For if while the man is alive
the body deliquesces and decays, and yet the soul always weaves her
garment anew and repairs the waste, then of course, when the soul
perishes, she must have on her last garment, and this only will
survive her; but then again when the soul is dead the body will at
last show its native weakness, and soon pass into decay. And therefore
this is an argument on which I would rather not rely as proving that
the soul exists after death. For suppose that we grant even more
than you affirm as within the range of possibility, and besides
acknowledging that the soul existed before birth admit also that after
death the souls of some are existing still, and will exist, and will
be born and die again and again, and that there is a natural
strength in the soul which will hold out and be born many times-for
all this, we may be still inclined to think that she will weary in the
labors of successive births, and may at last succumb in one of her
deaths and utterly perish; and this death and dissolution of the
body which brings destruction to the soul may be unknown to any of us,
for no one of us can have had any experience of it: and if this be
true, then I say that he who is confident in death has but a foolish
confidence, unless he is able to prove that the soul is altogether
immortal and imperishable.
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