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Book I Chapter 49

40.6 · Lives before embodiment

We must also consider the lives of souls before they enter a body, since these lives too differ greatly among themselves. Their different modes of life make their first conjunction different as well. Those newly initiated and rich in contemplation of beings, those who accompany the gods and are akin to them, and those wholly perfected and containing the forms of soul in their entirety all first become implanted in bodies free from affections and undefiled. But those filled to satiety with desires and full of other passions first unite with bodies already attended by passions.¹⁴⁹²

41.1 · When soul becomes present

In the same work.

According to Hippocrates, the member of the Asclepiads, the actual imparting of life and presence of soul first arise when the seed is formed, for it is then suitably disposed to share in life; according to Porphyry, they arise at the newborn’s first emergence in birth.¹⁴⁹³

41.2 · A possible sequence of powers

There could also be another opinion, not yet stated even now: that soul has several powers and substances, and that at different times, according to the developing body’s readiness, it shares first in nature, then in perception, then in impulsive life, and subsequently in rational soul, with intellectual soul at the end. Such are the opinions admitted by the association of souls with bodies as it develops over time.¹⁴⁹⁴

41.3 · Drawing soul in from outside

As for the topic of souls’ entry, under which we inquire how soul is introduced, one opinion has three forms. It draws soul in from outside at what is called conception: either through the eagerness of the begetter, by means of breathing; or through the eagerness of the receiving [womb], when it is suitably disposed to retain it; or through the sympathy of both, when both, breathing together in common, possess an attractive property, nature also moving in concert;¹⁴⁹⁵

41.4 · Entry under necessity

another opinion makes ⟨it⟩, self-moving, enter the organic body under a necessity deriving either from the universe, from the universal soul, or from creation as a whole.¹⁴⁹⁶

41.5 · Using the body: helmsman and rider

The use of the body, moreover, requires careful distinctions. Some say that it resembles the steering of a ship, from which the helmsman can also be released and stand apart. Others compare it to mounting a vehicle and guiding a journey and conveyance shared with it;¹⁴⁹⁷

41.6 · Cooperation, inclination, part, and art

others offer what they consider a more fitting likeness: cooperation in which both contribute equal shares, or a leaning and inclination toward the body that exercises mastery over it. Others accept none of these accounts, but say that soul is a part within the whole living being; still others say that it is an art implanted in its instruments, as if ⟨the⟩ tiller were itself ensouled.¹⁴⁹⁸

41.7 · Powers free of particular bodies

The purer of the Platonists, such as the followers of Plotinus, say that the organic body begins its movement from these parts, serving for generation the powers that use it. But they maintain that the powers themselves are free of particular bodies.¹⁴⁹⁹

42.1 · Souls’ association with the gods

⟨In the same work.⟩

There has been some dispute about souls’ association with the gods. Some say that gods cannot mingle with souls confined in the body; others maintain that pure souls share a single common civic life with the gods, even while they dwell fully in bodies. Others assign souls to a shared association only with divine spirits, or with heroes as well.¹⁵⁰⁰

42a.1 · Criteria for the better life

* * some are the better, judged according to Plato by purification, elevation, and perfection of soul; others are the worse, distinguished in contrast by the opposites of these. According to the Stoics, the criterion is fellowship and the nobility dependent on nature. According to the Peripatetics, they are preferred for proportion in accordance with nature and for intellectual life above human nature;¹⁵⁰¹

42a.2 · Further standards and countless lives

according to Herillus, for knowledge; according to Ariston, for indifference; according to Democritus, for decorum; and according to others, for some portion of nobility. Or they find what is choiceworthy in freedom from disturbance, according to Hieronymus, or in other modes of conduct. From these arise the particular lives, divided without limit within becoming. We need not investigate them busily, but may let them run on into infinity and bid them farewell.¹⁵⁰²

43.1 · On death: the central question

In the same work: on death.

When death comes after life here, what is it that happens? Just as, according to the different schools, soul pre-existed bodies at their coming-to-be, came into existence along with them, or somehow arose in them afterward, does it likewise, in dying, perish before the body, perish together with it, or remain on its own after its departure from here? Such, then, is the question as a whole;¹⁵⁰³

43.2 · Bodily processes and Cornutus

its parts and division into kinds admit many disputes of this sort. Do things that previously lived then die through suffocation, when the air passages are prevented from receiving the breath outside; through the dissolution and slackening of tension; or through heat somehow being extinguished within? But if death occurs in this way, soul is destroyed before the body or together with it, as Cornutus thinks.¹⁵⁰⁴

1492.The author explains differences at the first bodily conjunction by differences in prior lives. Neoteleis carries the language of initiation; polytheamones emphasizes extensive contemplation. The Greek shifts to masculine descriptions of those who enter bodies, which the English preserves with “those.” Its last contrast explicitly allows passions before this conjunction, rather than deriving every passion solely from the present body.

