there agreeable or
glorious in it? Not that I see any reason why the opinion of Pythagoras
and Plato may not be true: but even although Plato were to have assigned
no reason for his opinion (observe how much I esteem the man), the weight
of his authority would have borne me down; but he has brought so many
reasons, that he appears to me to have endeavoured to convince others, and
certainly to have convinced himself.

XXII. But there are many who labour on the other side of the question, and
condemn souls to death, as if they were criminals capitally convicted; nor
have they any other reason to allege why the immortality of the soul
appears to them to be incredible, except that they are not able to
conceive what sort of thing the soul can be when disentangled from the
body; just as if they could really form a correct idea as to what sort of
thing it is, even when it is in the body; what its form, and size, and
abode are; so that were they able to have a full view of all that is now
hidden from them in a living body, they have no idea whether the soul
would be discernible by them, or whether it is of so fine a texture that
it would escape their sight. Let those consider this, who say that they
are unable to form any idea of the soul without the body, and then they
will see whether they can form any adequate idea of what it is when it is
in the body. For my own part, when I reflect on the nature of the soul, it
appears to me a far more perplexing and obscure question to determine what
is its character while it is in the body, a place which, as it were, does
not belong to it, than to imagine what it is when it leaves it, and has
arrived at the free aether, which is, if I may so say, its proper, its own
habitation. For unless we are to say that we cannot apprehend the
character or nature of anything which we have never seen, we certainly may
be able to form some notion of God, and of the divine soul when released
from the body. Dicaearchus, indeed, and Aristoxenus, because it was hard to
understand the existence, and substance, and nature of the soul, asserted
that there was no such thing as a soul at all. It is, indeed, the most
difficult thing imaginable, to discern the soul by the soul. And this,
doubtless, is the meaning of the precept of Apollo, which advises every
one to know himself. For I do not apprehend the meaning of the god to have
been, that we should understand our members, our stature, and form; for we
are not