And what a marvel—indeed, the greatest marvel—that the partisans of dispute and schism never distinguished between those two kinds, nor realized that both are dense, heavy bodies, utterly devoid of the fine, weightless, spiritual element. For that reason such ponderous masses cannot go beyond these two modes of mixture. If they are fused into a tight, interpenetrating alloy, the outcome is contrivance and corruption; if each remains as it is, refusing to fuse or intermingle, the result is merely a “mixture of separation,” every part cut off from the other even though a single idol or a single garment may gather them together. In truth, no corporeal mass admits of any other mixture: it is always corruption or severance—unless the union be between two entities, one heavy and bodily, the other subtle and spiritual. Only then does another possibility emerge.
The third mode of mixture:
It is the union of indwelling, without intermingling, contrivance, corruption, division, or rupture. Rather, it is the permeation of the spiritual nature throughout the lower, heavy nature until it spreads through its entirety and dwells in every part, leaving no portion of that dense, earthly nature empty of the spiritual nature. The heavy corporeal element undergoes no transformation away from its own dense, heavy nature, and neither of the two natures is altered or corrupted. Such is the union of soul and body, or of fire and iron in a single glowing ember: one ember whose very substance is fire intimately joined with, and interpenetrating, the nature of iron, without sundering or severance and without the deceptive blending that breeds corruption.