“Thus have I trac’d the soul in all its works, And severall conditions have displaid, And show’d all places where so e’r she lurks, Even her own lurkings of her self bewray’d, In plants, in beasts, in men, while here she staid.” (I. ii. 23.) He next demonstrates that this soul is a self-moving substance. It is self-moving in plants, as the quickening power of the sun on vegetation shows. Through the heat of the sun the hidden centre, or soul, is called into the life of blossoming and growth. “Thus called out by friendly sympathie Their souls move of themselves on their _Centreitie_.” (I. ii. 31.) In animals the self-moving soul is manifested in motion and the life of sensation. “Then be the souls of beasts self-moving forms, Bearing their bodies as themselves think meet, Invited or provok’d, so they transform At first themselves within, then straight in sight Those motions come, which suddenly do light Upon the bodies visible, which move According to the will of th’ inward spright.” (I. ii. 36.) In man the self-motion of the soul is present in the activity of reason, whether as the presiding power in all of the operations of the image-making faculty, or as the contemplative and speculative power. (I. ii. 41–44.) After this account of the nature of the soul as a self-moving substance, More addresses himself to the task of showing that all life is immortal. In a time of despondency a Nymph once came and declared to him, “_All life’s immortall_: though the outward trunk May changed be, yet life to nothing never shrunk.” (I. iii. 17.) According to the theory unfolded by the Nymph there is an ever present unity in all things which is the true source of their life. This is God. From Him are six descending degrees of existence, called intellectual, psychical, imaginative, sensitive, plantal, or spermatic. (I. iii. 23.) Below all of these is matter, which is nothing but mere potentiality, or the possibility of all created things. (I. iv. 9.) Though these various degrees of life are distinct, they are manifestations of the one pervading unity. (I. iii. 25.) Matter thus cannot be the prop and stay of life. (I. iii. 26.)