Now if a particular soul, for certain mysterious reasons, is not
deserving of being placed in the body of a wholly irrational being, nor
yet in that of one purely rational, but is clothed with a monstrous
body, so that reason cannot discharge its functions in one so fashioned,
which has the head disproportioned to the other parts, and altogether
too short; and another receives such a body that the soul is a little
more rational than the other; and another still more so, the nature of
the body counteracting to a greater or less degree the reception of the
reasoning principle; why should there not be also some soul which
receives an altogether miraculous body, possessing some qualities common
to those of other men, so that it may be able to pass through life with
them, but possessing also some quality of superiority, so that the soul
may be able to remain untainted by sin? And if there be any truth in the
doctrine of the physiognomists, whether Zopyrus, or Loxus, or Polemon,
or any other who wrote on such a subject, and who profess to know in
some wonderful way that all bodies are adapted to the habits of the
souls, must there have been for that soul which was to dwell with
miraculous power among men, and work mighty deeds, a body produced, as
Celsus thinks, by an act of adultery between Panthera and the Virgin?!
Why, from such unhallowed intercourse there must rather have been
brought forth some fool to do injury to mankind,—a teacher of
licentiousness and wickedness, and other evils; and not of temperance,
and righteousness, and the other virtues.