[Discussion] On the Gods and the World, Ch. XX

[sdi]

Good morning and happy Wednesday! Let us pick the puzzle-box back up on this, the penultimate chapter:

XX. On Transmigration of Souls, and how Souls are said to migrate into brute beasts.

If the transmigration of a soul takes place into a rational being, it simply becomes the soul of that body. But if the soul migrates into a brute beast, it follows the body outside, as a guardian spirit follows a man.* For there could never be a rational soul in an irrational being.

The transmigration of souls can be proved from the congenital afflictions of persons. For why are some born blind, others paralytic, others with some sickness in the soul itself? Again, it is the natural duty of Souls to do their work in the body; are we to suppose that when once they leave the body they spend all eternity in idleness?

Again, if the souls did not again enter into bodies, they must either be infinite in number or God must constantly be making new ones. But there is nothing infinite in the world; for in a finite whole there cannot be an infinite part. Neither can others be made; for everything in which something new goes on being created, must be imperfect. And the World, being made by a perfect author, ought naturally to be perfect.

* Thomas Taylor notes, "This beautiful doctrine, which seems to have originated from Syrianus and Proclus, was universally adopted by all the succeeding Platonists."

Comments

[sdi]

The transmigration of souls can be proved from the congenital afflictions of persons. For why are some born blind, others paralytic, others with some sickness in the soul itself?

Speaking of Theosophy, I ran across this parallel quote from Blavatsky (in her 1889 Key to Theosophy): "If we have to believe in a divine principle at all, it must be in one which is as absolute harmony, logic, and justice, as it is absolute love, wisdom, and impartiality; and a God who would create every soul for the space of one brief span of life, regardless of the fact whether it has to animate the body of a wealthy, happy man, or that of a poor suffering wretch, hapless from birth to death though he has done nothing to deserve his cruel fate – would be rather a senseless fiend than a God."