion of the centre, life consistency of the sphere, death contraction to the centre." It is the soul that gathers about it, groups and vivifies the atom-mass; and the strongest argument for its immortality is that it cannot be of less value, of inferior condition, than the atoms themselves of which it avails itself to its own ends, and which are in their nature imperishable.[578] Each soul exists apart in its own unity and individuality; the soul of the universe does not impart anything of itself to the souls of its members.[579] The hierarchy of souls is not a scale of beings within beings, but a multitude of realities, co-existent to all eternity, the _Monas Monadum_ at their head, representing perfectly, completely, at every moment (_i.e._ timelessly), the reality of all the others, yet separable from them. Of the others _that_ is higher which knows more perfectly, and in closer unity--that is, more adequately--the universe to which it belongs. Thus there is the daemon or soul "which is wholly in the whole extent of the life of _the earth_, by the life of which we live, and in the being of which we are;" above it is the individual soul or substantial nature which is in the wider extent of the _solar system_ to which the earth belongs; above it again the soul of the whole system of the _universe_; and highest of all the mind of minds--_God_, the one spirit filling all things wholly.[580] So in the _Lampas_ the _Intellectus primus_ is said to be separable from particular finite intelligences. It does not belong to their substance: it works in them, but not as a part of them. It does not gradually leave the being to which it has presented itself when that begins to decay, but simply ceases to operate, just as it comes also _suddenly_ to each, if at all.[581]