Of Sensation and Memory. OF SENSATION. 24. (3) The soul contains the reasons of all things. The soul operates according to these reasons, whether incited to activity by some exterior object, or whether the soul be turned towards these reasons by folding back on herself. When the soul is incited to this activity by some exterior object, she applies her senses thereto; when she folds back on herself, she applies herself to thoughts. It might be objected that the result is that there is neither sensation nor thought without imagination; for just as in the animal part, no sensation occurs without an impression produced on the organs of sense; likewise there is no thought without imagination. Certainly, an analogy obtains between both cases. Just as the sense-image (type) results from the impression experienced by sensation, likewise the intellectual image (phantasm) results from thought. OF MEMORY. 25. (2) Memory does not consist in preserving images. It is the faculty of reproducing the conceptions with which our soul has been occupied. FIFTH ENNEAD, BOOK TWO. Of Generation and of the Order of Things that Follow the First. OF THE PROCESSION OF BEINGS. 26. When incorporeal hypostatic substances descend, they split up and multiply, their power weakening as they apply themselves to the individual. When, on the contrary, they rise, they simplify, unite, and their power intensifies. 27. In the life of incorporeal entities, the procession operates in a manner such that the superior principle remains firm and substantial in its nature, imparting its existence to what is below it, without losing anything, or transforming itself into anything. Thus that which receives existence does not receive existence with decay or alteration; it is not begotten like generation (that is, the being of sense), which participates in decay and change. It is, therefore, non-begotten and incorruptible, because it is produced without generation or corruption.