  Among the sources of unity and order in the universe, souls play a most significant role. As we have seen in the previous section, souls are at the center of Cardano’s cosmos. Being immaterial, they are “a unitary principle that is not continuous, nor contiguous, but exists of its own, not in a place, nor in a time.” Unlike life (vita), which is diffused everywhere and therefore cannot be said to be a real principium, souls have no spatial and temporal limitation and are nowhere (nullibi) to be found because of their incorporeal nature (De uno, OO, I, 279a; García Valverde, 12). While souls are one and individual everywhere (“our soul is no less here than in the sky, no less in Italy than in India”), bodies are different and manifold depending on material circumstances and vital urges, for “division of bodies is determined by the needs of life (vitae commodum)” (Paralipomenon, OO, X, 446a). Given the central role assigned to the soul, in all its forms, Cardano’s philosophy of nature is inevitably exposed to charges of animism and anthropomorphism. The issue is accentuated by the fact that the human being represents for Cardano a model of rationality and teleological activity.