, and the
Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most
thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of
the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction.
Phaedo):--"After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul
will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the
impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections,
will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross
vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a
propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a
certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed
from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is
recently collected from surrounding air; for according to the arcana of
the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and
immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene
body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is
an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more
extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a
long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being
dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while on the
contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial
regions with its ethereal vehicle alone."

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* This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan
philosophies.--Ed. Theos.
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Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of
its body. "However the soul be in itself affected," says Porphyry
(translated by Cudworth), "so does it always find a body suitable and
agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul
does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is,
an ethereal one." And the same author, "The soul is never quite naked
of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable
and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer
one). But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the
spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go
away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till
the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a
dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow."
Here it will