1493.The final predicate serves both accounts in the compressed Greek. The contrast is between the formation of the seed and the newborn’s emergence, with actual life-giving presence at issue. The passage reports these ancient positions; it does not supply a modern account of embryonic development. The identifying phrase about Hippocrates is retained as printed, without expanding it into a genealogy.

1494.This is explicitly a possible further account, not a teaching attributed to Hippocrates or Porphyry. The unusual “not yet stated even now” follows the printed oudepō kai nyn rather than the apparatus’s proposed revision. The body is understood as the subject of “shares.” Nature, perception, impulse, rational soul, and intellectual soul remain five stages, with no ages or durations supplied.

1495.Topos, literally “place,” is taken here as the topic under which the manner of entry is examined; the printed word is retained, not replaced by Heeren’s tropos, “manner.” The bracketed mētras, “womb,” is rejected in the apparatus, while an alternative “mother” is proposed there; both text and translation preserve the rejected word. “Breathing” stays in its printed position with the first alternative. Sympathy denotes a shared responsiveness in the reported account.

1496.The source supplies only the first two letters of autēn, correcting the transmitted article tēn into a pronoun referring to soul. English marks the resulting pronoun as a whole and records the partial-word restoration here. Both necessity and self-movement remain in the sentence; the translation does not remove their tension. Organikon means a body equipped with organs or instruments. The three alternatives are taken here as sources of the necessity; the compressed wording could also connect them with soul’s entry.

1497.The analogies describe different degrees of association between soul as user and body as instrument or vehicle. The first stresses the helmsman’s separability; the second stresses shared travel. The feminine participle “guiding” belongs grammatically to the act of mounting in the compressed Greek, which the English unfolds into coordinated actions.

1498.The adjective epikratei, “exercising mastery,” follows Usener’s correction printed in the edition; it is not rendered as subjection to the body. The source transposes clauses in this passage to establish the printed sequence, which is followed here. The supplied article before “tiller” is marked. An ensouled tiller illustrates art internal to the instrument, contrasting with the separable helmsman.

1499.“Purer” is the author’s evaluation. The source cites Plotinus, Enneads IV.3.3 and 23, and places this sentence after the preceding analogies by transposition. “These parts” remains the printed, somewhat loose backward reference. The edition adopts gennēsin, “generation,” rather than the transmitted genesin. The final distinction is between bodily service and powers not bound to particular bodies.

1500.The short heading is supplied by Wachsmuth, who separates this material from the preceding passage. Politeia evokes citizenship or a common civic order; it is not merely the fact of occupying the same place. Three positions are kept distinct, including the restricted association with divine spirits and possibly heroes. The emphatic kai ei hoti malista is rendered “even while ... fully.”

1501.The opening gap is marked by the edition, which establishes this as a separate excerpt numbered 42a. The antecedent of the masculine descriptions is lost; the English keeps “some” and “others,” without inserting a definite class absent from the surviving text. “The criterion is” completes an elliptical English clause. Anagōgē is a leading or raising upward; kalon can signify nobility or moral beauty.

1502.The printed euschēmosynē means decorum or propriety; Meineke’s proposed euthymosynē, cheerfulness, is not substituted for it. Aochlēsia is freedom from disturbance or trouble. The apparatus questions the construction with echontes, “having,” and the English completes its contextual sense provisionally as finding what is choiceworthy in the listed modes. The final dismissal of limitless particulars belongs to the excerpt’s author.

1503.The heading continues the work attributed to Iamblichus as On the Soul. The author sets accounts of soul’s coming-to-be beside accounts of its fate at death, without declaring a strict one-to-one correspondence between the two lists. Haireseis here are philosophical schools or positions. The final clause introduces the more detailed subdivisions that follow.

1504.Arteriai is rendered “air passages” in this account of incoming breath, rather than automatically given the modern anatomical sense of arteries. Tonos is tension or sustaining tone. These are reported ancient explanations. The printed inward-extinguishing clause is compressed; the apparatus’s proposal to add the onset of cold is not adopted. Cornutus’ name is printed Kournoutos in Greek.