out by the continual depredations of death; no longer
perceiving the objects of mental vision, nor permitted any more to
dwell with itself, because ever hurried away to things obscure,
external and low? Hence, becoming impure, and being on all sides
snatched in the unceasing whirl of sensible forms, it is covered with
corporeal stains, and wholly given to matter, contracts deeply its
nature, loses all its original splendour, and almost changes its own
species into that of another; just as the pristine beauty of the most
lovely form would be destroyed by its total immersion in mire and
clay. But the deformity of the first arises from inward filth, of its
own contracting; of the second, from the accession of some foreign
nature. If such a one then desires to recover his former beauty, it is
necessary to cleanse the infected parts, and thus by a thorough
purgation to resume his original form. Hence, then if we assert that
the soul, by her mixture, confusion and commerce with body and
matter, becomes thus base, our assertion will, I think, be right. For
the baseness of the soul consists in not being pure and sincere. And
as the gold is deformed by the adherence of earthly clods, which are
no sooner removed than on a sudden the gold shines forth with its
native purity; and then becomes beautiful when separated from
natures foreign from its own, and when it is content with its own
purity for the possession of beauty; so the soul, when separated from
the sordid desires engendered by its too great immersion in body,
and liberated from the dominion of every perturbation, can thus and
thus only, blot out the base stains imbibed from its union with body;
and thus becoming alone, will doubtless expel all the turpitude
contracted from a nature so opposite to its own.

Indeed, as the ancient oracle declares, temperance and fortitude,
prudence and every virtue, are certain purgatives of the soul; and
hence the sacred mysteries prophesy obscurely, yet with truth, that
the soul not purified lies in Tartarus, immersed in filth. Since the
impure is, from his depravity, the friend of filth, as swine, from their
sordid body, delight in mire alone.

For what else is true temperance than not to indulge in corporeal
delights, but to fly from their connection, as things which are neither
pure, nor the offspring of purity? And true fortitude is not to fear
death; for death is nothing more than a certain separation of soul
from body, and this h