[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]

Regarding the soul and it's evolution, you're speaking with a much more sophistication than I possess! I'll have to come back to this once I've studied a great deal more.


pre-Socratic (pre-Pythagorean, really) Greeks didn't believe in any sort of detailed afterlife or rebirth narrative for souls

As a minor point of clarification, I'd go with pre-Pythagorean: Empedocles, at least, is a pre-Socratic that has a well-defined position on reincarnation. (He is one of a very few that I have studied with care, though.)