And the rest of the company making the like exhortations, having paused a while, I began after this manner: It so happened, Ammonius, that you did, without
your knowledge, give occasion to the discourse which was
then held; for if the Daemons be souls and spirits separated from bodies and having no communication with
them, as you affirm, but according to the divine poet
Hesiod,
[p. 49]
Are our kind guardians, walking here their rounds,1
why do we deprive the spirits and souls which are in
bodies of the same power by which Daemons may foresee
and foretell things to come? For it is not likely souls do
acquire any property and power, when they abandon their
bodies, wherewith they were not endowed before; but
rather, we should think that they had always the same
parts, but in a worse degree, when they were mixed with
bodies, some of them being inapparent and hid, and others
weak and obscure, like those who see through a thick mist
or move in water, heavily and uneasily performing their
operations, much desiring to be cured and so to recover
what is their own, and to be discharged and purified of
that which covers them. For as the sun does not then
properly become bright when he has escaped out of the
cloud,—for he is always so, though to our eyes, being
clouded, he seems obscure and dark,—so the soul acquires
not then the faculty of divining when gotten clear of the
body, as from a cloud, but having the same before, is
blinded by the commixture and confusion which she has
with the mortal body. And this cannot seem strange or
incredible, if we consider nothing else in the soul but the
faculty of remembrance, which is, as it were, the reverse
of divination, and if we reflect upon the miraculous power
it hath of preserving things past, or, we should rather say,
things present, for of what is past nothing remains, and
all things do come into being and perish in the same moment, whether they be actions, or words, or passions; they
all pass by and vanish as soon as they appear; for time,
like the course of a river, passeth on, and carries every
thing along with it. But this retentive faculty of the soul
seizes upon these in some mysterious way, and gives a
form and a being to those things which are no longer
[p. 50]
present. For the oracle which was given to those of
Thessaly, touching Arne, enjoined them to declare
The deaf man's hearing, and the blind man's sight.
But memory is to us the hearing of things without voice,
and the sight of things invisible; so that, as I now said,
no marvel, if retaining the things which are no longer in
being, the soul anticipates several of those which are still
to come; for these do more concern her, and she does
naturally sympathize with them, inclining and tending to
things which are future; whereas, as to those which are
past and have an end, she leaves them behind her, only
retaining the bare remembrance of them.
