Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 283to the doctrine of transmigration, to which imperfectlypurified souls are subject, the body in which they didwell or ill is neither rewarded nor punished. Thesoul is punished by passing into another body, ofman or beast, corresponding to the quality which ithas acquired by its transitory union with the formerbody. It is plainly regarded as the only principleof identity in the man, but its reward consists inbecoming again impersonal, as its punishment liesin being again connected with a body. Nor isthis all. Even during its imprisonment in the bodyit has no substantial existence of its own, but is aportion cut off from the World-soul. It follows thatin Neoplatonic doctrine there is no such union betweensoul and body as to constitute a personality made upof the two. If we regard the soul's own nature, itis divine; if we regard its connection with the body,it is an imprisonment of the divine in matter; if weregard the body, it is a portion of matter, which byits connection with ^. the soul becomes to it the intrinsicseat of evil. The man, in whom these two antagonisticelements co-exist, indeed, without coalescing, is literally"halfdust, half deity," but he is not a whole at all.According to this system of thought, the unity ofbody and soul, which constitutes a proper humanpersonality, does not exist.3. The soull has come into its present conditiononly by a darkening of its original being, and duringits connection with the body can never cease to lookupon it as something foreign and disturbing. Thus, ifit can hope for a return to its original state only by absolutefreedom from the dominion of sense, its propertask is to work for this deliverance and so to reach the1 Zeller, v. 533.