10. (15). The soul has affinities with the divine and eternal nature.
This is evident, because, as we have demonstrated it, she is not a
body, has neither figure nor color, and is impalpable. Consider the
following demonstration. It is generally granted that everything that
is divine and that possesses genuine existence enjoys a happy and wise
life. Now let us consider the nature of our soul, in connection with
that of the divine. Let us take a soul, not one inside of a body, which
is undergoing the irrational motions of appetite and anger, and the
other affections born of the body, but a soul that has eliminated all
that, and which, so far as possible, had no intercourse with the body.
Such a soul would show us that vices are something foreign to the
nature of the soul, and come to her from elsewhere, and that, inasmuch
as she is purified, she in her own right possesses the most eminent
qualities, wisdom, and the other virtues (as thought Plato[82]). If
the soul, when re-entering into herself, is such, how could she not
participate in this nature that we have acknowledged to be suitable
to every thing that is eternal and divine? As wisdom and real virtue
are divine things, they could not dwell in a vile and mortal entity;
the existence that receives them is necessarily divine, since it
participates in divine things by their mutual affinity and community.
Anyone who thus possesses wisdom and virtue in his soul differs little
from the superior beings; he is inferior to them only by the fact of
his having a body. If all men, or at least, if many of them held their
soul in this disposition, no one would be sceptic enough to refuse to
believe that the soul is immortal. But as we consider the soul in her
present condition of being soiled by vices, no one imagines that her
nature is divine and immortal.