Chapter IX. The Same Against the Same, as at Variance With Plato and the Hebrew Scriptures Also on the Subject of the Immortality of the Soul

‘Now concerning the soul what need we say? For this is evident not only to philosophers but also to nearly all ordinary persons, that Plato allows the soul to be immortal, and has written many discourses concerning this, showing in many various ways that the soul is immortal.

‘Great also has been the emulation of the zealous followers of Plato’s teaching in defence both of Plato and of his doctrine; for this is almost the one thing that holds his whole school together.

‘For the hypothesis of his ethical doctrines was a consequence of the immortality of the soul, since it was through the divine nature of the soul that virtue was enabled to maintain its grandeur and lustre and high spirit; in nature also it was in consequence of the soul’s direction that all things gained the possibility of being well ordered.

‘”For soul,” he says, “as a whole has the care of all soulless being, and traverses all heaven, appearing at different times in different forms.” [1]

Moreover, science also and wisdom have been made by Plato dependent on the immortality of the soul. [2] For all kinds of learning are recollections, and he thinks that in no other way can inquiry and learning, out of which science springs, be maintained.

‘Now if the soul is not immortal, neither is recollection, and if not this, then neither learning. Whereas therefore all the doctrines of Plato are absolutely attached to and dependent on the divine nature of the soul and its immortality, he who does not admit this overthrows Plato’s whole philosophy.

‘Who then first attempted to oppose the proofs, and rob the soul of immortality and all its other power? Who else, I say, before Aristotle? For of the rest some allowed that it has a continued existence, and others, if not granting so much as this, yet assigned to the soul a certain power and movement and works and actions in the body.

‘But the more Plato tried to magnify the importance of the soul, declaring it to be the beginning of creation, and the pupil of God, and the power presiding over all things, so much the more contentiously did Aristotle seek to destroy and to dishonour it, and prove the soul to be almost nothing.

‘For he said that it was neither spirit, nor fire, nor body at all, nay, nor yet an incorporeal thing such as to be self-governed and to have motion, nor even so much as to be in the body without motion, and, so to say, soulless. For see how he ventured, or even was forced, so far as to rob the soul of its primary motions, deliberation, thought, expectation, remembrance, reasoning!

‘For this secretary, as they say, of nature says that these are not movements of the soul. Surely this man may be quite trusted to have understood anything about the things outside him, who has made so great a mistake about his own soul, as not even to understand that it thinks! For it is not the soul, he says, but the man that performs each of these acts, while the soul is motionless.

‘Dicaearchus therefore following him, and being able to discern the consequence, took away the whole substance of the soul. It is manifest indeed that the soul is a thing invisible and concealed, so that, through the clear evidence at least of our senses, we could not grant its existence: but though concealed, its motions seem to compel us to acknowledge that the soul is an existent thing.

‘For almost every one seems to understand that the following are acts of the soul: to deliberate, to consider, and to think in any way whatever. For when we behold the body and its powers, and reflect that actions of this kind are not proper to the body, we grant the existence within us of something else which deliberates, and that this is the soul. Since from what other source came our belief concerning soul?

‘If therefore any one take away these acts which are the chief evidences of the soul, and assign them to something else, he has neither left us any evidence of its existence, nor any purpose for which it would seem to be of use. What help therefore can he who would have the soul to be immortal derive from him that deals death to the soul? And what is the explanation of the manner of its motion, according to which we call it self-moved, to be obtained from those who attribute to it no motion at all?

‘True; but in regard to the immortality of the mind some one may say that Aristotle agrees with Plato. For though he will not admit the whole soul to be immortal, yet he acknowledges the mind at least to be divine and imperishable. What therefore the mind is in its essence and its nature, whence it comes, and from what source it separates itself and enters into man’s nature, and whither it departs again, himself alone may know; if at least he understands anything that he says about the mind, and is not avoiding the proof by wrapping up the difficulty of the matter in the obscurity of his language, and, just like the cuttle-fish, making it difficult to catch him by means of the darkness he creates. ‘But even in these matters he is altogether at variance with Plato. For the one says that mind cannot subsist without a soul, while the other separates the mind from the soul. And immortality the one gives to it in partnership with the soul, as being otherwise impossible; but the other says that this survives in the mind alone when separated from the soul. And that the soul goes forth from the body he would not allow, because this thought pleased Plato: but he insisted that the mind is severed from the soul, because Plato judged such a thing as this impossible.’

These are the statements of Atticus: and I will add to them the views of Plotinus also, expressed in the following manner: [3]