THE SOUL BOTH IMPASSIBLE AND PUNISHABLE.
12. There is a contradiction between our own former opinion that the soul cannot sin, and the universally admitted belief that the soul commits sins, expiates them, undergoes punishments in Hades, and that she passes into new bodies. Although we seem to be in a dilemma, forcing us to choose between them, it might be possible to show they are not incompatible.
PHILOSOPHIC SEPARATION REFERS NOT ONLY TO BODY, BUT TO PASSIBLE ACCRETIONS.
When we attribute infallibility to the soul, we are supposing her to be one and simple, identifying the soul with soul essence. When, however, we consider her capable of sin, we are looking at her as a complex, of her essence and of another kind of soul which can experience brutal passions. The soul, thus, is a combination of various elements; and it is not the pure soul, but this combination, which experiences passions, commits sins, and undergoes punishments. It was this conception of the soul Plato was referring to when he said1: “We see the soul as we see Glaucus, the marine deity,” and he adds, “He who would know the nature of the soul herself should, after stripping her of all that is foreign to her, in her, especially consider her philosophic love for truth; and see to what things she attaches herself, and by virtue of whose affinities she is what she is.” We must, therefore, differentiate the soul’s life acts from that which is punished, and when we speak of philosophy’s separation of the soul, we mean a detaching not only from the body, but also from what has been added to the soul.
HOW THE ANIMAL NATURE IS GENERATED.
This addition occurs during her generation, or rather in the generation of another ideal form of soul, the “animal nature.” Elsewhere2 this generation has been explained thus. When the soul descends, at the very moment when she inclines towards the body, she produces an image of herself. The soul, however, must not be blamed for sending this image into the body. For the soul to incline towards the body is for the soul to shed light on what is below her; and this is no more sinful than to produce a shadow. That which is blamable is the illuminated object; for if it did not exist, there would be nothing to illuminate. The descent of the soul, or her inclination to the “body, means only that she communicates life to what she illuminates. She drives away her image, or lets it vanish, if nothing receptive is in its vicinity; the soul lets the image vanish, not because she is separated— for to speak accurately, she is not separated from the body—but because she is no longer here below; and she is no longer below when she is entirely occupied in contemplating the intelligible world.
THE DOUBLE HERCULES SYMBOLIZES THE SOUL.
(Homer) seems to admit this distinction in speaking of Hercules, when he sends the image of this hero into Hades, and still he locates him within the abode of the deities3;—it is at least the idea implied in this double assertion that Hercules is in Hades and that he is in Olympus. The poet, therefore, distinguished in him two elements. We might perhaps expound the passage as follows: Hercules had an active virtue, and because of his great qualities was judged worthy of being classified with the deities, but as he possessed only the active virtue, and not the contemplative virtue, he could not be admitted into Heaven entirely; while he is in heaven, there is something of him in Hades4.