is eternal and imperishable, and will finally attain the beatitude for
which it was created. But it may be punished after death by a shorter or
longer exclusion from that beatitude. To suppose with Alexander
Aphrodisius that an imperfect or ill-prepared soul may be annihilated,
would be to admit a belief at complete variance with its eternal essence
and origin.

But we may well conjecture that the punishment of such ill-prepared and
refractory souls would consist in their being in a state in which after
separation from the body they still pine after sensual enjoyments and
suffer from the impossibility of such gratification.

It may also be supposed that such ill-prepared souls remember the
notions that were current in this world regarding beatitude and
damnation; their conceptions would in that case resemble dreams which
are often more vivid than impressions received in waking moments. They
would imagine themselves undergoing the examination in the tomb and all
the other punishments depicted in the Koran, or it may be enjoying the
sensual pleasures there described. On the other hand, the noble and
well-prepared soul will pass at once to the contemplation of the
eternal, and will be exempt from every memory and every conception
relating to this world. For if anything of this kind remained in it as a
reminder of its union with the body, it would so far fall short of the
plenitude of its perfection.

Besides his mystical treatise "On the soul," Avicenna has left a short
but remarkable poem on the same subject, which runs as follows:--

"THE SOUL.

"It descended upon thee from the lofty station (heaven); a dove rare and
uncaptured, curtained from the eyes of every knower yet which is
manifest and never wore a veil.[42] It came to thee unwillingly and it
may perhaps be unwilling to abandon thee although it complain of its
sufferings. It resisted at first, and would not become familiar, but
when it was in friendly union with the body, it grew accustomed to the
desert waste (the world). Methinks it then forgot the recollections of
the protected park (heaven), and of those abodes which it left with
regret; but when in its spiral descent it arrived at the centre of its
circle in the terrestrial world, it was united to the infirmity of the
material body and remained among the monuments and prostrate ruins. It
now remembers the protected park and weepeth with tears which flow and
cease not till the time for setting out towa