 Certainly at First Principles 1.4.1 he writes that satiety is the commonest cause of falling, but the soul of which he speaks may be an embodied one, as it is when it repents a few lines later (Princ. 1.4.1). At First Principles 3.5.6, and again in his fragmentary commentary on Ephesians, he interprets the noun katabolê at Ephesians 1.4 as an allusion to the soul’s descent to a body from the hand of God; but this descent, which is not a fall, is not said to coincide with the creation. We read that the soul of Christ adhered to the word with indissoluble love ab initio creationis, but these words could signify either “from the beginning of the creation” or “from the beginning of its creation” (Princ. 2.6.3–4). At First Principles 1.7.1 we are said to be properly identical with our rational element; but Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine said the same without being understood to mean that we have ever existed as disembodied souls. At Commentary on Matthew 16.35 he entertains the theory that souls await embodiment in Sheol, the place from which the soul of Samuel was raised by the Witch of Endor; since he appears to be hinting here not only at a primordial existence of the soul but at transmigration from body to body, we should not rely too heavily on this parenthetic chapter in a text which poses more than the usual share of difficulties for its editors. That souls are already rational in the foetal state is evident from the leaping of John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb when he recognises the child in the womb of Mary (Princ. 1.7.4). In his exegesis of John 1.31, Origen suggests that the Baptist deplores his failure to recognise Jesus at the River Jordan because he has already known him in a previous life; since, however, he was prepared to entertain the theory that the Baptist was an angel embodied for our sake, we cannot deduce that Origen credited all souls with a sentient existence before their entry into this world (CommJohn 2.31.186). That the elements are ensouled can be inferred from Isaiah 1.2, where God calls heaven and earth to witness; and Job’s exclamation, “the stars are not clean in his sight” is applied by Origen to the sun and moon, who have been made “subject to vanity” for the sake of those who inhabit the physical cosmos (Princ. 1.7.2). Here it may be true that he borrows a tenet from the Platonists, but not without biblical warrant, and the uncleanness of the sun and moon is a consequence of their voluntary enthralment, not its cause (see further Scott 1994).