On the Immortality of the Soul

...he named by way of excellence, he writes, I say, to Boethus that men agreed in asserting the immortality of the soul, and that there were reasons brought forward for it by philosophers, which others strive to refute. Porphyry himself, however, in his book On the Causes Leading to Intelligibles, judges the soul to be immortal, and was so inclined toward this opinion that in the third book of On Abstinence from Animals, he did not deny that the souls of those brutes which possess both sense and memory are rational and immortal; which Numenius also thought. Certainly, Numenius. Numenius himself and certain of the Platonists thought the souls of irrational creatures were immortal.

But let us set aside these Platonic matters; nor likewise let us assert those things which are commonly known even to the vulgar; nor likewise let us recount those most celebrated matters concerning the motion of the soul as something agitating itself and, if I may put it so, revolving in a circle; since they would not be to the taste of many, even though they were not displeasing not only to the ancient Peripatetics, Theophrastus, Albert M. Theophrastus and his followers, but were so pleasing to Albert, surnamed the Great, that, with a few changes, he honored them with the title of a most powerful demonstration in his book On the Origin of the Soul. And before him, they were esteemed so greatly by Philoponus. Philoponus in his commentaries on the first book of Aristotle’s On the Soul that he attempted to derive a demonstration from them—namely this one, which we transcribe, rendering it word for word into Latin terms from the Greek: “The soul is self-moving; Note. that which is self-moving is always moving; this, moreover, is immortal; therefore the soul is immortal.” But Themistius. Themistius also, although it does not please him that motion should be attributed to the soul, nevertheless thinks that Aristotle says nearly the same thing if he is willing to accept motion in place of actuality; he also thinks that other arguments of Plato agree and harmonize with Aristotelian arguments, especially those which Aristotle included in the Eudemus (which is a dialogue on the soul). Not only Themistius himself in his Paraphrase mentions this dialogue, but also Simplicius. Simplicius in his expositions, so that we may perceive that Jo. Pico. my uncle Giovanni Pico did not take up a burden entirely unsupportable by human shoulders when he promised the harmony of Plato and Aristotle even in this matter. Nor shall I assert the reasons explained elsewhere based on divine justice, nor likewise the testimonies of the divine oracles, and of those who have returned to life and brought aid after their death.