Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.

The line suggests that even in sleep the human soul is not inert: it continues to operate and, in some sense, remains implicated in the world’s ongoing formation. Read Heracliteanly, this points to the idea that reality is a process—an ever-living order of change—and that the soul is part of that process whether or not it is consciously “awake” to the common Logos. The contrast also implies a hierarchy of awareness: waking life can align with what is shared and lawful, while sleep tends toward a private realm. Yet the soul’s activity never fully stops; it still participates in the world’s becoming.