Select Works, Section 236 (part 2)

Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.

The text explicitly warns against representing the Soul as blushing or turning pale, rejecting the attribution of human physical characteristics to the Mind.

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

The nature of the Soul is described through negation, stating it is 'unchanged' and memories are 'not forms stamped upon the mind.'

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

The text identifies the body as the locus of physical passions and errors regarding the Soul's nature, implying it obscures the true mental state.

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

The text argues that the Soul or Mind is 'unchanged in substance and in essence,' aligning with the doctrine of an immutable, simple higher principle.

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

The author states that virtue and vice are 'not something imported into the Soul,' implying they lack positive being within the essence of the spirit.

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The author urges the reader to determine 'what it is that changes,' which is an inquiry into the true nature of the self versus the composite body.

Ontological opposition between two primal principles (light/darkness, truth/lie, spirit/matter) as the fundamental structure of reality.

[auto] The passage explicitly distinguishes between the Soul/Mind and the 'soulless matter' of the body, establishing a spirit-matter opposition central to the argument.