INDEX

XII Various and manifold opinions of Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman Stoic philosopher regarding the immortality and origin of souls. He confesses that they are either sampled from or poured out by the divine spirit. That they shall exist in eternal rest among the choirs of the blessed after departure from the body. Concerning their kinship with the Gods, the everlasting light, and the dwellings of the fortunate.

XIII Concerning the everlasting souls drawn from a divine origin, from the same Seneca. Concerning their divine lineage and nature. Concerning the birthday The day of death was often called the 'birthday' into eternal life on which they shall fly away to those above. Concerning the blessed life after death, and a divine description of it.

XIV Concerning the likeness and image of souls with God, from Plato, who through his entire Philosophy maintained this same point: And that he asserted this as the cause of their immortality.

XV Concerning Phocylides A Greek gnomic poet of the 6th century BCE, a most ancient Poet, who said the soul is immortal, and having departed from the body, becomes a God. And that the most ancient Theology of the Magi Refers to the Zoroastrian priests of ancient Persia confessed similar things.

XVI That Epictetus A Greek Stoic philosopher, admirable to all in Philosophy, confessed the soul was created by God in his own likeness: and that he disposed the members of the body in the same way, and gave freedom to the soul.

XVII Other opinions of Epictetus upon the same matter: that the soul is cut off from, or radiated from God: and what the "cutting off" or "radiation" of souls signifies.

XVIII That man was made and introduced into the world by God so that he might contemplate it; that the members of the body were disposed for actions: and that this is the consensus of all.

XIX That the Philosophers assigned a double nature to man: but that the soul itself is the true man, and this is immortal and like unto God.

XX That for this reason they said the soul fell from heaven into the body, in which it lives as a punishment: and that this suspicion is not true: and that what the ancients handed down is to be understood in another sense: And the opinion of Plotinus The founder of Neoplatonism upon the immortality of souls.

XXI That Alexander of Aphrodisias A famous commentator on Aristotle felt the soul was immortal. He separates the bodily soul from the more divine soul. He attributes the dignity of the "active mind" intellectus agens: the part of the mind that creates universal concepts first to the highest God, then to our intellect, affirming both to be incorruptible. The clear words of Alexander concerning the incorruptibility of the human intellect.

XXII That the same Alexander of Aphrodisias asserted the soul is immortal, and resolved the doubt concerning mortality. And that Plato before him and Aristotle taught this very thing, showing that the organs can be weakened while the soul remains incorrupt and inviolate.

XXIII The arguments of Plotinus concerning immortality: and that Aristotle and Plato again confessed the same, that the soul is incorporeal, just as God is: And an epilogue of those things in which nearly all Philosophers wonderfully agree regarding the immortality of souls.

XXIV An epilogue of the reasons by which the soul appeared immortal to the wise.

XXV Against the reasoning by which they thought souls were eternal in the past original: "retro sempiternos" - existing forever backwards in time: and that they erred, attributing the omnipotence and majesty of the highest God, who alone is endowed with everlasting motion, to weak souls: and that human souls are not by themselves the principle of all motion, but God alone.

XXVI That the reasoning by which they persuaded themselves that souls are unbegotten is not true: and that Panaetius A Stoic philosopher who famously doubted the soul's immortality erred by transferring the law of bodily things to souls. And that even the Philosophers agree that not all things that are born must perish, from which...